May 4, 2023 We left Cayman Brac around mid day on May 1st and arrived at Guanaja about mid morning on May 4th. There was no boat to welcome us here as there had been at Grand Cayman, we had to make our way by dinghy to the crowded little Cay called Bonacca. We had checked out here just a month and a half earlier so we knew the way through the maze of sidewalk passages. It was routine except the people ahead of us were apparently frustrated by some kind of bureaucratic snag and their impatience was on display. It's generally never a good idea to give vent to your frustration with the authorities and we wondered if his attitude might "poison the well" for us following along behind. And in fact something weird did happen. The immigration guy went over Gail's passport rather carefully. (They hardly ever do that). He noted that she had been in and out of the country a few times that year. He commented that this could create a suspicion that she was doing something "Other than tourism" and, instead of the normal 90 day Visa, he gave us only 30 days. Neither of us had heard of such a thing before! It wasn't a problem for us this time since we planned to return to Rio Dulce soon anyway, but had we planned a longer stay this would have been a major inconvenience. In talking about this with other people later on we found out it wasn't just a capricious immigration guy, the new president had brought out some new policy to restrict or reduce the time given on Visas. None of the people we talked to (all expats) could figure out what the purpose of this policy really was. I heard of one story where this policy nearly spoiled the vacation of a family visiting Roatán. Some were now traveling back and fourth through an airport on the mainland instead of Roatán because at that airport they always got the full 90 day visa. Honduras is the second poorest nation in the Caribbean after Haiti, so to us, messing with tourism seemed to be the height of idiocracy. ========= We took it easy the rest of the day and most of the next day. We were happy to get rested after that 3-day trip. That night I had the best sleep I had in a long time. Here in this sheltered anchorage, even with the wind blowing and a little bit of a fetch on the water the boat was very steady. In the Caymans the mooring balls are exposed to the open ocean and we could not get into the sheltered sounds with our deep draft. So except for a very few exceptionally calm days we always had the boat rocking. Here this calm water felt like the lap of luxury. I noticed in the Cayman's that this boat (and I suppose all boats) has a resonant frequency. In this case something like 15 cycles per minute. So if even tiny waves come at that interval the boat would start rocking strongly. Interestingly I also notice that if the waves were almost 15 per minute but not quite, the boat would rock more and more, then the rocking would diminish until you had a few moments of blessed stillness. But then the cycle would start all over again. That on and off cycle is what I would call a beat frequency. It's the difference in the frequency of the waves from the resonant frequency of that boat. You get the same thing in a twin prop boat. If the props are turning at almost, but not quite, the same speed they make a sort of wah wah wah sound. In the music world. if two musical instruments play the same note but are slightly out of tune with each other you might also hear that wah wah sound. I think they call it dissonance. 5 May 2023 Friday (125) But by evening, rested, we decided to go someplace for dinner. Gail had been here years earlier and vaguely remembered a place that sold Pizza, that sounded good to us. It was a big tiki hut in a corner of the bight where we were anchored. We never even knew the name of the place, we weren't even sure it really had an official name. But I later got the story. There happen to be two German guys named Hans here, one is just Hans, they call the other Hans Pico (Little Hans, even though he is very tall). This place is Hans Pico's pizza and bar. We discovered there some other sailors we knew from our time in Utila, Jim Newell and Yolanda and also John and Deb whom I had only met briefly, Gail knew them better. We also got to know some new people and we wound up staying until well after dark, something very unusual for us. The panorama of the anchorage taken from the restaurant is mine. Our boat is second from the left, too far to really see. I was very remiss in my picture taking of this place but Yolanda shared some of her pictures with me.