Yes, we have “MERCH” as all the YouTubers and “influencers” post. The difference with the Island Spirit program is that we do not need to do this to survive; we are solvent and we pay for all our sailing with OUR OWN money, not gifts. We actually give away more than we make, as we try to help others. But here are the cool shirts, mugs, and photo books I have made. I hope you enjoy these, the profit off these are like $2, again, it not about money for us, it is more about helping others. Enjoy. Question? What can you do for others?
The sv ISLAND SPIRIT team shirtThe Original sv Island Spirit Shirt, established 2001…wowThe IPYOA Island Packet Yacht Owners’ Association, that I created 20 yrs agoThe IPYOA, Island Packet Yacht Owners’ Association MUG
Calendars and Photo Books!
The 23rd IPYOA Sailing Calendar I createdSmall 5×7 Photo Books, very cool
Dec 2025 after 7 months of Caribbean sun. Our protective tape is holding up well.
Island Spirit is safe in the #1 boatyard, Jolly Harbor Marina, where we will return Jan 4, 2026! Our dear friends, Steve and Maria, on the mothership IP485 SAVANNAH SKY https://savannah-sky.com/ sent us these great photos of our boat.
What’s the WHITE TAPE?
We have been using this protective white tape for well over 5 years. I have posted many photos of this and how well it works. I was introduced to it in Grenada when a mega yacht 150 footer was taping their varnish with it. I WAS SHOCKED. I asked why and what it was. They were prepping to cross the Atlantic and said they put this on when going to sea on passages as it protects the vanish. Of course my next question was….does it pull off cleanly? They said yes. That yacht team told me about NATIONAL MARINE company. They service the mega yacht industry, and if you see your yacht here, I will be impressed: https://nationalmarine.com/
How to Order this White Tape
The challenge to ordering this tape is that you need to establish a credit account with National Marine. This requires an application and a credit card. Once that is set up, then you can call in or email George and place an order. What you are ordering is: PROTECTIVE CAPRAIL TAPE, 6″ 8″ OR 12″
National Marine Suppliers
https://nationalmarine.com/contact/
2800 South West 2nd Avenue,
Fort Lauderdale Florida 33315 U.S.A.
This white tape is PROTECTIVE CAPRAIL TAPE. It is made in 6, 8, 12 inch wide rolls I have used the 12″ wide to cover hatches and ports and I have used the 6″ or 8″ to cover the teak side cap rails. I think I will start using the 8″ roll for everything as it will be easier to handle. But then again the 12″ really covers the ports and hatches well. The cost is about $100 for 6″-8″ roll and maybe $150 for the 12″ Each roll is 400 feet long, so it will last a year or two. Remember, 100-150 foot yachts use this to tape their caprail varnish. Selling to us, the small boat industry, is not National Marine’s business focus. But I can not find it anywhere else. Do not use other product you find. This product is similar to the white tape on car hoods when they are delivered.
An overview as seen from 485 Savannah Sky
Does it pull off clean?
In the 5 years of using this, I only had one year it made a mess. That was the year I tried to find this product from ULINE. STUPID IDEA…..it looked the same but it was thinner, Well, I put it on in Brunswick GA and 6 months later it had fused to the varnish. Lucky it was just the hand rails. I had to use carbide scrapers and remove all. tape and varnish. SO, I only buy this from National Marine Suppliers now. You know they would not sell poor products to the mega yachts, so I trust them.
I have put this on in Puerto Rico for what was to be a 4 month break, but life and Covid happened and we did not return for 18 months. It pulled right off with no issue. Most times I leave this tape on from May to Dec in the tropics. I have used it in Brunswick GA, Stuart Fl,Fajardo, PR, and now Antigua. I think it is fantastic and a great way to keep the UV off the varnish.
A few Photos from May 2025 Antigua
Caprail tape 12″ being used over the ports!Narrow tape 6″ used over the handrailsIt is crazy, but I tape all the hatches to keep the UV outAll finished, and I am thrilledThe gunwales are the hardest because of needing to cut around each stanchion and shroud.
Dear Friends help…
Steve and Maria with Lil Island Spirit next to their MEGA Yacht 485 Savannah Sky. Thank you!!!
The wonderful asset to our Island Packet Yacht Owners Association is that everyone is so helpful and kind to each other. Anywhere you cruise you will bump into other IPY owners because there are 2,500 of us and WE ARE OUT CRUISING! Thanks to Steve and Maria of 485 Savannah Sky for sending us these photos of the current condition of our boat, Dec 2025. We will be there soon!
I have just completed my 23rd Island Packet Yacht Owners’ Association Calendar. This edition is another international global edition showing how our IPYOA fleet is worldwide. Plus our owners really sail the world. The $5.00 profit per calendar is applied to offset the ongoing costs of the www.IPYOA.com web server, which hosts 18,500+ photos of IP yacht modifications by owners. This web server went live in 1998 and has been supporting the fleet for 27+ years at $50/month! That is 324 months this web server has been live which has costs me $16,200, or $600 per year plus! So, I make this calendar every year and I make about $500 from selling about 100 calendars a year. This $500 is applied towards the $600+ costs. That is obviously not the total cost of the web server, there are additional software subscriptions installed to help run the site. Its always entertaining how people think I am making a living off the IPYOA, when in actuality I spend over $2,000 a year on supporting the IP fleet. Enjoy this 23rd edition.
2026 IPYOA Cover1 JAN 420 MACARENA anchored French Polynesia2 FEB 35 ISLAND SPIRIT sailing for SXM under full moon3 MAR 485 AESTAS sailing Galveston Bay TX4 APR 420 TRANCE Bras dOr Lake, Cape Breton Island5 MAY 440 BLUE BEAR sailing Aalsmeer The Netherlands6 JUN SP CRUISER KOTI Isl of Evia, village of Panagia, Greece7 JUL 38 STARGAZER anchored off Ellis Isl NYC8 AUG 380 TOUCHÉ off the Statue of Liberty9 SEP 349 KOKO anchored Worton Creek Chesapeake Bay10 OCT 350 SIRENA off Cabo Samana Dominican Republic11 NOV 40 SHAMBALA anchored Alligator River NC
Our little 35-footer has been stored in Jolly Harbor, Antigua, for six months. From May 2 to December 2, she was hauled, stripped down to bare poles, and strapped down to a concrete pad resting on welded-together jack stands! This is hurricane storage in Jolly Harbor, and it is not cheap. But after making three runs from Annapolis, Maryland, to the Caribbean Sea, we felt it was time to leave the boat down here and enjoy time at home off the boat.
Dec 2, we checked out our Girl…
Launch Day
Always exciting to see your 20,000 lb boat be picked up with a massive marine travel lift and driven across the land to the travel lift well at the fuel dock. Jolly Harbor Marina is a very skilled team and their goal is to make your time here easy and enjoyable, They are focused on customer service and it really shows. WE LOVE this place. They are the best of the best, hands down!
The skilled travel life operator runs all with a wireless remote
We Rented a Condo!
This has been the best situation for launching and preparing a yacht, a condo with a dock. Yes, this is what we found in Jolly Harbor where there are many many condos here and we found one in the North Finger with a nice 40 foot solid dock with cleats. The cleats are rare we have seen, so this was lucky. We booked this for a week and then extended it 3 more days because we loved it. After ten days of work, we had the boat rigged and ready for us to move aboard and anchor out.
Our boat docked at the rented condo, yes yes yesJob one at daybreak, hoist sails in calm no windThis may be the LAST time I take off this stack pack and main sail, so much work to rehoist this.After many days of work, the boat is rigged up, dinghy, outboard, sails, running rigging, starlink, etc
Anchored out for the next 6 months!
Departing the dream condo air conditioned condo, we moved out to Jolly Harbor and dropped anchor where we have anchored ten times before. Now it was time to clean up the cabins and bunks and organize the yacht. You would think this would be easy, but it is crazy how much stuff we have aboard, so we have begun to load up bags of gear and stuff to give away. And we did.
Sunset shadows on the hull, always a fun shot
Of course we fixed some systems
Every yacht has systems that need to be upgraded or worse yet, repaired when they stop working. When we put this boat away 6 months ago, every system was working fine, but now, we had to address three systems. 1 the shower sump pump failed. 2 the propane solenoid was rusted and looking old. 3 the sewer pump was intermittent so lets install a new one. I was able to do all three of these systems while still at the condo dock, so that was great.
New macerator sewer pumpNew propane solenoidNew bilge shower sump pump
Lucky for us, we had all these spare parts onboard and we need to buy nothing. We just needed to tear out the old non working gear and install the spare part. We have torn this boat apart fully 4 times so we know the systems and we have the tools to fix nearly anything that may break. Lets hope this is the end of this for this season.
Paradise Reached: Deep Bay and the Beach
One of our favorite places is the beach of Deep Bay, Antigua. Yes, there are jet skis here and yes the large cats bring over cruise ship quest, but it is still a dream beach location. By 3 in the afternoon, everyone is gone and you get the bay and beach to yourself. Nice.
Deep Bay Beach off our bow.
Neso Tent on the beach
Boat buddies, Mike and Jenn of sv HAPPY 420 introduced us to these beach shade tents. This was the second time we tried it and they are really cool. You fill the corner bags with sand and then pull and stretch the shock cord as tight as you can. Then you push two pole up under the fabric and you have a tent. We like to place the poles in opposite corners as then the fabric takes the wind better than a standard lean-to set up. This was fun.
Radeen loves the beachLocals ride by on their Uber 🙂Neso Tent with pole in opposite cornersOur “car” the AB dinghy and our boat at anchor, Deep Bay Antigua
Thanks for sailing along
We are trying to bring back the blog, as our Facebook page has taken over top billing. But with decades of blogging here, we want to keep this going as a record for us as well. Thank you for sailing along. Please ALSO like and follow us on our PUBLIC sailing Facebook page here, that is always current content.
We use the Garmin Inreach, and whenever the boat moves, we turn tracking on making a very cool archive map of our travels. For fun, click the VIEW ALL and then zoom back or zoom into areas like the USVI and BVI and you will see our tracks. Very interesting.
This is the 22nd year of my sailing calendar. I create this for the Island Packet Yacht Owners’ Association, IPYOA.com that I created many years ago. Our IPY fleet of owners is very connected and is worldwide with thousands of owners sharing and supporting each other. These photos have been submitted by owners and I then take them and integrate them into my custom printable frame with text and captions. Here are the images, enjoy this 22nd edition!
The 22nd IPYOA Sailing Calendar
The COVER of the 22nd IPYOA CalendarJan 2025Feb 2025Mar 2025April 2025May 2025June 2025July 2025Aug 2025Sept 2025Oct 2025Nov 2025Dec 2025
We were hosted on Salty Abandon Podcast the other night as we talked about the routes into the Bahamas. There are two sections of the Bahamas that most people will sail to. One: and the easiest is the Abacos, the northern section. Two: the Exumas are more challenging to sail to and are the southern islands. Yes in the middle are the Berry Islands and some will make this area be their exploration. For us, we have made over 10 trips into the Bahamas and we prefer the Exumas and the far out islands like Cat, Conception, Rum, Long Island and Eleuthera.
Looking at the big picture below, you will see route #1 east into the Abacos and then you can see route #2 heading down into the Exumas. We have done both many times. The two pages I published discuss and show each of these routes in details.
Hayden & Radeen in Stuart Fl ready to sail to Caribbean Sea season #24
We plan to add some catch-up blogging posts now that our season #24 has ended. We sailed from Georgia to Florida to the Bahamas to the Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico to USVI to St. Martin and then finally onto Antigua. We spent Thanksgiving and Christmas in Stuart Florida then moved down to Biscayne Bay and stagged there for the Bahamas.
Our Island Packet 35 ready to sail south
This year’s sailing was incredible because the winter had many strong cold fronts that came off the USA East Coast and these strong fronts pulled the tradewinds north or south making it a great sail to sail EAST! The run from Florida to the Caribbean Sea is 1,200 NM on a course of 120m. With the normal headwinds of 090m this places the winds 30 degrees off your port bow as you push southeast for a month!
So, with these fronts, we ended up sailing 9 legs from Miami to Antigua and we sailed 90% of all of these. We had so many north winds that we sailed from Puerto Rico past the USVI and directly out to St. Martin. Then two weeks there, we turned around and sailed back to USVI on yet another north wind. Then two weeks later we sailed back to St. Martin. This is unheard of, but we enjoyed this all and will always sail east on any north winds the Caribbean Sea gives!
You hopefully are following us along on our public Facebook page for svIslandSpirit, that blog has been easier faster, and more current for posting. We have been using that page as our newer blogging platform for years. Yet, this platform has all our 13+ years of blogging, and tracking maps, so we need to resume this and update this as we have before. Thank you for checking in, I will try to post a summary of the legs we sailed to reach Antigua.
Here is a map overview of this season #24. Look at this run, we are very proud of our 5th Caribbean Season. We have stored the boat in Antigua and we hope to keep it based in the Caribbean Sea for a year or two. We will see….
Season #24 GA to Antigua, our 5th Caribbean Season
Interactive Tracking Map
If you look into this archive map you can zoom into and click on a point to see the date and time for that location. I use these archive maps to help me review times and distances. See this link
This is my 21st year of creating the Island Packet Yacht Owners’ Association Calendar. This year’s edition is more global than ever, with fleet members sending in photos from as far away as Cape Horn, Alaska, Mexico, and the Netherlands! Island Packet Yacht Owners really get out and go sailing. It is always amazing where we see our fleet sailing too. Take a look at these photos and you will agree, that the IPYOA is global!
2024 IPYOA Calendar Cover, Jesse Shumaker and Mike Parsons Connie Hamilton ParsonsRodd and Shelly Benfield 379 Tasi at Isla Carmen, Sea of Cortez, MXHayden Cochran Warderick Wells, Bahamas, Paradise 350 Traveller, 380 Painkiller, 35 Island SpiritSuzy Suzanne Hurwitz 37 Cay Paraiso Water Cay, JumentosMarlene Adam Reasoner 420 Trance Sailing Wing on WingJonell Bowman and William Bowman 350 Kharis on Port Clyde mooring, MaineJim Martin IP44 Alisoné rounding Heron Neck Light, MaineKevin Hornback 420 Catharpin Blue, Sailing Glacier Bay AkJudith L. Jacobsen 380 Touché in Fiordo Falcon, PatagoniaJesse Shumaker 440 Vita Beata View of the boat at mooring from hike on Jones Island in the San Juan IslandsCarla and Jeff Hale 485 Latitude, Pot of Gold at the end of the Rainbow in AntiguaJohn Bartges Lisa Speer Bartges 445 No Wahalla between the Pitons in St Lucia.Richard Hage 440 Big Bear and 27 Carpe Diem Big and Small in Leiden, Netherlands
Thank you everyone for looking at and enjoying our sailing adventures! This has been a lifetime passion of ours. Radeen and I appreciate you sailing along. Please add a comment as they are emailed to us when you comment. Thank you!
This was our 9th season in the Bahamas after spending the past 4 winters in the Caribbean. So, this was a review tour of the best places. The best part of the Exuams is between Shroud Cay and Rudder Cay. We focused on these places. Here was the planned route inbound, A direct run from Miami to No Name Harbor….No need to stop at Binini when the wx window is open. Run east as far as you can reach.
This is a short 20-hour run from Miami to Great Harbor in the Berrrys
After checking in, we powered on east to Highbourne Cay, then south to Staniel Cay, and onto Black Point as well. After Black Point, we pushed down to Rudder Cay and swam the Piano. From there we turned around and sailed back to Black Point, Staniel then Compass and Cambridge, and Warderick Wells and Shroud. Here are the best photos of the past month. Enjoy.
Photo Essay of Sailing the Exuamas 2023 One month…
Blue Blue Blue with a storm coming off Shroud CayOur pet nurse shark that loved the shade of our boat off Staniel CayThe anchor chain in 20 feet of waterRadeen and the blue water of Black PointSwimming with Eagle Rays at Warderick WellsThe beauty of Warderick Wells is breath takingLazy sailing in 10-12 knots on the beamBuddy boat 35 JUST DUCKY and us sailed for Black PointWarderick Wells never gets oldSailing our fav, the Code Zero in 12 knotsThe best sailing photo ever, 35 Just Ducky and 35 Island SpiritIsland Spirit with all three sails outBahamas blueDown with the Q and up with the Bahamas flagRadeen taking in the blue water of the banksWalking Staniel Cay
This was a very short Bahamas season for us, only a month. We usually are over here in Jan, Feb, Mar, and April, then we sail back to the coast May 1. This season we did not sail over until the second week of March! Still, it was well worth the effort and time, and the push east to reach the 200 nm it takes to reach the Exuma Chain of Islands. No place has better watercolor and better beaches. Hands down, the Bahamas are a dream.
Heading North
We are sailing north to Freeport Bahamas where we will dock for one week at OCEAN REEF CLUB April 16-23. Then after that, we will sail for the Florida coast. This season we will store the boat May 15-Nov15 at Brunswick Landing so we can get an early start at the Caribbean. We want to spend Christmas in the USVI. One more Caribbean Season for us. That is the plan.
We are excited to share with you our recent sailing adventure from No Name Harbor near Miami to Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands.
The Planned 130 nm route direct to the Berrys.
We have a fleet of five boats!
We departed from No Name Harbor on March 7, 2023, at 7 a.m. We were eager to set sail on this exciting journey with IP 35 Just Ducky, IP 350 Traveller, IP 370 Sea Lyon and Fleming 55 Our Eden with former IP380 & 440 owners aboard. Our destination was Great Harbor Cay, in the Berrys, a group of islands in the northwestern Bahamas. We charted a course via North Rock, which is located north of Bimini. After passing North Rock at 2:45 a.m., we prepared ourselves for a night of motor-sailing on the Bahamas Banks which are only 10 feet deep.
Cape Florida Lighthouse as we head out to sea.
Sunset brought Full Moon Rise!
As the sun began to set, we eagerly awaited the rise of the full moon on the Bahamas Banks. Finally, at 7 pm, we were greeted with a spectacular view of the full moon as it rose above the horizon to the east. The moon’s radiant glow illuminated the surrounding shallow waters and gave us an amazing view of the white sandy bottom. It provided us with awe-inspiring sights that we’ll never forget. The sound of the waves against the hull and the gentle rocking of the boat put us at ease as we motor-sailed through the night.
Sunset as we push east on the very calm Bahama BanksFull Moon RIse at 7 pm, perfect for an all-night run, no reason to stop and anchor in this calm.
Digital Radar Approach at Night
At 3 am, we navigated the approach to the island and dropped anchor at last, feeling a sense of accomplishment and excitement for what lay ahead. The Berrys are known for their pristine beaches, crystal clear waters, and abundant marine life, and we couldn’t wait to explore Great Harbor Cay from the marina of the same name, renowned for its friendly staff and fun activities.
Navigating at night under digital radar and chartplotter as we arrive at 3 am!
The Bahamas Waters are the BEST
In conclusion, our sailing journey to the Berrys was an incredible experience that we’ll always cherish. It was the calmest Gulf Stream Crossing we have ever experienced. From the stunning full moon rising on the Bahamas banks to the exhilaration of motor-sailing through the night, this adventure was one for the books. If you ever have the chance to sail in this beautiful part of the world, don’t hesitate – you won’t be disappointed!
Radeen taking in the beautiful Bahama Banks Blues as we push eastDown with the Q flag and up with the Bahamas Flag, welcome to the Bahamas, our 9th season here!
Thank you for reading our blog, yes, we are a bit behind and trying to catch up. We are also posting nearly in real time on our public Facebook PAGE. Please like and follow our page there, you do not need to have a Facebook account. Thank you all. PS: Messages and comments are sent directly to our email. We will see them immediately.
