My Wife and I love walking the beach and seeing what we can find; it’s one of the pleasures of a Caribbean vacation. I could do it every day. In Cuba or Cancun, I’d normally find shells, bits of coral, or maybe colourful pebbles, even abraded glass. My luggage would easily gain five pounds on my return to Montreal.
But here in Roatan, at West End, things are a little different. This island is a little-known Caribbean gem just off the coast of Honduras. It’s not known for its resorts, rather, its star attractions are the fabulous coral reefs, maybe a kilometer or two offshore. Here, a lot of small boats take snorkelers and scuba divers out to the reefs, to swim and play among the fishes for a couple of hours.
So you can imagine, I was expecting to see lots of broken pieces of shells and coral when we were walking the beach; but I was totally disappointed, all we saw, other than sand, was seaweed washed up at the high tide mark.
I was feeling quite disillusioned about my beach walk so far; there were very few things of interest, and the whole idea of a beach walk is the possibility of finding something interesting and exciting. Then we came across this wreck; it was an old inflatable assisted boat
with its inflatables torn and their hull attach-points rusted.
It wasn’t as exciting a find as would be, the wreck of the “Minnow,” you know the Gillian’s Island tour boat, from that 1960’s inane TV show. It did give me pause for reflection though, and I wondered, if I was marooned here could I fix it
No, it was hopeless; I took the picture, and we moved on. Walking further along the beach we found more abandoned boats; some lying upright, filled with water, others on their side with obvious holes in their hulls, and even a few outboard motors lying around, all scavenged for parts. It looked like people tried to fix them, but they were all hopeless wrecks.
What had we stumbled upon? If this were the bottom of the ocean, I’d say it was Davey Jones’ Locker, you know, the place where sunken, wrecked, hopeless ships go to die.
My wife often says that I let my imagination run away, and see the strangest co-incidences… myself, I don’t agree; I’m sure that if I looked hard enough, I’d see a sign somewhere saying, “Davy Jones’ Dry Dock.”