Vivorillo Cays, Honduras (2016)

Monday, April 18, 2016

015-49.853 N
083-18.347 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

We're now located at the Vivorillo cays, which are a small set of Honduran cays about 35 miles NE of the tip of Honduras/Nicaragua which is used by fishermen. Our primary reason for stopping here was that it's a day hop (55 miles) from Media Luna to the Vivorillo cays and then an overnight passage to Guanaja, Honduras.

We departed Media Luna at around 06:30 and had a great sail to the Vivorillo cays, arriving at about 2:30 that afternoon. We thought that we had picked a good anchorage, based upon the easterly winds that we were having, but the winds switched to the NE overnight and we were no longer in the lee of the island, which made for a bumpy night. There's another cay to the NE which looked like it would have done a much better job of protecting us.

I had planned on going ashore the next morning, but the boat was rolling way too much to be able to drop the dinghy and mount the outboard. The pictures here are from 2002, when we were last here. It's clear that some major storms have hit the island as the concrete block building shown to the left is now at the water's edge and has a wall staved inward.

Also, unlike 14 years ago, there were no fishermen on the island. This made us happy as last time we gave a fisherman a ride back to Guanaja and we think that he was responsible for the theft our of dinghy in Guanaja.

From here was have a ~150 mile sail to Guanaja and we'll depart mid-morning and hopefully we'll have good winds to sail and smooth seas.

-- Geoff & Sue

---

For the cruiser:

The chart in this area are very accurate. Simply come around SE side of Grand Vivorillo cay and look for a bright sand spot to drop the anchor. As stated above, if you have NE winds, it appeared that the key/reef to the NE would provide good protection. We anchored at 15-49.85N/083-18.347W in about 15' over sand.

Log ID: 2274