Cruising Plans - 2010-2015?

Friday, April 23, 2010

041-38.760 N
071-13.080 W

Ahoy from the crew of the BlueJacket!

Man, it's been a long time since I wrote that line. I'm sure that many of you thought that we fell off the edge of the world or sank at the dock. Well, neither is true and you're about to start receiving fresh updates from us on our new cruising adventure. But, before I do that, I'll explain the lack of logs for the past season.

When you last heard from us we had just completed the Down East Circle Route which took us up the Hudson river, through the Erie and Oswego canals to Lake Ontario, down the St. Lawrence river to Prince Edward Island, through and down the coast of Nova Scotia and then down the east coast and back home to RI, where BlueJacket hadn't been for 10 years. That was 2008 and it was a cold and wet trip.

Then in the spring/summer of 2009 I was contacted by the founder of an Internet based marine company who wanted me to come on board as the Chief Technology Officer. I was quite happy being retired and sailing, so it took a lot of negotiation to convince me to come to work for them. However, I believed in the concept, so not only did I go to work for them, but I also invested. And to make matters worse, I decided that I would work purely for stock. To keep the story short, I'll simply say that after 4 months of intense effort on my part, that I decided that the CEO had no clue as how to run a company (it was his first) and that I could either keep working and not have a life and lose my investment or I could re-retire, get my life back and lose my investment! Guess which I chose? Luckily that was just at the start of ski season, so Sue & I had a great (albeit short) winter where we skied 3+ days a week.

Now fast forward to today: I've always dreamed about cruising the Great Lakes and I've wanted to get the boat to the Pacific. After a lot of research, I laid out a plan where we can do both. Basically we're going to sail from RI to NY and then take the Hudson river up to the Erie canals. Unlike our last trip, we're going to take our time and explore lots of the towns and area along the way. And unlike our last trip, I think that we're going to continue on the Erie canal down to Buffalo. From there we'll head through Lake Erie to Lake Huron and then to Lake Michigan, where we'll end up in Milwaukee, which is where my 88 year old parents live. They've never seen the boat, so this will provide a great opportunity for them to do that.

From Milwaukee we'll ship BlueJacket, via truck, to the west coast. Now I had planned on shipping her to the Sea or Cortez (Baja), but it seems that US trucks can't drive in Mexico and visa versa. No offense, but handing BlueJacket off to some unknown Mexican trucker someplace along the boarder just doesn't seem like a good idea. So I'll probably ship her to San Diego. Then next March I'll sail from San Diego to the tip of the Baja peninsula. (Note that I'll be looking for crew for this week long leg.) We'll probably end up in La Paz, Mexico. Then Sue & I will spend the season cruising the Sea of Cortez.

The following season we'll sail from the Sea of Cortez to Panama, passing the coasts of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. We'll leave BlueJacket in Panama for the hurricane season and then head down the coast of Ecuador to Peru.

Since I really don't think that we want to head around the tip of Argentina, we'll head back to Panama, go through the Panama Canal and then spend a season or two in the NW Caribbean. From there, who knows, but that's 5-6 years out and by then life may have dictated things differently.

As you can imagine, getting the boat ready for this long of a trip has been quite challenging. I've been spending lots of time at the boat working on lots of projects. It just took me 12 hours to replace 8 bolts. But it's all getting done and I expect that we'll be heading out at the end of May or beginning of June.

Anyhow, that's our plan. It's cast in sand by the waters edge, so we'll see what will actually happen. No matter what, I can assure you that it will be interesting!

-- Geoff & Sue

P.S. Note that you can find all of the maps in one place by clicking here.

Log ID: 1352