Prow pointed south this foggy morning! Full moon and a lunar eclipse tomorrow night to get us started.

We will sail down the river overnight, and anchor out the flood tide near Ellis Island, then depart NY harbor with the mid morning ebb tide. We are aiming for the Turks and Caicos as our first port, but we have preapplied for permits to land in Bermuda in case strong southwest winds head us in that direction. T&C is about 1000 miles from NY. We will not be able to sail a straight line, and our first waypoint will be a favorable Gulf Stream crossing somewhere around 38N71W. The winds look generally good for the first three or four days out - light southerlies on Monday, increasing to 20 knots Monday night as a front approaches, and then two or three days of favorable but moderate west and northwest winds for our Gulf Stream crossing. After that, models are less consistent, but no big storms are in the models for the first week.

Because the wind is hard to predict, it is hard to predict our arrival date in T&C - somewhere between ten and fifteen days is most likely. We might skip T&C and head straight for Jamaica if we don’t need provisions and the winds look favorable for the Windward Passage.