How the First Cruise Ship Came to Roatan

The Methodist Church damaged and weakened by Hurricane Francelia and Hurricane Fifi once stood nearby. The church’s congregation moved to a new worship building up the hill and a few hundred feet away.

The first cruise ships began coming to the island in 1980s. This pioneer was the 500 foot long Ocean Spirit, and by far the biggest ship to visit Roatan to that date. She ended up visiting the island on regular basis.

While Coxen Hole was a quaint sleepy town, in the 1980s the dive industry had already discovered Roatan. Ocean Quest International, the world’s largest diving operation at the time, was eying Guanaja and Roatan, both known for their pristine coral and tall dive walls. The company wanted Ocean Spirit, their live aboard flag ship, to make regular stops in the Bay Islands on a week-long dive cruise from Florida.

One of the people who helped in creating a welcome environment for international divers was Alejandro Monterroso. In the 1980s Alejandro lived on Roatan and had his own dive shop in Coxen Hole, next to Key View Hotel. It was called South Shore Divers. “This was the Waldorf Astoria of Roatan,” remembers the seaside hotel Alejandro.

Alejandro remembers that one day a man named Laurence August knocked on the door of his dive shop. August was an executive for Ocean Quest, an international company that operated Ocean Spirit and was looking to come to Roatan and Coxen Hole in particular.

On September 5, 1989, Ocean Spirit visited the island.

Mr. Allan Hyde was chosen to be the port agent for Ocean Spirit. An appropriate spot was chosen in Coxen Hole and a roughly 12” by 12” square cement bollard was poured that helped to secure a rope that tied the ship to land. This would prevent Ocean Spirit from spinning as she discharged her dive boats from her stern.

On September 5, 1989, Ocean Spirit, the biggest ship that has visited the island until then, came to anchor off Coxen Hole. At 20,000 tons Ocean Spirit was the easily the biggest dive ship in the world. The vessel was over 110 feet high and had ten deck levels.

The dive and excursion cruise ship accommodated 360 passengers, 198 crew and 32 diving staff. Ocean Spirit even had its own decompression chamber and carried 10 dive boats that could be launched with a special high speed overhead crane.

Roatan along with Guanaja were placed on a regular schedule for visits by Ocean Spirit based in Southern Florida. Every week the boat would leave New Orleans, head for stops in Guanaja, Roatan, then for Belize, and Cozumel before returning.

These were different times. Back then Honduras was a military dictatorship and as there was a CIA sponsored civil war going on in Nicaragua, nearby Roatan was a place to take a break from the action for American GI and CIA company men.

Eventually, in 1990s Honduras’ Empresa Nacional Portuaria built a cruise ship port near the site. In 2008 Royal Caribbean took over the management of the port from Empresa Nacional Portuaria. In 2018, ITM Group, a Mexican conglomerate that operates cruise ships all over eastern Caribbean: Costa Maya in Mexico, Taino Bay in Dominican, took over operation of Port of Roatan.

In 2020 a second birth was added so two cruise ships could disembark their passengers at the same time.
Sheltered from wind and currents, and with ample enough room to maneuver Coxen Hole became one of the safest terminals for cruise ships in the Caribbean. Many cruise ship boat captains consider Port of Roatan as one of the easiest to enter and leave ports in the Caribbean.

Mexican Multinational Expands Roatan’s Cruise Ship Dock a mid Controversy and Exposes Island’s Double Standards

In 2018 ITM Group has purchased a majority stake in the Port of Roatan cruise ship terminal from Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. ITM begun work on second berth and has planes to open it at the end of 2019. IMT is expanding by 500% the area of attractions “adventure islands” with restaurants, aviary, rays, kayaking, for cruise ship passengers. An investment of around $30 million.

While the money are jobs are attractive to many, some see hidden dangers of the expansion. “The people are for dock expansion, but not for ‘Disney Land’ expansion they are doing,” says Aleynzka Grant Watler, Constellation bight resident. “We contacted SERNA in December and they still haven’t sent an inspector.” Indeed, the people of Roatan and Constellation Bight have been left in the dark. “We don’t know the shape, size positioning of the island,” said Lean about the Port of Roatan non-transparent filling in of land in Constellation Bight.

There are numerous concerns about the damage to the coral, change of tides and currents in Constellation Bight and closing of a public swimming beach. “SERNA should not have issued permit to remove the coral,” says Francis Lean, executive director of the Marine Park. Lean is not alone in seeing the double standard of life on Roatan. “Environmental concerns and agencies are only a front to control which projects get through and which ones don’t,” said Kaveh Lahijani, owner of Little French Key that employs 80 full time people. “There are far greater forces at play than proper permitting, processing and protection of natural resources and environment of Roatán.”

Cruise ship tourism boom of the last ten years has strained Roatan’s infrastructure to its limits.

Despite numerous requests by Paya Magazine, Port of Roatan management, nor ITM has not answered any questions regarding their port expansion. “The community is against the project,” says Lean, but “this is a done deal unless the community stands up against this right now.”

Locals indeed are speaking up, but no one is listening. “We don’t want this Disneyland,” says Alex Watler, the secretary of the Constellation Bight patronato. Watler feels the community has been sidelined, sacrifices for personal interests of politicians and big companies. “We contacted the governor, fiscalia, minister of tourism, Ministerio Publico, BICA. They didn’t even want to see us, or made empty promises,” says Watler.

Constellation Bight is beautiful bight, but the constant turning of giant cruise ship propellers has damaged much of the coral in the area. While the environment has suffered, people have made profit from property values and excursions offered nearby. Marco Galindo Sr., owner of Gumbalimba Park that caters to cruise shippers, says that the property values have already doubled and “Now they will multiply a thousand percent.”

Watler sees double standards in how islanders and big business like ITM are treated. “A man had three fish pots [traps] here [in Constellation Bight] and Marine Park came in so fast and confiscated the traps. But now when there is so much damage, they don’t do a thing,” says Watler.

“I even told Jerry [Roatan’s Mayor Jerry Hynds]: you guys are going little guys like Little French Cay [for their lack of environmental permit] but do nothing about the damage done here.” While Little French Cay, a tourist destination several miles away from the port, is a fraction of size of Port of Roatan it gathered wrath of Municipal and mainland government in form of inspections, raids and fines. “This area [Port of Roatan] would not be open to general local public and would only really benefit the foreign investors intending to keep the cruise ship passengers and their dollars within the confines of the port,” said about the Port of Roatan expansion Lahijani.

The second Port of Roatan dock is planned to accommodate larger, Oasis size cruise ships like the Allure of the Seas. “These cruise ships are the future,” says Marco Galindo Sr. about the megaship bringing not 3,000-4,000 passengers but 7,000.

Some other businessmen who operate out of the existing Port of Roatan dock also feel that bigger ships and more passengers will leave plenty of cruise-shippers to leave the port and spend money on their attractions on Roatan proper. “I employ 20 people and 20 families are dependent on the cruise ship tourist,” says Vidal Villeda, 53, who owns Chocolate factory stands in two Roatan cruise ship ports and a chocolate factory center in West End.

Villeda is renting a three meter by three-meter stand at the cruise ship dock for $100 a cruses ship day. Villeda says that his rent hasn’t gone up since the Mexican conglomerate took over the Port of Roatan except for the maintenance fee of $50 a month. ‘They are brining bigger boats,” Villeda says about the Mexican conglomerate. “The more cruise ship tourist will come the better.”

The uncontrolled cruise ship tourism boom of the last ten years has strained Roatan’s infrastructure to its limits, attracted tens-of-thousands of mainland labor migrants and caused environmental damage to reef and soil that is impossible to enumerate in dollars. “If we keep destroying trees, it’s a matter of time and we will be like Haiti,” says Galindo Sr. who remains pessimistic about the long-term growth of the island. “In 15-20 years’, time we will be charging islanders Lps. 500 to hug a tree.”

Roatan’s love affair with fast growth and cruise shippers doesn’t only end in Port of Roatan or Mahogany Bay. The Santos Guardiola is financing a study to find out the best location for a cruise ship terminal in New Port Royal. This would bring a third cruise ship terminal to the island. “Santos Guardiola has a lot to offer at the East End of the island,” says Galindo. “It’s going to happen. It [Roatan] will be a cruise ship island,” says Galindo.

Relying on only one industry for the sustainment of the island is like putting all one’s eggs in one basket. Twenty years ago, Roatan was an island with several industries: fishing industry, seafood packing industry, dive industry, construction industry and cruise ship was yet another industry. “If cruise ships leave, we will starve to death,” says Galindo Sr.

A Grass Roots Group Takes Up the Never Ending War on Trash

One organization is making a difference. “BICCU [Bay Islands Coastal Clean Up] started at my desk at the Port of Roatan,” says Dawn Hyde, Customer Service manager at the Port of Roatan. It was 2012 and Hyde was wondering why no one was doing a similar effort to the Ocean Conservancy’s 30 year-old world wide effort of International Coastal Cleanup. Since there appeared to be no such local effort, Hyde decided to start one herself.

With seven friends, she started an island-wide clean up that takes place twice each year. BICCU empowers the island community to grow stronger by working on a common goal. It builds community cohesion and provides some relief from the trash problems that increasingly plague Roatan. The Bay Islands clean-up effort has inspired similar programs in Tela, Omoa, and La Ceiba.

Every day rain and sea currents wash hundreds of tons of trash, especially plastics, onto the shores and reefs of the island. To counter that, BICCU organizes two clean-ups a year: there is one clean up before the rainy season and the other before the Holy Week tourist rush.

In 2018 things really ramped up when an international corporation became interested in Roatan’s garbage conundrum. Daniel Birnbaum, CEO of Soda Stream saw images of Roatan’s waters being filled with floating plastic and decided to help. “Everything happened in less than three hours,” remembers Michelle Mejilla, a Honduran who moved to Israel 18 years ago and graduated from Tegucigalpa’s Catholic University Environmental Department. SodaStream, an Israel based multinational, decided to locate their annual 2018 worldwide meeting on Roatan with part of their stay dedicated to picking up trash on the island. SodaStream is about to close a deal where it would be purchased for $3.2 billion by PepsiCo and its CEO, Ramon Laguarta, showed up on Roatan.”We can’t clean up all the plastic waste on the planet, but we each need to do whatever we can,” said Birnbaum, whose company makes sparkling water from ordinary tap water. As a result, Roatan got some international media exposure and 151 rooms at Fantasy Islands were filled in the low season.

Bay Islands clean-up effort has inspired similar programs in Tela, Omoa,
and La Ceiba.

In May, Mejilla spent four days scouting the most littered places of Roatan and decided to focus SodaStream’s main trash collection efforts at Jonesville’s Mangrove Point and Celebration Cay just south of Los Fuertes. 150 SodaStream employees and 150 Roatan schoolchildren picked up around 2,000 bags of debris. “We put aluminum and glass in green bags, transparent bags are for plastic,” said Hyde.

Dozens of groups of totaling almost 3,000 people took on the task of picking up garbage not only across Roatan but in Utila and Guanaja as well. “SodaStream added the fizz we needed to get the clean up moving this year,” said Hyde.

On the fifth day of the cleanup, the Mahogany Bay employees took their turn in picking up plastics and trash in the middle of the island. They were assigned one of the more polluted areas on Roatan: the Brick Bay mangrove next to the Brick Bay village. The currents and wind push the debris and garbage from open sea into the cove from the east almost directly into Brick Bay trapping tons of garbage.

There was driftwood, plastic bottles, metal cans and the volunteers even manage to pull out a boiler. The ladies gathered the garbage into bags and men pulled the bags in knee high water to the collection point. By the end of the morning a two meter high pile of bags was awaiting a garbage truck. “When we have the clean-up the Municipal trucks can’t handle the loads,” says Hyde who negotiates with local transport companies and taxis that do business at the Port of Roatan dock. The bags ended up at the Roatan Municipal trash dump where eight families live from recycling. “These ‘pepenadores’ separate the trash and sell it to recycling collectors,” says Zulema Santos, of the BICCU organizers. “There are so few people that value their work.” Mayor Julio Galindo has worked out an agreement with PepsiCo and the Cerveceria to establish an NGO – Island Green that provided a buy-back of recyclables on the island and facilitates free transport to recycling centers on the mainland but this subsidized NGO arrangement only lasts five years.

Inadvertently BICCU has become the islands emergency force. When a major weather emergency takes place on the island it is unlikely the central government would be able to provide fast and large enough support to the islands. It could be BICCU volunteers that will be going to affected areas and providing quick response aid.

I thinks an educational video should be prepared and be mandatory viewing for all schools on island. It should be played on the ferry on the way in and out of the island and available at the airport as well. Cab drivers and people renewing their drivers license should have to view it before getting a license. The dive shops on island should make presentations at the schools as part of their social contribution. Let’s try to stop the plastic before it reaches the ocean and not concentrate on picking it up after its already polluted the waters.

Roatan’s “the Last Straw” is wonderful initiative aiming at reducing the use of plastic single use straws in island restaurants. Already many island establishments will give you a metal straw or a bamboo straw. While some business owners are fighting extra hard to eliminate plastic single use products such as bags and straws, other ignore this and serve Styrofoam-to-go containers at an alarming rate.

As far as conservation goes, we are at infant stage. We are just beginning to awaken to the need to stop plastic from ending up in our sea. If this rate keeps as is, in a couple decades, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

We are already getting sick as a byproduct of fish consuming plastic waste and Styrofoam. As an island that depends on tourism we should be doing more to conserve the natural resources that the tourist come to see. We demonize one, or two individuals who fill in the reef and yet sit by idly as the Port of Roatan cruise ship terminal is set to destroy an entire bay and do or say nothing. Unfortunately, its all government sanctioned.

At a town hall meeting meant to explain the details of the cruise ship terminal expansion in which a mockup of the proposed expansion was presented the town folk almost unanimously rejected the proposal. They cited multiple objections to the third development phase of the cruise port. The main one was the environmental impact on the area and the loss of income from the passengers not leaving the “attractions” at the port.

There will be more plastic in the ocean than fish.

At this meeting several participants requested a list of the partners in the Port of Roatan. We would desperately like to know who is benefiting from the destruction of the reef and our natural resources. The impact of just that many more toilets flushing at the port will be a strain on the water supplies.

The sad news is that we will be pillaged and plundered and all the investment will just leave the island. I hope we haven’t moved back to the conquistador days. The Port managers aren’t even Honduran and the money from this latest insult will be taken not only off island, but out of country.

It’s curious how an environmental permit was approved and environmental license given from the Honduran government. I wonder who at a high level has a vested interest in this project. I am perplexed where we could turn to for help if we are being sold out by our own central government. Where are our island elected officials when we need the most?

USCGC Eagle flies her flag at Port of Roatan.

Biggest Sailing Ship to Date Visits Roatan

On June 29, USCGC Eagle, a US coast guard school ship docked at Port of Roatan and flew her banner. For two days Eagle turned into a floating museum hosting hundreds of Roatanians touring it’s deck and receiving a lesson in vessel’s history.

On Roatan the Eagle’s crew and cadets got a break from their sailing routine and got to do a bit of diving, snorkeling, zip lining, and shopping. “This was actually Eagle’s first visit to Honduras and Roatan (…) I can scarcely believe that none of my predecessors would have visited. Their loss,” wrote Matt Meilstrup, Eagle’s Commanding Officer. “We also had very productive meetings with the Honduran armed forces and government, especially Navy and Merchant Marine.”

The 295’ training cutter is the only active sailing ship in US military service. She dates back seven generations of ships to 1792 when US coast guard used its first ship – ‘Revenue Cutter Eagle.’ The Eagle was originally christened Horst Wessel in Hamburg in 1936, after a Nazi hero, in the presence of Adolf Hitler. She trained German sailors until WWII broke out and in 1942 she was armed and patrolled Baltic Sea. After the defeat of Germany, Horst Wessel was won by the United States in a drawing of lots with the Soviet and British navies and given to the US Coast Guard. Since 1946 every single new US cadet undergoing officer training has begun his or her career by learning to traverse the seas the old way, by trimming sails and scrubbing the decks.

The Eagle has almost 10 kilometers of running rigging and 2,070 square meter of sail area. Her hull is made of 3” teak wood laid with 1” steel. For an octogenarian, the Eagle is in great shape and there are no plans to retire it.

The New London, Connecticut based Eagle goes out on voyages lasting up to two months. It performs a public relations duty for the US Coast Guard as it offers training to cadets and officer candidates. USCGC Eagle recently underwent renovations including repairs to portions of her hull, upgrades to the berthing areas, installation of a new radar, and inspection of her masts. “That work is expected to add an additional 15 years of service life though, if my past experience is any guide, that will be stretched much longer,” wrote Captain Meilstrup. “ The ship is in fantastic material condition.” On July 2 Eagle departed Roatan for Cartagena, Colombia, to Curacao and then onto Miami.

Six Cubans with their vessel on the reef in front of Fantasy Island. (photo by Gringo Divemaster)

MS Armonia at the scene of the incident. (Photo by Ana Svoboda)

Roatan has its Biggest Maritime Accident to Date

The ship ended up with a gaping hole and the 205 meter long dock is now 170 meters. Two mooring dolphins and a walkway were destroyed.

According to Elmer Cruz, owner of the Agencia Naviera del Caribe, representing cruise ships arriving in Roatan, several Roatan hotels and Americans on the island contacted Anacaribe with offers to host passengers injured in the collision. But, since no injuries were reported and MSC Armonia has more cabins than Roatan has hotel rooms, the offer was not taken.

Within hours an investigation was initiated, gathering representatives from the Honduran Ports Authority, Port of Roatan, insurance agencies, the ships agent, and Carlo Aiello, the Italian captain of the MSC Armonia. Also within hours, the crew of the cruise ship began to repair the gaping hole in the ship’s hull. They purchased some repair supplies from Serrano’s Hardware and welded steel plates onto the hull. 17 hours after the accident, at 2:30 am, they were on their way to Belize.

Since we have been working in 1997 it’s the first time that a boat has hit a dock

While Roatan got plenty of play on FOX and CNN, two cruise ships: Liberty of the Seas and Getaway, cancelled their visit to Roatan. “They didn’t know the damage to the pier, so they decided just to play it safe,” said Cruz. “Since we have been working in 1997 it’s the first time that a boat has hit a dock,” said Cruz.

The conclusion from the investigation is pending, but that hasn’t stopped a local band from Roatan, ‘Jhaytea and Don Mark,’ from rendering their own verdict in the form of new song lyrics: “They say the captain was drinking Jack Daniels. (…) Drinking Ice and Tatascan.” Human error is more likely the culprit.

Nic Bach, Coordinator of Marine Infrastructure at Roatan Marine Park, dived the site of the incident the fallowing day looking for damage to coral that still surrounds the port of Roatan, but has seen no damage done by the Armonia. “Years of cruise ships there smothered the coral. Most of the coral in the vicinity of the cruise ship dock is already gone,” said Bach.

Kester Bodden, Deputy Director Port of Roatan, the construction on the second pier at the Port of Roatan is due to begin in September and last for 18 months. The repairs to the damaged existing dock are likely to coincide.

MSC Armonia is a cruise ship that was built in 2001 for the now defunct Festival Cruises as MS European Vision. It is based in Havana, Cuba and offers a week long cruises in Western Caribbean. Captain Carlo Aiello was relieved of his duties upon returning to Havana and was transferred to MSC Opera to Master position.