We haven’t been posting much lately, as you can see….. Not much fun boating news to pass along, but that is about to change….
Our close friends know, but many that keep up only via our blog don’t know, we have plans to make a SYL Bahama cruise in 2016! Our timing is regulated by that dirty 4 letter word.. WORK. I’ve committed to work a turnaround near New Orleans, we are preparing for it as we speak…. I’m working regular hours in the planning phase. Things will start heating up on the job after new years, working more hours as we get closer, but the main event isn’t supposed to occur until April.
Our fluid departure date will more likely be May, given it’s driven by how quickly a fabrication shop can build a new 200′ tower. Our turnaround includes erecting a large piece of equipment that hasn’t even been designed yet, much less manufactured. We probably won’t know when that equipment will be available until the second month of 2016. I’ve committed to the effort so I’m kind of stuck. At least it won’t be cold when we cross Lake Pontchartrain heading out into the Mississippi Sound…..
The worst part of the trip is behind us, now that SYL is here in Louisiana. It’s exciting to know we don’t have that week and a half of ICW travel facing us from Kemah to New Orleans! In fact I just checked how far it is from here straight to Marathon non-stop… 700 miles. Hmmm that’s less than 6 days if we go direct! Only 4 days if we go directly from here to Tarpon Springs…! I always do that.. I see how fast I can get to the Bahamas to maximize our cruising time before we are forced to head home to avoid the summer storms. I go fast fast… in order to stay in the Bahamas as long as possible. I probably shouldn’t do that. It actually makes better sense (given our departure point) to see some of the Florida panhandle before striking out.
It’s 70 miles from my dock to Cat Island…. just offshore from Gulfport Mississippi, so that’s the first day. On a long second day you could make it 90 miles into the mouth of Mobile Bay, there’s a dock at Fort Morgan with an easy entry and full protection. If you pulled up anchor by 4AM off the Cat Island coast and struck out, you could get to Fort Morgan by dark. The 3rd day you could make it to Destin, but that would be two big days in a row. It might make better sense to go non-stop to Destin, that’s 48 hours of straight sailing at a 5 knot average. A friend and I actually did that one time, it’s not a bad run.
So to Destin in 2 days, stay overnight and see the sights, 2 more days (48 hours of sailing at just over 5 knots) to Tarpon Springs, probably 3 overnighters from home, depending on what time you started to put a considerable portion of the trip behind you. That puts you almost 1/2 the way down the Western coast of Florida. Another 48 hours of sailing gets you to the channel 5 marker,(the first tall bridge you can get under at the overseas highway) that gets you to the keys, and your staged to cross the Gulfstream. So.. if you pushed hard, sleeping tied up or on anchor for two of the 7 nights, you could make it all the way to the keys from Madisonville Louisiana is a week.