So, we have the
boat and it will be ready to move in the next couple of months. The
sale of my business will finance the rest of the
refit. The boat's in the
SF Bay and we live now about 200 miles south of there. No job ties and minimal
family ties but plenty of friends.My wife has heavy
weather experience doing Search &
Rescue with the USCG, I have a lot of
small boat racing experience but most of my ocean experience has been at 30kts on a Nacra cat jumping swells and I haven't been out of the sight of land in spite of all my
race winning. She has good nav skills and I can read a
compass and a
GPS, that's it. Neither of us has spent appreciable time on cruising boats except for when we lived aboard our 38'
trimaran that we planned to
cruise but that plan sunk when my son had to have a tracheostomy at 2 yrs old. He is well now. Our plan for now is to
cruise the bay for a month to shake down the
boat and ourselves and make sure everything is safe and secure. We definitely want to
head south where it's warmer, probably to Ventura or Oxnard to earn some cruising
money and hone our cruising skills in the Channel Islands and at the same time sell off the last of our non boatable possessions that have value and
head to the
Sea Of Cortez in the fall. My wife is a talented and published writer and we'll have enough
money to not have to worry for that season just from selling off a couple of cars and an RV. By the end of
winter she should have been able to sell a book (she's extremely talented at sending out query letters to the right publishers to get paying gigs) and if not we'll head back up to Ventura so I can
work through
hurricane season. By then we'll be able to make a bigger trip, both financially and skill-wise. So after
hurricane season we should be ready for a bigger trip and we see 2 ways to go. Down to
Panama, through the
canal and pick our way across the
Gulf of Mexico and into the
Caribbean and the
Bahamas. The advantage there is that for the next hurricane season we could cruise the
east coast to teach our 15 year old all the US
History he'll ever need and then cross the Atlantic and see the
Med without having to either take our chances with Pirate Alley or have to go all the way around
South Africa and across to
South America to get to the
Med. Instead, we could plan to head out across the
South Pacific if we have plenty of money. So which way to turn at around the tip of
Baja? Carib & Med first or
South Pacific first?
Assuming for now that we can afford either, which way and why one way over the other?
Re: Where should we go?
Linear Mode
Recent Discussions