Planning a Trip South

[Pa La O La]

Good day to all,
Some mind picking if I might. We plan to leave the Keys and head out for the Bahamas after hurricane season this coming fall. We are looking at heading south and being in the vicinity of the Dominican Republic to the British Virgin Islands by the January 2011 time frame. We are leaning toward spending the 2011 hurricane season south of 15 degrees North Lat. What I am looking for is a good idea for charts and Cruising Guides to serve us well in the 15 to 10 degrees -Upper South America Region. I want to start now to acquire the charts I’ll need, this way we can do our preplanning with charts and guides in hand. We want to do several plans so we can be as flexible as possible. We don’t have the first thought that one plan will work. We work off the two weather plan.1) whether we want to and 2) weather permitting. The worst we have seen it is when we have been pushed by schedules so now that we are just cruising we go with general ideas and fallow the ones that we seem to enjoy. We quite writing in stone. Your thoughts would be welcome.

Thanks
Gary

[osirissail]

Charts and guide books are how it is normally done. There are NOAA (government) charts for most of all the islands all the way down and around the Caribbean Basin. These tend to be rather ancient and not very accurate so you supplement with private charts like the Explorer Charts; WaveyLine Charts; CYC charts; Imray Charts, and lots of guide books with sketch charts of the various island bays and harbors. There are so many people who are doing the area and who have done the area that the coverage is quite good so there is a broad selection of charts and guide books.