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.
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….
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
https://new.spotwalla.com/trip/9d17-11d2708e-b11b/view
Being able to actually “sail” for extended times is such a blessing.
May God speed Island Spirit into the future.
As always it’s great to follow along. You had fantastic sailing weather! Hope you’re enjoying being home for awhile!
This log you share with us is our way of sailing right along with you. And I think of it, too, as an historical record you’ll be able to refer to forever. Win. Win.