Tomorrow we’ll be in the air on the way back to St. John to begin the trip back to the Chesapeake. Once again Heron and Freestyle will be sailing together, trying to see who will catch the biggest fish. We will be covering 1570 nm in 14 days. Unlike the cruise of the eastern Caribbean, which covered 1200 nm in 7 weeks, this will very much be a sailing trip, with minimal time ashore. We will continue to use the SPOT tracker, so you can follow us on the link on the right-hand column of this blog.
To summarize it in three sections:
1) 498 nm from St. John to Provo over 6 days, two overnights.
2) 422 nm from Provo to Marsh Harbor over 4 days, two overnights.
3) 650 nm from Marsh Harbor to Little Creek over 4 days, three overnights.
The long range forecasts is still great –downwind sailing with mild seas.
Here are some of the weather sites that we like:
www.passageweather.com
Here is the latest plan-of-record, subject to weather etc.
29 April: fly to boats in St. John.
30 April: sail to Bahia De Sardinas, Culebra (31 nm, 4 hrs@7.5kn)
1 May: sail to Club Nautico, San Juan PR (52 nm, 7 hrs@7.5kn)
2 May: layday in San Juan
3-5 May: sail to anchorage near Turtle Cove Marina, Providenciales (Provo)
Turks & Caicos (416 nm, 56 hrs@7.5kn)
6-7 May: sail overnight to Port Nelson, Rum Cay (188 nm, 25 hrs@7.5kn)
8-9 May: sail overnight to Marsh Harbor, Great Abaco (234 nm, 31
hrs@7.5kn)
10 May: lay day in Marsh Harbor
11-15 May: sail from Marsh Harbor to Little Creek VA
(650 nm, 87 hrs@7.5kn)
--520nm on a heading of 021M to the Hatteras waypoint--we’ll use Commanders or Chris Parker weather routing services.
-- weather permitting ETD is 0800 May 11; ETA is May 14, 2245 if 7.5kn, 1720 if 8.0kn.
It's been very tricky to plan a route through the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas. Both boats draw 7.5 ft --deeper or close to the limit of draft for many of the harbors there. It is critical to arrive in good light to navigate on the banks and in the harbors. This will be interesting!
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