Michael Rock (Part 1) Guanaja Honduras Bay Islands

Outside the reef, Bonacca behind us

On Sunday 9 February we decided that we should take advantage of the easterly wind to sail around to the west side of Guanaja and to anchor off Michael’s Rock.  Our dive map shows many good dives on reef around here and the anchorages on the west side are a lot more sheltered than those on the east, albeit that there can be strong katabatic downdrafts off the high ground.  So we left Graham’s Cay at 1015hrs….. 

Top: Guanaja with the reef, and the shallow water inside it, standing out clearly.  Bottom: We passed between Southeast Cay (in this picture) and Guanaja as we headed south

……and once out from the reef set off on a fun and fast broad reach towards the southern tip of the island.

Looking NE up length of Guanaja

We had to avoid the reef at the southwestern end of the island which put a couple of miles onto the passage but we had a great view along the length of the island at our gybe point.  From there we had another good sail, close-hauled this time, up the western side of the island.  We stayed a short, but safe, distance outside the fringing reef and saw a good number of large, bright orange dive buoys marking the areas we hoped to explore over the next few days.  It wasn’t all sunshine, though, and as we approached Michael’s Rock area a large black cloud bubbled up over the island.  As the heavens opened, the wind howled and the visibility reduced to virtually zero, we hove-to, pointing out to sea, and waited for the squall to pass rather than risk getting too close to the reef.

Top: looking east from the cut through the reef.  Bottom: view to the southeast from the cut through the reef. (Both pictures taken as we left Michael’s Rock several days later: we were quite busy during the approach)

Passing the End of the World Resort 
(Photo taken as we left Michael’s Rock)

When the rain had stopped the sky remained pretty cloudy, which was not good for making an entrance because it the light not strong enough to penetrate the sea and light up the sand and coral heads.  [Ed: in the end, the clouds cleared away entirely about an hour after we dropped anchor but it didn’t look as if that would be the case when we started our approach through the reef].  From our pilot book we had a transit to follow for the transit through the reef but after that we only had the pilot book’s (good) sketch map, nothing more detailed.  [Ed: Here, as we have subsequently found elsewhere in the Honduran Bay Islands, our (electronic) Navionics charts are really rather poor and definitely not worth relying on or, at times, even having open.]  We worked our way in slowly with Nicky on the bow trying to see down through the water using polarised sunglasses but the light was very flat and it was very difficult to judge depths.  Steering, I tried to follow the directions in the pilot book but actually turned right too soon and got too close to the corner of the reef so we reversed out with the keel just touching the coral as we did so.  We tried again, heading further in towards the shore to where, a fortuitous gap in the clouds showed the water to be deeper.  That worked and from there the directions in the pilot book made sense and the light improved too.  So we made it around Michael Rock safely and into the anchorage just to the south of the rock, though it took a long time as we stayed below 2 knots throughout.

Anchored south of Michael Rock, which is out of the picture to the left.  (Photo taken a few days after arriving)

Once around the rock and into the anchorage we found good depths.  We were the only yacht on this stretch of coast but we were not the only people using this beach.  There were several small pangas with day-trippers, mostly local people by the looks of things, all enjoying the generally good weekend weather (now that the rain squall had gone through).  But they all left before dark – though some didn’t leave until after sunset which made us wonder how they would get back to Bonacca through, what we thought, was an unlit passage inside the reef.  The anchorage is absolutely beautiful.  There’s no mobile phone signal at all and, when darkness fell we could only see one light – and that was on a dock about ¾ nm away.  We used the rest of the previous night’s dough and finished the off the (very elderly) mozzarella on another pizza, read our books, enjoyed the sound of tropical birdlife in the trees and planned a trip to go diving the next day.

Michael Rock, Guanaja, Honduras Bay Islands