26 Days and Counting

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

024-13.282 N
110-18.329 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

Yes, it's that time of year again when our ski season is rapidly dwindling away and our attention is shifting towards BlueJacket and our upcoming cruising season. Believe me, lots of prior attention attention has been applied, but at this point we realize that we've got less than a month before we'll be back on the boat. Wow, time at home sure has flown!

This year we have been quite lucky to have known several cruisers who were driving to Mexico from the US and were able to carry supplies for us in their vehicles. Believe me, finding supplies down there is at best very difficult, and if you can find what you're looking for, it's very expensive. The costs of carrying extra bags while flying is prohibitively expensive, so we're very thankful to those who carried our supplies. It will become much more difficult starting next year as we most likely won't have that option.

As you may recall, BlueJacket is sitting on the hard in a boat yard in La Paz, Mexico. On February 4th we'll be flying into Cabo San Jose and then take a 4 hour bus ride to La Paz. Once we're down there we'll start the major job of getting BlueJacket ready for our 1,800 mile trek to El Salvador. That will be slightly more complex than most years as I have the propeller pulled off as well as part of the engine. We also need to have a survey done on the boat for insurance purposes, put the boat back together, clean it and provision. That's a huge amount of work that we want to get done within a week and then, if weather permits, position ourselves for the 200 mile passage to the mainland.

The chart to the left shows our planned passage between La Paz and El Salvador. This is about 1800 miles and our goal is to get to our destination by mid-May as we'd like to do some inland travel and rainy season starts in June. We also want to take our time and explore the area as we move, so we need to get moving as quickly as possible. We're also going to face some challenges that we haven't faced before, such as the Pacific swell and crossing the Golfo de Tehuantepec which regularly has 40-60 kt winds for days at a time. I'm sure that you'll hear about both of these as we move...

While we were home I made a lot of changes to the web site. First off I completely replaced my old photo gallery with a new photo gallery. The new gallery provides much higher resolution images, works with mobile devices and provides a mapping feature which allows you to see view photos from a geographic area. You can also rate photos and if you create an account, you can comment on images. I'd appreciate any feedback that you can provide.

I also added lots of features and new charts to my Interactive Weather Map. The image to the right shows clusters of buoys which you can click on to see information directly from the buoy. I've also added animated radar and satellite images and greatly expanded the depth and breadth of the European coverage.

And last, but not least, I'm adding a new feature which will allow you to track us even more than you've been able to do in the past. This year my parents gave us a Spot satellite tracking device which provides, among other things, a method to track the position of the boat on 10 minute increments. At any time you'll be able to click on a link which will display our last known position. This device can also be used to send short text messages and SOS notifications. The map below shows a trip from our house to Sudbury, MA while I was testing it out.

Well, that's about it for now. The next time that you hear from us we should be working our butts off trying to get the boat ready. Hopefully we'll see some of you before departing, but if we don't, have a great winter!

-- Geoff & Sue

Log ID: 1512