Early Sunday morning we lifted anchor and motored out the San Andrés channel. It had been a pleasant week back in the civilized world. Britt got a haircut, I bought a swimsuit, and we went out to lots of restaurants, used an Internet cafe, and even saw a movie in a nice little theater on the top floor of a beachfront hotel. I'd done the major provisioning back in Colón, but I picked up fresh fruits and vegetables and replenished our chocolate supply.
We also replenished our fuel supply, as the $1.60 price at the Panama Canal Yacht Club in Colón seemed awfully high to us. We had heard on one of the cruiser nets that you could get a fuel truck down to the dock in French Harbor, Roatan, for $1.30 a gallon, so we were going to wait until then. But while in San Andrés, we saw the diesel price at Nene's Marina's fuel dock was only 2428 pesos (about $1.12) per gallon. Cheapskate cruisers that we are (especially since we needed about 100 gallons), we decided that the low price overrode the disadvantages -- specifically, the need to med-moor, which we had never done before, to the fuel dock.
"Med" is short for Mediterranean, where this is a common way of tying up to docks, although it's actually quite common in the Caribbean as well, and perhaps everywhere except in the US. Med-mooring consists of either picking up a mooring or dropping an anchor as you back up to a dock, bringing the boat's stern close enough to tie off to the dock cleats. It is easy in theory but a devil in practice, as even a breath of crosswind will push the boat around. We had 12 knots and consider ourselves lucky to have taken only 20 minutes to get Windom tied up. (Actually, we were too nervous to actually tie to the fuel dock, as another boat was awfully close and we were worried its anchor line would get in our way. The marina manager assured us the diesel hose was very long, so we backed into a slip on the regular marina dock, which was mercifully fairly empty so we didn't have to worry about hitting anyone else. If we hadn't had someone on the dock to handle the lines, in this case a dreadlocked marina worker who assured us "no problem, mon, you do fine", it would have been impossible.)
So with full fridge and full fuel tanks, we headed out to sea. The wind, which had been blowing 15-20 after a front blew in midweek, had settled down a few days back, and the waves were back down to normal 3-5 footers. 12 knots just behind the beam, and we were zooming. The problem was, we didn't want to zoom.
We were heading for Media Luna reef, off the coast of Honduras, about 170 miles away. Media Luna sits on a relatively shallow (70-90 foot) shelf, along with lots of other reefs that were potential hazards, and we didn't want to be in that neighborhood at night. Leaving San Andrés at 7 a.m., if we averaged 5.5 knots, we'd get to the reefy area about 10 a.m. the next day and to Media Luna in early afternoon. This would ensure good overhead light to see hazards before we bumped into them. We'd averaged 5.2 on the leg from Colón to Cayos de Albuquerque, but that was more into the wind -- we were confident we could make 5.5 on this leg, but didn't want to commit to more, especially since the forecast was for only 10 knots of wind. But those 10 knots came from exactly the right angle, as it turned out, and we were soon averaging nearly 7 knots of boat speed.
There are three things you can do when your speed is such that you will arrive at your destination at night, and at one time or another, we have done each of them. You can keep going to another destination, which is what we did on our way to Los Roques in Venezuela, opting to continue to the western islands in the chain when we hit the eastern approach at 3 a.m. You can go ahead and enter at night, as we did in well-marked Boquerón, Puerto Rico, and wide open Five Bays, Colombia. Or you can slow down (or heave to) and wait for daylight. With Media Luna just one of countless reefy hazards toward the Honduran coast, this was a no-brainer for us, and we reduced sail at dusk to bring our speed down. (We didn't want to reduce speed too soon, in case the wind dropped off later.) We were particularly aware of the need to handle this situation gracefully because of a sailboat which had run into problems just a few days ago approaching San Andrés.
Serenity had left Panama around 10 in the afternoon, figuring on a two-night passage that would put them in San Andrés early in the morning of the third day. Two other boats left Panama early the same morning, counting on a fast trip to get them there after one night. They all had 12 knots of wind leaving Panama, and the forecast was for 10 to 15; another boat that had left the day before reported they saw winds under 15 knots the entire time.
That evening, while we sat at the yacht club bar in San Andrés, a front went through. The light wind died completely, and it rained heavily for about an hour. Afterward, the wind picked up steadily, settling on about 20 knots. The forecast had shown the front stalling near Honduras. The forecast was wrong, and the San Andrés-bound boats got hammered.
It was a bouncy and fast passage for all of them, and the first two boats made it into the harbor before noon. Serenity, a slower boat with a 4-hour later start, approached the channel around 8 p.m., in pitch dark. We were all manning our VHFs, giving advice and moral support. The channel is well marked with lit buoys, and since getting to the yacht anchorage would be tricky at night, we repeated advice we'd been given from another boat about a temporary anchorage partway down the channel. Serenity was being tossed around by huge waves. Running on adrenaline and no sleep, they were audibly on the verge of panic as they told us that there were too many lights for them to distinguish the channel markers.
Then there was a curse. "We hit the reef! We're turning around!" A few long minutes passed with no reply to our calls. Finally, they came back on. "We're going to continue to Providencia," an island another 60 miles north. They sounded miserable, scared and desperate.
Britt took the mike. "Don't be silly. You guys are too tired. According to the chart, the west side of San Andrés is completely free of dangers and there's an anchorage marked in the lee. You can go over there and anchor and rest up." We quickly plotted up a course and gave them waypoints, making them repeat the numbers and show they understood.
Serenity was on its way back toward the other side of the island, when apparently they saw a fishing boat. They hailed it with their spotlight, got on the radio, and asked them to call the Coast Guard to help them. A local Civil Defense guy then got on the radio and said, "I've been listening to you for the last hour and a half, but you didn't ask for help until now. So I have just dispatched a pilot boat to lead you in." (How nice of him. I'm astonished that you need to explicitly say, "Help me!" before they come help. "Oh my god we're in trouble!" just doesn't cut it, I guess.) We stayed on the VHF; they came in just before midnight, following a pilot boat, after a passage that was far from serene. They're not leaving San Andrés until they get absolutely perfect conditions.
Our passage seemed like absolutely perfect conditions to us. The waves were absurdly small, compared to the monsters we've grown accustomed to, and we were at such a perfect point of sail that it was actually difficult to get our speed down. Ordinarily, we fight for every .1 knot of boat speed, so it was amusing to reef and re-trim and still be going 6.5 knots; kind of like getting lousy cards in every poker hand and then playing a lowball hand and turning up nothing but kings and aces. But with perseverance we brought the speed down to a comfy 5-5.5 for the night.
Dawn broke as we approached our waypoint to turn into the Edinburgh channel, heading for the Edinburgh reef where we hoped to find a place to anchor so we could fish this pristine area. It turned out to be not protected enough to anchor, but oh boy, did we do some fishing. But that is another (fish) story.