Goin' home

After the lonely beaches of Anguilla, we've come to the last stop of our Caribbean circuit. Very touristy, with hundreds of charter boats. We manage to squeeze into anchorages, albeit sometimes a bit awkwardly. The beaches are fine, the sailing excellent.



The first items on a list of things to do before we leave for the Azores are being tackled. It isn't a very long list, we've been doing this for a while now. Just a few more days of cruising, relaxing and sampling the local cooking and we'll be heading across the big pond again.

The crew has smoothly filled up and we'll be crossing with the five of us. We're preparing for the extra people on board. The last few bouts of snorkeling and some more turtles, rays, lobsters and barracuda. One evening snorkel with my dive lights we had an eagle ray whizzing by at very close range.



The BVI is a very nice cruising ground, something to come back to. So many bays to be explored, so many islands. They'll have to wait for us to come back one day, perhaps chartering out of Road Town or a nearby place.

So we head for Village Cay Marina, where we'll pick up our crew and get supplies, and seek that weather window that sets us off across to yet another string of beautiful islands, much closer to home.

Finding crew is fun

At a party I threw last Saturday, I announced the trip and got a lot of crew in return. I had displayed the trip dates and some graphic representations of the route and invited people to put their names down. I was surprised to get as many interested folk to sail along for a short (1 week) or longer (up to 3 months!) period. Of course, there is still a lot of explaining, checking and organizing to do, but getting this kind of encouragement is fantastic.

For those interested in the exact route, these are the legs:

Ostend to Brittany: July 3rd to 15th 2010
Brittany to Porto: July 18th to August 1st 2010
Porto to Faro: August 15th to 31st 2010
Faro to Madeira: September 1st to 9th 2010
Madeira to Tenerife (Canaries): October 1st to 7th 2010
Tenerife to Boavista (Cape Verde): October 26th to November 1st 2010
Boavista to Grenada: December 5th to 28th 2010 (First crossing)
Then we island-hop along the Caribbean
Martinique: January 15th 2011
Dominica: January 29th 2011
Guadeloupe: February 6th 2011
Antigua: February 19th 2011
St Kitts: March 5th 2011
Anguilla: March 26th 2011
Tortola to Faial: April 21st 2011 (Second crossing)
Visiting Azores: May 8th to May 29th 2011
Faial to Scilly's: May 30th to June 5th 2011
Scilly's to Boulogne: June 24th to 29th 2011
Boulogne to Ostend: June 30th to July second 2011

I feel I've taken enough time to be able to reach every stop along the way and still be able to organize crew for the longer legs. Starting days are generally in a weekend, so relatives and friends joining us along the way, can arrange flights and so on.

I'm not entirely certain if the conditions for the second crossing will turn out to be good enough, but there is some spare time for that trip. I've read several pages of advice, and none are conclusive as to when to start and which route to take. There is the Azores High to contend with, so taking plenty of fuel seems paramount for this leg.

At the moment, I'm very pleased with all the excellent feedback I've gotten.