Bobs_Honduras_Guide » Page 2 of 13

UTILA has for some years been renowned as “the cheapest place in the world” to take a scuba certification course (hence its attraction to a steady stream of backpack-toting dive enthusiasts). Not only that but the diving IS first-rate, and in-water whale shark watching is legendary. Other amenities are inexpensive as well - restaurants and reprovisioning possibilities more so than anywhere but the Honduran mainland. Utila is the island that owes most to its British (via the Cayman Islands) heritage. It is also one of the easiest and most convenient places for a country check-in (or out) in the Caribbean.

Approach. If sailing from Belize, you’ll want to take care to plot a course that adequately skirts the reefs that extend south and west of Utila’s West End. One of these (well south of West End) is now marked by a lonely fishing camp, built on stilts on an otherwise invisible shoal. In 2002, we had an early-morning surprise as we came up behind it, thinking it was a slow moving barge headed for Puerto Este. The deeper reefs (50’ – 150’), extending westward of the main island, are nightly frequented by numerous unlit fishing dories, suggesting the precaution of a radar watch while crossing them.

PUERTO ESTE (otherwise known as Utila Town at the easterly end of the Island) is protected from the North through Southeast by the island itself and a reef marked by the Puerto Este light (high metal pole midway along the harbor’s protective reef). To avoid this reef, extending well east of the light, we use an entry WP of N 16° 05’ W 086° 54’, taking a course of 25°M, sighting on the red and white micro tower in the center of the Puerto Este settlement. (The TV satellite dish used as a reference in an earlier cruising guide no longer exists.) The small white buoy to port on entry along this course marks a dive site over a relatively shallow reef. Similar conical white buoys surrounding the Puerto Este light are also set for divers over the shallow reefs in that area; not useful for navigation.