After the bright calm of Christmas Day, the following days brought 20 knot winds and rain. During Boxing day we watched a couple of boats drag and re-anchor. The forecast for New Years eve is for 30 knot winds!
29th December, and our friend Bev Corey s/v Aseka has arrived after a traumatic crossing from Guatemala, she had her steering lock up and drifted for several hours during which the Honduran Coastguard sent out two boats that turned back with problems and a third that failed to turn up. Eventually the steering freed and she could sail again. There are some big rivers running into the Sea off Honduras and trees and other debris are not uncommen. To check in she and her crew member will need to travel to the main town of Coxon Hole. The four of us are driven to Coxon Hole. Jonesville is near the end of the island, away from the main places so it’s a great opportunity to do some provisioning and a day out!
The water around Sisu is still a murky, plastic strewn brown, I get pretty twitchy if I can’t exercise, Terry is now good at recognising this, so we head to Trico bar with it’s small outdoor pool, plus of course it’s a bar…. I swim for an hour, it’s like a large goldfish in a small tank, back and forth, back and forth, I don’t care, it’s movement and raises the endorphins, which makes life onboard a small space bearable, for us both!!
30th December. There’s an ex pat community here and Friday is BJs bar live music. The four of us dinghy round to the next bight, OakRidge to Bjs. We were at this bar for music in 2019, it’s now 2022 and unchanged!
An easy afternoon of listening to the music of our era and buying fruit and veg from the back of the weekly veg truck.
Something that has changed is the sheer proliferation of plastic in the sargassum weed surrounding BJ’s bar.
It’s shocking, I can only hope that our blog raises some awareness of what we are doing to our fragile planet and the innocent creatures who have to survive in these conditions that we have created.
Even an attempt at a funny photo of how the loo operates here captures also a photo of a different human waste, plastic.
31st December, New Years Eve. We know we won’t be staying up till midnight to see the New Year in, 9pm is the cruisers midnight!
However, there’s music all afternoon at La Rosa, a bar restaurant through the mangrove canal. Bev, Paul, ourselves, together with Bev’s friends David & Soy s/v Easy Rider take our dinghys round to La Rosa in the afternoon. It’s calm and sunny, not what was forecast thank goodness. La Rosa bar and the owners house is set up in the hillside.
The house is painted a deep rose pink which is striking against the lush green of the surrounding trees. For once I put on a dress, this place really does look like it’s from one of those sailing magazines!
The music is superb, two guitarists we saw at Trico in 2019, they’re a tight duo playing Santana covers, R & B. We enjoyed a perfect afternoon chatting, listening to music whilst over looking a blue twinkling sea.
I have to say, it beat freezing at home…. The afternoon wound up at 4pm, time for home, but the day wasn’t over just yet. Terry & I dinghied back to Sisu, retrieved our bottle of New Year Fizz, grabbed some nibbles and went to Bev’s catamaran together with David & Soy to continue catching up with each other. By 8pm we were back at Sisu, and rounded the evening off with a glass of wine in the cockpit. 9Pm, cruisers midnight, Happy New Year!!
1st January 2023. We were glad we’d declined the tequila shots at La Rosa as Mother Nature decided she’d welcome in 2023 with winds causing a fetch across the bay which left Sisu rolling through the night!!
During the day we rang our families and wished them happy new year. My Dad had been at a community party till 2am, what stamina!
There’s a floating bar in the entrance to the bay (there really does seem to be a high proportion of bars here) and as the water round Sisu was still murky, great for crocs, not great for us being able to spot them, we dinghied to the bar and enjoyed snorkelling off the reef. Typical, the day I don’t bring my underwater camera and we have two very curious Cuttlefish for company! They were incredibly inquisitive, to the point where we could almost touch them. We also saw a lionfish, hard to believe that amongst it’s Tiller girl frills it hides it’s lethal venom.
As it’s the festive season, we ended up at a bar, this time to our friend Eds Hole in the Wall. I see from my sailing diary the entry for 2nd January it starts “Both v tired….we’re staying in tonight”! Reading further down the entry for the 2nd. I see we failed the plan of staying onboard…. My diary records “After doing a few boat jobs, provisioning at Oak Ridge then Terry helped Bev with some electrics on her catamaran, which is conveniently moored at Trico bar! “
As I said at the start of our blog, this is a blog about our life whilst on Sisu, the daily life, the sailing, the experiences, an honest account, not every day is an adventure or amazing experience, contrary to what is believed on land. We will stay here at Jonesville whilst the current weather front blows through. It’s not living on the edge or a sailing by the seat of your pants passage blog, so maybe not the most riveting of reads. It is however an account of the ordinary, even mundane stuff we do, and part of that is enjoying the festive season and the very good company of friends here, soon we’ll be off once more!
sisu journey 