Back in the USA

We are back in the US getting ready for the summer.  It is odd that we are ending our season when everyone in the US is just getting started.  That's the difference with us cruising in the winter and avoiding the summer weather in the islands, including hurricanes.  The reason we leaving the boat in Trinidad again is that it is out of the hurricane zone.  It's been over 100 years since a hurricane hit that far south, or so I am told.  She is up on land and a couple of workers will be taking care of some projects and looking after her while we are away.

 We had a great season even with the usual problems.  We visited seven countries, several are single islands and several others are groups of islands where we visited more than one of them.  We did not travel as many miles as we had in previous years.  We traveled 829 nautical miles or 953 statute miles.  Nautical miles are a little longer that statute miles which causes the difference.

We had some days of great sailing, a few that made us wonder why we are doing this.  We saw many beautiful sunsets, several "green flashes" (yes, they exist, Google it), many rainbows, several double rainbows, and any number of sunrises if we were up early enough or doing a passage.  We had many days with high winds, very few days with light winds.  Since arriving in the Caribbean we have changed our attitude of what constitutes too windy to sail.  Previously 20 knots was our upper limit.  In the islands 20 knots is the norm so we did a lot of sailing with winds of 20-25 knots.  We met a lot of other cruisers and ran into a number we had met previously.  There is a large cruising community out there and it doesn't take much to find common interests when meeting new people.

We are back in the States, having arrived in Boston.  We bought several used sails from another Pearson 424 owner and picked them up in Newport RI.  From there we drove down to Richmond VA to visit Cori's brother and then drove down to North Carolina and are staying with friends just up the road from our old marina home.  We have a storage unit in the area and will be storing the sails there until we return to the States with the boat.  From there we will be flying to Denver to visit Cori's other brother and then to Spearfish SD for the summer.  I have plans for several trips back to Minnesota to visit family and friends also.

What's next?  We are constantly making plans for the next season and revising them.  At this time our plan is to return to the boat in October or November, visit a number of the islands as we work our way North to the Virgin Islands.  From there we plan to make the move to the Bahamas and then back to the US.  We think we will be back in the States this time next year.  At that point we will go back to cruising up and down the east coast and spending the winters in the Bahamas.  Don't hold us to that plan since all plans are subject to change.  As we cruisers say "plans are written in sand at low tide."

We hope you have enjoyed following our adventure and will continue in the future.