Coxen Hole (Roatan), Honduras

We were notified by Holland America when our cruise left a few days ago that Roatan was turning into a tender port because another big ship came. It rained cats and dogs on Roatan yesterday and the forecast calls for more rain today. The wind and swell on the sea is also bad.

First we couldn’t start the tender operations because one of the other ships was maneuvering to dock and the tenders had to wait for that to complete. The wind was building during this timeframe. They tried loading a tender around 8:30 am.

The wind and swell were too much to safely get on the tenders. They tried a couple different orientations of the ship to protect the tender from the worst of the swell, but it wasn’t enough. The captain announced that the port call was canceled. They had dropped five tenders and it took 90+ minutes to recover them and get them stowed.