Bruce Van Sant's book is A Gentleman's Guide to
Passage South which is available in most major
boat stores. The nickname for the book is Thornless Path South. It is sort of a "bible" for sailing from
Florida down to
Puerto Rico via the
Bahamas and the
Dominican Republic. The book is written for a small sailboat with minimal
engine motoring capability. - I call it the "worst case scenerio." The information is gathered over decades of traveling on that
route. The book does not deal with
current weather, obviously since is is many years old.
What the book contains is the strategy and chartlets for the possible interesting stopping places along the route. Also of most importance is that it discusses the typical weather patterns and weather strategy to use when heading south and east into the
Trade Winds. Also it contains
local information about major stopping points along the way. Kind of like a omnibus guide book. All of the information in the book is slanted towards the small sailboat without a
motor. So the routing techniques in the book are very useful for bigger boats who experience engine failure and must "revert back" to the
core sailing principles. Kind of like a "baseline" of information and tactics.
Van Sant also puts out a smaller version of the book that only contains the weather tactics and does not include the place and harbor guides. This might be a better choice for an experienced sailing cruiser. Heading east into the
Trade Winds and
current is not fun and knowing how to do it in the most painless fashion is quite useful.
I have a rather large motor-sailor yacht and can "bash" my way east if necessary, but the ride is not comfortable or enjoyable - so I meld in some of VanSant's techniques to lessen the bashing and minimizing the uncomfortable
parts. So you would thoroughly read the Thornless Path to get a base of information and then modify it for your own
boat and degree of comfort you want getting from
Florida to
Puerto Rico. If things start to quit, break or complicate a passage I want to have the basic knowledge of how to do it the basic old fashioned way.
**Warning** Chris Parker provides a weather source
service. He provides to you his interpretation of weather conditions along your projected routing. He does not and can not tell you when or where to go. Only the
Captain of the vessel can make the decisions of when to go and where to actually go. Chris Parker does NOT know when it is "safe and good" to go anywhere. Weather forecasting is an art form of trying to predict what Mother Nature is going to do in some future time and location. Nobody on this planet can tell you what the weather "will be." They can only tell you what the weather "might be" or "could be." It is up to you to decide if the weather forecasts make sense and the probabilities are acceptable to you. Basically there is a
legal and moral liability issue here. Do not leave harbor because somebody has told you the weather is "safe and good" to sail. Leave harbor when you think the available weather information looks reasonable and safe in your mind based on gathering information from many sources, not just one.
There are multiple weather sources available to the cruising sailor on the HF SSB
radio nets and fax
charts; from the
internet from NOAA in both chart form and text formats; and from just
learning how to read the sky and being aware of the seasonal
history of weather systems in your region of interest. All of the information Chris Parker puts out is available for free from sources I listed above. Chris does a great
service of distilling and organizing the available information for cruising sailors over specific areas of interest. You can also just listen in to his broadcasts for free and there will be plenty of other "members" requesting information about an area of your interest. Look up the
Caribbean Compass - Caribbean Yachting News Magazine website and download the
Caribbean Weather Nets page to get all the SSB times and frequencies for weather services/information.