Roatan is an island off the Honduran coast and Honduras is neighboring Guatemala, so the trip from Santo Tomas to Roatan was a short one. By 06.30 am I was laying off the pilot station with the ship, only to be advised by the ships agents that there was still unrest on the island. Yesterday there had been protest gatherings and road blocks been setup on the island by the local population. There was an argument between them and a utility company over the fees. Meetings had been taken place during the day and evening and we had high hopes that come the morning, all would have been resolved.
This was not the case. I discussed the issue with the agent and decided to wait until 0800, to see if we could get a better picture of what was going on, on the island. By 8 am. the agent advised that the police were clearing the road blocks but that there were still many unhappy protesters around and that there would be the chance of new protests. The authorities strongly recommended that the Veendam would not call at Roatan today, as they could not guarantee the safety and security of our guests. That left me no other option than to cancel the call. I know that I would have 1200+ unhappy guests on board but it is beyond the question to let guests go ashore and then to find them embroiled in a local dispute. It is not my job to provide CNN headline news with fresh material. It is my duty as a captain to ensure the safety and security of my guests at all times, whether on the ship or ashore, as long as the latter is within my capabilities.
Thus I spun the ship away from the pilot boarding area, where we had been floating for the past 1.5 hours and went on our way. As I now had a lot of time on my hands, I decided to go sightseeing. Making a bad thing less bad; which cruise guest will ever get the chance to do a circumnavigation of Roatan Island, unless they have their own private yacht? A bit of a unique experience. Later in the day it transpired that the local utility company had been privatized and had raised the prices 3 to 4 times and that got the Roatanians up in arms.
Roatan is a long and fairly narrow island. It is the top of a under water mountain range and the shore rises steeply out of deep water. One mile from the coast it is over 1500 feet deep, half a mile from the coast and the ship can run aground. Thus the Veendam leisurely sailed around the island until 14.30 in the afternoon at an average distance of about 1.5 miles; giving the guests a good look at the various little fishing villages, secluded villa’s and resorts.
Then we continued at a slow speed heading to the North West to Costa Maya, where I will arrive at the scheduled time of 8 am tomorrow. Due to the fact that Roatan is located fairly off the beaten track, there is no other port that I could have quickly sailed to, to give the guests an alternative to enjoy, provided there would have been a berth. With cruising so popular, the docks in the various ports have to be booked months, sometimes years in advance and that makes deviating not an easy solution.
In the mean time I was keeping a close eye on our Tropical depression number 17, which in the course of the night got upgraded to Tropical storm Paloma. It is expected that the system will intensify even more and might reach hurricane status. However the estimated track is still veering away from where we want to go, so things are looking good.
Graphic taken from the National Hurricane Center website.
November 7, 2008 at 11:24 am
Hi Captain,
As someone who has lived on the island for over 5 years, I can tell you that in the four years that the prices of fuel has risen from 40 dollars a barrel to well over 100, the “Fuel Adjustment Surcharge” that RECO needed to raise years ago, never happened because of demonstrations 4 years ago. How can an electric company stay in business when the cost of doing business has gone up 3 times with no fuel surchage adjustment? It is nearly impossible. That is why the former local owners had to give up the company. They ran out of money and were greatly in debt.
Along came a Houston based businessman who rescued the island by investing tens of millions of dollars on a company that will take 20 years to make a profit. He did it for the island. The islanders love him for it.
It is the people who most recently came here from the mainland who have no ties to Roatan, they are the ones who protested and demonstrated. It was their goal to upset you and other ships from coming here, to get some kind of political power. Having no long term vision of what these actions would do to the very future they are depending on to stay here…tourism, they are ruining it for themselves. I am sure no one told them that.
The new owner knew the only way he could remain here helping the island was if everybody paid a little more for the energy. The people that protested were mostly people that don’t even have to pay their bills as 40% of the poorest people don’t pay their electric bill. The fuel surcharge, not the rate was raised. The owner did a good job of informing the people for months before this was to happen.
The people that came here to the island came here on a mission. To upset our beautiful applecart. Most of the demonstrators were not known to any of the islanders to took a look at who was causing all these problems for their mostly peaceful island.
I assure you that the people of Roatan, who are from Roatan, who have lived here on Roatan for their whole lives, are loving kind and wonderful people.
November 7, 2008 at 1:11 pm
Thank you Captain for taking the time to write this blog. It give us a lot of information on why sometime thing do not go as schedule. I have been sailing for the past 3 years and this blog make me enjoy it more. Thanks again
November 7, 2008 at 6:18 pm
I wanted to thank you for answering my question about pilot ships and stations in the past couple of blogs. I found it highly interesting.
Best!
November 8, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Hello Captain Albert,
I think it is sad that you were unable to dock and your 1200+ guest were not able to spend the day in Roatan. It is a beautiful island and it is unfortunate that RECO, the public utility company spoiled the day.
I see Roatan Bruce is spewing his RECO/Warren propaganda here, long winded as usual.
I’ll keep mine short, here is a link to another view on the simple economics regarding the public utility company RECO: http://buyroatan.blogs.com/tjs_roatan_real_estate_bl/2008/10/roatan-electric-companyfriend-or-foe.html
I hope next time around your ship and guest will be able to visit this beautiful island.
Happy Cruising to you and passengers!!!
November 13, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Dear Captain Albert,
I disembarked your vessel in Tampa, on Nov. 9, 2008.
My small family group (4 of us total) greatly enjoyed the 8 day Western Carribean cruise aboard the MS Veendam. You vessel and crew were wonderful and made our trip even better than we pictured.
While this was my parent’s first cruise, my boyfriend and I have now completed our third voyage with HAL and we hope to sail with you, and HAL again in the future.
Needless to say my boyfriend is a avid diver, I only snorkel, we were very, very disappointed about not calling on the port in Roatan. However, I would like to commend you for putting the safety of your vessel, crew and passengers first, as any good captian would. As you mentioned in your overhead announcements prior to our touring the island in lieu of docking we only wish that you had made us aware of the situation either late in the evening before or a little earlier in the morning so we either could have sept in a bit, booked some spa time or eaten a very leisurely breakfast. No matter, the important thing is that you kept us safe, the shore excursion company refunded our money almost immediately and we got an awesome tan at the aft pool instead.
With skyrocketing cost of utilities here at home we feel for the locals at Roatan and sympathize with them and feel bad that we didn’t spend our toursist dollars there that day with them. But luckily for us we had a little luck in the ship’s casino that evening.
We had been considering traveling to Roatan for quite some time and hopefully we’ll be able to dive and tour there in the future. We were not detoureed, just postponed.
Thank you, again, for keeping us safe! As well as explaining what was happening at the time that influenced your decision not to dock as well as the additional information posted on your blog.
Between the “unrest”, Paloma, casino winnings, activies and great staff and just everyday funny stuff that happened we sure came home with great stories.
Thank you.
Maureen