The idea for the Dolphin Program at AKR came to Julio Galindo, the resort’s owner, via an idea made by a couple of the guests in 1987. “We made a trip to a facility in Gulfport to look at their dolphins,” says Julio Galindo. Galindo began the program with two other partners, but by 1993 he bought them out. “Its [dolphin program] been good for business,” says Galindo.

The Honduran government permits needed to capture the wild dolphins was not easy to obtain. “It took a while to get permission to do this. The government wanted to know what we were up to,” says Eldon Bolton, Director of Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences. In 1989 Eldon was hired by AKR to locate, catch, and move the bottlenose dolphins to their Sandy Bay facility.

Eldon worked for Marine Animal Productions, a company that amongst other clients supplied the US Navy with bottlenose dolphins for their military program. In early 1980s until 1987 the Mississippi based company was providing dolphins for US clients.

At first it was not even known if the team would be successful at catching bottlenose dolphins. Bottlenose dolphins can be found on three Oceans in the world: Indian, Pacific and Atlantic. They are only absent from the Arctic Ocean. They are plentiful and feel right at home in warm waters off the Honduras’ Caribbean coast.

The key step in catching dolphins in Honduran waters was finding the right location to capture a group of bottlenose dolphins large enough to make it viable in a pen off Roatan. “It took some scouting. We took several boats and stayed several weeks at a time,” says Eldon about locating Honduran coast for the bottlenose dolphins.

The dolphin search focused in areas both east and west of the Trujillo peninsula. Once the team would spot the dolphin pod they would feed the dolphins and using a 1000 foot long net the capture team would encircle the dolphin pod.

The dolphin scouts determined the best location and the way to capture the aquatic mammals. “We would circle a group of animals and try to find a right group. Maybe half a dozen or fewer,” says Eldon. They would run a net forming a big circle or compass around the pod.

Their gear was designed to work in less than 20 feet of water.
The team consisted of 18 dolphin “trappers” that would start in as deep as 40 feet of water and stealthily move the net around the dolphin pod. They would keep the net intact and slowly wring in the whole thing on shore, shallow enough where the crew could stand up and safely manage the dolphins. The entire process would take half-a-day’s time.

Dolphin scouts determined the best location and the way to capture the aquatic mammals.

Each time the animals were then placed on specially designed slings, lifted out of the water, but kept moist and cool. The transfer of the animals between Trujillo to Roatan took four to five hours.

Three different trips were conducted from October 1989 to November 1990. In three capture operations five, three and eventually seven dolphins were caught in this manner. Fifteen bottle nose dolphins were brought in to AKR altogether.

The Dolphins are quite territorial, so it is possible that the three dolphin catches all came from two or even just one pod.

Originally AKR had constructed a dolphin enclosure facility near its museum building. The pen blew down three to four times before it was dismantled and in 2003, replaced by new pens.

In order to help with the beginning of the dolphin facility in the Bay Islands, Marine Animal Productions would send some of their trainers from Mississippi to Roatan do start working with and training the dolphins. “We hired local people right off the bat,” says Eldon. “They began teaching local trainers essentially.”

The AKR dolphin program started with four trainers and five dolphins. The original pen enclosure offered, adjacent bleacher seating and “classic dolphin performance with a commentary.”

All the dolphins from the first 1980s capture died from old age. In 2017, Paya, the last of the original dolphins, who lived up to the venerable dolphin age of 34 died. He was around five when he was caught in 1989.

Out of the 17 dolphins that live in AKR facility in 2023, two females were caught wild. Only two wild caught dolphins remain at the AKR. Gracie was caught in 1998 and Elita was caught in 2003.

The actual number of dolphins has been up and down over the years. In 1998, 2002 and 2003 the AKR went to Bay of Trujillo and Honduran coast to replenish their dolphin stocks. In March 2023 AKR had 17 dolphins: eight males and nine females, including a one year old dolphin. One or two dolphins are born in AKR each year.

While AKR’s dolphin facility is unique in Central America, there are around a dozen dolphin aquariums in Mexico, half a dozen in Cancún alone. AKR has maxed at 32 dolphins. “From the management standpoint that is a nightmare,” says Eldon.

As the dolphins began to reproduce more steadily AKR had more than enough dolphins and even provided other sea mammals facilities with their dolphins. In 2003 AKR provided animals to the Curaçao Sea Aquarium and Ocean World in Dominican Republic. In 2013 they provided dolphins to Nassau Bahamas. AKR helped in designing and sometime staffing those facilities, the influence of AKR on the dolphins is quite considerable.

AKR dolphin facilities are unique because the dolphins are allowed to spend time in the bay. So the animals are familiar with the space outside the pen in case of bad weather and break down. “We don’t have any problems with animals trying to escape,” says Eldon. “If we took the nets down they would not leave the lagoon.”

One male, two mothers and two calves were lost during Hurricane Mitch. The pen holding them disintegrated in the water storm surge and dolphins escaped. “They made their way out of the channel and we never saw them again. We looked all over,” says Eldon. Three of these were wild caught and remembered how to provide for themselves. They most likely made their way to the coast.

According to Eldon the dolphins don’t escape, they are content in the enclosed, but not escape tight facility in Sandy Bay. “I prefer to think that we give them everything that they need, good food and each other” says Teri Bolton, Assistant Director at Roatan Institute for Marine Sciences Honduras. “They have a pod and they are more important to each other than we ever will be.”

The dolphins not only have their physical needs met, they are entertained, stimulated and have enough social interactions to keep them happy. “They have that family structure so there is no need for them to want to leave,” says Teri.

The dolphins have a variety of tasks and activities throughout the day to keep them occupied and entertained. “It’s more complicated than it looks. We are dealing with living, breathing, soulful animals that are much more important to each other than we are to them,” says Teri Bolton.

Every September and October AKR has been offering dolphin therapies for kids with disabilities. Groups of 20 disabled children travel to Roatan every September and October to have twice-a-day interaction sessions with the bottlenose Dolphins at AKR. “I only wish we could do more of that,” says Julio Galindo, about the 25 year old program.

AKR dolphin facility also gets involved in rescue operations from time to time. During Hurricane Mitch, the Bay Islands and especially Guanaja were pounded by ferocious winds causing enormous damage to the reef, and forests of the islands. Many dolphins died, or barely survived. In Guanaja a dolphin washed into a swampy area, unable to swim back to open water. It managed to survive for several days and was spotted by islanders who alerted AKR. Eldon brought the animal to AKR and tried to nurse the bottlenose female back to health for a week, but she was too worn down and wounded to survive. “Its skin was peeling off. It was a bad, bad situation,” says Eldon. “That was the only time we had to put an animal down.”

They have several enclosure pens that are used for housing and training during the day. “We tend to move them around to prevent boredom,” says Eldon. The enclosures range from zero depth at shoreline to 20 feet deep. The biggest dolphin pen is ¾ acre. There are several isolation holding pens that could be used as maternity areas. “Occasionally males are isolated from a newborn baby calf to assure safety of that calf,” says Eldon. “The males can get aggressive, like a lion would.”

AKR dolphin trainers take out their dolphins from their pens on a regular basis. “At the end of the day we draw all the gates down and let our animals run,” says Eldon. “We are very unique in the way we manage our heard.” Only facilities in Curaçao and Bahamas take their bottlenose dolphins out on regular basis. All-in-all the AKR dolphins have one acre of enclosed area to swim in.

Feeding the dolphins and keeping them healthy with good, consistent feed is a key task. The dolphins receive four feedings a day. While a small 12 month dolphin eats as little as two pounds of fish a day, a grown dolphin eats over 30 pounds per day.

As main source of food for the AKR’s bottlenose dolphins is Capelin fish from Newfoundland, Iceland and Norway. The staffs sometime buy juvenile herring from France and occasionally Atlantic herring from North America and Norway. “The prices went sky high in the last five years. 30-40 percent increase in price,” says Eldon. “We are buying feed worldwide.”

Each dolphin is assigned a place on board of how many and what type of fish food it is given during each of four daily feeding sessions. For every five pounds of feed a vitamin tablet is placed in the gills of the fish fed to the dolphins.

Every couple weeks each dolphin’s length and girth is measured to monitor their weight. “The idea is not to over feed them and not to underfeed them,” says Kenly McCoy, one of 12 dolphin caretakers who have been with AKR since 1996.

The AKR dolphins supplement their diet by catching fish and other sea creatures that stray into their pens. They feed on unsuspecting snappers and blue tang. “I have seen them eat lobsters,” says McCoy.

About every three months AKR dolphins have a shipment of food arriving from the US. A specialty supplier in US out of Newport, Rhode Island ships two 20 foot freezer containers via Naviera Hybur. Then the fish, up to 40,000 pounds, is stored in freezers at the AKR’s dolphin facility.

As the AKR facility uses 400 Lbs of fish a day getting local feed for the dolphins has proved difficult. “We tried for years to work with our shrimp fleet because they have a lot of by catch. They have a lot of dead fish that they bring in when they are shrimping,” says Eldon. To make an optimum feed for the dolphins, the entire fish has to be frozen quickly to eliminate the possibility of the intestines beginning to rot.

Dolphins cannot eat gutted fish as that food has not enough nutrients for the sea mammal. According to Eldon, the Roatan shrimp boats are not geared for processing and freezing which creates a health risk for the dolphins that would consume these fish. “They get parasite loads from food they take in,” explains Eldon.

Anthony’s Key Resort facility uses 400 Lbs of fish a day.

AKR runs a variety of educational programs with the dolphins. There is a volunteer program, a six week internship program and a scientist programs at the Dolphin center. “Bottlenose dolphins are the ones we know the most about because we have been exposed to them for the longest time,” says Teri. “It is a very exciting time for research on the dolphins.”

The number and variety of careers associated with dolphin research and keep has multiplied over the last three decades. “You can be in animal care, you can be a lab technician, an educator, a research scientist,” says Terri. “It is a very exciting time because technology has caught up with the dolphins.”

Teri Bolton oversees researchers who come to study dolphin behavior at AKR. There is a strong and ongoing connection of AKR’s dolphin program with several academic institutions. Dolphin observation study has been conducted by Rees Magnasco’s group Lab out of Columbia University and Rockefeller University. Most reputable facilities are also promoting conservation, education, providing opportunities for scientists.

It is a very exciting time for research on the dolphins.

AKR’s dolphin program is host to several scientists and doctoral candidates. One of them is PhD candidate Melissa Voisinet who studies dolphin cognition and communication at Hunter College and Rockefeller University. Voisinet spent many weeks observing the AKR dolphins.

Public display of the dolphins and activities with them provide major economic sources for the upkeep of the dolphins. The bottlenose dolphin is exposed to guests for three to three-and-a-half hour a day.

The twice-a-day dolphin programs at AKR has allowed others to sell island boat tour packages that include a stop-by-the AKR dolphin pens. In high season as many as 17 tourist boats make their way to AKR’s Bailey’s Key. “The noise and fumes are bad for the dolphins,” says Teri. “They need good water, good food and clean air just like we do,” says Eldon.

Historic Tragedy near Guanaja’s Shores

By Elke Jackson-McNab 
A pioneer in the floral industry on Roatan, Elke loves refurbishing, decorating, antiques, beautiful new and vintage things. Elke is very devoted to her family and her Christian life. She remembers vividly her interaction with the captain and crew of the Fantome in 1997, when this beautiful vessel first arrived to the islands.

The Fantome, originally named “The Flying Cloud” was considered one the world’s most luxurious yachts when she was completed in 1927. By 1998 this four-mast, 282-foot, steel-hulled staysail schooner was owned by Windjammer Barefoot Cruise based in Miami, Florida.

The yacht was built by the Italian navy and purchased before its completion by the Duke of Westminster. A few years later “The Flying Cloud” was sold to Nelson Warden, who died two years later and his wife let the yacht her go. “The Flying Cloud” was then acquired in auction by Arthur Guinness, who renamed her “Fantome” which in French means ghost.

In 1956[U1] it is said that Aristotle Onassis “the Greek Tycoon,” purchased her as a wedding gift for Princess Grace of Monaco. Onassis did not receive an invitation to the wedding, so he just left the yacht to rust at a port in Kiel, Germany. In 1969 Captain Michael Burke Sr., owner of Windjammer Barefoot Cruise, bought her from Onassis. She was half sunken and rusting. When he first saw the Fantome, he was a bit disappointed, she was a wreck, but he could see her potential. He then refurbished the schooner at a cost of $6 million US, and she became flagship of his tall ship barefoot cruise line[U2].

Windjammer Cruises was a different kind of cruise. It was a very relaxed, go barefoot cruise. No special dress code was required and sometimes it was a you did not need any clothes at all.

In the spring of 1997 Mr. Allan Hyde, and Michael D. Burke Jr in Miami, made arrangements for Roatan to be one of the destinations of the Fantome. Mr. Allan offered me the job to assist him with the arrivals of this vessel. I knew very little about what I was supposed to do. I was fresh out of nothing: I never used my college degree much and knew no one with any experience in cruise ship arrivals. I had my sail up to where ever the wind blew, so I went for it.

Fantome that was the first cruise ship to dock there.

Captain Paul and another representative from Windjammer in Miami come to the island in early April 1997. We toured them around so they could see the beauty of the island. There were not that many options for tourist back then, but they seem pleased with what we had to offer. Roatan did have some of the most beautiful beaches, and diving spots.

I remember the excitement I felt the day the Fantome arrived to Roatan. It was the summer of 1997 and the cruise port dock in Coxen Hole was almost completed. In fact it was the Fantome that was the first cruise ship to dock there.

We arrived early that morning: Mr. Allan, his son Shawn, Nadeen, the customs agents, and I. We soon saw her sailing in, slowly on horizon. The Fantome was a beautiful ship, she was majestic, something you thought you would only see in a movie.

Everything was well kept, polished, even though she was 70 years old, Fantome still preserved her original beauty. Captain Guyan March was always very friendly. He was a handsome blonde British born man, who had started very early at sea. At 32 he was considered Windjammer’s “golden boy.”

The Fantome only came to Roatan a few times. I remember the last time I went to receive, and entered this ship. We waited in the lobby to be attended, an in a few minutes the deck was covered with nude men.  They just stood around talking to each other; some with drinks in their hands, laughing, and chatting as if they were all wearing tuxedos. I had never, ever felt so out of place in my entire life. I acted as if it all was perfectly normal to me, and did my job.

As I met with Captain Guyan, he explained to us that it was a nude cruise for gay men, and asked if there were any nude beaches on the island. Later that afternoon we returned to the vessel with paperwork, and found the passengers jumping off the ship into the sea, having a merry good time. And again, yes they were all nude.

The deck was covered with nude men.

I don’t really know much more about the Fantome and her crew after this. They change route, and moved to Omoa, Cortes where she was home-ported. The yacht sailed to Belize, Hog Islands and Utila. Passengers would fly to San Pedro Sula, and then they were shuttled to Omoa to meet the ship. I never quite understood why they left Roatan.

According to what’s documented the Fantome left Omoa, Cortes, with Captain March, and his crew on October 25, 1998 headed for Belize to drop off the 97 passengers, and all non-essential crew. Fantome was left with 31 crew, one being a Honduran “Jesús Hernández,” who could not get off in Belize because he did not have the correct paperwork.

October 27, 1998, was a historic day in my life. Mitch, a category five hurricane, and one of the most devastating storms, blew with a relentless intensity. The island of Guanaja was left looking as if a fire had destroyed all the trees on its once green and beautiful hills.

Entire communities were devastated in Guanaja. Yet God wrapped his arms around the island and saved the islanders lives. October 27 was also my husband’s Birthday; he turned 32, the same age as Captain Guyan. Sadly, it was the last day for the Fantome, and her crew.

Guanaja was left looking as if a fire had destroyed all the trees. 

I was devastated to learn about the Fantome’s demise. Windjammer headquarters in Miami had been in touch with Capt. March all day via satellite phone trying to direct the boat to safety. Fantome was trying to find shelter on the lee side of the Bay Islands.

Shawn Hyde, Mr. Allan’s son, recalled an early conversation between the agent in Belize, his father, and the captain regarding what they would do in the event of a hurricane. The Captain answered “head out to sea.” Someone then said: “Well that’ll be the last you’ll see of her.”

Captain March found himself in a very difficult position, inside the small bridge room where he, and first mate Crispín were in had only one window about two by three feet. He described to headquarters that they were facing over 100 miles an hour winds, and up to 30-40-foot seas, the ship was being battered from all directions, the Fantome was taking 40 degree rolls. I cannot even begin to imagine the horror they faced in those last hours.

At 4:30 pm October 27 1998, the satellite phone went dead, and headquarters lost communication with the Fantome. Capt Guyan March, and his crew members lost at sea in a merciless deadly storm. Fantome rests at the bottom of the Caribbean Sea, likely somewhere south of Guanaja. Yet what exactly what happened we will never know.

“Well that’ll be the last you’ll see of her.”

A couple days later, on November 2, two life rafts, seven life jackets, a life ring, and part of a wooden staircase were discovered by a helicopter dispatched by British destroyer the HMS Sheffield near Guanaja.

Even so many years later there are families, and friends who remember that dreadful day and Miss Captain March, his crew, and the Fantome.

Tough Times among Uncertainty, Fear and Government Restrictions

Roatan’s tourism services and hotel sectors have been hit the hardest by the March shut down. While many hotels have fired most of their employees and shut down completely some have dug in and focused on renovations and expansion. Anthony’s Key Resort is building a new seafront restaurant for their future cruise ship guests and Meridian hotel in West Bay has focused on finishing construction of condominiums.

Edward and Laura Moulder, Meridian’s owners, take the lockdown as a time to do improvements, maintenance and construction. The Meridian is a hotel and condominium development that started in 2007. Meridian has dug into their rainy-day fund, but most of Roatan’s hotels don’t have that luxury. “I am shocked how few businesses have had reserves set up,” said Laura Moulder. “We are continuing to pay employees. We feel the island is going to get worse off if we don’t pay. (…) Important to maintain the impression that Roatan is safe and organized.”

Laura Moulder believes that the key for Roatan’s recovery lies in local businesses working together at presenting the island businesses join together and market Roatan as a safe place just like Cayman Islands or Belize have been doing. She feels that recovery from the shutdown will be different than after the 2008-2009 financial crisis and Micheletti political coup that caused the island economy to retract for over two years. “The turnaround should come quite quickly,” she says. “People have been putting their lives on hold. We will see a lot of urban money leaving.  A lot of urbanites will make that move.”

That is as long as these “urban refugees” have funds to do so. With over 40 million Americans who filed for unemployment over the US shut down policy, fewer and fewer have the money to invest or travel.

There is a noticeable capital flight as Americans are ready to sell their homes in urban areas and look for safety in rural areas and the Caribbean. Turks and Caicos are benefiting from a luxury home boom as North Americans look for safe place to live, seek refuge or telecommute. This Caribbean country has cut duty and planning fees and waiving duties on construction materials. If it plays its cards right Roatan could also be in line to benefit.

Before the economic turnaround many businesses will go broke. Businesses that didn’t have a rainy-day fund aren’t doing that well. Casa Marmol, a stone finish store, closed its store at the Megaplaza Mall alongside several other businesses there.

RAS Express, an air shipping company that has been doing business since 2001 has called it quits. Gil Garcia, RAS Express’ owner, had to let go of six of his eight employees in Coxen Hole. With the airport being closed he can’t provide shipping services his business is based on. “I blame both municipalities. For the longest time Roatan was clear [of COVID-19]. They should have helped people that were stuck on the mainland instead they just came here illegally,” says Garcia. “I gave up on central government a long time ago.”

Garcia is one of the few people not afraid to criticize the almost five month long, chaotic and indiscriminate government policy of locking down healthy people and business. The isolation, fear and confusion has produced a chilling effect on the island. Many are fearful to criticize the local government officials, central government, or police.

Other than shipping dozens of COVID-19 positive police officers to the island the central government has been doing little to help Roatan handle the shutdown crisis. For one, the title registry office has been open only for two days in May, and that’s it. There is no way to proceed if someone wanted to buy or sell a property.

The next financial crisis on Roatan might come from the looming foreclosures on thousands of loans on properties and vehicles.

Some businesses are getting creative in trying to pay their staff dependent on tourists. West End’s Sundowners Bar has eight local staff and its owners resorted to doing a raffle to pay some of the staff’s $4,000 monthly salaries.  “The island has been shut down for almost four months. No cruise ships, no flights, no tourists. (…) our local staff is hurting,” wrote on social media Aaron Etches about his iconic Roatan bar.

Some businesses are actually thriving. Island Shipping, cargo shipping between Roatan and the mainland, has taken over freight business that before the shutdown was handled by the Galaxy Wave ferry.

While Galaxy Wave had practically no business since mid-March but it has managed to update much of its on-land facilities and two of its ferries. “We took time to do the general maintenance. We painted the engine room, seats, we redid lifeboats, (…) we redid the sales counter,” said Jesus Reyes, Galaxy Wave manager, adding that the operations are aimed to return in mid-August. “We are quite ready to start operating. We are just waiting what the airlines and airport want to do.”

Some businesses have managed to opened new locations, or even expand their operations. Serrano Industrial hardware store opened a long planed second location in Coxen Hole. CARNIAGRO, an agricultural supplies store, moved to a new, bigger location in French Harbour. “Now we are selling many seeds and plant products,” said Greg Norman, owner of CARNIAGRO.

While hardware stores and agricultural supplies stores are not as dependent on tourism and keep the island economy afloat, they are struggling as well. “We are doing half the sales we did in January,” said Oscar Oseguera, Madeyso’s General Sales Manager who moved to Roatan form La Ceiba several weeks ago to help run the two Madeyso stores on Roatan.

The next financial crisis on Roatan might come from the looming foreclosures on thousands of loans on properties and vehicles. While Honduras Central government have imposed a moratorium on banks not to require payments from debtors for three months that expired in mid-June. On July 1 many struggled to renegotiate terms with their Honduran lending institutions.

Banco Atlántida, Honduras’ biggest lender, owns a big stake in Roatan’s defaulted properties. “[Banco] Atlántida is not very forgiving under normal circumstances,” said Laura Moulder. For over 20 years Banco Atlántida has amassed hundreds of acres of Roatan land and properties and it is likely to take over more properties in the months to come.

Roatan was the Favorite Base for the Brethren of the Coast

In 1683 Roatan hosted the largest meeting of pirates in history; they planned a series of attacks on Spanish towns and shipping routes. These pirates known as ‘Brethren of the Coast” raided Spanish cities and burned towns, captured and sold slaves and executed hostages, sewing terror from Florida to South America. These buccaneers defied laws and civility, no one was safe from their greed and cruelty.
While many people glorify them, today that loose coalition of pirates and privateers would be called terrorists with behavior surpassing that of the Islamic State. Some of these buccaneers carried ‘Letters of marque and reprisal’ that regulate their relationships with their European benefactors and themselves. The Brethren were almost always English Protestants, Dutch Lutherans and French Huguenots that saw their Catholic, Spanish and French counterparts as legitimate targets of ruthless treatment. Their actions were the extension of ruthless European religious wars in the New World. 

This was the largest and the last convocation of The Brethren of the Coast to be held on Roatan, and it was convened at the behest of Dutch sea rover Nicholas “Claas” Van Hoorn, who had persuaded two of the most flamboyant and successful pirates of the era to accompany him on the mission. They were Le Chevalier Michel de Grammont, a French nobleman who had fled France and turned to piracy after killing his sister’s lover in a duel over her honor.

The other leader of the group was Laurens Cornelis Boudewijn de Graaf, who harbored a deep hatred for the Spanish after being captured on a Dutch merchant vessel and forced to work as a galley slave and later to labor on their plantations for several years before escaping. De Graaf, known simply as “The Devil” to the Spanish, was so successful in his piratical activities in the Caribbean that they sent their special, fast, pirate-chasing fleet, called La Armada de Barlovento, or Windward Fleet, under the command of Andrés de Ochoa in pursuit of him.

Furthermore, Henry Morgan was now a reformed character assigned an as acting governor of Jamaica. Morgan had sent the 55-gun frigate the “Norwich,” with 240 men aboard, to hunt down de Graaf in order to appease the Spanish. Four years earlier, De Graaf had turned the tables on the Spanish and attacked the boats chasing him, capturing two of their vessels, the “Tigre” and the “Princesa,” the flagship of the Barlovento fleet, off Santo Domingo, along with 120,000 silver Peruvian pesos, which he shared equally with his crew.

De Graaf renamed the second boat “Francesca” and used her as his own flagship for years to come. To keep himself and his 200 crewmen entertained, the popular De Graaf employed an orchestra of musicians, replete with guitars, violins, and trumpets, who lived permanently aboard the ship.

In retaliation for this great insult and loss, the Spanish confiscated the first Dutch-flagged boat that sailed into Santo Domingo. This ship, which belonged to Nicholas Van Hoorn, contained a valuable shipment of 900 African slaves to be sold in Martinique. Van Hoorn was so aggrieved by its loss that he immediately sailed to the French-ruled western part of Hispaniola and demanded and received from the governor a letter of marquee and reprisal against Spanish property.

Armed with this valuable permit to attack the Spanish, Van Hoorn met up with Grammont at their base in Pétit-Goâve and sailed in his own triple-decker warship, the “St. Nicholas Day,” along with 300 men, to rendezvous with De Graaf on Roatan.

Van Hoorn’s ship, the largest operating in the Caribbean, had been paid for with part of a bullion shipment of two million gold livres which the Spanish had paid Van Hoorn to protect on its way from Hispaniola to Cádiz, and which he had stolen once the convoy left port.

By chance, they encountered John Coxen and his ship the “Dorado” off Jamaica. Coxen, who had temporarily retired from piracy (only for one year!), Was himself under Morgan’s orders to hunt down and capture another Dutch corsair, Yankey Willens, a former cohort of Morgan, for a reward of 200 English pounds. They explained to Coxen their plan to attack Vera Cruz and invited him to join the team, but he demurred, and they continued towards the Bay Islands.

Van Hoorn was so eager to retaliate against the Spanish that he diverted his boat to attack Trujillo on Honduras’s mainland. Trujillo proved easy to capture, as it had fewer than 200 men under arms to defend it.

There they found two large Spanish galleons, Nuestra Señora de la Concepción and Nuestra Señora de la Regla, awaiting a valuable shipment of indigo which was to arrive by mule train from the south. Unfortunately for the townsfolk and the soldiers guarding Trujillo, the boats sat idle and empty. This infuriated Van Hoorn, who already had a reputation for his arrogance and cruelty towards prisoners, and he ordered his army to kill the garrison of the fort and to murder the entire population of the town, after which he ordered Trujillo to be torched and burned to the ground. This act of insanity caused the Spanish viceroy in Guatemala to order Trujillo to be completely abandoned as indefensible; it would not be repossessed by Spain for another 97 years, leaving it a free port for smugglers.

Van Hoorn and Grammont then sailed with their two new prizes to French Harbour. Unbeknownst to either man, Laurens de Graaf and his colleague Michiel Andrieszoon also had plans to seize the two cargo ships and were waiting patiently on Guanaja, careening their boats, until the cargoes of indigo arrived at Trujillo, and were appalled and angered by Van Hoorn’s actions. The animosity between Van Hoorn and de Graaf would turn deadly within less than two months.

The animosity between Van Hoorn and de Graaf would turn deadly.

With England and Spain being in a state of peace for eleven years, the men gathering at French Harbour for the raid were almost exclusively Dutch and French, with only two English captains, George Spurre and Jacob Hall in attendance. The rest of the pirate captains were Michiel Andrieszoon, Jan “Yankey” Willens, Jacob Evertson, Francois Le Sage, Pierre De L’Orange, Nicolas Bregeult, Nicolas Bot, and Antoine Bernard. They spent over a month on the island, careening boats and hunting and fishing, their enforced stay caused by the news from their spies that Ochoa, with 1,200 marines and the Armada de Barlovento, was in Vera Cruz, preparing to sail to Cuba to look for de Graaf.

As soon as the coast was clear, the Brethren departed in five large boats and five smaller vessels. Late on the night of May 17th 1683, Van Graaf boldly sailed into Vera Cruz harbor in the two Spanish-flagged vessels from Trujillo, and, along with Yankey Willens, silently landed over 200 men.

Meanwhile, Grammont and Van Hoorn moored their boats down the coast, and with another 200 men marched overland into the rear of the town and took over a hundred horses from the garrison’s stables. They attacked the fort at dawn.

The Spanish were so surprised by the Dutch cavalry charge on their own horses that they quickly surrendered without a fight. The sea rovers quickly spread out through the town, herding most of the population into the large church, to be bartered for ransom. Captain Spurre found the town’s governor, Don Louis de Cordua, hiding under some straw in a stable, and would later successfully ransom him for 70,000 silver pesos.

After a week of looting the town, De Graaf learned that another heavily armed Spanish fleet was soon to arrive from Cartagena and hastily retreated to La Isla de Sacrificios two miles offshore, taking his Spanish hostages and over 1,500 black and mulatto slaves and freemen with them. The latter would be dispersed and sold throughout the Caribbean, a sad crime which the people of Vera Cruz never forgave De Graaf for.

While awaiting the ransom for their Spanish hostages to be sent from Mexico City, Van Hoorn became impatient; he ordered the decapitation of twelve of the hostages, intending to send their heads back to the mainland as a warning. When De Graaf stepped in to prevent the execution of the Spanish, a drunken Van Hoorn attacked him with his sword. A duel ensued and ended when De Graaf slashed Van Hoorn badly on the wrist, and then ordered him confined to his boat in chains.

After receiving their ransom, the sea rovers sailed to Isla de Mujeres, off present-day Cancún to split their booty. Laurens de Graaf, Jacob Evertson, Michiel Andrieszoon, Jan “Yankee” Willens, George Spurre, and Michel de Grammont shared the equivalent of $30,000 each, while their men each received 800 pieces of eight, worth perhaps $7,000 today. In addition, there were some 1,500 slaves to dispose of.

Grammont and Jacob Hall took 400 slaves north to sell in North Carolina; Hall would use his profits to retire in Virginia. De Graaf, Evertson, Andrieszoon, and Spurre sailed directly to Saint-Domingue (present-day Haiti) to auction off the remaining slaves; over the next four months Spurre would drink himself to death there.

Meanwhile, Andrés de Ochoa, the Spanish commander of Vera Cruz and Admiral of the Fleet of Barlovento (on the present-day Colombian coast), hell-bent on capturing “Laurencillo” de Graaf and the pirates who had raped his town and destroyed his citadel, embarked on a two-year mission to hunt them down. On August 4th, on his 450-ton flagship, the San José, accompanied by three pursuit galleons of 350 tons each, Ochoa had success off of Little Cayman, where they captured two ships involved in the raid, Pierre d’Orange’s Dauphinand Antoine Bernard’s Prophète Daniel, along with their crews and stolen plunder.

A week later, on the evening of August 11th, they chased down Yankee Willens, who was captaining La Señora de Regla, one of the cargo ships captured by Nikolaas Van Hoorn in Trujillo. Willens set fire to the ship, and then escaped on a smaller vessel in the smoke, dusk, and confusion, eventually making it back to Saint-Domingue, having left behind 90 slaves, who put out the fire and were rescued by Ochoa. The French captains and their crews were publicly executed by garrote on the waterfront, as were 14 Englishmen who had participated in the raid and were captured in a failed attack on Tampico in early 1684.

Along with Yankey Willens, silently landed over 200 men.

On August 22nd Ochoa returned to Vera Cruz; there he would stay for ten months while overseeing the rebuilding of the city.

In October 1683, the remaining Brethren of the Coast–minus de Grammont, who was attacking Spanish settlements in Florida–were offered the opportunity to attack Santiago de Cuba by the governor of Saint-Domingue. The one condition was that the raid would be accompanied by a detachment of French soldiers and that the overall command would be undertaken by the pompously titled Major Jean de Goff, Sieurde Beauregard.

A brutal martinet, de Goff displeased the Brethren so much that they mutinied before the venture got under sail, and instead turned their attention to another Spanish target, Cartagena, a heavily fortified citadel surrounded by 11 kilometers of walls and ramparts.

With over a thousand men, they moored outside Cartagena’s bay for three weeks while calculating how to infiltrate the city’s formidable defenses. Their presence became known to the Spanish governor, who on Christmas Eve dispatched a force of some 800 men on three ships: the 40-gun San Francisco, the 34-gun La Paz, and the 28-gun galliot Francesca.

However, the large Spanish ships were outmaneuvered by the dexterity of the Dutch captains. The San Francisco ran aground on a sandbar, and the other two boats were captured with all on board. Ninety Spanish soldiers were killed in the battle; on the Dutch side, only 20 men were lost. De Graaf refloated the San Francisco, renaming it the Neptune and making it his flagship; Andrieszo on was given the La Paz, renaming it the Rascal; and Willens was rewarded with de Graaf’s former flagship Princesa.

Three weeks later Willens would use this ship to capture a passing English sloop named the James, thus angering the governor of Jamaica so much that he doubled the price on Willens’s head from 200 to 400 pounds.

De Graaf ransomed the surviving soldiers back to Cartagena. Upon receiving the extortion money, he sent a messenger thanking the governor for his Christmas present. With his cohorts, he then sailed back to their main base at Petit-Goâve, where he would remain on his sugarcane plantation with his family for the next year while plotting his next raid.

In June 1685 de Graaf returned to Roatán to await the passing of the Spanish treasure fleet on its way to Guatemala and thence to Cuba. Thwarted when the fleet was delayed by bad weather, he reconvened a meeting of all the Brethren of the Coast on Cuba’s Isla de Pinos (now Isla de la Juventud).

From there he sailed with Michel de Grammont and the entire team who had accompanied him at Vera Cruz and Cartagena—minus Hall and Spurre, who had been replaced by the Frenchman Pierre Bot, who captained La Señora de Regla, and the English pirate Joseph Bannister, aboard his ship Golden Fleece—and a total force of 750 men and 30 boats to launch an attack on Campeche, Mexico. Campeche ranked alongside Havana, Cartagena, and Vera Cruz as one of Spain’s most valuable shipping ports.

He withdrew to Trujillo,now a virtual ghost town.

Forewarned of the attack, the governor of Campeche, the 50-year-old veteran soldier Felipe de Barreda, ordered the women and children to leave the town, taking with them most of its valuables, while he remained to organize Campeche’s defenses. The first assault group of pirates, arriving on July 6th, was repulsed by Barreda’s 200 defenders upon landing. However, the pirates regrouped, infiltrated the town at night, and emerged victorious from a pitched battle with the remaining Spanish militiamen as well as two other detachments of 200 soldiers sent from Mérida.

The pirates then stormed Merida, only to find it mostly devoid of treasure. Enraged, de Grammont sent 200 mounted French and Dutch cavalry riding stolen horses throughout the country in a radius of up to 50 miles from the town, burning farms and hacienda sand killing two thirds of the province’s population.

De Graaf then sent two ransom demands to Juan Bruno Téllez de Guzmán, governor of the Yucatán, insisting that he send 80,000 pesos and 400 head of cattle to prevent the town from being burned to the ground. Guzmán refused both notes, saying that the pirates could do what they wanted, but that Spain, being powerful and wealthy, would simply rebuild the town. This provoked de Grammont into hanging six of its leading citizens in the town square. He was about to execute six more, including Barreda, when de Graaf intervened. Finally, having spiked the fort’s cannons, the pirates sailed away on September 5 and scattered up and down the coast.

Meanwhile, on learning that de Graaf was holed up on Roatán, Andrés de Ochoa scoured every bay and inlet on the island in search of the nemesis he had been hunting for over two years. Unable to find any trace of him, he withdrew to Trujillo, now a virtual ghost town, to await de Graaf’s return. When a messenger boat arrived from Mérida to report that de Graaf was attacking Campeche, the gravely ill Ochoa set sail north on September 8th with five galleons.

Three days later, he espied three sails 53 kilometers north of present-day Cancún and gave chase, catching up with part of de Graaf’s heavily laden fleet at Cabo Catoche and eventually capturing Bot’s slow-moving galleon, with its crew of 130 Frenchmen, over 200 weapons, and 30 African slaves taken at Campeche, as well as a sloop, while another sloop was sunk.

The Spanish continued to tail De Graaf for four days until, at Alacrán Reef, having dumped much of his cargo overboard to lighten his ship, De Graaf turned and daringly engaged and outmaneuvered the Spanish warships Santo Cristo de Burgos and Concepción. Though the two pursuit vessels fired over 1,600 cannon shots at the Neptune, luck was on De Graaf’s side. After his rigging was crippled by Spanish chain shot and it looked as if he would be taken, a cannon blew up on Ochoa’s flagship, killing several men and severely damaging the superstructure, making further pursuit impossible.

De Graaf returned to Roatán to await the passing of the Spanish treasure.

Ochoa died the following morning from a combination of fever and battle fatigue, and the chase ended. The disappointed Spanish fleet turned north for Vera Cruz, giving De Graaf the chance to escape after jettisoning all his cannons. However, the unlucky Pierre Bot, his officers, and six Spaniards sailing under his flag were immediately executed.

The Englishman Joseph Bannister was as unlucky as Bot. On his way back to Jamaica, his boat was intercepted by HMS Ruby and he and his men were taken to Port Royal, accused of piracy against English vessels, and sentenced to be hanged. Bannister appealed the sentence, and while awaiting a retrial, made a daring nighttime escape with some of his men. They sailed the Golden Fleece to Sabana Bay, Santo Domingo, where he successfully outgunned the English naval frigates Falcon and Drake which had been sent to capture him.

Joseph Bannister then fled to Honduras’s Mosquito Coast, hiding out in an Indian village before being recaptured and returned to Jamaica. The governor of the island was so incensed by Bannister’s disregard for English law that he immediately had him hanged onboard the ship in the harbor without trial.

Michel de Grammont, aboard his flagship Hardi, teamed up with Nicolas Brigaut, making Roatán their base of operations for two months while preparing for an attack on St. Augustine, Florida. Leaving Roatán, the two Frenchmen split up at Matanzas inlet, the plan being that Brigaut would capture guides and interpreters to assist them with intelligence before the raid.

When Brigaut’s ship ran aground, it was attacked by a much larger Spanish force and his entire crew of 40 men was annihilated. Brigaut himself was captured and taken to St. Augustine, where he was hanged at the end of May at the age of 33. Michel de Grammont’s luck also finally ran out. In an attempt to rescue Brigaut, his ship Hardi capsized in a storm and he drowned along with all of his crew, aged 41. The other Frenchman of the Brethren, François Le Sage, would survive a further nine years before being killed while accompanying De Graaf in a successful raid on Jamaica in 1694.

Joseph Bannister was as unlucky as Bot.

Of De Graaf’s three remaining Dutch officers and leading captains, only Michiel Andrieszoon survived along with De Graaf to live into middle age. After the raid on Campeche, Andrieszoon retired from piracy to live out his life on Petit-Goâve. Yankee Willens partnered up with Jacob Evertson, his old comrade of many years, sailing the Princesa, the ship De Graaf had given him, around the Caribbean while being hunted by both the Spanish and English navies, before both men reportedly drowned in a storm in the Gulf of Honduras in 1688.

Laurens de Graaf was, after Henry Morgan, perhaps the greatest privateer of the Golden Age of Piracy, which would end at the beginning of the 18th century with the introduction of strong Dutch, French, English, and Spanish naval patrols and the elimination of such pirate bases as Roatán, Petit-Goâve, Tortuga, Port Royal, Providence, and Isla de Pinos. The Brethren of the Coast would never reunite; their time was over.

De Graaf, however, would continue to lead a charmed life into his 50s, continuing daring raids until the end of 1690s. In March 1693, when he was 39 years old, he married a beautiful woman known as Anne Dieu-le-Veut (Anne Who-God-Wants), one of the very few known female buccaneers (Mary Read, Ann Bonny, and Jacquotte Delahaye being the others).

Having fallen in love after she challenged him to a duel for some slight, they lived together for 12 years. He died either in Louisiana while attempting to start a new colony there or back on his plantation in Saint-Domingue. The date of his death is given as 1705, making him 50 or 51 years old at the time, slightly younger than Henry Morgan, who died in 1688 at age 53 after a heavy drinking bout in Jamaica.

Consistent Winds and Pristine Beaches Make Roatan a Perfect Destination for Kiteboarders.

For a couple decades, Roatan has been a place for sailors and windsurfers. More recently it has become a place to learn and enjoy kiteboarding.  Located on the path of eastern trade winds Roatán is one of Central America’s top kite boarding locations.

The prevailing eastern winds and the angulated, slightly curved shape of Roatan create great conditions for kitesurfing. Between Punta Gorda and Pigeon Cays, as the island turns completely east west, that is the best place to kiteboard. All-in-all it is Camp Bay Beach that is the ideal overall place for kiters practicing surfboard, twin tip or hydrofoil. Camp Bay’s long, two-kilometer beach has side or side on shore wind conditions and is sheltered by the reef a couple hundred meters to the north. 

Roatan offers many months of solid wind throughout the year. The dry months of May thru August offer great, strong predictable easterly winds. January thru May are not bad wind months either. ‘That’s the big advantage of Roatán. Eight great months to learn and progress.” says Chris Bergler, the owner of Kitesurf Roatan, Kiteboarding School in Camp Bay. The trade winds are an ever present part of the Bay Islands weather and only stop during peak hurricane season in September, and rainy season in October & November.

Pigeon Cay is another great kitesurfing spot for more advanced kiteboarders. While the two cays are slowly disappearing, the left-over and bar is surrounded by turquoise blue water and plenty of wind. 

The kiteboarders also go to Saint Helene harbor for their kite sessions. “The spot needs to be handled sensitively because of its fragile shallow water ecosystem,” says Chris. “This spot is the best in the morning, with super steady winds coming from ESE and butter flat water.”

There are also a few less known kite-spots in the region like Ometepe and Corn Islands in Nicaragua, and San Andres in Colombia. There is also Rio Dulce in Guatemala and various cays along the Belizean coast that offer nice kiteboarding conditions. These are small destinations that haven’t developed yet to accommodate a growing sport like kiteboarding.

While not inexpensive, kiteboarding is less expensive, and more convenient than other sailing sports. It uses the wind energy from a kite at a much larger atmosphere volume than a sail.

Kiteboarding is the least extreme of the extreme sports. “It [kiting] has a steep learning curve, though a few days are required to ride independently,” says Chris, who taught children as young as 10 and clients as old as 75. As the sport rewards riders with finesse and good technique, it is attracting a good share of female athletes.

Roatan offers many months of solid wind.

While athletic abilities are not a prerequisite in learning how to kiteboard, deep pockets often are. “Kite gear, lessons and traveling is expensive, so a solid financial background is needed to afford getting into the sport,” says Chris. The typical kiteboarder is between 30 and 60 years old.

Most kiteboarders will have a quiver of two to three kites allowing them to surf in a variety of wind conditions. While kiteboarders can have fun at anywhere between 12 and 35 knots, the sweet spot for kiteboarders is 20 knots. “Most of the time I ride an 11-meter hybrid kite while Marilou prefers small freestyle kites,” says Chris. Chris’ wife Marilou Lavallée, is still sponsored by Core Kiteboarding so the brand is being used at the Camp Bay school. With many kiteboarding kites being manufactured in Germany, Core is an expensive option as far as kite gear.

While often-urban millennial launch into the sport quickly, many older kiteboarders started their experience on the water with sailing, windsurfing or wakeboarding. As they progress in their skills, for many the sport becomes more like an addiction. For them, kiteboarding is not just a sport, it’s a way of life, living in nature, harnessing nature elements and being in harmony with them. “Very often my students were in some sort of transition in their lives when they decided to learn how to Kitesurf and often it becomes a life changing decision,” says Chris.

Chris and Marilou found Roatan while looking over a Yoga magazine. It was 2012, and someone was advertising a yoga retreat on Rio Cangrejal, outside of La Ceiba. The timing was good as Chris was ending his work at a kite school in Punta Chame, Panama. In order to visit the resort Marilou was flying into Roatan as the island was a convenient entry point. “I’ve never ever heard about Roatan. One of my Panamanian friends had visited it and he said it’s stunningly beautiful,” said Chris.

At first, they couldn’t find any information about kiteboarding conditions on the island. Chris scanned the internet and determined that the trade winds blew on the island most of the year. The couple decided to give it a look. “We were set to discover Roatan’s kite potential. Marilou booked her ticket and I hopped on the TICA bus from Panama to La Ceiba,” remembered Chris. Thus, the couples Roatan adventure began.

Once they set their feet on the island, a Garifuna taxi driver took them straight to the island’s east end. “We booked a room at Marble Hill Farm, as we found out that “Brian, the manager was a kiteboarder,” remembers Chris. “He used to kite but wasn’t anymore as enthusiastic about it.”

Chris and Marilou found Camp Bay and almost instantly jumped in to test the wind. “This kite session, it was just magic. Blue sky, blue water, great wind, beautiful waves on the reef, outside huge ocean rollers which we shared with a pod of jumping pilot whales,” remembers Chris.

The couple took a rest at Wilks Point under an Almond Tree. “How it can be that a beach as beautiful could be still so deserted,” Chris asked Marilou, looking around the deserted two-kilometer Camp Bay beach. The only people they saw were a few passing fishermen in their dories.

“Mike,” the owner of Camp Bay lodge was eager to sell, but Chris was cautious. It was a big decision and something not to be taken lightly, or on a whim. “I bought a Salva Vida that day… that’s about it,” remembers Chris. After a couple more days the couple grew increasingly enchanted with the place, its people and their hospitality.

Chris’ journey to Roatan had many twists and turns. He grew up in a little Bavarian village in the south of Germany and was an amateur sportsman in track and field, and in football. Chris graduated with a physical education degree and had a life lined up for him. ‘I had the choice to work in a school in Munich but I choose to pack my bags.” says Chris. ‘I wasn’t happy with my life back then so it was an easy choice and I quickly booked a one way ticket to the Canary Islands to teach kids swimming.’

The History of Kite Sailing
It all started when George Pocock used kites of increased size to propel carts on land and ships on the water. Pocock used a four-line control system, not much different from what is used in kiteboarding today. His kite powered boats were able to turn and even sail upwind. The kites could be flown for hours on end and the idea was kiting as an alternative source of power.
Another kiteboarding predecessor was Samuel Cody, who in 1903 built “Man lifting kites” and crossed the English Channel on a canvas boat powered by a kite.
In 1977 Durchman Gijsbertus Panhuise, the inventor of kitesurfing, received the first patent for Kitesurfing. The invention described a person standing on a floating board and being pulled by a wind catching contraption like a parachute. The pilot had the kite tied to a harness on a trapeze type belt.
It took the sport another twenty years to hit it big, but when it did, it mesmerized fans and athletes across the world. ‘The real heroes were the pioneers back in the 90s where most of it happened on Maui: Lou Wainman, Pete Cabrinha.” says Chris. ‘The Maui crew already had experimented and pushed the limits.’ Today the kiteboarding equipment is safer, more durable and accidents are infrequent.

He had experience running swimming schools in different hotels and befriended an owner of a kite school in Fuerteventura. Chris soon learned how to kite, and began working at the kite school. ‘I was standing in a big lagoon and starting my best life.” says Chris. For several years Chris was a journeyman kiteboarder. He worked in Egypt, Panama, South Africa, Dominican Republic and Brazil.

He was always looking for a place to make his own mark, to put down roots. That place turned out to be Roatan. ‘You can’t be afraid to step out of your comfort zone, leave everything behind especially if you are not happy.” says Chris. ‘There is a journey ahead and why not flying through instead.’

The transition was a bit trickier for Marilou who was still competing as a kiteboarder all over the world. ‘Marilou is my absolute hero and I chased her around the world for many years as a diehard fan. She finally fell in love with me.” says Chris. Before suffering injuries Marilou, originally from Gatineau, Quebec, was one of the top freestyle riders in the world. ‘Marilou could combine hardcore tricks with a beautiful smile and great looks.’

The couple went back to Camp Bay in January 2013 and began teaching kiteboarding there. “Everything just fell in place and step by step we were able to live our dream,” says Chris.

Their first local kiter was Olwen, a local youth who was always there, determined to learn how to stand on the board, go upwind and jump. His lack of swimming skills didn’t hold Olwen back. “His curiosity and will to learn something new made him overcome the fear,” remembers Chris.
The path to the kiteboarding career Chris envisioned for the local youth was the following: start them off as a beach boy, progress to rescue driver, learn how to kite, be a kite assistant, then a kite instructor, hopefully head instructor and maybe one day become a sponsored international pro-rider. “We started to hire kids as much as we could, always with the goal to get them hooked,” says Chris.

Kiteboarding is not just a sport.

In 2015 Elloncito was the first to climb the tricky Camp Bay kiteboarding ladder. From Elloncito he became Ellon and earned his respect with hard work and athletic abilities. Four years into his life as a kiteboarder, Ellon, 21, is the head instructor at the school and Chris’s right hand man “I can fully rely and trust” says Chris.

While many of the school’s instructors hail from Europe and the Americas, the heavy lifting: the day -to-day teaching is done by a team of Roatanians. ‘Local crew has been always our backbone and has become our island family: Ellon from (Camp Bay), Junior & Jordan (Helene), and Jardale (Camp Bay).” says Chris

Ellon has not only become Chris’ right hand, but the head instructor and ‘chief rocker.’ To be closer to work and do more kiteboarding Ellon moved back from Pandy Town to Camp Bay in 2015. ‘I knew he could be very good at it. He had the perfect frame and athletic to become an elite kiteboarder.” remembers Chris, who stopped by Ellon’s grandmother to ask if he was up for the task. ‘It was a pretty short and typical island conversation. Chilling… Sure… Ok cool.” said Chris.

‘Leave everything behind especially if you are not happy.’

Ellon first started as a beach boy tasked with driving the rescue boat, packing kites, helping guests landing and launching. Ellon picked up kiting quickly and by the end of the year he did his first jumps. “First jump was a perfect. Powerful takes off… Boom. You could finally see he got special talents,” said Chris.
Ellon wasn’t just a natural athlete; he was also a good teacher. “He’s been teaching most of the lessons and adding new tricks. Currently he is in training to become the school manager.” says Chris. “I hope he inspires a few other fellow islanders especially the next generation.”

Chris has seen a lot of raw kiteboarding talent among the island’s youth. “They speak two languages, but what most impressed me was their problem-solving capabilities and creativity,” says Chris. His secret of how to develop skills among the locals is giving them opportunity to constantly progress in their skills, responsibility and helps them to grow. “I give them full access to our kite gear, I’ve passed on all my tips and tricks whenever possible, since they are keen observers, they learned most of it simply by watching us doing our thing,” says Chris. ‘One day we will see them riding on international competitions and represent Honduras at the Olympic Games.” predicts Chris.

Kiteboarding in Camp Bay doesn’t just bring a few hundred kiteboarders to the East of the Island. Chris and Marilou also wanted to start up a local kite community. They looked for island kids keen to learn kite boarding and even ready to make it their living. “It took a little longer than I expected to light the fire but finally we have a bunch of vivid kiters with unlimited potential.”

Over the last several years the couple has taught a group of kiters from Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula. “Often they would send me pictures when they were exploring spots on the coast between Tela and Trujillo or in the Gulf of Fonseca,” says Chris. The kiting community is growing in Honduras.

There are also several other good kiters in the Bay Islands. There is a French kiter who lives and kites often in Utila. Guanaja was a place where an Italian had a kiteboarding school, but several years ago the Italian relocated back home. “He had done a great job over there, but left a few years ago to live with his young family back home,” says Chris.

After six years with Chris, the kiteboarding community has slowly developed on the island. A few people from West End and several retired expats took kiteboarding classes. “It’s a slowly growing tribe but we are getting there,” says Chris. Awareness of how precious Camp Bay, Roatan’s arguably most beautiful beach really is, has grown with it as well.

As the island’s center of gravity moves further east, Camp Bay will most likely become more and more visited. The paving of the main road is being planned and cruise ships are scheduled to begin visiting the nearby Port Royal in October 2019.

No doubt, development will bring the quickening of the pace of life on Roatan’s east end. Several eco resort owners near Camp Bay, like it just the way it is: unspoiled not easy to get to and quiet.

‘We were set to discovered Roatan’s kite potential.’

Also Chris is concerned that the quiet, and not so easy to access Far East end of Roatan will turn into a nightmare, just like many other surfing and kiteboarding destinations in third worlds did before. “Surfers discovered little fishing villages which turn into tourist hubs, leave the local community’s behind and create a split society with crime, prostitution and drugs” says Chris. Meantime however, the flying kites off Camp Bay signal that the east of the island is still all about nature, wind and harmony.

A 50 Year Perspective on the Forgotten and Little Understood Conflict

Few people remember the July 14 to 18, 1969 war when El Salvador invaded neighboring Honduras, causing mass destruction, death and suffering.  Despite its name, the ‘Soccer War’ was not a spontaneous event that flared after a soccer match. The war was a planned event with objectives involving many bad actors in a drama that claimed thousands of lives. In the 100 hours of brutal conflict 2,100 Honduras and 900 Salvadorians were killed in urban and mountain warfare and in aerial bombings deep inside Honduras.
 

Fifty years later there is little knowledge and even less understanding why this seemingly senseless war took place. The conflict is mostly ignored in Honduran schools and there are very few references to it in Honduran media. The sad fact is that those who don’t know their own history are bound to repeat it. 

Gs overnments need enemies in order to rally the common people behind them and if the governments don’t have an enemy, one often has to be conjured up. This worked perfectly in football-obsessed El Salvador and Honduras, countries with internal conflicts over land, jobs and just a goal away at making their debut at the 1970 Football World Cup in Mexico.

The excuses for the war were also multiple: proud Salvadorians perceived mass expulsions of their compatriots as offensive. Hondurans were sold the idea that El Salvador had desires of expanding their territory to the Caribbean coast. The mistreatment of football players and fans in Tegucigalpa and in San Salvador added to the dented pride of both countries. Then there was the dispute of Honduras and El Salvador over several mountain border areas and two islands in the Gulf of Fonseca.

There is a likely a plot within a plot, within a plot.

Paya Magazine went through declassified State Department documents at the United States National Archives seeking what and who caused the ‘Soccer War.’ We tried to determine who knew what and what was the motivation behind actions of the many players involved in the war. This is what we found out.

THE BUILD UP

In 1969 the population of Honduras and El Salvador was a third of what it is today. Honduras was five times the size of overpopulated El Salvador, while it only had only 2.6 million inhabitants compared to El Salvador’s 3.7 million. Since the 1930’s a steady trickle of Salvadorians moved across the border, farmed and took on jobs. All-in-all as many as 20% of people living in Hondurans were Salvadorians.

Another player with a stake at protecting their interest were the American fruit companies accustomed at dominating Central American politics and protecting their investment since the 1900’s. United Fruit Company owned 10% of land in Honduras and average farmers found it difficult to compete.

In 1966 United Fruit created the Federación Nacional de Agricultores y Ganaderos de Honduras (FENAGH: National Federation of Farmers and Livestock-Farmers of Honduras) to protect its land holding interest by putting pressure on small farmers and Salvadorians. FENAGH also put pressure on Honduran president, Gen. Oswaldo López Arellano, to protect wealthy land owners and expropriate land owned by Salvadorians and squatters.

In 1967 a ‘Land Reform’ law took effect allowing the Honduran central government and municipalities to take over land farmed illegally by El Salvadoran immigrants and redistributed it to native-born Hondurans. Prior to the war breaking out, around 20 thousand Salvadorians laborers and migrant workers were expelled, leaving behind broken families and raising tension and sabre rattling in El Salvador.

Both El Salvador and Honduras were led by military strongmen used to using violence as a political tool. Honduran president Oswaldo Enrique López Arellano took power in a violent 1963 coup and stayed in power until 1971. President of El Salvador was Fidel Sánchez Hernández (in office from 1967 – 1972) was also a ruthless army general. Neither one of these men steered away from a fight or underhanded politics.

In his undergraduate thesis from Notre Dame University, Chris Newton argued that El Salvador’s land shortage was “artificial” and induced by concentration of land by elites… therefore, land monopolization and the primary cause of the Soccer War.

The US knew that El Salvador was to invade Honduras the evening before the war.

In June and July 1969 Americans were trying to figure out what was driving the escalation of the conflict and their best assessments came from Nicaragua’s spies in the Salvadorian government. The State Department confidential 937 summarized Somoza’s spy take at what were the real reasons behind the push for war. “Sol [spies’ pseudonym] believes there is likely a plot within a plot, within a plot, in Salvadorian-Honduran difficulties. According to Sol’s thesis, as Somoza tells it, Sanchez’s ‘leftist advisors’ pushed Sanchez to invade Honduras and overthrow [Honduran president] Lopez.”

The Salvadorian Press played a vital role in stirring up anti Honduran sentiment in months and weeks prior to the war. On June 27, the US Embassy chief of mission toured El Amatillo near the border and the ambassadors interviewed some of what they estimated was around 700 refugees. The refugees accused Hondurans of burning of property, beatings and harassment. Photos of well-dressed, European-looking handsome Salvadorian “crisis actors” posing as distressed refugees made front pages of Salvadorian newspapers.

Department of State declassified documents also indicate that US officials were under the impression that the refugee’s testimonies were exaggerated or faked. “All thought the torture and rape stories were mighty unconvincing. They all believed as I did that the refugees fled out of fear, threats of violence, lack of protection, and a general feeling that they were unwanted,” wrote US Ambassador to El Salvador William Bowdler about his and three visiting the border ambassadors.

It is very important to convince the public to go to war and be ready to die for reasons they don’t fully, or just barely understand and Salvadorian media was doing everything to stir up emotions and hatred.

In months and days prior, and even during the war, both El Salvador and Honduras desperately were looking to beef up their arms cache. “On 17 July, Rpresentatives ofFirst National City Bank, New York, inform us Central Bank of El Salvador has requested confirmation two letters of credit, totaling $1.3 million in favor of German arms manufacturers,” wrote in State Department telegram on July 17.

According to State Department documents on July 15, “Diario Las Americas editor [Horacio] Aguirre provided an unconfirmed report to the US embassy that “Nicaragua plans to deliver military hardware, especially ‘tanks,’ to Honduras this evening.” Thanks to agent influence planting in operation Mockingbird, CIA had plenty of informers in different branches of US military, academia and American press.

Declassified Secret 771 Department of State telegram informs that Panamanian National Guard shipped rifles and ammunition to El Salvador prior to the commencement of war. A confidential report No. 591 referred to reports that there was no truth to an Israeli ship bound for El Salvador with arms had been stopped in Panama Canal on July 18. While El Salvador received the bulk of new arms, there was strong evidence that Nicaragua supplied Honduras with weapons and ammunitions in the last 24 hours of the conflict.

In addition to having Nicaragua as a source of arms, Honduran military went to the Miami mob to purchase arms for their troops. “Local bank sources (..) tell us in strictest confidence that 7.5 million arms purchase in being acquired on “U.S. black market” and cargo flight reportedly being arranged Miami for today,” wrote Jean Marie Wilkowski Deputy Chief of US Mission, on 16 July, 1969, in 765 telegram Tegucigalpa Embassy.

Honduran military went to the Miami mob to purchase arms for their troops.

There was a collusion of El Salvador’s private,military and governmental interests. One such example was in a conversation recalled by Roatan resident Erick Anderson. “Archie Baldocchi, El Salvador’s Aeroclub President, asked me if I could provide some badly needed parts for P-51 Mustang fighter. And that ‘we’ will be happy to compensate me well,” said Anderson about the conversation that took place in the weeks preceding the war. Anderson, a Roatan resident since 1960s, back then was a 27-year-old Central America Sales Manager for Cessna. His job took him to meet government officials all over Central America.

The tensions between the two countries hit a crescendo during the 1970 FIFA World Cup qualifier. In June 1969, Honduras and El Salvador met in a two-leg 1970 FIFA World Cup qualifier. Hondurans kept the Salvadorian Team awake by chanting and making noise in front of their Tegucigalpa Hotel all night. There was fighting between the fans and the June 8 match ended up with Honduras winning 1:0.

In a rematch on June 15, Salvadorians burned the Honduran flag at the stadium and delivered more violence. Salvadorians took home a 3:0 victory, but a deciding playoff match was scheduled for June 27 in Mexico City. Playing in the Azteca stadium, El Salvador prevailed 3-2 in extra time.

After the final football match, things continued to turn for the worse. The Honduran government exacerbated tensions by continuing the expulsion of as many as 11,000 Salvadorians and El Salvador severed diplomatic ties, stating that Honduras had “done nothing to prevent murder, oppression, rape, plundering and the mass expulsion of Salvadorians.”

While the abuses suffered by Salvadorians were exaggerated and the tempers just kept on rising. “(…) British Ambassador, the Brazilian Ambassador and Monsignor Cassidy of the Papal Nunciatura. All thought the torture and rape stories were mighty unconvincing. They all believed as I did that the refugees fled out of fear, threats of violence, lack of protection, and a general feeling that they were unwanted,” read a June 27 State Department report from El Salvador. The stage and pretext for invasion was set.

The Salvadorian military began military operations prior to the official break out of the war. First clashes took place on Thursday morning (July 10) when “forty armed Salvadorian civilians entered Santa Ines, near Goacoran in Valle department, committing various acts of pillage especially robbing food.” There was shooting which frightened villagers. Police (ces) chased Salvadorians away,” reads the State Department confidential 634 from July 13.

The White House was kept informed of the escalating conflict. DNSA Memorandum from a telephone conversation between President Nixon and Kissinger on July 14 states: “K (Kissinger) said the Salvadorian Ambassador said it is a matter on national honor that they do something. They are afraid there will be a coup. They have a very unruly army,” said Kissinger, National Security Advisor to President Nixon.

The US knew that El Salvador was to invade Honduras the evening before the war. A confidential declassified Telegram from the Embassy in Managua to Washington from 13 July 1969 said that “Sol advised Somoza on behalf of President Sanchez that Salvador had decided to invade Honduras.” Somoza called the US embassy’s Crockett at 7pm to say this.

It wasn’t going to be a very big war – just a little shot here and a little shot there,” said Kissinger.

What is even more surprising is that the US and others not only knew that the war was going to break out, they knew how long it was going to last. This is confirmed by a recorded conversation between Henry Kissinger and Charles Meyer, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs from 1969 to 1973. “Let me tell you what the Salvadorian Ambassador said. He said it wasn’t going to be a very big war – just a little shot here and a little shot there,” said Kissinger at 1pm, July 14.

THE WAR

Salvador moved into Honduras days and weeks before doing reconnaissance and moving artillery pieces in strategic places inside Honduran territory. On July 14, almost 30,000 Salvadorian troops began an all-out assault on Honduras in three ground war theaters: Chalatenago, Northern, and the Eastern front.

The larger and better equipped Salvadorian troops made quick gains following two roads into Honduras. The fighting also took place in the wooded mountains, villages and towns of southern Honduras. After brutal urban fighting, Salvadorians managed to take the town of Nueva Ocotepeque, the capital of the Ocotepeque Department.

While the Bay Islands were unaffected by the war, today Roatan is home to one veteran of the war: Adolfo Cruz, 68, of Los Fuertes. Cruz is fit, energetic with a tough gaze and ready to talk about the conflict that shaped him. In 1969 Cruz was an 18-year-old serving in La Ceiba. When the war broke out his unit was transported on busses to the front line in Ocotepeque. “We arrived on the scene at 2pm on July 15,” remembers Cruz. The Second Military Zone had 80 soldiers and was commandeered by Captain Santiago Rojas Vasquez.

While the Bay Islands were unaffected by the war, today Roatan is home to one veteran of the war: Adolfo Cruz, 68, of Los Fuertes. Cruz is fit, energetic with a tough gaze and ready to talk about the conflict that shaped him. In 1969 Cruz was an 18-year-old serving in La Ceiba. When the war broke out his unit was transported on busses to the front line in Ocotepeque. “We arrived on the scene at 2pm on July 15,” remembers Cruz. The Second Military Zone had 80 soldiers and was commandeered by Captain Santiago Rojas Vasquez.

According to Cruz, he participated in especially intense fighting around San Rafael de las Matare. “The Salvadorians had newer rifles, better equipment,” says Cruz. “We fought in close combat, shot from 100-200 meters.” At the end of three days eight of his unit’s soldiers were killed, 10% of the entire squad.

Honduran troops did the best with little they had. The radio communications were easily intercepted by the enemy and Hondurans came up with an idea. “When US used Navajo code talkers to communicate in World War II, we used Garifuna talkers,” says Cruz. According to Cruz, the unit’s Garifuna cooks Bartolo and Jose, were assigned to the radio and communicated with other Garifuna radio operators in the Honduran military.

This was not a war about football, the football match was just a pretext

“This was not a war about football, the football match was just a pretext,” says Cruz. “The Salvadorians wanted to take three Honduran departments of Cortes, Copan, Santa Barbara and Ocotepeque. Cruz says that Salvadorian General Chepe Medrano made statements that Salvadorian troops would have lunch in San Pedro Sula and dinner in Puerto Cortes.

The conflict exposed the widespread and extremely large malversation that was taking place in the Honduran Military for many years. “We had 9,000 troops fighting, but on the books, we had 18,000,” says Cruz. “Our commander would get money for salaries and upkeep of 200 soldiers, but there were only 80 of us there. Every year he would have a brand-new car,” remembers Cruz.

While Honduras lost ground in the first 72 hours of the war, its ally to the south was getting extremely concerned and threatened to aid the struggling neighbor. “Somoza says he is convinced that if cease-fire does not become effective by 5 a.m. Honduran resistance will collapse and chaos will follow unless Honduras is provided emergency material assistance,” read the July 18 communiqué No. 183 from the US State Department.

There was also daily combat in the skies over Tegucigalpa and later El Salvador. The Salvadorian Air force used passenger airplanes as bombers to drop explosives on Tocontin International Airport and other targets. Tegucigalpa and other large cities were blacked out. For every Honduran soldier to die, 10 civilians were killed.

“They turned DC-3 into bombers and threw out bombs out the passenger doors,” said Anderson about the El Salvadorian air force. “Some exploded and many did not.” According to Anderson, Charlie Mathews, an American businessman living on the outskirts of Tegucigalpa had a Salvadorian bomb land right in his back yard. “It was a dud,” said Anderson. Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and many other Honduran cities observed blackouts because of Salvadorian air raids and bombings.

Yet it was the Honduras air power bombing that was impressively accurate and damaging. Honduran Air force bombed Ilopango airbase on July 16 and Honduran bombers attacked Acajutla Port, setting El Salvador’s main oil storage facilities on fire.

While the air force of both countries used WWII era equipment, they managed to score some impressive feats. It was the last time in military history that piston-engine fighters fought each other in combat. The first aerial dog fight took place in 1913 during the Mexican civil war and the last one just south of there. Incidentally, Dean Ivan Lamb, the pilot involved in the first air dog fight, helped to establish the Honduran air force in 1921.

One of the more spectacular military feats in Honduran history took place on July 17. While Salvadorian Mustangs flew south of Tegucigalpa, Honduran Captain Edgardo Acosta Soto was flying a Corsair. Captain Soto shot down three Salvadorian planes that day, a no easy feat. Salvadorians were furious. Before his death in 2008 Capt. Soto explained that Honduran fighters were fighting on their own terrain that was much more varied and mountainous compared to that of El Salvador. That is what gave Honduran pilots a tactical advantage.

One of the concerns the US State Department had was that the Central American press had given more attention to the Salvadorian crisis than the Apollo 11 build up to “moon landing” broadcast. “Media coverage Honduras-El Salvador conflict heavy, almost equaling that for Apollo 11,” wrote in 904 Telegram from San Jose, Costa Rica on July 17. People of Honduras and El Salvador were gripped in the much more primordial struggle of warfare and survival and did not focus on America’s great publicity stunt.

After much pressure by the Organization of American States, at 10pm on 18 July the suspension of hostilities was announced. Just as scheduled by Kissinger, it was a little war: less than 100 hours and “just” thousands killed. Another victim was the Central American unity and free trade opportunities that were developing at the time. After blocking El Salvador’s access to the Pan-American Highway, Honduras practically withdrew from the Central American Common Market (CACM) and suspended its activities for 22 years.

When the tempers came down, this forgotten by most conflict protected Banana Companies land interest in Honduras and provided a backdrop for a series of military coups in El Salvador and Honduras. Military governments both in Honduras and El Salvador consolidated power and justified their rule.

Captain Soto shot down three Salvadorian planes that day.

THE AFTERMATH

Good fences make good neighbors and the El Salvador- Honduras border dispute, dating to XVIII century, appeared to be solved in 1993: 436.9 square kilometers. The disputed land was divided into six contested pockets, or bolsones and islands of Meanguera and El Tigre in the Gulf of Fonseca. The decision awarded 300.6 square kilometers to Honduras, and 136.3 to El Salvador. Even more importantly ICJ ruling assured Honduras’s free passage to the Pacific Ocean.

As the borders shifted, around 10,000 Salvadorans ended up in Honduras and 4,000 Hondurans in El Salvador. Out of 32 islands in the gulf of Fonseca, only three are recognized as Honduran. The International Court of Justice ruled that Honduras held authority over the island of El Tigre, and El Salvador over the islands of Meanguera and Meanguerita. Still, the conflict lingered on.

In December 2012, El Salvador agreed to a tripartite commission of government representatives from El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua that was to take care of territorial disputes through peaceful means. Yet in March 2013 letters between Honduras and El Salvador threatening military action were exchanged. Keeping the tensions alive between Honduras and El Salvador has its value.

Wars are indeed useful. Wars distract us from seeing problems at home and focus our anger at “an enemy” across the border. We are told to look for enemies within, but we don’t realize that the government itself does not have our best interest at heart. Therefore, the government itself could be more dangerous than anyone abroad.

Island Team Brings Hope and Glory to the Island

Honduras’ national football team has made great strides since its first international match in 1921 when it lost 10-1 to Guatemala. The “Catrachos” qualified three times for the FIFA World Cup: in 1982, 2010 and 2014. Football is a serious business here, so much so that in 1969 a football match between Honduras and El Salvador sparked riots that fueled existing tensions and ended up in a full blown war. That was almost half a century ago and now times have changed.

Central American football has made great strides in recent years and Costa Rica and Honduras have the best teams in the region. Honduras is ranked 63rd in FIFA world rankings.

Roatan has had a presence in these Honduran successes. In all three games that the Catrachos played in the South Africa World Cup in 2010, Georgie Welcome, a Roatan born striker, played a leading role. Welcome began his career at Arsenal, Roatan’s first division team.

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS

Arsenal Football Team was started by Russell Borden, Darcie Martinez and Jay Hynds in 1997. “We were looking for a name and Russell came up with Arsenal, and since it was a popular team back then, it just stayed that way,” says Leyland Woods, the team’s first coach. Arsenal’s roots are in French Cay where they practiced on a sandy patch of land bordered by mangroves. “That was our home field, this is where we trained,” says Leyland Woods who is now the owner of the team.

At first the team played other Honduran non-federated teams. Arsenal beat other island teams to go to a tournament in Santa Barbara and then the islanders got a rude awakening: the Honduran rules football are determined by who you know and where you play. “Our opponents were late one hour to the game, which mean we won. They convinced us to play anyway and challenge this later. But when we did and lost, they said we couldn’t challenge,” says Woods.

This is how legends get made: the Santa Barbara team arrived cramped and tired

Arsenal was about to enter the dragon’s den of Honduran football. “On a rainy day in 1999 in Las Colinas we decided to federate the team,” Woods says, recalling that fateful day.

At first the owners tried to buy a second division team and move it to Roatan, but that involved permission from Honduras Football Federations and plenty of red tape. “So we just decided to federate in third division and move up to second,” says Woods. That took four years.

It was 2003 and Arsenal ended up playing against a Santa Barbara team in the finals to ascend into the second division. After tying 0:0 at home, the Santa Barbara team lost the second game 1:0 in Los Fuertes, but then challenged the result saying that the Los Fuertes field didn’t fulfill the minimum size standards. The Honduran Football Federation sided with Santa Barbara and ruled for the final game to be replayed at a neutral venue. When Arsenal got to pick that neutral field and they picked Trujillo, at sea level and about a 10 hours drive by bus from Santa Barbara. “I told them: ’you’re lucky there isn’t an accredited regulation field in Gracias a Dios, or that is where you would be playing’,” said Woods.

This is how legends get made. The Santa Barbara team arrived cramped and tired, not ready for the next morning’s match in hot Trujillo. Arsenal chartered a boat that took them directly from French Harbour to the Trujillo dock in less than two hours on a comfortable journey. Arsenal dominated the game and won 1:0. “Everyone [in Honduras] knew about this. We were famous before we even made it to second division,” said Woods.

In 2007 Arsenal almost made the impossible happen. They made it into the finals and challenged Deportes Savio to a two-game playoff for a spot in the Honduran first division. After losing 1:0 away the second game was played to a full stadium in Coxen Hole. The field was originally a privately owned baseball field surrounded by a temporary corrugated zinc fence: typical island ingenuity and improvisational style.

The entire island held their breath as Arsenal came within one goal of beating Deportes Savio and making it to the big leagues. “But we just couldn’t do it. We had no stadium that would qualify for first division. Perhaps the loss turned out for the best,” says Woods. A decade ago Arsenal, Roatan, and its owner just weren’t ready for the Honduran premiere league. There wasn’t enough money, not enough fans, not enough infrastructure to handle the success. “We would have to play in Tela or La Ceiba and the traveling costs would kill us,” says Woods.

HOME STADIUM

Now two of eight teams in Honduras’ northern second division are based on Roatan. There are two fields qualified for division two play: the Coxen Hole stadium and the field at Lucy Point in Oak Ridge.

The Coxen Hole field, where Arsenal trains and plays every other week, slopes a drastic 36” from north to south giving a clear advantage to a team playing on the north side. “When we flip the coin we always try to lose so we could choose to play the second half down hill and with the wind behind our shoulders,” says Woods.

Woods envisions a Coxen Hole stadium for 1,500 fans, changing rooms for both teams, referees, and lights permitting games to be played on Saturday evenings – a prime time for attracting fans. Woods wants entire families to watch Arsenal play and enjoy music and meals after the game. “It wouldn’t interfere with church, beach, family,” says Woods.

They made it into the finals and challenged Deportes Savio to a two-game playoff

While the big obstacle in achieving this dream is cost, others share Woods’ vision. According to Woods, congressman Ron McNab has been promised Lps. 4 million from the central government to improve the stadium in Coxen Hole. Jerry Hynds, the new mayor of Roatan, is a football fan and promised support in improving football infrastructure on the western side of the island. “Once the stadium is there then the first division is an open door,” says Paul Jeffries, advisor to the team and owner.

The key elements in keeping Arsenal running in the black are sponsors and ticket sales. The ticket prices to the game are a flat 50 Lempiras. “We started with 100 Lps. but we had to go backwards,” says Woods. Around 400-500 people come to each Roatan game, but according to Woods the team would need regular attendance of 1,000 to make Arsenal a profitable team.

Sol Gas, Serranos, Island Shipping, Galaxy, and Madeyso are the Arsenal sponsors and have their logos displayed on team’s shirts. Half of the additional cost is covered by Woods out of pocket, mainly from his Tropical AC cooling company. “If we got the acknowledgment we wouldn’t have enough space on the shirts for other sponsors,” says Woods.

The biggest expense are travel and referee salaries: Lps. 15,000. “We try to have three local referees at our games to reduce that and just have a main referee from the coast,” says Woods. Arsenal is considered a consistent upper tier team in Honduran second division.

The salaries are a bit higher and the opportunities to get noticed and picked up by division one teams are greater. “We tell our players: ‘You gonna get your shoes, but it’s all about sacrifice and dedication if you’d like to be a professional player. You gonna sacrifice you body, time, money to be a professional,’” says Woods.

You gonna sacrifice you body, time, money to be a professional

The higher salaries paid by Arsenal are noticed by mainland players. “That brings a bit of resentment from other division two teams,” says Jeffries. The controversy and a bit of resentment mobilizes fans. “We fill the stadium when we come to play on the mainland,” says Woods. Still “They [mainland teams] are still complaining about the expense of traveling and playing on Roatan.”

While Arsenals motto is “one island, one team, one love,” with the majority of Roatan residents being born on the mainland, locals fans often end up cheering for the visiting team. Things get especially rowdy when Roatan plays a home game against Social Sol of Olanchito – place of origin of many new Roatanians. “Sometimes our fans are outnumbered by theirs,” says Woods.

TOUGH ISLAND PLAYERS

While a few Roatan-born players are branded for lack of discipline they are also known for being tough and quick. “Island guys don’t get hurt. They don’t need a masseuse after the game, you don’t need to be injecting them,” says Woods.

Some of the most talented island players come from Santa Helena and Pandy Town. “In Santa Helena there is nothing to do, so guys just focus on football,” says Jeffries. “They are tall, physically strong, they are tough people. They work hard and play hard,” says about Santa Helena players Woods. Already Roatan and Arsenal have produced several great football players. Georgie Welcome, a striker originally from Coxen Hole, played with Arsenal from 2004 to 2008. Welcome represented Honduras many times and played for the country in World Cup in 2010. He even played a season at FC Monaco. Georgie started in the national Honduran selection while playing with Arsenal – a second division team, a first in Honduras’ football history.

Several other Arsenal players made a name for themselves on a national and international stage. Edrick Johnson from West End is now a back up goalie for Olimpia. Shannon Welcome, a forward form French Harbour, plays for a second division team in Greece. Kenzi Abbot from French Harbour played for a first division Tocoa.

The 2007-08 were the glory days for Arsenal with Georgie Welcome, Shannon and Jose Anthony

The 2007-08 seasons were the glory days for Arsenal with Georgie Welcome, Shannon and Jose Anthony all playing together. “We haven’t recuperated this caliber of players,” says Woods. Arsenal also started Jose Anthony ‘El Caballo’ Torres who has played a record number of times in the national selection of Panama. Yet keeping good players, especially good strikers, is a difficult task for Arsenal as for any division two team. “Every time we get a good player they buy him out,” says Woods.

Coach Pasquale Mendez RIP developed the core of Arsenal players between 2003 and 2009. The current coach is Hernan Contreras was an Arsenal player and a manager before stepping into coaches’ shoes.

Arsenal’s strongest lines are defense and mid field. They are usually lacking in strength of forwards and goalies with the best players scooped up by division one teams. “We are a pretty young team,” says Woods. The 30 Arsenal players on the roster average 22 years of age so the future looks promising.

Many changes in island and Honduran football lie ahead. FIFA is pressuring teams for significant changes. This will likely result is the first division going from ten to 12 teams and the second division teams dropping from in number from 28 to 18 or 20. Next season the second division players will be considered professional, not semi-professional as they have been up to this point. Arsenal will be required to sponsor a women’s team.

There are now two division three leagues on the island: eight teams play in Roatan Municipality and seven in Santos Guardiola Municipality. There are six fields certified for division tree play on Roatan: Sandy Bay, Coxen Hole, Los Fuertes, Punta Gorda, Diamond Rock and Lucy Point.

In 2017 Arsenal was joined by Dortmund Los Fuertes in division two. Dortmund is owned by Ray Mayorquin who founded the team in February 2011. With two strong division two island teams the future for Roatan football looks bright.