We are in the final few minutes of policing the boat to make sure she is ready for our next adventure, and will be dropping lines within a few hours. We will be leaving from Brunswick, GA and making one long jump to Martinique in the eastern Caribbean. That is a straight line trip of about 1500 nautical miles as the seagull flies, and is expected to take about 13 or 14 days.

As is common with sailboats, the straight line trip is not the one we will be taking. The issue with heading straight to the Eastern Caribbean from the US East Coast is that you are straight into the teeth of the prevailing winds. Few things are LESS fun than beating into the wind for weeks, and we do this for fun, after all is said and done.

So instead of a course like this:

We’ll be going more like this:

It is an extra 300 miles and a day or two of sailing, but much more comfortable. If you are following us on our SailLogger page https://saillogger.com/svharmonie do not be surprised if we even head north a bit at the beginning. We are NOT lost, just looking for the fastest trip available in the existing winds that is matched with our comfort!

One of the things about a trip of this length is that the weather forecast becomes more and more of a work of fiction as you move out into the future, so the exact details of our course we can not plot with certainty but we will alter on the fly as the forecasts are updated.

We do have a couple commitments once we get to Martinique. One is actually back in the US where I am helping a client install a new C-drive in his Amel 55, and then about April 15 I’ll be sailing away from Martinique on a delivery of an Amel 54, Destination: Portugal. By the time I get back to Martinique in mid May it will be time for Harmonie to start moving north again.

A busy time!