Category: Caribbean Sea

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.
  • info@nationalmarine.com
  • +1-954-764-097
  • George Foley <gfoley@nationalmarine.com>

What to ORDER?

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.

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

Dear Friends help…

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.

https://www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/ipyoa

The 23rd IPYOA Calendar Pages

You 

You can ORDER a Calendar HERE:

https://www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/ipyoa

Thank you

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

https://www.facebook.com/svIslandSpirit

Our Travel MAP, Follow here

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.

https://share.garmin.com/IslandSpirit

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

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.

See the ABACOS ROUTE page here
https://svislandspirit.com/bahamas-abacos-route/

See the EXUMAS ROUTE page here
https://svislandspirit.com/bahamas-exuma-route/

You can also watch the video where we present and talk about these routes. Minutes 1-35 minutes is the ABACOS
Minutes 35 onward is about the EXUMAS

The Video is here….thanks to Tinsley!

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!

You can order a calendar here:
https://www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/ipyoa

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!

You can order a calendar here:
https://www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/ipyoa

 

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.

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…

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.

Remember…. https://www.facebook.com/svIslandSpirit/
live updates there…..

This is my 20th year of creating the Island Packet Yacht Owners Association calendar. I create this to make $5.00 profit off each sale. The profits go to offset the $1,000+ cost of hosting the website for IPYOA.com where we have nearly 20,000 digital photos uploaded by IP owners. My calendar sales are usually 75-100 calendars total, netting me $350-$500 per year. So, you can see that I am living off this income and going sailing…ha ha ha! NOT. Please take a look at these fantastic photos. Enjoy…

If you would like to buy one, please see

https://www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/IPYOA

If you want a sailing calendar, then please place your orders here.. Three days of work, 47 photos submitted, plus the 10,000+ I have taken, and here is my 20th edition. Truly a labor of love for IPs.

https://www.createphotocalendars.com/Shop/IPYOA

 

Working since June 3, we have spent the summer repairing systems and upgrading failed systems. We have mostly been posting the progress onto our PUBLIC Facebook Page, so please LIKE and FOLLOW us there. You do not need Facebook to read a public web page! Here is the direct link, it is fun to scroll back and see the work.

https://www.facebook.com/svIslandSpirit

Here is the summary of the work completed. This has been a very big list of jobs. We will now begin our shake down and testing of all upgraded systems. We plan to make our 20th Intracoastal waterway run heading for Stuart Florida for Thanksgiving. From there we plan to push out into the Exuams and out to the USVI asap. We want to spend Christmas back in the Caribbean Sea. It is just far too nice, and we love sailing the Tradewinds. Getting there, well that is not fun. 1,200 nm on a course of 120m with a 090 wind! Or sail out to Bermuda and hang a right. For us, it will be a third trip down the “thorny path!”