The first part of our stay here fell into a routine, swim first thing, oh to swim in bathwater warm water!! Bliss, after several circuits of Sisu, breakfast followed then catch up on the boat jobs we didn’t have time to do in the Rio. Our afternoons were spent depending on the weather!
Each evening unless it really was too rough, even for me, we would swim around Sisu, after a day or so we saw that we had guests, three Remora fish had firmly attached themselves to our hull, waiting for perishable food, fruit and veg scraps to be dropped in, whereupon they would detach the suckerlike disk on their heads and devour the scraps.
There were only 3 to 4 boats in the bay so on the first morning we upped anchor and moved to a spot where shelter could be had from the buildings lining the small bay.
Here in the clean waters of the bay we could run our watermaker. Terry always maintains our gear, each and even after two years of not running it, the watermaker, built by Terry, fired up and after an hour or so we had a tank of fresh drinking water, success!
We were low on fresh supplies. Unlike Guatemala who grow abundant veg and fruit, Utila has it’s fruit, veg and everything else brought in by ferry. Fresh fruit and veg arrive twice weekly, Tuesdays and Fridays. The “Utila Dream” Ferry, a large catamaran travels between Utila and La Ceiba, Roatan in both directions twice a day in less than an hour. It even has a freezer for perishables, acting as both a passenger and freight ferry.
We tied up our dinghy at Trudy’s a dive school and, as luck would have it, a bar. Provided we had a beer or a meal then we could leave our dinghy safely at their dock, it was no hardship with pay our dinghy fee with a beer!
Utila is known for being the Whale Shark capitol of the Caribbean. We went on a whale shark trip in 2019, never saw one! It’s the smallest of the Honduras major Bay Islands, marking the south end of the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, the second largest in the world. Technically it’s two islands as Utila is split in two by a canal. It’s only 17 sq miles, highest elavation 243ft, with a population of approx 5,000. The people of Utila are of African (Garifuna), English and Dutch descent. English is widely spoken with the Garifuna holding on to their own cultural identity and language. They have even gone to the World Court to ensure they can keep their culture from when they were British Islnds. Utilla is extremely popular with young backpackers, with more than 80 dive sites around the island. Certainly from our cockpit each evening we could see the multi coloured lights from the many bars and hear party music! Although one evening in the cockpit, we were treated to the most incredible Garifuna drumming and singing for almost two hours, wish we had been ashore to see it!
On Monday, looking at the forecast on our Iridium, a weather front would be passing through for a few days, the forecast proved accurate. By 4pm, the wind and rain were too strong to head into Trudy’s for an evening meal, we definitely didn’t want to be ashore if Sisu dragged! Last year we fitted a wind speed indicator, prior to this we have never accurately known our wind speed, not a bad thing actually, at times it’s best we never knew! We were so unused to having this new bit of gear that we forgot to measure the wind speed that night!
Fortunately next day the winds had calmed and we went into town to get some cash. It’s a common problem for ATM’s not to work here, fortunately we had a reasonable supply, but extra is always useful. A cheerful security guard at the local bank informed us the ATM would work tomorrow. Of course it took several tomorrow’s for the ATM to work!
One place we really wanted to revisit was The Jade Seahorse Garden. Owned and built by Neil Keller, an artist from Los Angeles. He has spent over twenty years creating this psychedelic world in his back garden.
His designs utilise everything in the garden, be it man made or natural.
With plates, bottles, broken pottery, bits of tiles, glass, ornaments, conch and other shells, you name it, it’s here, eclectic shapes, arches, pathways, christmas tree type constructions, bridges and platforms provide elevation, albeit in a wonky fashion, to view the 6 cabins, each one unique and his world below. It’s not only humans who can stay here, spiders, huge Silk Golden Orb banana spiders inhabit this Gaudiesque place.
The spiders are harmless, and I don’t mind spiders on the whole, however we took care as their webs would be spun across pathways, their presence caught by the silken webs glinting in the bright sunlight, we would then seek an alternative path!!
One visit is not enough, Neil is a fascinating character, true to himself, at times provocative, teasing people for their reaction, and perhaps their level of world knowledge, Neil is an exceptionally well read man. This is his world, if you don’t like it, that’s cool, no one’s forcing you to stay! We love his world and will hopfully pay Neil a call before we leave Utila.
During our time here we’ll work through some of the jobs we didn’t get time to do whilst at Ram Marina. There are always boat jobs! Terry overhauled our engine compartment cooling fan that he fitted into a locker above the engine. Next up was the windlass hand held controller connection, another case of taking it apart, rewiring and improving how it fits into the anchor locker. The elements are so hard on everything here, corrosion is a constant problem.
This week’s weather front is still passing through, on the 30th November we set the anchor alarm on the ipad just in case. 9Pm is known as the cruisers midnight, we start so early in the mornings that by 9pm we really are in bed most of the time! At 9.30pm the alarm shrieked at us. What a shock! As we never know how serious the situation is we shot into action, still semi conscious! Fortunately, Terry had set the alarm parameters tight and the anchor hadn’t dragged, the chain had moved enough to set the alarm off. The last night of November passed with the wind blowing a right hoolie and rain beating down on the hatches.
sisu journey 