2007 Cruising Schedule and New Boat Projects

Sunday, March 4, 2007

026-7.380 N
080-7.200 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!
Yesterday I received e-mail from someone who reads my logs on 7knots.com and was wondering if we had just stopped cruising as he hadn't seen any reports since we moved the boat to Ft. Lauderdale. I guess I need to provide an update!

Yes, we're headed out cruising this year. We pushed the schedule back because it can be cold in the Bahamas in Jan/Feb. Even when we were in the NW Caribbean (Belize, Guatemala, Honduras) we would have cold fronts that pushed through on a regular basis which made it unpleasant. The Bahamas are a lot further north and it can definitely get chilly with strong winds. By March things are getting much nicer. Anyhow, we expect to be underway soon.

This year we plan to head to the Turks and Caicos islands, which are at the far end of the Bahamas. We'll depart from Ft. Lauderdale (which is about 25 miles N of Miama) and head towards Bimini. From there we'll work our way to Nassua, down through the Exuma islands, then through the Far islands and 600 miles later we'll end up in the Turks and Caicos. Then we'll reverse our course and take a different route back through the Bahamas and eventually we'll end back up in the Chesapeake for hurricane season.


We arrived in Ft. Lauderdale about a week ago and we've been very busy getting the boat ready to leave. As usual we had lots of projects to do and new equipment to install. Probably the biggest change involved swapping the 12V DC watermaker for a 120V AC watermaker. The old watermaker produced 6-7 gallons/hr (GPH) whereas the new one will produce 25 GPH. This is great as we'll be able to wash the boat and dive gear and be able to take real showers! Of course swapping these two wasn't exactly simple and required major reworking of the feeds and outputs for both the plumbing and electrical systems. On a boat, this is major work.

I also switched most of our interior and running lights to LED based systems. They draw 1/10th of the power compared to incandescent bulbs. We also have a new Rocna anchor, which is supposed to have incredible holding and sets quickly. This will be important in the Bahamas where you can have very strong tidal currents. I installed an external WIFI antenna and router which should greatly improve the distance that we can obtain Internet. After an incredibly long battle with Solara AG (a German manufacturer), I finally got my solar panels replaced under warranty. Of course the new ones have slightly different hole patterns which required filling and painting the hard dodger where they were mounted. Frequent rain showers have made this problematic. I also got a fish finder for the dinghy to help figure out what the bottom looks like for diving. Until now we've motored along, stopped and I've stuck my head to see what the bottom looks like. Hopefully this will make finding dive sites a lot easier.

Another cool thing that we added was a soda maker by Soda Club. It carbonates the water and they have an amazing selection of flavors which are quite good. We normally carry a lot of soda with us because we often can't find diet soda or its at exhorbitant prices. This is a huge weight and space saver for us and the cost per liter is below the cost of soda in the US.

One the unexpected work side of things, we just found out that the air conditioning compressor needs to be replaced. While we don't use it while cruising, you sure need it when you're in a marina with no air moving. The new compressor should be here on Tuesday, so once that's done, we should be ready to leave. That's going to be a $3K job when all is done and said. Oh well, it's a boat!

Once all of our jobs are complete we have to wait for a good weather window to leave. When you cross the Gulf Stream you don't want to have any N component to the wind as the wind blowing against the S bound Gulf Stream can make for a very uncomfortable ride. We've had SW winds for the past several days, but we're stuck here waiting for parts and the long range forecasts are showing N winds for the next week...Arghhh!!!

Anyhow, we're fine and are enjoying Ft. Lauderdale. This is definitely the land of the pretty people. We're right off of Los Olas Blvd, which is THE street in Ft. Lauderdale. The number of exotic cars around here is amazing. There are lots of Ferraris and Lambroginis and Porches are a dime a dozen. BMWs don't even get noticed. And of course all of them are driven by perfectly sculpted individuals talking on their cell phones. Believe me, we're way out of our league in our rental PT Cruiser! The people watching is definitely fun, but you wonder how real these people are.

I'll keep you updated on our progress. We hope that you're all doing well.

-- Geoff & Sue

P.S. If you're on Skype, please let us know your username. Mine is GeoffSchultz.

Log ID: 938