Sailing from Brunswick to Martinique: Our Next Adventure Begins

Posted on March 13, 2025 by Bill Kinney

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!

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A Short Detour…

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Bill Kinney

Continuing on our delivery voyage, we cut in off our planned route to anchor in Boqueron Bay on the west side of Puerto Rico to handle a minor repair that wasn’t easily done under way.

That’s been handled, we grabbed some shuteye, and we are back off again.

Between the short delay, and updated weather forecasts our best predicted route has changed. We are now going to head straight up through the Bahamas, pretty much on a rhumb line course for Brunswick, GA.

It’s about 11AM here, and we are motoring away from the PR coast. Once we get clear of the wind shadows of the island, we expect good winds for the rest of the trip. We will be racing a cold front as we approach the Georgia coast. With a bit of luck we’ll get there first!

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And Now for Something Completely Different..

Posted on February 9, 2025 by Bill Kinney

While crossing the Caribbean Sea yesterday evening, up on our system pops an unusual alert: Tsunami Advisory. There has been a large undersea earthquake off Honduras, and most of the Greater Antilles are on watch for a possible tsunami.

For a boat in the deep, open ocean a tsunami is a non-event. Right now we are sailing in water almost 3 miles deep. Even the largest, most powerful “tidal waves” pass under the boat totally unnoticed.

Fortunately, it appears that the waves are small enough to not be dangerous. The forecast arrival time for the waves has come and gone without reports of significant coastal damage. So we get to add a new ocean experience, sailing over a tsunami, and the local coastlines do not have to deal with a major disaster. Win-win!

We continue to crank out the miles at a fast pace. The boat is performing well, with no mechanical issues. In 18 to 22 knots of wind, we are making 8.5 to 9.5 knots of boat speed, hour, after hour. There is the occasional tradewind squall passing by in the night time hours, but they haven’t presented major issues.

Sunrise behind the last rain squall of the night.

We weighed anchor 43 hours ago, and we have covered 319 nautical miles since then. We have been running a bit ahead of the routing predictions so far, Our most reliable forecast has us at the entrance to Brunswick Harbor about midnight on 16FEB.

We are now about 24 hours from the Mona Channel between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. From our past experiences, this is likely to be the most challenging sailing of the trip. Currents are strong, and confused, and there are frequent squalls and thunderstorms as the tradewinds blow down off the mountains of Puerto Rico.

Once through there, we will turn left, sailing between Cuba and the Bahamas, until we pick up the Gulf Stream off the Florida Keys, and then ride that conveyor belt north.

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And We’re Headed Back

Posted on February 7, 2025 by Bill Kinney

After an uneventful trip from Georgia down to Granada to pick up our delivery boat. A whirlwind couple of days getting her provisioned, checked out, and launched back into the water, we are underway back north. We have about 1700 miles to go, and that will take about 9 or 10 days.

It’s interesting the differences provisioning a boat for a week and a half when she is fully empty of food. You can not count on things as simple as having flour onboard. There is way more detailed recipe planning needed.

We hauled anchor in Prickly Bay, Grenada to this view. Hopefully an omen for a good voyage!

Our route is a 450 mile straight beeline from Grenada to the northwest. We’ll pass between Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in the Mona Channel. The routing models then offer us a choice between the Old Bahama Channel, south of the Bahamas and north of Cuba, or a route traveling up through the Bahamas.

That is not a decision we have to make for a few days, by the time we get there the choice might be obvious as the weather situation for next week becomes clearer.

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North in January?

Posted on February 1, 2025 by Bill Kinney

What ARE they thinking?

OK, sometimes our decisions seem a little odd… For example we were in warn and comfy Miami, ready to cross to the Bahamas, and instead we end up in Brunswick Georgia? Where they had real snow on the ground two weeks ago?

Well, I have clients who need a delivery of their boat from Grenada, right back to here, Brunswick, GA. so we took two days, and a nearly perfect weather window, to bring Harmonie up here. An easy trip for us, it is a nice safe place to park Harmonie for the two weeks we will be gone, and it eliminates travel expenses to the client for Karen and I on the back side. Win-win.

The sailing on this trip was ALMOST perfect. When we are looking to sail south along the USA East Coast we look for the back side of a cold front, when the wind clocks to the northwest, and use that to make miles south. When moving north, we look for the front side of the front, where the wind builds and clocks from the southeast to the southwest.

Our timing on this one was almost perfect. As soon as we got out into the ocean off Florida, we set sail, and rode the Gulf Stream north. We continued that ride all the way to within 15 miles of the sea buoy off Brunswick, when the front came racing off the coast and after a very short period of rain, left us with northwest winds, right on the nose. If only we had been clairvoyant enough to have left 4 hours early, we would have been tied up before the front came offshore. Our trusty Volvo came to the rescue and brought us the rest of the way. For the overall trip, we averaged 8.2 knots over 45 hours. Really fast for us. We even had a 24 hour stretch where we covered 211 miles. Not our fastest run ever, but well up there.

We now have three days to put Harmonie to bed and fly off the Grenada. We’ll have a bit of setup on the boat which is currently on the hard, and due to be launched after we arrive. We’ll then check out of immigration in Grenada, and set off on what we expect to be a 10 day trip back to… right here!

In case you missed it…

Recently we posted a video on our YouTube channel that was about the worst example of anchoring we have EVER seen. (There was one worse than this, believe it or not, but we didn’t have cameras ready).

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A Fishing Day

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Bill Kinney

We have been hunkered down in “NoName Anchorage” on the southern end of Key Biscayne, near Miami. Originally to wait for weather to transit to the Bahamas, but then we got stuck a bit longer while we explored a business opportunity in Florida. That fell through, and now we are back on our sailing track, with some additions to the schedule.

Today we pulled anchor in the morning, and went out into the Gulf Stream to see if we could find some fish. I had what was likely a wahoo bite off my hook on our first stop, come up blank on our second, and then found a colony of black-bellied rosefish.

You are probably not familiar with the Black-bellied Rosefish. They are not a commercial species, and not widely know with sport fisherman. They are not sporting to catch. The size in the picture is typical. The world record is 5 pounds. They live at depths of 1000 feet. So who cares? And what’s the deal with the name “black-bellied”?

Well, the big deal is once you find them, you can catch all you want. Seriously, if you are not catching one on every hook you have on the bottom, you are not in a good spot. The only thing that limits the number you catch is you have to reel them up 1000 feet to the boat.

And more important, they are delicious. We simply air-fried a few fillets, and they are unlike any fish that we have eaten. My first adjective was “sweet” and Karen’s was “buttery”. They are small, but “chunky”. Three will feed two people.

OK, so what’s the deal with the name? They don’t have black bellies, or black anything…

Well, when you clean them, you find out the origin of the name. The membrane lining the abdominal cavity, which is white on every other fish I have ever cut open is white, on these fish is black. Not just dark gray, or deep blue, but a true deep jet, black.

Plans…

With the understanding that a cruising boat’s plans are “written in the sand at low tide” here is our coming schedule:

We have a delivery that is quickly approaching for a boat in Grenada that needs to move to Brunswick, Georgia. To accommodate that we will be sailing to Brunswick at the next weather window, probably near the end of this week. To move to Georgia, fly to Grenada, and then sail back to Georgia, will probably take the best part of 3 weeks.

We will then sail to the Bahamas, and south to the eastern Caribbean. I have a client back in the Chesapeake who I will help install a new drive train in his boat, and another who will need an alignment of a new engine installation in Martinique, and then a delivery from Martinique to Lisbon(!). Then it will be time to head north again.

All in all, it is kind of a crazy schedule for us laid-back cruiser types, but the pieces are falling together.

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We’re Sailing!

Posted on January 12, 2025 by Bill Kinney

After almost 2 months of being at anchor or on the hard in the greater Fort Lauderdale area, this morning we left our anchorage in SouthLake, Hollywood, motored to the fuel dock in Dania Beach. We took on diesel, gasoline (for the dinghy) and water, and headed back out into the ocean. We tanked up everything we could because diesel at the dock on Florida is about $3.60. In the Bahamas it is over $6.00.

A perfectly reasonable question is why we spend so much time in, and around, Fort Lauderdale. The answer is best delivered by a picture. It’s not the most interesting photo you will ever see:

This large industrial building in Pompano, FL is FULL of nothing but bolts, nuts, screws, and related products. You walk in, hand the guy behind the counter a sample of what you need, and–like magic–more appear. No matter how odd, they can be replicated.

Now, by itself, this is not really magic. But this repeats over and over for every kind of boat part imaginable. No matter what you need for your boat you can get it in Fort Lauderdale, or have it made. Somebody here actually had an exhaust elbow for our Dutch made generator on the shelf. Surprising, and very helpful.

Well, almost everything.

Just before we are ready to leave, we sheared the valve stem on a critical part of our toilet plumbing. We have a European boat, with European parts. The only place I can find a replacement valve is from… Europe. Well, the UK actually, but close enough. While bemoaning this state of affairs to a friend on another Amel, he replies with, “We have four of those, if you need one…” So here we are at Key Biscayne with the part we need waiting for us to pick up.

We re now anchored outside of NoName Harbor on the southern end of Key Biscayne. This is the traditional place for many boats to wait for a favorable weather window to cross to the Bahamas. Which is what we are doing now.

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Happy Holidays Everybody!

Posted on December 21, 2024 by Bill Kinney

Yesterday, we sprang ourselves out of the boatyard and made our way to the anchorage in South Lake in Hollywood, Florida. A world of palm trees, speedboats, and high-rise condos. The only white part of Christmas here is the sand on the beach!

We are probably here for two weeks or so while we clean the last of the accumulated boatyard dirt off the boat and finish off the last few things on our list. It is a convenient location with access to groceries and land-based stuff. The boat seems to be in good shape, as do we, and all are ready for further adventures.

Once done here, we will head off to the Bahamas for our slow and relaxing trip down the islands. We do not have our stops planned out ahead of time but ultimately will be landing in Martinique about April 1.

Our stay at the yard was efficient and uneventful. Playboy Marine has been a fixture in Dania Beach for many years and is one of the last of the yards that allow you to work on your own boat. Small and smoothly run, we were happy with our stay there. One of the few downsides is that the yard is right at the end of Runway 10R for the busy Fort Lauderdale Airport. The noise of departing jets is constant, as is the rain of dust from burning jet fuel added to the normal boatyard gunk.

The South Lake anchorage has changed quite a bit for the better in the last year or so. It had been slowly accumulating boats that were either derelict or close to it and was becoming clogged by boats with owners who could not afford to keep them in a marina, so used the lake as free storage for their poorly maintained boats. Florida has been slowly working through decades of neglected and abandoned boats in an effort to clean up the waterways. Overall, the program seems to be a benefit, at least here in Broward County. This afternoon, the Hollywood police boat cruised through the anchorage, touching base with the boats who arrived today, and—I assume—noting who was here and starting the clock on the 45-day limit for a stay.

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Forward, and back…

Posted on December 7, 2024 by Bill Kinney

So many boat projects are two steps forward and one back. Today was definitely one of those steps back.

While the boat is on the hard is always a good chance to get hands and eyes into places you don’t always have time or access to. During our poking around, I found that the exhaust elbow on our generator was leaking salt water. Not a big deal. There is actually a local supplier here who keeps a good supply of WhisperPower spare parts, We gave them $400, they gave us a brand new exhaust elbow. My expectation was that I would have that installed in a an hour or two of work this morning, and then be off to other projects. Ha!

I was tightening the nuts to clamp it in place using my torque wrench because this is important to get right. I was coming up on the final last bit of turn when suddenly the nut got a lot easier to turn. That’s never good. Turns out I pulled the stud right out of the aluminum exhaust manifold. Argh…

It’s not too big a job to pull the manifold off this tiny little engine, so off it came. Since I have it in hand, I took it apart checking on things. It always kind of struck me as odd that this was assembled with multiple metals but no sacrificial zinc anode to protect them from corrosion. I put it down to some magical Dutch engineering at the manufacturer. Turns out I was wrong… There WAS a zinc. Normally these would be replaced every 6 months or so, but I had never done it because they never mentioned that it was there in the maintenance schedule.

After cleaning this up and making it all as good as can be, I basdically ended up at the end of the day, and I have a few more small parts and tools arriving on Monday that I need to finish it up. We’re scheduled to launch on Friday… Time to prioritize projects to be sure I get all the ones done that much be done before we go back in the water!

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Binocular Deal!

Posted on November 30, 2024 by Bill Kinney

I don’t often make these kinds of time sensitive product recommendations, but here is one too good to passup! It is an Amazon Black Friday Deal, and the version without a compass is almost 50% off retail, and a price I have never seen anybody else come close to. I do not know how long these prices will last. Seriously, these are really good prices on a product that is not often discounted much, if at all.

If you need a pair of binoculars, this set is a great deal for a really awesome optic kit. I have a pair of Steiners, and I have had them for over 30 years. In that time, they have been back to the factory for repair under their lifetime warranty several times, and they look and work as good as new. These are WAY better than the cheap optics you will fond from mass market, and are the correct magnification and objective size for use from a rolling boat. They are sealed, and totally waterproof, and fog-proof. They do not float, so be careful with them!

They come in two versions, with, and without a bearing compass. I find the compass to be handy for a number of navigation techniques, and would recommend it, if you can afford the extra.

Steiner Navigator without Compass. $299!

Steiner Navigator with Compass $449

We also have a pair of Fuji Technostabil TS-X binoculars that Karen describes as her “best Christmas present ever.” They are very, very nice, but also about three times the price of the Steiners. They have a much higher magnification, that requires active stabilization to work at all on the deck of a moving boat. Unlike binoculars that are stabilized for hand held use on land, these have a full 6 degrees of active stabilization. They give crystal clear view even if the roughest seas. Even fantastic for stargazing at night from the boat. They do require batteries, but they use standard AA batteries, and we have a pile of easily rechargeable AAs onboard, so that is not an issue for us.

Fuji Stabilized Binoculars. $1099

And the standard disclaimer, these are associate links. If you buy through them, I get a small commission, that does not affect your cost. The products in this post we bought for ourselves, at full price, and we would happily buy them again. We use them virtually every day we are on the water.

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