More Preparations

Preparations are now in earnest. We have started the daunting task of packing our books away. The loft floor upstairs ceiling will be groaning once we are finished. The new kitchen arrives next weekend so we will be frantically fitting that shortly. Even so, we are now thinking that we will not be ready for the end of March so have slipped the final departure from the UK to the middle of April. This also helps as the flights are much more expensive over the Easter holiday period.

Once, we do finally get down there we will still have a bit of work to do before we are ready for departure but should be away around the end of April. We may then have to get a haul out and bit of work done in Lagos.

Plans continue to be to head out west along Spain and Portugal before heading out to the Azores and then back to mainland Europe where we make a decision about where to go next.

Plans may change though of course. I remember an article a few years back in Yachting Monthly which included the quotation "Tread lightly on my cruising plans." If you don't have fixed plans, no one can they say you haven't achieved anything!

Work is also working into a bit of a crescendo to get everything done in time for my impending departure.

Flights for two weeks in Jamaica have been booked for March. It got me doing a bit of quick research on the web for information about cruising in Jamaica in the remote possibility that we might head there.

As ever, it sounds like a a very enticing place to visit though not may small boats do. I think that the problem would be getting back. The trades blow consistently through the Caribbean and would mean either a long slog to windward to pass between Cuba and Haiti or a longer trip round the western end of Cuba and then again with a long beat between the Florida Keys and Cuba.

The websites are an intriguing mixture. There is even a Jamaica Sailing Association – Sail Jamaica

Sail Jamaica

Next is a guide dressed up as a narrative account of where to go and how to get there from Haiti on a site called Free Cruising Guides

Free Cruising Guides

There is allegedly a book about it but neither Amazon nor Bookharbour knew about it.

Oh well, I suspect that we will leave the boat somewhere like Puerto Rico and fly there.

Finally, congratulations to the Chandlers on arriving in the Cape Verde Islands.

Lynn Rival