16:24N 85:42W

 

David insisted we fish on the passage from the Hobbie Cays to Guanaja in the Honduras Bay Islands.  Cook wasn’t quite so keen given we still had lobster and mahimahi in the fridge but the skipper’s word is law so out went the line.  Mid afternoon it screeched and sure enough we’d hooked a biggie.  After battling with it for a while it became clear it wasn’t a mahimahi (they usually jump out of the water and you can see their electric blue colour) but either a wahoo, barracuda or shark.  Sure enough as it got closer to the boat we saw its fin, sinister black shape and realised it was a shark.  It was an effort to get it on board and it fought like crazy.  Eventually David cut the hook as it was too firmly wedged to get out.  We saved our trusty lure and threw the shark back in the sea.  He was very relieved and swam away to live another day and frighten the living daylights out of yet another yachtie.  Needless to say, the line came in for the day.

 

We had a fantastic overnight sail – probably our best this season.  We decided to leave the MPS (multi purpose sail) up all night but around 9pm (just after David had gone to bed) the wind increased to 20 knots and at times Bandit was a bit overpowered surfing down waves at up to 9knots.  Skipper was woken and we quickly put two reefs in the main which helped bring her back under control and the rest of the night was magic....we averaged 6-7knots with wind aft of the beam.  We did five hour watches each and it passed quickly with an almost full moon and starry skies to look at.  It is our second last overnight sail for the season.....we have one more to get across to Livingston at the mouth of the Rio Dulce.  We had a count up and we’ve done 42 overnight passages this year – quite enough broken nights for two people who don’t like interrupted sleep!

 

We can see the island of Guanaja clearly now which rises to 1300ft.  We should be there in an hour or so.  Other cruisers who have been there say it’s beautiful so we are looking forward to exploring.  We won’t have long there as we need to keep heading west to Guatemala but plan to come back out here in November, once hurricane season is over.  Weather today is again hot and sunny with clear blue skies.  We’re getting much better weather than other cruisers checking into our net who are seem to be getting rain, squalls and overcast skies elsewhere in the Caribbean.