So I had a trip to
Newfoundland and Labrador mostly planned but ended up doing more or less a complete systems
refit of my
boat this summer that took (surprise!!) a lot longer and a lot more
money than I thought. I ended up going back to
work for the summer but still am ending up with not a whole lot of
money.
Looks like I'll have about $2k in expendable money with another $5k in a reserve I'd really like to not touch. I spend almost all my time on
anchor (or on the occasional borrowed mooring).
The
boat is in Salem, MA now, going in the
water on Sept 8th (hopefully). I'd like to do at least a week of sea trials as basically everything (mast,
radio,
outboard mount, lights,
Aries vane,
windlass, chain, etc.) is new. So realistically could leave around Sept 15th or after.
Fully aware that this is
hurricane season.
I'm not sure what to do as I was planning on going north and doing
research about that. So now scrambling for plan B. I haven't sailed the boat since last September and I'd really like to get some use out of it this winter, if not for the whole winter.
Pondering wintering in
Florida, the Chesepeake and/or a Caribean trip. I'm a nurse, so I need to squeak out 6 months of
work between now and April. It would be very easy to find work in
Florida for the winter, less so other places but totally possible.
Some other restrictions:
1) I'd like to do the
Newfoundland trip next year. I'd like to leave the Boston area around June 1 or earlier and work my way up through
Nova Scotia slowly.
2) I'm not totally sure I can live on the boat and work my job (12 hour shifts, sometimes overnight, need to sleep at weird hours.) So I may need to rent a
mooring somewhere and live ashore. I've never tried it thus far.
3) If I was to work in Florida, not sure where I would go. Would need to have a hospital pretty close to the shore somewhere. Probably a city but hopefully one with reasonable (?) dockage or moorings?
4) Chesepeake area would be lovely but not sure how it would go over the winter with the boat, too cold to
liveaboard?
Lots of low key sailing experience in my life, but as far as cruising experience goes, mostly it was last summer, 3 months living on the boat, cruising around Narragansett Bay, up through the
canal and bringing the boat up to Danvers where it is now. Feel pretty good about the basics, have great ground tackle, but have yet to do overnight passages.
Singlehanding unless some miracle comes along in the meantime.
Any thoughts?
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