I really don't know what happened to all the days in between my last entry and day 20!

Work on the boat has continued. You'd think we'd be done by now.

About a week ago, we were still trying to figure out just how we were going be south of 13 degrees latitude (around Grenada) by June 1, which our insurance requires us to do in order to be out of hurricane range. We had been kicking around a whole lot of scenarios, none of them ideal.
Our greatest challenges in getting that far south in such a short time are the distance (about 1500 miles) and the winds. Grenada lies south and way east of Vero Beach and the winds are predominantly from the east/southeast. That means we would heading into the wind much of the time. Lots of motoring and little sailing.

About a week and a half ago, we had two boats raft up with us on our mooring ball. Both were retired couples traveling northward together. As is usual with boaters, the questions of where are you from and where are you going, came up. We talked about our predicament with our time limit and winds. Bill and Sandy on 'Lucille' and Jack and Annie on 'Nottus', both highly recommended joining the Caribbean 1500. This is an organized crossing from Norfolk, Virginia area to St Martin in the Caribbean. Lots of seminars, experts to help set up your boat and crew members to help you sail there. It all sounded great until they mentioned that it takes place in November.

Bill thought that we might be able to bypass the Bahamas and go directly to St. Martin. This would mean due east out onto the ocean for about 4-6 days, depending on the winds and then due south for another 4-6 days, again depending on the winds until we reach St. Martin. We told him that we didn't have the experience nor confidence to do such a voyage on our own.

Bill asked if we were interested in having a crew member to sail with us. "Of course", we said! He offered to contact one of them to see if she was available. She wasn't, so he called Lauren, a crew member who has sailed with them a few times. All this took place on a Friday. By Sunday morning, we had talked to Lauren on the phone and by Sunday evening, she had emailed us the airport and time she would be arriving at the following Friday.

We were ecstatic. We still are!!!!
Lauren has been with us for a week now and she has helped us so much with all kinds of things. She had set up our satellite phone on both computers to download weather information. She has gotten the DSC working on the SSB and the VHF radio. That means, in an emergency we can press a button on either the SSB radio or the VHF radio and it will send out our latitude/longitude. She has our autopilot (electronic self-steering) talking to our RADAR, which allows us now to see our RADAR data overlaid onto our electronic navigational charts. She has downloaded a bunch of free charts that allow us to overlay weather data (grib files) onto them so we can see and understand what weather is forming along our route. She is a wealth of information. We are so fortunate to have someone so knowledgeable and generous on our boat. A huge thank you to Lauren and Bill and Sandy for bringing her to us.

The pre-departure list is still long, but it seems to be getting a bit shorter every day. This is quite unusual, because the lists have consistently gotten longer no matter how much work we have done.

We have signed on with a weather forecasting service. Chris Parker, gives detailed forecasts daily via SSB radio and email. Once we are underway, we will contact him everyday on our SSB radio and he will advise and guide us about our route. This is a very good thing!! We feel much more comfortable undertaking this trip knowing we have an experienced weather guy on the job.

So, weather permitting, we plan to depart from Fort Pierce, Florida on Sunday morning. At this point the winds and seas look favourable, but we won't be able to make our decision until Sunday morning. Tomorrow, we will leave Vero Beach and go anchor at Fort Pierce. At present, due to strong north winds, there are waves between 8-10 feet on the ocean. We had hoped to do a 'shake-down' cruise for a few hours on the ocean to test some of our systems. Due to these high waves though, we won't be going out tomorrow. We'll see how things look on Saturday.