We’re getting a lot of questions about our cruise, so here’s a little bit of a primer for what we have planned. We’ll be leaving next Wednesday the 3rd and flying to San Juan. Northwest/Delta was kind enough to cancel our mid-morning, direct 4 hour flight to San Juan and replace it with a 7:30am flight connecting through Atlanta. Total of 8 hours. Then we take a short island hopper flight to Tortola in the BVI. We get in at around 6pm AST.
The boat is in a marina in Fat Hog’s Bay, at the east end of Tortola, just a couple miles from the airport. I will try to post a cool Google Earth placemark that zooms in on the bay.
Once we get checked out on the boat, and get our food loaded we are on our own. We’ll probably just take a short sail in the afternoon and head to Trellis bay for the night. After that, our plans are very loose. We want to stay in the BVI, where the sailing is easy with lots of great places to snorkel and protected harbors, for the first week or so. I think the challenge will be balancing between wanting to explore and discover lots of places with just relaxing and hanging out, and not pushing ourselves to be on the move the entire two months. So we have a rough plan, but it will allow us to skew toward either end of the spectrum.
After getting comfortable with the boat, we will make the jump over to St. Martin in the Leeward Islands. At about 80nm, this is one of the longest passages between islands in the Caribbean, and is directly against the prevailing wind. It doesn’t look like a lot of fun, but the pay-off should be worth it. Once in the Leeward’s we will explore St. Martin, Anguilla, and St. Bart’s. Depending on our pace we may shoot down to St. Kitts and the more mountainous islands, but this is less likely.
We only have one firm commitment that must be kept, and that is to be back in St. Thomas on April 2nd to pick up our friends, the See’s. They are flying in that day, and staying with us for 9 days. So sometime before they arrive, we will return from the Leeward islands and head for the USVI, probably checking in at Cruz Bay on St. Johns. After picking up Tim, Katie, Ellen and Loren, we are heading back in to the BVI for the week. The See’s leave on the 11th (Happy Anniversary to us), and we will head west to the Spanish Virgins. (Culebra and Vieques on the first map) This looks like a great cruising area, mostly undeveloped with no crowds. Lots of great snorkeling and a lobster season that lasts all year!
We need to be back in the BVI during our final week, to make sure there are no delays in turning the boat back over. April 27th is our last day, and we’ll bring the boat back to Fat Hog’s bay. We’ll spend our last night ashore, and then begin the trip back home. Same long route we took down, in reverse.
With luck, we will discover that 2 months is not enough!
Update: just found out how to insert video!
repost
