Wednesday, January 13, 1999 – Roatan, Honduras

How?

That’s the local greeting around here. Yes, we have arrived in Fantasy Island, Roatan. Coming back to the Bay Islands made up by Roatan, Guanaja and Utila brings back many excellent memories, as I used to work as a dive instructor on the last two islands a number of years ago. It turns out that Hurricane Mitch did very little damage to any of the islands. The worst hit was Guanaja, but they got away lightly, which can not be said for the rest of Honduras.

STARSHIP tied up in Fantasy Island Resort

We were banged around again quite heavily last night. In fact, I reckon it was the worst to date with 6-9’ short waves heading directly into our bow. One of the pot holes we fell into must have been so big that the tender, which was very well strapped down, came off the chocks and was only held up by the large tender fuel tanks beneath it! On my watch I overheard a conversation between a US Coast Guard plane and a sailing vessel that had apparently run aground around Cabo Falso. We offered our assistance, but the vessel was 100 miles away and the Coast Guard had it under control. Spare a thought for those on the yacht and those doing the rescue. Most annoying of all however, was that all the weather forecasts suggested an easing and direction change of the wind. All we got was more of the same with gusts of up to 35 knots.

Water over the bow!

Later in the morning the wind finally turned and we ran with it all the way to Roatan, allowing all of us to finally get round to getting STARSHIP shipshape again. The change in weather conditions also allowed us increase our speed back to over nine knots again and hence we managed to pull into French Harbor by 16:30 to pick up our agent, Beatman (beatman@globalnet.hn). He guided us into our present position at Paradise Island and processed our paperwork.

Beatman Ebanks

Tomorrow morning DJ, Michael and I head off for New Orleans, therefore there will not be any journals until my return on Monday. So without much further ado we wish you all well.

Just be nice