Welcome to The Log of
the Second Sojourn,
a Chronicle of the Erickson's year long 2002 East Coast Sail
Trip down
the ICW to the Bahamas
The Plan:
Our plan is to sail for one year from
early July 2002 to July 2003, First to Maine for the
summer, then down the Intra-Coastal Waterway to
Miami and then across to the Bahamas. It's only a short day sail
to
Bimini from Miami. All sailing plans are subject to the weather,
so
we'll play each leg by ear.
Planing and
Preperation '00-'02:
In mid 2000 we decided to do this. Our
1968 sailboat is basically suitable for such a trip and we had
sailed
many summer weeks in Maine. But living aboard is another story.
Systems
that worked OK for a few weeks would need to work perfectly for
a year.
This meant a new engine and a new roller furled jib. The rig
needed to
be checked out and upgraded a bit. Storage would need to be
improved.
And a lot of minor improvements.
The winter of 2000/2001 was committed to the engine project. The
antique Volvo MD2B was removed and a shiny Yanmar was
installed.
But this required many other systems to be upgraded: electrical,
controls, exhaust, prop, engine beds... For the details, see our
Apache
37 web page here.
The
winter of 2001/2002 was a galley upgrade and numerous other
projects.
Both winters we had the boat trucked to our side yard so it
would be
close by and close to my basement workshop, tools, etc. I have
tried
doing major projects at boatyards before, and the number of
trips just
to get something to fit properly is prohibitive.
I was not willing to leave the boat on land during the summer
between
these 2 winters. The short summer sailing season in New England
is
precious to me, and we wanted to test out the engine for a
summer
before setting off on the trip. So the work was to be done two
falls,
winters and springs.
Summer '02:
We launch on 7/3/02, move out of the
house and on to the boat on 7/8, and settle in for a few days on
the
mooring in Salem Harbor. We'll have a car in Marblehead for
those days
to run errands. Then cast off, sail to Maine for the summer,
getting to
Mount Desert and maybe further.
September:
Then turn around and sail south thru the
Cape Cod Canal on Labor day, and sail southern New England to
New York
in September. We haven't sailed southern New England much
considering
it's our back yard. Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket, Falmouth,
Block
Island, Narragansett bay and long island sound, ending September
in New
York City for a few days. Then to Sandy Hook to wait for weather
for
the sail down the coast of Jersey to Cape May.
October:
Then up Delaware Bay to the C&D
canal and to the Chesapeake for the month of October. It is
supposed to
be very nice sailing in October. There we plan to visit friends
the Allen's in
Annapolis and Ed's brother in Virginia. We want to visit
Baltimore, DC, and spend a bunch of time on the less settled
east
shore. By the end of the month we plan to enter the ICW at
Norfolk.
November:
Down the ICW thru North Carolina to
South Carolina. We plan to visit sister Annie in Charleston for
a
while. Then further to Savannah and to Jacksonville Florida. the
ICW is
called "the ditch" as it is mostly a narrow canal. We'll
probably
motor almost the whole way from Norfolk to Miami.
December:
We'll sail the ICW, visiting friends as
we go: Amy and the kids, Rich and Mel near Orlando. Then Greg
and more
cousins in Fort Lauderdale. South of Miami we'll wait in
Marathon for
weather to cross the Gulf Stream to Bimini.
January to
April:
We sail about 400 miles of the Bahamas
from north to south and back again.
May and June
2003:
We sail back up the ICW seeing some of
the things we missed on the way down, and back on our mooring by
early
July.
On to the trip log.