Wind Song's Bahamas cruising plan for 2004-2005
We live in El Segundo, CA, which is a long way from the Bahamas. We
sailed the intervening ocean once before, and it took over a year, so that's
not an option this time around. We only have ten months total. So the options
are A) buy a boat in Florida, or B) buy one on the West Coast and truck
it to Florida. Both have drawbacks. We chose Option B.
We've arranged truck transportation for Wind Song from Marina
del Rey, CA to St. Petersburg, FL, a distance of 2550 miles, with a local
SoCal company called Moger Yacht Transport. Wind Song will be launched
and re-rigged at Sailor's Wharf Yacht Yard in St Petersburg, FL, on the western
shore of Tampa Bay. We'll move aboard, provision, head south down the Intracoastal
Waterway to Sanibel Inlet, then south across Florida Bay to Boot Key Harbor
and the town of Marathon, in the Florida Keys -- all the while watching
the hurricane forecasts and keeping an eye out for places to run and hide.
At Marathon we'll top up the larder and depart on October 31st 2004
for the day hop east to Long Key Bight, followed by an overnight passage
to South Riding Rock on the western edge of the Great Bahama Bank. This
photographic map (JPEG, 665KB),
based on an image of the Earth from space taken by the MODIS sensor on the
Earth Observing System (EOS) Terra spacecraft, will help you visualize
the next six and a half months, after which Wind Song will end up
back in Florida at Lake Worth Inlet, near West Palm Beach, roughly May 15,
2005. From there we'll vamoose up the ICW to the Chesapeake Bay, where we'll
put Wind Song up for sale. We'll drop our daughter Roxanne off at
St John's College in Annapolis, MD where she'll start her freshman year, and
the rest of us will head back home to El Segundo to resume our former lives.