Planning...

Top Shelf Resting at Shelter Cove

It's been a week in Hilton Head.  Great place to spend the fall.  New England always feels like you are preparing for winter.  Down here, the humidity is gone and the best part of the season is just starting.

Let's talk about planning a trip like this.

The Boat:    It starts with the boat.  You must have a spare for everything within reason.  I subscribe to Wheel House Technologies for maintenance schedules.  They surveyed Top Shelf and they listed models & serial numbers of every mechanical part.  From the Windlass to the rudders, and every pump in between, I have parts, service manuals, and more important, a maintenance schedule for all of them.

We added a few things on the boat.  From everything I have read, a deep freezer and a water maker will make life in the Caribbean sooooo much easier.  Both were added this spring by Burr Yacht Sales at their brand new facility in Stuart Fl.

Weather:  The weather in the Caribbean is completely different than the weather in the temperate zone (+30 N).  In the winter, the Caribbean weather is dominated by the trade winds.  The trades during the day can blow NE to SE up to 25 kts.  This is Beaufort Scale force 6 winds that create 9-13 ft seas.  It so happens that we are trying to go east in an easterly wind....big waves on the bow, not fun!

The trick is to stay hunkered down during normal trade wind days and only move east just before a winter cold front arrives from the US east coast.  You move before sunrise as soon as the wind goes south of east to arrive early morning at the new destination.  For a short period of time, the frontal winds oppose the trades and the wind dies down.  You need to be back on anchor when the front arrives.  After frontal passage the wind will continue to veer and when it goes SW to NW be ready for a 30 kt blow as it veers NW to NE.  This can last a day or more before the trades settle back in.  Rest-move-hunker down-repeat.  The two best books to learn about the Caribbean weather are The Thornless Path to Windward by Bruce Van Sant and Chris Parker's Coastal & Offshore Weather.  I subscribe to daily weather updates from Chris.

Cruising Guides:  There are dozens of these to pick from, I read most of them and they all have different strengths (and weakness).  My favorite East of Puerto Rico are three guides written by Nancy & Simon Scott.  For the Bahamas I found Stephen Pavlidis to be the best except that he broke the information down into way too many guide books with the front half of each one having the same information.

Last note on planning.  We are going to follow the advice from the "Thornless Path to Windward".  If you are even thinking about doing this, read Bruce Van Sant's book, then read it again.  As we follow the Thornless Path, I will be reporting here on how accurate his information is.

October 10th I'm heading to Florida to take my first freediving class with the North American Spearfishing Champion Ryan Myers.

Tearing Away From Work

Captain Top Shelf

Laying in bed in Massachusetts.  Work is all done.  I won’t be back to my desk till December 21st.  I thought I’d be ecstatic tonight, but the Irish guilt has shown up in full force.  So much to do at work.  I keep forgetting that I will still be working my marketing role, just from the boat.

Top Shelf is in Hilton Head and has now dodged the bullet on three hurricanes in as many years.  Next fall I am committed to move her as three may be the end of the charm.  Since there was no damage, I’ll be on board my new home tomorrow reinstalling the bimini top, tender cover and paddle boards.

Lots of wind sheer in the upper atmosphere in the Caribbean and Eastern Atlantic.  No tropical storms as long as there is wind sheer.  Wind sheer came back just in time to knock the zip out of Florence turning her into a Cat 1 at landfall.   Windshear at 300-500 mb and a Caribbean SST of less than 26 degrees Celsius and we’ll start steering Top Shelf Southbound.

Till then, final prep and a waiting game.

Next blog....what I did for planning and preparation

Intro to Blogging the Caribbean aboard Top Shelf

Monday Night Labor Day Weekend 2018. 

We've been studying weather, cruising guides, learned about customs, taken beginner Spanish on line.  I've learned way more than I need to know about data communications in the Caribbean.  

We've outfitted Top Shelf with data communications, a watermaker, freezer and every spare part you can imagine.  Planning is long, detailed and fun for me.  Julianne wants nothing to do with it.

Julianne is heading for Hilton Head to spend time with our son AJ and start getting Top Shelf in order for the trip to Florida in late October.

Top Shelf Cruising Chesapeake Bay

All summer the tropics have been quiet, now that September is here, there are 2 storms in the Caribbean and 2 more on and off the coast of Africa that may form.  We will wait at Shelter Cove in Hilton Head, a proven hurricane hole, until the coast is clear to head south into Florida.  IF everything goes to plan, we will start to move Top Shelf south on October 19th.

This blog is my way of documenting our trip into the Caribbean.  Julianne and I have owned Top Shelf for 4 years now and we have never taken her off of the east coast.  We both run an insurance agency in the northeast, and it was our idea to install state of the art electronics to live and work in the Caribbean this winter.  

I've had some experience in the Caribbean.  Previous to Top Shelf, a Fleming 55, there was another Top Shelf, a 38 Henruques sportfishing boat.  I took her to Turks & Caicos back in 2014 with my good friend Eric Stewart.  That 13 day trip saw 10 ft seas and 20 knot winds.  That WAS NOT the way to take a vessel east through the Bahamas in December.  On the way home in May, we lost a prop near Hawks Nest just off of Cat Island.  We got the boat to Nassau on 1 prop, then spend the next 6 weeks getting a shaft and prop into the Bahamas.  Quite an ordeal!

I have a USCG OUPV/Six-pack license and I am a experienced SCUBA diver.  My gear is on board, but my new passion is for free diving and spear fishing.  If all goes right, this blogs will show a tour of the Bahamas, Turks & Caicos, Dominican Republic, Southern Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands from both above and below the water.

Stay Tuned