The Bay of Islands in Honduras are special. We arrived in Guanaja, after a 4 day offshore trip from San Andrés, and checked into Honduras. After a brief stay, we moved on to Roatán, where our daughter Ani with her fiancé Fred visited us for a week. These islands are spectacular. The snorkeling is some of the best we have ever seen, right off the beach!

We will add more pictures and stories on the Bay of Islands as we get caught up.

"Our trip to Guanaja, the easternmost of the Honduran Bay of Islands, provided an easy and inexpensive ($4US) entry into the Country, on a small, crowded island settlement next to the big island. You can get clean diesel at the Texaco fuel dock, along with pure mountain water, at a deep dock on the west side of the settlement.

After we checked in and fueled up, we headed north inside the reef to anchor west of Josh Cay, where we took a mooring and enjoyed Reggie's Tequila Grouper at the bar/dining area. It's a lovely setting, but bring lots of insect repellent. The noseeums there are voracious! There are other nice anchorages nearby, and the snorkeling in this NE area of Guanaja is reportedly very good.

We developed problems with our refrigeration, and several local sources recommended Enrique, a Cuban, now married to a local, who had left Baracoa, Cuba, on a raft built on inner tubes, just five years ago. He was rescued in the Gulf of Mexico by a Honduran fishing boat, after he had run out of food and water. Enrique dropped everything and spent a day troubleshooting and repairing the system, which cools down better than ever before. We enjoyed meeting his family, and plan to stay in touch. We gave him copies of our Cuban music CD's, including Benny More, Orquesta Aragon, Celia Cruz, and many many more. We had a great time.

From Guanaja, we moved on to Roatan, a thin sliver of land, surrounded by a barrier reef. We spent time in Port Royal, where pirates Henry Morgan and Lafite, among others, hid between attacks on Spanish galleons. We quickly moved west to West End, from where we would pick up our daughter Ani, with her fiance Fred, when they arrived from Florida for a short, but non-stop, fun vacation in Roatan. There are no up-to-date cruising guides for this area. Nigel Calder's book, the Cruising Guide to the Northwest Caribbean, was very helpful, but was written before hurricane Mitch, and is currently out of print.

We went back to Port Royal, where we moored to Mango Creek's buoy, and enjoyed the hospitality of Terry and Pat, who were visiting their beautiful home at the time, before returning to their 60' Deerfoot sailboat, currently in Thailand. The are planning a quaint fishing resort there. For more information, go to www.mangocreeklodge.com

While at Port Royal, we got to meet Peter Schmitt, the designer of our CSY sailboat. He lives with his wife Barbara in a large trawler, off his property there. We enjoyed talking about those early days at CSY, and gave him a tour of our website CSY material. He was very impressed about what CSY owners have down with their boats.

By dinghy the four of us toured a number of beautiful bights or bays on the south coast, including Calabash and Oak Ridge. Plus the snorkeling off Port Royal was simply awesome.

At Oak Ridge we visited the Hole in the Wall restaurant, where there is all you can eat lobster and steak every Sunday. We were not able to arrange our schedule to make this, but we know we missed something special. We took SIESTA into Port Royal for fuel, eyeballed the Port Royal Yacht Club, and stopped at Brick Bay, where the old CSY charter fleet operated some years ago. Those CSY boats were close cousins to our current SIESTA CSY 44. From Brick Bay, we took a taxi into Coxen Hole for our checkout, which was 30 lempiras, not quite two dollars. Others have been asked to pay up to $40US here. Go figure.

We loved the anchorage off West End, where we could dinghy into an almost endless number of small but very good restaurants and souvenir shops. The snorkeling all along this area, as well as in Port Royal, is some of the best we have seen, ever!!! The water clarity, the abundance of fish, the contrasts of different depths, all made for unforgetable snorkeling expeditions. Ani and Fred particularly enjoyed the snorkeling."

                                           Pictures of Guanaja:

                                         Pictures of Roatán: