Deciding to Go

[This was originally intended to be published back in October but got overlooked, so here it is.]

We have decided to take Juno on another adventure to warmer climes for the winter of 2021-2022. Getting ready covers a large swath of activities. They range from boat maintenance or upgrades to provisioning and getting everything on board. But first things first, we had to decide to go and where we wanted to go.  After Harry decided to retire from Akamai in June we were pretty sure that were ready for another sailing trip.  We thought we would do more general traveling but COVID has put a big crimp in those sorts of plans.  Our first trip was in the winter of 2019 where we spent most of our time in the Bahamas aboard Juno.  There are 700 hundred of islands and in four months we only visited about 40. That was a lot, but clearly there are a lot more to experience.  Many of those we did not see are more remote and we would need more time for them. So, a return trip to the Bahamas seemed like a good idea.  On the other hand there are many beautiful islands south of the Bahamas in the Caribbean.  Since we are never sure if there will be another trip like this, we started focusing on the Caribbean with the hope that we would get another chance to see more of the Bahamas in some future trip.

The Caribbean is a slightly different beast. First of all getting there is a lot more work. The options we considered were first to join a group of other sailors leaving from Norfolk VA in early November and sail Armada style, non-stop for 10 days to Antigua.  The second island hop through the Bahamas, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico to get south.  While thinking through the first option we knew that we had managed pretty well  as just the two of us on our Bahamas trip, not needing more than a couple of 3-day / 2-night passages.  On these we shared “watches” of two to four hours during the night, then rested during the day. However,  for a ten day offshore passage we decided that we would need to enlist the help of a third crew member to lighten the watch load and also provide a buffer in the case that one of us got sick or injured.  We started making a list of potential crews and felt we had some good candidates.

The “island hopping” option, or the “Thorny Path” as it is also known, was definitely worth considering. We  could do it on our own and we could also see many islands that we do want to see some day.  The challenge is related to the name “Thorny Path”. It gets this name because the prevailing winds in the southern Bahamas are from the South East, just the direction we are trying to go, or as sailors call it, going upwind.  In a sailboat that doesn’t work too well as you have the zig-zag back and forth, about 45 degrees away from the wind. Now instead of going six mph towards your destination you are only making a little over four mph.  On top of that, the waves are coming much more towards you so the boat has to plow through these. The last complication is that many of the sea currents that you encounter on the Thorny Path are also against you. While you can’t do anything about the currents, to get over the prevailing winds coming at you, you can wait for fronts to pass that cause the wind to move to more favorable directions for a few days.  All of this makes for a much longer passage to get to Caribbean.

So while we were mulling the above over in our minds, trying to decide which is the better alternative, there was that pesky thing the world is all too familiar with - Covid - happening.  Each island, or small island group, in the Caribbean is either its own country or part of another European country.  As such, each has its own Covid protocols. Generally though it means going through the “Test-Get results-Request Permission-Travel (hopefully)-Check In - Retest and/or quarantine” routine. This isn’t insurmountable, and lots of people are in the Caribbean managing just fine, but it started us reconsidering the Bahamas. The Bahamas too has added back more restrictions now requiring testing when moving between Bahamian island groups but it still seems much easier than trying to travel between different countries in the Caribbean.

The final factor was the wonderful news that our daughter and her husband were expecting their first child, and our first grandchild, in November. Now thinking about the more complicated, and somewhat more expensive travel options to return home for a visit or two (or three) really started to tip the scale in favor of The Bahamas.  So, sometime this summer we dropped the Caribbean and started focusing our planning on The Bahamas and some time in the Florida Keys.

The image below shows the 10 day, non-stop passage from Norfolk to Antigua in red. The Thorny Path is in yellow with the opposing prevailing trade winds indicated by the green arrow. The first leg of the red path takes advantage of more westerly prevailing winds further north.