We are definitely going through cruising withdrawal. The major symptom revolves around a compulsive scanning of charts, googling of exotic destinations and moving the departure date steadily forward. We are now looking at a mid to end of September date to set off to get Nelleke back in the water. Of course, much of that will be dependant upon our earlier trip south to check up on her.

We are planning for a trip to Indiantown sometime in April to return as much of the boat gear that we brought home for maintenance as possible. The plan will be for a leisurely drive, taking time to see some sites and visit friends on the way. We will be taking back roads and avoiding most, but not all, of the major American metropolitan areas. There aren't any big cities between here and the US border so we won't have to avoid any in Canada. I am planning to blog regularly on the way down and take some photos for the record. Then for the rest of the summer we will be doing some new boat projects such as a roll stopper design that I have come up with and a water turbine generator which is a refinement of the one that we started the last cruise with. Combined with that we would like to tour a bit with the Westy, exploring NE and mid west USA.

Our cruising plans for the fall are beginning to take some "carved in jello" shape. First, of course is another drive to Indiantown and a couple of weeks getting Nelleke back into the water. From there we will head out the St Lucie Inlet and across to the Bahamas where we will gunk hole down from West End to Freeport to the Berrys and down through the outer keys to DR, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Island groups and then Saba, Monserrat, and Guadeloupe. We think it is do-able if we keep Nelleke well maintained and the weather cooperates. The good news is that pretty much any point along that route is a place, that if we wind up staying there longer than planned, is something we can tolerate.

Our "end game" is that we at hoping to find a place in the Caribbean where we could put the boat up on the hard for the summer so that the following fall would have us restart the cruise from paradise.