New Port Royal Roatan Honduras

Feeling our way into New Port Royal

The forecast for the period Thursday 27 to Saturday 29 February was for a fairly intense cold front to work down into the Bay Islands from the Gulf of Mexico, bringing with it strong west and northwest winds, low cloud and lots of rain.  So it seemed sensible to move on to Jonesville, a more populated area and a more protected anchorage to sit out the spell of bad weather.  But we thought that we’d stop in at New Port Royal en route for a spot of snorkelling on the reef at the western end of the bay.

The reef passage into New Port Royal between (right) Lime Cay to the east and (left) the reef, with Conch Cay about ½nm further west

To make the best of the light for snorkelling, and for our transit of the reef pass in and out of New Port Royal and into Jonesville Bight, we left Old Port Royal promptly at 0900hrs on Wednesday 26 February.  There are now 2 marked entrances to New Port Royal.  The easternmost entrance, in the centre of the bay, has 2 large lateral markers, one to port and one to starboard; the westernmost entrance is marked by 6 small pillar buoys, 3 on each side.  We took this latter entry, where we found depths of only about 3.5m minimum but, with the sun reasonably high and the sea smooth, the entrance was fairly easy.

New Port Royal marks the beginning of ‘populated’ Roatan.  There are several small hotels and holiday homes here

New Port Royal is hardly a developed tourist mecca but it certainly marks eastern extent of ‘populated’ Roatan.  As we moved further west from here we found increasing development, both in terms of tourist infrastructure and in terms of local population.  However, the buildings on the shores of New Port Royal seem mostly to be boutique hotels and holiday homes……

Views from our ‘lunch-stop’ anchorage close to Conch Cay (bottom left).  Some of the second homes on the surrounding hillside look palatial – certainly in comparison to the houses we saw on St Helene

…..some of which are almost palatial.  We spent a couple of hours anchored in New Port Royal, taking the dinghy through the cut to the outside of the reef, close to Conch Cay, to snorkel there (faster than getting all the dive kit out).  It was great fun and, as we had found further east, the coral looked healthy and was home for a wide variety of marine life.  As we had lunch, the first 2 cruising boats that we had seen for a long time entered the bay.  Oh, the madding crowds!

New Port Royal, Roatan, Bay Island, Honduras

Old Port Royal Roatan Honduras

Coral garden between the sand patch where we anchored the dinghy and the reef wall.  There was lots of soft coral here

Giant barrel sponges

We’d spent some of the afternoon the previous day, snorkelling over the reef close to the ‘wreck (conspic)’ to the east of the entrance to Old Port Royal.  Now, on Monday 24 February, we decided to dive on the wall to the west of the entrance.

Left: spiny lobster.  Right: lionfish

It was a nice dive.  The visibility wasn’t as good as that which we’d had in Guanaja but we saw plenty of reef-life including, disappointingly, several lionfish.

A stream of blue chromis

Beautiful coral garden with adult bluehead wrasse (right foreground), younger bluehead wrasse (left foreground), stoplight parrotfish (initial phase, centre foreground) and yellowtail snapper (above foreground coral head)

One of several large schools of surgeonfish

Scrawled cowfish

Stoplight parrotfish (initial phase)

We’re still struggling with identifying sponges!
This one might be a red encrusting tube sponge

Parts of the reef were shallow and, even without a light on my camera, the colours of the corals and sponges stood out clearly in the bright sunshine.

Fan coral

Yellowtail damselfish ‘displaying for the camera’

Top and bottom left: The mangroves east of Bailey Point Cay with a resident white egret stalking in the shallows.  Bottom right: the shallow cut through to the sea between Bailey Point Cay and the mangroves

After our dive we took the dinghy a little further east to briefly explore the channels around Bailey Point Cay. The one leading to the open sea is quite well marked but looks very shallow.  Unsurprisingly, we didn’t see many pangas coming in from that direction, though the channel that runs inshore of the cay and the mangroves to its east is very well frequented by traffic.  The new electricity cable linking St Helene to ‘mainland’ Roatan also follows this latter channel, and there are large signs warning one not to dive, anchor or fish in the channel.

BV anchored in Old Port Royal, viewed from the lagoon end of the cut-through east of Bailey Point Cay

Left: Cushion sea star.  Right: conch (perhaps a milk conch as we think it had green eyestalks)

In the afternoon we decided to try a dive on the ‘military wreck’ in New Port Royal.  However, our dive map is not terribly detailed and we failed to find the site.  The visibility was dreadful (though I suspect that those who dive in parts of the UK would tell me that it was actually quite good) and all our short search pattern out from the dinghy mooring revealed were several cushion sea stars and a few conch.

So we moved back to Old Port Royal and dived on Old Shrimp Boat Wall (East), roughly where we had snorkelled the previous day.  This wall dive turned out to be deeper than that on the west side where we had dived in the morning…..

Large green moray eel (which looks to be auditioning as a Dementor in the next Harry Potter film)

…..and some of the residents were significantly larger too!  We saw 2 green moray eels on the dive.  One very close too, the other further away and, mostly, underneath a rock.  I only got a very fuzzy photo of the latter but the first eel seemed reasonably unfazed by us and I managed to get several good pictures before we felt we should move off out of his/her territory.

Grey angelfish

The same grey angelfish in close-up

We also spotted s couple of very large French angelfish…..

Giant barrel sponges with a lionfish between them and a bluehead wrasse to the left.  Thin leaf lettuce coral under the wrasse, brown octopus sponge(?) in the foreground and sea plume in the mid-ground

….more huge giant barrel sponges and, again, some more lionfish.  I really do need to get a spear so that we can try to kill some of these scourge.

Spot the reef fish hiding in and around the coral

It was another lovely dive and the highlight of it, and probably of the day, has to have been that first green moray eel we saw.

The mountains of mainland Honduras visible on the horizon.  Given that the mainland is over 30nm away those mountains must be very impressive when seen close up!

The weather was quite calm overnight and in the morning of Tuesday 25 February we had our first glimpse of the mountains of the Honduran mainland.  The forecast was for easterly quadrant winds at 10-15kts, filling in from the southeast overnight and increasing to 25kt gusting to 35kt.  We spent the day doing chores, filling the dive tanks, writing the blog to post at some point in the future and Nicky did some proof-reading for the next edition of the OCC’s magazine, Flying Fish.  Part way through the morning a panga stopped by and the driver asked if we wanted to buy some hash.  We passed on the offer.  There are no photos of all this excitement but we managed to achieve quite a lot and, in the evening, the wind filled in from the southeast and increased as promised and we were very grateful for the shelter offered by Bailey Point Cay.

Old Port Royal, Bay Islands, Roatan, Honduras

Sailing to Old Port Royal Roatan Honduras

We left Helene village anchorage at 1045hrs on Sunday 23 February. It was lovely and sunny which made the departure very pretty….

…. and easy as the shallows stood out clearly in the strong light.

View back towards Rose Island.  Helene village anchorage is off to the left of the picture.  The shallows around Rose Island are marked by lit pillar buoys (white with green stripe and green flashing light at night).  One of these buoys can be seen in the centre of the picture

The building second from right is Denissa’s Bar where we had spent a couple of hours the previous day

We had a good view of the village we had walked to the previous day….

Tommy lives in the house on the right

….. and we also spotted where Tommy lives as we sailed gently west along the coast.

Leaving St Helene behind us.  Guanaja is on the horizon on the right of the picture

It was a very pleasant gentle reach under genoa alone for the 5½nm passage to Old Port Royal.  Hardly one of our longer trips!

With the sun strong and high the gap in the reef stands out well in this picture

‘Wreck (conspic)’ as the chart says.  And it’s about the only useful
thing that our Navionics charts have to say about Old Port Royal.
Clearly the Royal Navy of Nelson’s era wasn’t based here!

We arrived off the gap in the reef at about 1140 and made our way in towards the bay with me on the bow, wearing polarised sunglasses, looking down into the water and keeping and eye out for coral heads and shallows.  Happily, whilst the entrance curves somewhat, in the good light it was clear to see the way and it seems to be clear of obstructions.

Old Port Royal – the only sign of habitation

In the bay itself, the water was cloudier and so it was more difficult to read the depth but we took it carefully and never saw less than 5m on the echo-sounder.  There were no other yachts and the only sign of habitation is the house and the dock on the north shore of the bay.  We saw a few people walking on the beach and on the dock during our stay but no lights in the building.  Apparently the land behind it is a failed farm, now a National Park.

Anchored close off Bailey Point Cay – positioned for the forecast strong southeasterly winds

With strong southeasterly winds forecast from the next evening, rather than anchoring off the beach on the Roatan side of the bay, we anchored in about 5m of water close to the island, Bailey Point Cay, that provides some of the bay’s protection.  There is a channel that runs inside the reef and inside Bailey Point Cay, through the mangroves up towards eastern Roatan and St Helene.  Water-taxis and pangas zip back and forth along this channel but tucked up close to the cay we were out of their way, with a lovely view of the beach, and yet able to keep an eye on all that was going on.  And, better still, unlike in the anchorage off St Helene where the traffic keeps going busily and at full speed until well after dark, we found in Old Port Royal that the boat traffic dropped almost right away as dusk fell.

Old Port Royal, Bay Islands, Roatan, Honduras

St Helene Bay Islands Honduras

We left Mangrove Bight at 1045hrs on Thursday 20 February under sunny skies and with a forecast of a nice sailing wind.  We were sad to leave Guanaja and could happily have stayed much longer but we wanted to explore some of the other islands too.

Leaving Mangrove Bight

The high, bright sun, coupled with our entry snail-trail on the chart plotter, made leaving through the reef easy……

The east end of Roatan, including the islands of St Helene, Morat and Isla de Barbareta 

…… and as soon as we were clear we hoisted full sail and gently moseyed downwind towards St Helene, one of the islands at the eastern end of Roatan.

Dolphins!  The first we have seen for ages

It was a lovely sail, made even better by being joined for a short period by a large pod of dolphins – the first we have seen in a long time.

Outer approaches to the anchorage off St Helene

We arrived off the outer approached to St Helene at about 1500 and, with a chart plotter chart looking much like Christopher Columbus’s of the place when he arrived (it doesn’t say ‘Here be dragons’ but we feel it should!) we made a cautious approach.  Happily the water was very clear and the sun (as we had planned) was still high so we were in more danger of being spooked by coral heads we could see 9m below us than of actually hitting something – but that’s always a good situation to be in!

Final approach to the anchorage to St Helene.  We use Navionics charts on our chart plotter
 but whilst they were very accurate in Cuba and the Bahamas they aren’t here in the
Honduran Bay Islands (and, yes, I do update them frequently).  In fact, they had so little
detail on them that the stack rocks in these picture do not show up on the charts at all. 
Eyeball navigation is king ….. and the key to eyeball navigation is good light

Oddon in his leaky canoe

As we arrived, very slowly, in the anchorage we were welcomed by Oddon, a local Rastafarian who had been fishing in his very leaky canoe as we arrived and who had waved us in quite impatiently.  Clearly we should have been driving in far faster!

The main village on St Helene, next to the anchorage

Oddon wanted to sell us seafood, fruit and crocheted items that his niece produces.  We refused everything at that point, explaining that we had enough food aboard but we did give him a jar of peanut butter that he requested for his niece.

Local panga (with an inboard engine which is quite rare; most are very speedy with large outboards).  There are no roads between St Helene and Roatan so everything and everyone arrives by sea 

Looking east from our position in the anchorage.  The fishing boat is anchored in a relatively shallow lagoon.  The large dock behind it was built about 9 months ago but we saw no ships use it

Believe it or not, this was the first bunch of
green bananas that we ever had on board

The next morning (Friday 21 February) Oddon came past again, bringing with him 4 mangoes and offering to get hold of other items for us.  Nicky relented and bought the mangoes and requested a papaya or a pineapple and 4 ripe bananas.  When he returned later in the day, inevitably he had brought more than we had requested, in this instance in the form of a small bunch of green bananas.  We’ve never had a bunch of bananas aboard before, having taken heed of the warnings of Atlantic crossers before us who said that if you get a large bunch all the bananas ripen at once and you end up with a glut.  But we reckoned we could deal with the numbers here and the papaya looked (and was) good as were the 8 very small, ripe bananas.

The forecast for Saturday was for strong northerly winds as yet another cold front was expected to enter the area.  So, rather than go ashore, we decided to spend Friday diving and then explore on foot the next day.  Our first dive was on Helena Wall, on the reef to the east of Rose Cay, which itself is to the east of the anchorage.  Unlike in Guanaja, we found no moorings marking the dive sites, so we anchored the dinghy on one of several large sandy patches close to the reef and hopped over the side to see what was around. 

It’s not a deep wall but it’s deep enough.  The visibility wasn’t as good as it had been in Guanaja but I think we were rather spoilt there and it was plenty good enough for us to enjoy the dive.

We saw 6 (yes, six!) lionfish on the outbound leg of this dive.  We definitely need to do a Lionfish killing course

And it was quite good enough for us to spot 6 lionfish on the outbound leg of the dive (and we saw 2 of them coming back too).  To quote from Caribbean Reef Fish by Micky Charteris: ‘It has been called the worst marine species invasion ever.  Although lionfish are now found throughout the area, they are not native to the Caribbean…….and are remarkably successful in their new habitat, with no natural predators.  ……  A female can reproduce after only one year and, under the right conditions, can do so every 4 days.  She can release over 2 million eggs every year.  ……  The major threat from lionfish comes not from their [venomous] spines but from their voracious appetites.  Indiscriminate feeders, with stomachs expanding to 30 times their normal size, they may continue to feed until full.  …….  Over 70 local species have been found inside lionfish……. They also target juvenile fish, which seriously disrupts the balance of local reef ecosystems.’  The rangers at the Roatan Marine Park in West End run training courses in killing lionfish and it is certainly something we hope to do when we go there so that we can do our bit, albeit a very little bit if the numbers are correct, to help to reduce the population of this scourge. 

Queen triggerfish – a first for us

Despite the number of lionfish we saw, we also saw large numbers of other fish, including a beautiful queen triggerfish….

Huge shoals of blue chromis

….huge shoals of blue chromis, sergeant majors and surgeonfish….

Right:  Elongated vase sponge (left of centre), azure vase sponge (bottom centre), giant barrel sponge (a young example, right of azure vase sponge)

This formation of 3 spotted eagle rays gave us 2 or 3 passes but each time were right at the limit of visibility

….and a formation of 3 eagle rays which, unfortunately, stayed just on the limit of visibility.

There was also a wide variety of hard and soft corals to enjoy

Four ENORMOUS rainbow parrotfish – these are in their terminal phase, which can be seen by their colouring and huge size

In the afternoon we dived on the western side of Rose Cay on a site known as Rose Cay Wall.  Almost the first fish we were lucky enough to see were 4 enormous rainbow parrotfish.  Rainbow parrotfish can live for up to 16 years, growing to 1.2m (4ft) long and over 20kg in weight and these ones certainly lived up to that description.

The topography here was quite different to where we had dived in the morning.  Here we found large coral outcrops with sandy channels between them – great fun to swim along and to explore. 

Bent sea rod (top centre), common sea fan (top left), doughnut sea rod (bottom, left of centre)

French angelfish against a backdrop of corals 

Graysby

We saw several large schools of surgeonfish

As the dive, and the afternoon, wore on, the sky gradually became more overcast, resulting in poorer light underwater so we surfaced a little earlier than we needed to and headed back to BV.  We washed the kit and started to refill our dive tanks but found that, as the pressure in the tanks increased and the compressor worked harder to add air to the tanks, the generator’s output voltage was about 10V down from that which we expected; clearly that capacitor was on its way out.  So we left the tanks part filled and let the generator cool so that we could work on it.

Guanaja in the distance

Contrary to the forecast, we had a calm night and woke on the Saturday morning to bright sunshine and very benign conditions – a perfect diving day!  We changed the capacitor and topped off the tanks and found that the generator output was back where it should be.  Great news!

BV in the anchorage as seen from the village…

After a morning of boat jobs, we took the dinghy ashore to explore.

… and again, from a different angle and a little more zoomed in

We headed south to begin with, intending to go as far as a small village we could see south of the anchorage before coming back to explore the main village close to BV.

Beautiful, lush surroundings

The mud track crossed a concrete, broken down bridge and then continued more as a footpath than as anything larger.  The scenery was lovely, very lush and green, with a great variety of trees and shrubs and small houses set back away from the track.  We commented on the incredibly new-looking electricity meters outside each house.

The Channel Bar and Grill

Eventually the track reached the small village we had seen from BV and appeared to terminate but in retrospect it probably didn’t.  What we had thought was the track going onto someone’s land was probably the public track continuing past another house.

View eastwards.  If you squint you can just see BV above the docks

At Denissa’s Bar.  Left to right: Tommy, Noah and Nicky

We returned the way we had come and stopped in at Denissa’s Bar, where we got chatting to Tommy and Noah.  Both are American and live on the island for several months each year.  We had an interesting conversation about life on the island.  The houses in the village were only hooked up to ‘mains’ electricity about 5months before we visited – no wonder the meters all looked so new!  Before that each house or business had to run a generator for electricity which, as Denissa said, was a very expensive way of keeping your fridge and lights going.  Tommy talked about the withdrawal of US Aid from Honduras, one of the results of which is that the villagers now need to pay to send their children to school. 

Views from Denissa’s Bar – sunshine, a rainbow and showers in the distance coming our way!

The conversation wound back and forth between life on the island, sailing and travel and before we knew it the showers were getting heavier and the light was fading – time to beat a retreat back to BV before it got too unpleasant or too dark.

As expected, the wind picked up quite significantly in the evening but BV was quite secure on her anchor and the sea was nice and flat as the wind was off the land.  We’d just drifted off to sleep when we were woken by a couple of loud bangs on the side of the hull.  It took us a few moments to get on deck but, when we did, a scan with a flashlight showed a heavy fibreglass panga drifting off behind us.  By then it was already 200m behind us and it was difficult to see if there was someone in it but we thought it looked empty.  It was drifting away rapidly, too fast for us to be able to inflate, launch and fit the engine to the dinghy so that we could give chase and recover the vessel.  Sadly, it looks like one of the locals has lost their boat and, in the process, it looked as if BV had gained some very large scratches in her paint.  [Ed:  happily for us we later found that the ‘big scratches’ were just lines of white paint scraped off the drifting boat, which rubbed off BV’s hull quite easily].

St Helene, Bay Islands, Honduras