Greetings from Roatan!

We are sitting poolside at the Barefoot Cay Marina in Roatan, one of the Bay Islands of Honduras, enjoying the cool breezes that propelled us here from points south. We arrived yesterday morning after four days and three nights of continuous sailing from Providencia, a small Colombian island off the coast of Nicaragua.

Capt. John wasn't kidding when he said we would knock out a good portion of the total sailing distance in the first half of the trip. We departed the Careening Cay Marina in Bocas del Toro, Panama last Saturday and sailed three days and two nights to Providencia, stayed the night and then headed out again the following afternoon. We have covered about six hundred miles so far in seven days, and a fair number of those miles have been motor sailing in light winds. Our best sailing so far was on Friday evening, when we were zipping along at 8.5 knots or more in a broad reach with a fast northerly current.

Backing up to the beginning, Nan and I had an uneventful trip from Colorado to Panama City, where we stayed at the Country Inn located at the Pacific end of the Panama Canal. The first photo shows Nan standing on our balcony, with the bridge over the Canal and boats from the Balboa Yacht Club behind her. The next day, we flew over to Bocas del Toro and met up with Capt. John and fellow crewmembers John and Jan on Quetzal at the Careening Cay Marina.

Providencia was a bit of a let-down. The tiny island is parched from seven months with no rain, so there was no water available to refill our boat's tanks and no produce to be bought at the tiendas. Nan and I rented a scooter for the day and motored around the island, being careful not to add to the considerable iguana and black crab road-kill we saw. There were some nicely kept houses here and there, but the poverty was stark and the litter overwhelming. The island is not set up well for boat visitors; there were no facilities of any kind at the public dock, not even restrooms. We stayed pretty sweaty and grubby, except for quick boat showers, until we arrived here in Roatan.

Today we are going to tour Roatan with Capt. John's friend Eric, who lives here with his wife Sarita and young son Axel. They are going to take us to some nice snorkeling spots and then we'll find a good spot for a picnic.

Tomorrow we will set sail for Lighthouse Reef in Belize. It should be a long one-day sail that will put us close to the Great Blue Hole. From there, we will do another day sail to Ambergris Cay in Belize and then an overnight sail to Isla Mujeres, arriving on Thursday afternoon.