I am in love with Roatan even though it is completely different from the Rio Dulce, being a dry, tropical island rather than a jungle-strewn river. We talked about our rough passage (my words, the Captain thought the wind was great!) from the Rio to Roatan in a passage update, so I won’t belabor the point here. Suffice to say that arrival in French Cay Harbour was a joy, even though it was a cool, wet day, and our buddy boat, TANTALUS, had to be towed in by dinghies. That exciting and heartwarming story can be viewed online on the Rio Dulce Chisme, in its archives.

Roatan is located between the islands of Útila and Guanaja, and is the largest of Honduras' Bay Islands. It is approximately 37 miles long, and less than 5 miles wide at its’ widest point. All told, it is about 50 square miles of landmass. And, in this compact space, there exists a wealth of intriguingly diverse communities. Each one had something remarkable to recommend it, and made it a place we wanted to visit again. And that is why we are recounting our Roatan adventures in retrospect. We took some notes while we were there, but were having such fun that we never really took the time to sit down and write up our daily outings. And this is probably a good thing, as there might then have been a lot of repetition. So, rather than provide a typical journal, I will provide a list of the places we visited, and tell you about them, and our new friends there.

I have included a map of Roatan that can be used as a reference to follow our cruising areas. The map covers French Harbour on the left end of the map, and Old Port Royal at the right end of the map. I have some more detailed maps of the specific harbors in which we anchored.

Our cruising schedule to and from Roatan was as follows:

March 3 – March 14 French Cay Harbor