The start of January saw us celebrating our friends David & Soy Smith s/v Easy Rider, 50th anniversary at Trico bar, another very convivial day with good company and music!
Over the following few days we continue with boat jobs. Being in one place for a time gives us the opportunity to do jobs, clean, check things over and with a short dinghy ride to the next bight over we can even provision and refuel.
We also have the luxury of Trico bar having a laundry service! There’s also a good supermarket Eldon’s in the next town of French Key, so Terry & I together with our friend Bev s/v Aseka and her crewhand Paul we taxied to town and did a huge provision, it really is a feast or famine at times depending on where we are.
Some Islands we’ve sailed to have very little in the way of provisioning up. We can usually get fresh fruit and veg wherever we go and I have to say those Islands are better for our waistlines than a large supermarket with treats, biscuits etc which definitely are not good for the waistline!
On our return back to Sisu by taxi we discover the road to Trico Bar normally a driving hazard due to the knee deep ruts and ravines, is being worked on. Completely unperturbed, our driver cruises up to the enormous Caterpillar digger virtually blocking the road, which is following an equally enormous road roller and calmly slaloms past them both!
We cling to our seats as he shimmies his taxi down the road, waving at the workmen, who take this unorthodox manoeuvre completely in their stride!! We remembered to breathe and continued on our way….
Finding places to stow extra food in a small boat can be a logistical puzzle.
Under beds in lockers, cupboards, the quarter berth, even the wardrobe is used to store extra staples that we may not find at later destinations!
7th January 2023.
Dropping and settling the anchor anywhere is just a small part of arriving at a place. We then have to hoist the dinghy off the deck, hoist the outboard motor from it’s perch on our stern down onto the dinghy, get out the oar and set up the dinghy fuel tank.
After that we put the sunshades back up around the cockpit, zip the bimini extension onto the sprayhood, clean up if necessary down below, clean the sprayhood and get out the large water container for our showers in the cockpit, plus any other setting up camp jobs that may occur. We may also have to clear in, so it’s lovely to stop somewhere for a little while, enjoy our surroundings and explore.
However…..after a week or so, we both get a sense of being “too settled”. Routines have been established and the desire to move on begins to grow within both of us. We tentively ask each other if we are “done” here for now, each other’s answer is affirmative. We’re done. Terry checks out weather forecasts each day anywhere we are. Fortunately there is a nice window to sail to Guanaja. So on the 7th Jan, we break up camp, cleaning and putting away everything we’ve set up.
Guanaja is just 36 NM, which if we average 5 knots will take just 6 hours. At 0715hrs we haul anchor, motor out through the gap between the reefs which keep out the worst of the weather, together with Aseka and Easy Rider. The forecast was for very little wind, indeed the sea was almost flat calm, we put up the mainsail with a reef purely for stability. The forecast also said rain. It certainly did!
We motored onwards, Easy Rider was ahead, we watched the catamaran disappear into a heavy rain squall. It was a matter of time before we too would catch that squall!
For pretty much the whole 6 hours we had heavy rains. I took shelter under the sprayhood, leaving Terry to sit it out, there are some perks to being crew.
We had a visit from dolphins, always wonderful to see. These sleek, muscular beauties were intent on fishing, so after a quick performance of leaping and checking us out, they went back to their fishing, leaving us with big smiles on our faces despite the rain!
The entrance to Guanaja bay requires eyeball navigation plus the excellent charts on Navionics.
To our port side we have the Dunbar Rock with it’s huge hotel precariously built upon it, to our starboard side we have reefs. We always read up prior to arriving at a new anchorage, in real life we then fit what we’ve read into what we actually see on arrival, which can be rather tricky.
Fortunately the weather brightened considerably, so we could see the reefs either side and the narrow channel through them. Once in we weigh up how many boats are already in and where’s safest for us to anchor. Anchor holdings vary so much wherever we go, is it rock, sandy, seagrass,coral, deep,shallow?
Here the holding is good, and the bay is almost empty of other boats. We anchor up in clear, blue/green water and have a brew whilst the anchor settles into it’s new surroundings. We’re in a bay with many houses along the edge, some bars and a dinghy ride away is the fascinating town of Bonnaca. This is going to be fun!
sisu journey 