Weather to Go, Weather to Stay

A screenshot of Weather Guru

We finally got checked out of Mexico, but you'll never guess what? We are still in Puerto Morelos! At this point, we might as well resign ourselves to opening up a palapa bar and living here forever, making periodic trips to Cancun so that Mexican officials can continue stamping our paperwork. Vlad has even invented a new version of "Hotel California" that goes a little something like this: "Welcome to the town of Puerto Morelos ... you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave." (Actually, you can't check out any time you like, or we would have been in Honduras already!)

So what's our hold up? The weather, plain and simple. We are serious weather weenies and really don't enjoy going out in heavy seas and high winds. After three days of waiting for the weather to change, conditions are decent currently, but over the weekend and down the coast the winds get higher again and, more importantly, the wave height gets up to between two and three meters, coming right on our beam, a recipe for one of my vomiting and sweating episodes and not great for Bettie either.

Neither one of us has experienced nine-foot seas, nor are we particularly keen to do so. Therefore, we have decided to once again be illegal aliens in Mexico until Sunday when we can make a mad dash to  Roatan, one of the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras.

Plus, my mom had some excellent advice when I asked her opinion on whether we should stay or leave. She said, "Why would you willingly go out when you know the weather is bad. You'll have plenty of opportunities to experience bad weather even with a good forecast." You might not be able to trust the weatherman, but they say moms are always right.

If any of you are interested, here's a list of weather sites we use.

• Passage Weather - Note: This site lists the wave height in meters, not feet. Before I knew that little detail, I kept wondering why everyone was in such a tizzy. I mean, the winds were 20 to 25 with gusts to 30 - which is on the high side but nothing that couldn't be handled with a reefed main and jib - and the seas were only two to three feet. Oh, wait, that says meters. Doh!
• Wind Guru
• NOAA
• Then, there is Chris Parker, who gives the weather in the morning over the SSB. He also does custom passage reports for a fee. Here are the stations and times:
  
  Caribbean Weather Network
  6:30 4045
  7:00 8137
  8:00 4045 (Bahamas)
  8:30 8104 (Caribbean)
  9:15 12350
  9:30 6221 and 16531

Please let us know if we are missing any good ones.