Monday 7 Mar, Honduras day 5, Guanaja: Move to Michael’s Rock on the remote west coast. Raymarine plotter plays up and a wild wind makes for a restless night.

It was a peaceful night in El Bight, but that is about to change. This afternoon a strong easterly, the trade wind, will set-in, and despite shelter by the outer reefs and cays, it will likely become uncomfortable on this eastern side of the island. So late morning the anchor is coming up and we are off again. This time to the other side the island, the remote western side where there are no settlements and certainly no roads.
We do the same routine as yesterday to weave our way safely through the reefs then motor down to the southern point of the island. This southern end is virtually untouched by any buildings, just pristine deep green wooded hills rolling into the sea. We remark this could even be an island in the Sporades (Greece). The wind is already 15-20 kts and the swell has started to roll in. But once around the tip and heading up the leeward side the water flattens off again.
The charting of the western fringe reefs is really not good. We try to motor up the edge of them but where our Navionics chart says 50m we find only 7m and later, where it says we should be in shallows, our depth sounder clearly shows we are well over the drop off, in very deep water. So we just go by the colour of the water and stick well out over the drop-off in 50-60m water, meaning at least 1 mile offshore. As we head NW up the back of the island, we observe the shoreline is fringed with white beaches and only the occasional small dwelling. Our pilot book from 2000 said this is a remote shoreline and it still seems to be just that. Access is still by boat only.

Our pilot book also describes very well the 2 or 3 passages that pass through the reef allowing boats to get into the back-reef area and close to the shoreline. We decide to use the Michael’s Rock passage, which is wide and deep. But we again use our same technique for going in with me at the bow and Oana in the cockpit. The going-in bit is very easy. The channel is 50m deep with waves breaking on the reefs either side, make it very easy to see. But once close to the shore and we turn right, we are going west and slightly into the sun, making it more difficult to see the shallow spots. Luckily, a previous boat had posted their exact course on the Noforeignland website, so we at least had that to follow as we aim for the Michael’s Rock anchorage.
Michael’s Rock is a small island jutting out into the sea, connected to the main island by a short sandy strip. We anchor in 10m of water behind this rock and appear to have total protection from wind and seas. And our view to the shoreline is quite special. If there is an image everyone thinks reflects paradise, what we are seeing here must be close to it. Beautiful crystal-clear water, white sandy beaches nestled between rocky promontories, all backed by lush vivid green vegetation that runs all the way to the top of the hilly island. Stunning.

In the afternoon we take off in the dinghy, around Michael’s Rock to explore the 2 resorts just north of us. I say “resorts” but that is a bit of an overstatement, both are just a few simple huts on the hillside for those who really want to get away from it all.
The first is End of the World diving resort. But other than its jetty with a welcome sign, you would barely know it was there. All the buildings are totally obstructed behind the lush vegetation. We tie the dinghy to the jetty and walk in. We find it looking all closed up, until we meet an American guy in a shed full of dive equipment. He tells us they are having a “spring cleaning week” and the place is closed till the next guests who arrive on Saturday.

So we walk up to the next place, The Green Flash bar, which sits on top of a jetty. There we find a girl and her mother serving, who unlike others we have met seem downright rude in their indifference to serving us even a beer. As for food we are told “only at lunch time, from 11:30 to 1pm”. And when we request internet password the answer is “… only if you eat here”. Hmmm, that’s not nice, so we down our beers and leave. Pity, because visually the place has potential, or at least it had potential in the past. Most of the exhibits and photos on the walls are now rather faded, showing their age. On the way out we do come across 2 guests, and they tell us they are the only ones in the “resort”, and apparently even they were not trusted with the internet password – it had been inputted to their phones without them being able to see! So much for the line in our pilot book which read “nice bar, friendly staff and free internet”.
Hence, we head back to the boat with our tail between our legs. Oana is a bit miffed not having internet. She really wants to keep track of the news these days, for obvious reasons. And where we are anchored there is zero phone signal.

After dinner I have a task to do with our Raymarine plotters. On the way from Mexico, the plotter in the cockpit’s touchscreen functionality started to play up. This was OKish, because we could still control the chart on the screen using the manual controls. But then today, coming around to this bay, it had gone one step further. Now it seems to think we are pressing the touch screen without us even being near it. It was bleeping away every few seconds and the display jumping around all over the place, making it useless to view the chart. Luckily, we have Navionics on an iPad as a backup navigation system, which is completely independent of any other boat system. Also, we have another Raymarine plotter, the exact same model, inside the boat at the nav-station. So this evening I swap the two plotters, bringing the nav-station unit up into the cockpit and preparing the broken one to be sent off for repair when we get back to the USA. It seems these RM touch screens are not that reliable. This will be the second time we have had to send one for repair, for the same problem. Last time was 2018. We are glad that we had the foresight, when we did the major refit in 2017, to install 2 plotters exactly the same model, allowing us the ability to swap one with the other if/when one fails.

During the evening the wind strength increases as per the forecast, and I raise the FinDelta steadying sail to stop us kiting around on the anchor. Whilst we are indeed sheltered from waves on this lee side of the island, we are on the receiving-end of huge wind gusts cascading down off the hillside, hitting Cloudy Bay from varying angles. One minute we are in a gentle 5kts of wind and the next 25kts with a 50degree change in angle. I’m a bit worried about the anchor. I had dived it during the day, and it looked well set, but it is into thick seagrass. The only other time we have dragged anchor was on a similar seabed in Corfu where the roots of the seagrass finally gave way and the anchor dragged. And when we lifted the anchor, it bought up with it a piece of “turf” that was at least 1.5m square! So tonight I will sleep with the anchor alarm right next to me.