May Pre-Departure Update

As predicted our pre-departure preps have kept us very busy.  By the end of this week both Chelle & I will have tended to all our personal administrative tasks, allowing us to focus on the boat and the voyage.  Late this week we’ll also move back to the boat, close up the condo and prep the pickup truck for storage.  (We sold Michelle’s hot rod this week, so we are now down to one vehicle.  Yay.)

Windlass in Pieces

Boat preps continue.  We think we are appropriately stocked on provisions (or soon will be); the boat is definitely sitting lower in the water.  Spares are another story – if I go more than a day between Amazon orders they call me to ask what’s wrong – and I suspect that exercise will continue well after we depart.  Hopefully our mail-forwarding solution will work well enough to allow orders to catch up with us somewhere.

Windlass back to Ops-Normal

The dinghy is across the river at Tom’s shop in Cape Coral getting its annual physical and tune-up, but we should have the tender (“Casper”) back on board by the end of this week.  Rick tore apart the windlass today for its semi-annual maintenance – and somewhat surprisingly, after getting it all cleaned & lubed, managed to put it back together with no left over parts & smooth operation.  Once we complete the scheduled water maker maintenance this week – according to our Wheelhouse maintenance software – we’ll be up-to-date on everything and ready to sortie.  At least until the next thing breaks.

As for that next journey, here is the preliminary outline:

·         Depart FMY on or about May 9….will make some stops around Sanibel, Marco, Marathon, Key West….and then out to the Dry Tortugas for a few days; that takes us out to about May 20.

·         Head back east from there with stops around Key West, Marathon, Tavernier, Biscayne Bay, Lauderdale, and then Palm Beach; we plan to be hanging out in the PB area from late May to June 8/9, with a side (airplane) trip to STL in there.  That will also give an opportunity to have James Knight and his Yacht Tech gang tend to any major maintenance items that come up.

·         After that we’ll continue to head north from Palm Beach with stops in Fort Pierce & St. Augustine, taking us to mid-June.

·         Once we get past St. Augustine, we’ll likely only make one or two stops before Hilton Head (not sure where yet, likely will entail some overnight running, and we’ll want to time it for slack tide/current in most places); we plan to RZ with some good friends near Edisto Beach, SC (roughly the third week of June.)

We haven’t done much mission-planning beyond that, but will be generally heading towards the Chesapeake Bay for some cruising in that area.  Depending upon calendar and weather we’ll decide at that time whether to head further north before reversing course and heading back to Florida (roughly a November return.)

If that sounds like a pretty loose plan….it is, and that’s intentional.  No doubt weather windows and maintenance issues will intervene (at a minimum the main engine will be due for an oil change by the time we reach Palm Beach.)  Regardless, we can be tracked via the links provided on our website:  http://www.mv-ghostrider.com/locations.html.         

We’ll post more updates after we get underway next week.