We hope that you all had a great Thanksgiving with your loved ones. We are SO thankful for you! And, we are thankful to be settled in Utila though today we are making the move to Roatan or Cayo Cuchinos depending on the wind! We didn’t know that it is rainy season here so that’s been a bit of a shock to the system after a very hot and sunny time in Guatemala. We now have to heat the water for showers! Brr!!
Twenty years ago, I spent a couple of weeks here in Utila diving all day, every day. I loved it. Things haven’t changed much since then; it’s a laidback, very chill island. Utila is located in the Bay Islands, a small group of islands off the coast of Honduras. It’s best known for the cheapest dive certification in the world; we have already completed one dive and we are now getting our gear serviced.
Life onboard is so different now that we are back in the ocean and in a remote location. In the Rio, we never checked weather, now we check it every few hours. In the Rio, we never went swimming/diving, now we go daily. In the Rio, we never thought about food shortage at the grocery store, now we have to plan our grocery runs according to the arrival of the provisioning boats.
In the Rio, we never had boat motion, now we have constant boat wakes and waves. In the Rio, we never thought about moving from place to place, now we are always looking for weather windows to move from one island to the next. This is much more like the Bahamas so we are getting our sea legs back again.
One bonus to being here in Utila is that we are reunited with our German friends, Heidi and Juergen; they are planning to make the January passage to Panama with us and cross the Pacific in 2024. We met Heidi and Juergen in May 2021 in Beaufort, NC (friends of sailing friends) and saw them a few times during our second sailing season. We will spend most of the third sailing season with them. They are a lot of fun!
We hope you enjoy the video this week! It’s on a fascinating topic!! We are featuring our friend, Eric’s humanitarian work in Guatemala. He and his wife are using 3D printers (on their boat) to print prosthetics for Guatemalans without arms or hands; most of the locals lose their limbs because of machete attacks, birth defects, and deadly snake bites!
Here is the link to the 27-minute video for this week:
Lots of love,
E&B
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