Countdown to Roatan Departure

We are officially checked out of Roatan yesterday. We walked into Immigration and got all our documents squared away. As we left, another Capitan asked when we were leaving. “There some rough weather out daare, ya know,” he said in his deep Garifuna-accented English. We replied that we were leaving the departure decision up to our Capitan. “Yeees,” he said, “but the crew and the Capitan, same boat.” He laughed. We laughed, possibly a little nervously.

But, thankfully, Randall has spent hours looking at the weather and tracking the fronts coming through. Our plan is to leave Monday when the seas and wind moderate. It is a small window but we don’t have too far to go. This plan left us the weekend to provision, clean, play games at the palapa and bid farewells to new friends.

We played a word game called Quiddler with Richard and Selma of Callisto and Steve and Connie of Better Days. Michelle keeps calling Selma the Mayor of Vancouver Island because she knows everyone. I totally thought she was actually the mayor so was kinda let down to learn she just frequents council meeting in an effort to reign in development. I fully expect that she might go ahead and run for office with Michelle as her campaign manager.

Connie invited us aboard Better Days for a chat. She and Steve have quit a sea saga involving losing their mast in the middle of the night on route from Roatan to Rio Dulce. They had to motor into Rio Dulce with their mast secured to the fiberglass cockpit top. They got the boat back shipshape in the Rio and are happy to be back cruising. She invited us for a boat tour to show us the many photos and travel memorabilia they have from many years of world travel. She was also getting out her Christmas decorations which included several trees, lights and a newly purchased Santa sign. Jake has commented on the lack of personal decoration on our boat and Nyango is pretty much the way we bought it. I am thinking we need to at least get some pictures on the walls.

The plan is to take off tomorrow and possibly anchor in West Bay. Hopefully, the next post will be an update from Mexico. We all have a lot of Mexico sites we want to see.