The Big Picture

As of 9/28/2017, my plan is:

I will be leaving on Sunday, October 8th (or a day or two after, depending on the weather).  Leaving with me will be my good friend Phil Heisley.  Phil has a Dufour 38 and we have sailed a fair amount on one another's boats.  We will take a month to sail to Myrtle Beach SC where Phil will fly home.  That same day, my partner Joan Brandt will arrive in Myrtle Beach.  We will spend 5 days touring the area from Southport SC to Georgetown SC (about 90 miles either side of Myrtle Beach).  After Joan flies back home, I'll continue down the ICW to Florida.  I hope to get there in Mid December.  I'll leave the boat at a marina in Vero Beach and return to home (via some, TBD, mode of transportation - other than a boat).  After the holidays, Phil and I will return to the boat, continue south to Miami and wait for weather that is good for crossing over the Gulf Stream to Bimini (Bahamas).  From there, we will go east to the Berry Islands and then down to the Exumas.  In about mid February, Phil will leave the Bahamas for home.  Around mid March, my good friend Robert VanTrigt will meet me in Eleuthera. We will sail from there to the Abacos.  He will be on the boat for about a week.  My son and his family (Mike, Jody, and Quinn) will fly over to Marsh Harbor (Abacos) for Spring Break and stay for a week.  After that, I plan to begin my journey home - to arrive back between mid to the end of May, 2018.  

If this sounds boring, that's what I'm praying for!

Introduction

Introduction 

I've been dreaming about this trip for years and planning it for the last 6 months.

This first post will be intended to outline some of the background and planning I have done, leading up to my departure on around October 8, 2017.

My first interest in the Bahamas goes back to the mid 1980s when I chartered a Stevens 47 in the BVIs for 10 days.  The constant 25 knot trade winds made it fairly rough and there wasn't a lot of protection from the winds.  Also, there were basically no charts for the area and chart plotters didn't exist at that time.  All navigation was line of sight, cruising books, and a single 11 x 17 inch sketch of the islands provided by the charter company. 

Soon after that trip, I began wondering what it would be like to charter a boat in the Bahamas.  I found a few maps and assumed that cruising the Bahamas would be much more difficult since the waters were much more shallow than the BVIs.  In fact, the idea of cruising the Bahamas seemed nearly impossible. 

Then, in 2014, I helped my friend Phil Schnering bring his Endevour 43 back from St. Thomas to Baltimore.  We spent about a week passing through the Bahamas.  We had some big picture charts but most of our detailed navigation was using electronic charts on our smart phones.  They seemed accurate and worked well. 

After that, it was just a matter of time before I cruised the Bahamas in my own boat.

Click here to go to The Big Picture