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