Above you can see globally what the idea of the route is. In detail I plan to depart in September or October 2011 from Galveston, TX USA to Charleston in SC, USA. In Charleston Heloisa and Auke will join me at the ned of October (Auke will go to the International school till end of October) and we will be finalizing the storing of goods. From somewhere in the second week of November we will be heading for the Virgin Islands via the Atlantic, directly.

The reason of going to Charleston SC is the fact that this is a good "jump board" for a direct sailing trip to the Virgin Islands. "Good" being defined by the prevailing winds in the Atlantic at that time of the year. In November the prevailing winds will be variable direction at the latitude of Charleston but will quickly become North East if you track East and South, roughly in the direction of Bermuda. Somewhere half way or closer to Bermuda you turn South East and head directly for the Virgin Islands. This roughly 1.300 NM trip will take around 10 days sailing.

An alternative route is direclty from Florida via the Bahamas working your way down the islands towards the Virgin Islands. This is however against the prevailing strong trade winds and becomes quickly a daily battle against wind and sea. This route is sometimes called "the thorny path". We are not much into this days and days into to wind and seas sailing, hence our preference to make a wide detour over the Atlantic which will bring us nicely into the Virgin Islands within 10 days.

We plan to spend quite some time in the US and British Virgin Islands. The area is a great sailing paradise due to its geographical formations, sheltered from Ocean swells, great steady trade winds, ideal sailing grounds with tons of beautiful anchorages. We are really looking forward to spend some time in this area, and get in the groove of our new life style, living on board, homeschooling a (by then) 7 year old and maintaining a boat to ocean going standards without immediate access to quality nautical materials.

We will slowly make our way south likely, however when June comes we will be heading directly for Curacao. This location will place us outside the Hurricane "box" for the period starting July - November. This is not only a comfortable thought, our boat insurance does not cover us either in the period for that region insdie the hurricane box.

We will spend some time in Curacao, exploring the coast of Venezuela and will make our way to Panama around November. There are some great small islands, the San Blas Islands belonging to Panama on the Caribbean side (see http://www.enjoypanama.com/san_blas.htm).

By January we will have to cross the Panama channel, in order to be ready to cross the Pacific Ocean in February.

Crossing the Pacific we will be heading for the Marqueses Islands. We will detour via the Galapagos Islands, a little south, just on the Equator. From the Galapagos we head for the Marquesas Islands. This leg is a "biggie" of around 3000 Nm (3000 Nautical Miles, 3400 land miles or 5486 Km), non-stop. This will take us about 23 days. That is a long hitch, by any standard. Anyway the reward is having access to the Pacific Islands, from the Marquesas Islands to French Polynesia to the Cook Islands etc. with thousands of the best anchorages in archipelagos and challenging but interesting navigation. (I am fairly convinced that my wife is not too thrilled by the challenging aspect of the navigation in archipelagos, where corals are not mapped, and what is mapped was mapped around 200 years ago with conventional navigation methods of that time, so navigation will be eye ball while entering atolls and the like).

By November we will have to depart the Pacific Islands and head for New Zealand. The Pacific in this region has a typhoon season, starting in November. We will head for Whangarei in the north of New Zealand. This is a place where we will take some rest, possible place Auke in public school for some months for the social contact aspect.

Beyond New Zealand things will change possible. We are not so interested in passing via the Red Sea to the Mediterranean due to dangers of piracy. I on the other hand would very much like to do a long ocean crossing solo. Not quite sure what drives this rather masochistic behavior, I guess I want to prove to myself that I am up to that. Heloisa certainly does not have this masochistic behavior and she actually thinks it is quite stupid and useless to do a long ocean crossing solo. But she knows me and she is more then happy to have me give it a go.

So possible Heloise and Auke will depart with me from New Zealand and make a stop in New Caledonia. Possible here or later on in Australia (somewhere like Darwin) she will depart from Mundinho and go home with Auke. Here on onwards I will sail Mundinho to Europe with a few quick stops along the way. Quick stops like my favorites; Christmas Island, Coco (Keeling) Island and Mauritius and Reunion. From here I would head for Cape Town, a favorite city of mine where Heloisa and Auke will visit me if it would fit schedule wise.

From Australia to Cape Town is some serious distance of 7.000 Nm, which will take me about 7 weeks (without the time for stops calculated in here).

From here it will go directly to Europe in a large S-curve across the South and then North Atlantic to take full advantage of the prevailing winds. (A quick stop on the lonely island Saint Helena)

In the big picture this is it. We make it a point that we do not want to "micro schedule". We do not want to plan ahead to visit this anchorage at that day. If we are comfortable somewhere and there is one of us that expresses the desire to stay longer there in that spot, then that is what we will do. If Auke has met some friends at a certain anchorage, we may decide to hang out longer there in order for him to spend some time with peers.

The big picture milestones are defined by weather systems and you are stuck with those when you sail a boat like we have (basically anything below 200 feet in length, you better stick to the weather systems) and when you have a desire to create a comfortable environment for all. Yes, you can perfectly sail in parts of the world disregarding weather systems like Hurricane or Typhoon seasons or areas with very high change %-wise of high winds (higher then windforce eight). However this is not comfortable by any standard measured.