223: TRAPPED AGAINST A REEF ON CHRISTMAS

I'm definitely going to make a mess. Hopefully they're not dry. Oh man, the waves are big. This is awesome. Our friends Joe and Christine from the Rio Dulce just pulled in to the anchorage and are going to stay for a few days, which will be really fun to have them around. Improvisation when you don't have whipped cream. We have put the organic coconut cream in the refrigerator. And the bowl, and the whisk. A very special pumpkin latte. Or a mess. I'm definitely going to make a mess. So we've been mixing for about five minutes now. Big pumpkin lattes, whoo baby. That is the bomb right there. After about ten minutes, we don't think it's going to whip up much more than this consistency. It's not great. But it tastes good. We're pretty decadent here on Blown Away. We're leaving the boat because, as you can hear, the winds have really kicked up. As of the waves, we've got a big west wind and storm coming in. So we are leaving the big island and heading over to Cayos Minor over here, where we'll stay for the next two days in safety. A little bit of a different Christmas morning than we anticipated, but hey, we're going to be safe. That's the most important thing. The trade winds come from the east, so the Cayos Grande anchorage is well protected. But due to a freaky Christmas storm that has come down from the north, the winds have shifted to the west and it's no longer safe. Our choice is to sail back to Roatan or, as the park rangers suggested, move over to Cayos Minor until the storm passes. Our only concern with Minor is that the wind will shift to the north at some point, leaving us completely exposed to wind and waves that have built up over a vast area. Hopefully, the storm is not as bad as forecasted. So we are hiding from the westerly winds and we've been told to come over here by the park rangers and here's where we're at. And Eileen's going to dive and make sure we don't have any coral within swinging range because the maps are not detailed, they're not accurate here. So trust but verify. So this island is going to block all the wind and we shouldn't have an easterly from here on out. So the anchor's down. Brown's in the water now. I just did two dives to check the anchor. It's been a heck of a time anchoring. We've got a lot of sand, but we do have a lot of reef. So Brown's going to go check it to make sure we are okay. It'd be nice to be able to have a little bit of assurance here for the final hours of daylight on Christmas that everything is okay and we can relax a little bit. Brown's still checking our chain and anchor. We tried several times to drop anchor here and the first time the anchor didn't sink into the sand at all and the chain was wrapped in coral. But this is where the park rangers told us to drop anchor. Our friends suggested we move up closer to them, which we did. And then we dealt with the anchor getting into the sand but the chain still being in coral. The anchor didn't go into the sand completely so I wanted him to take a look at it because if we drag, we are dragging straight into a coral reef. I went down the anchor chain. I pulled on it really hard. There's no way we're going to drag that way. Okay. The only problem is when the wind turns west, we're going to tear up all that coral. I know. Boy, it's so nice to have daylight. Very thankful we survived the night. It did not get dicey. Stayed up a lot of it but thankfully we never ended up hitting the reef. You can see them. There's one there, one there. Well, the surf is definitely up. The swell is huge. It's difficult to show you on camera but if you were able to look out between here and Utila, it looks like elephants on the horizon. You're feeling nothing here but our friends did go out by dinghy out of the protection of the island and they said it was really rough. So we're glad to be in a very safe location right now. As you can see, tons of debris in the water. Logs everywhere. They are floating past us hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of logs. It's pretty crazy. Probably six or seven feet long in the size of a telephone pole. The logs are definitely getting bigger. It was a huge weather night but you can see how close we are. You can see the edge of the reef, the discoloration. It's really pounding. He's pulling it. I think he's going to pick up some chain. Well, our friend had to pick up anchor. Things have gotten a bit rough. And now they are out between Cayos Menor and Cayos Grande. We need to be really careful. We've got a reef over here, very close to us, that we've got to keep an eye on. Very thankful that the anchor's holding. Oh, man, the waves are big. Dust up to 30 now. Still got the north wind, so it's coming right through here with no protection for us other than that reef that's in front of us, which is good. But we're really looking forward to the shift from north to northwest and getting some protection from the island. Our friends are safely over there back in Cayos Pachinas. They are anchored, so they should be okay for now. We've got full buckets of laundry. That's good. Things are calming down a little bit. It's so good to just be parallel to the coast instead of stern to the reef. And we can see Cayos Cochina again there in the distance. The storm is pretty over. Thank goodness. We're ready to get back to the big land over there tomorrow morning. Wow, it feels good. We're leaving this safe spot from the five-day storm. It feels so good to be out of there. The anchor came up without a problem, thankfully. And now we're headed back to where we were. We are so glad that that's over with.