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February 2007 |
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13 February - Panama to Honduras
The rest of January was spent in Colon doing jobs on the boat, Stuart has been on a varnishing and painting mission so the boat looks a lot better than it has in the past. We stocked up on a load of rum and wine before we left as it is so much cheaper here than it is anywhere else so we have booze all over the place now, stacked in the bilges, in the cats sleeping place and our spare water bottle is now full of rum!
We had another trip through the canal on our friends boat Pagos, it all went really smoothly and we had a really good time, Meri and Demitrie from Adagio came over too so it was the last time we would all be together. Sue made some lovely food and we all got to watch 'Pirates of the Caribbean II' which was good fun. So they are now happily in the Pacific getting ready for a long haul at sea. We did manage to lose our camera in Panama city though which was a bit of a pain, luckily I still have a camera and we are heading up to America so will pick one cheap up there.
Stuart's passport finally turned up and we set off for Honduras. I really wasn't looking forward to the journey as the weather has been pretty bad and we were being predicted 10ft seas and 30 knot winds for the whole journey, but we had to leave as we had to be here in time to meet our friends. There was a lull in the weather so we set off with this. The first night out was pretty brisk winds and 8 ft seas but after that the weather completely clamed down. We still had a fair amount of wind to push us along and we made it non stop to Guanaja in 6 days. My longest time at sea so far! I spent my 29th birthday at sea, which wasn't very exciting, although I did get a pressie this year!! That was very exciting and we caught a large tuna for dinner which Stuart cooked up for my birthday treat!
When we arrive in guanaja we moored up at Josh's Cay on one of the mooring buoys. It is a really nice place, with sandy beaches a bar and beautiful clear blue water, we were here this time last year (this was where we lost our dingy!).
We settled down to have our first uninterrupted nights sleep for 6 days. We woke up at 3 in the morning and took a look outside to find that the mooring had broken and he had drifted to the other side of the bay, we were beached!! Not a very nice surprise at all, we had no joy moving the boat with the engine and none with the dingy and the boat engine, we put a kedge anchor out in the end and winched ourselves off. It took a couple of hours to get off and no one was listening to the radio so we could get no help, it was very scary as we were getting further and further up the shore and the boat just wasn't moving, we really thought that we were going to loose the boat.
Mind you for all the unluckiness of the mooring breaking we did have some good luck too! If the wind had have been blowing in a slightly different direction we would have ended up on the rocks and certainly would have lost the boat. Also it appears that it was a very soft mud bottom and after looking at the keel and the rudder they look ok and there is no visible damage.
Since being in Honduras we have spent a few days at Josh's Cay then moved over to El Bight and caught up with some Germans that we had met here last year. They were running the Crazy Parrot restaurant then but this has since closed down, but they are now running a new place just opposite called Manatee. So we had a few good nights catching up with them. We signed in to the country no problems and we are now just on our way to Roatan to pick up Andy and Caroline on 15th! We then plan to head back up to Belize then on to Mexico.