This voyage we’ve embarked upon has been in the works for about 4 years – it’s taken lots of saving, a number of major life/career choices and seemingly countless boat projects to get us to this point.

The plan is simply to sail from our home in Boston to the Caribbean for the winter – but we’ll call it a long winter – maybe 9 months or so.  The voyage to me is three things – extended honeymoon, sabbatical from work, and an opportunity to play peter pan for a little longer.  Just because Kirsten & I are married now, doesn’t mean we have to be fully grown up yet.

We hope our voyage will take us down the east coast of the US to North Carolina – from there we plan to sail to Bermuda.  The passage to Bermuda is the biggie, 5-6 days due east and includes crossing the gulf stream.  This will likely be the riskiest part of the whole voyage.  We’ll spend a short while in Bermuda then head straight south towards St. Maarten – another big passage, about 6-7 days.  From there we will island hop south along the leeward islands and then the windward islands.  At some point we’ll likely decide we’ve headed south enough and make a big turn back to the north-west and in one big jump (probably 3-4 days) sail to the US & British Virgin Islands.   We’ll stay in the VI’s for a while, maybe a month and hopefully play host to friends & family.  After that we’ll make another big jump to the south-eastern end of the Bahamas.  We’ll slowly work our way up through the Bahamas over the course of a couple months – then end up back in Florida or southern Georgia.  From there it’ll be a easy late-spring cruise back up the US east coast to our home in Boston.

All that said – plans are meant to be broken, especially sailing plans.  Who knows where we’ll go, how long it will take, and maybe even where we’ll end up.

Thanks for checking out our blog, we’re happy to have you following along!

-Mike