Saturday 21 December 2013

BVI's Virgin Isles we are here

Sat 21st December
Well I expect most of you have been looking at our little blog and will have following our progress from Fort Lauderdale. Lets say it was something we would never attempt again, the crossing from Spain was a doddle compared with this one. We were so concerned we would have to make landfall elsewhere not to the Virgin Isles which would have wrecked our new cruising season plans. At the moment we are in Sopers Hole in Tortola and have a cruising licence for the BVI's for a month. So these islands we will explore as best we can as we didn't do them justice last time we were here. Not taken any photo's yet but when I do I will post some. 
We would like to say a big thank you for the encouragement given by other yachts on the SSB radio who checked our progress twice a day. The only other contact was via the sat phone to our friend John who did his best to help with weather info, albeit at times not good. Oh well thats all for now we need to chill, buy lots of rum and get someone else to cook!
Bfn
Don and Glenys 
Agua Therapy

Tuesday 3 December 2013

Bye Bye Fort Lauderdale

Wednesday December 4th 2013 Position 27:07N 80:07W

At last after almost 7 months we are going back out into that wobbly stuff to our first destination. 
We can't believe how much time we have been here, a lot of time was spent buying and fitting more equipment to make our life at sea easier. The new dinghy is (upside down) on our aft deck takes up quite a lot of room and it was quite a struggle to manoeuvre it into place. However it's much more stable with a fibreglass hull when we are making our way to an island somewhere.

Ok, first of all we have to cross the Gulf Stream current which is going North at around 3 knots, we are heading North East ish  so we do expect a few lumps but the weather forecast is good so fingers crossed we should do that in the first day / night.

As we leave our dock in Fort Lauderdale it is high tide and we have 2 bridges to go under the only problem is they don't open until after the traffic rush hour so we can't set out too early. 

The route will be to go North East around the top of the Bahamas, we then need to go a little more North but mainly East, roughly 600 / 700 miles to take advantage of the prevailing winds which is the opposite of when we first came here. Then it should be a nice sail South South East to our destination the Virgin Islands. 
So we think our trip should take around 10 days non stop weather permitting.

Hopefully we should be in contact by SSB radio with other boats heading the same way, maybe even folks we know from last year.

Sorry folks no photos until we have the internet again.

BFN
Don and Glenys
Agua Therapy