The Route

June 2008. The plan is to move onto the boat on July 21, 2008. The boat is currently docked in Parry Sound, Ontario at Sound Boat Works. We will have the opportunity to sail the gorgeous waters of Georgian Bay and the North Channel of Lake Huron, Lake St. Clair, Lake Erie through the Welland Canal to Lake Ontario where we will stay in either Kingston and Gananoque for a few weeks to say another farewell to friends and family, then it will be down the Oswego Canal to New York City!! We plan to sail to Virginia and particpate in the Caribbean 1500 Cruising Rally. The Caribbean 1500 leaves on November 2nd from Hampton, Virginia and sails to Tortola, B.V.I. We plan from there to sail south and then we will just see how it goes.......

December 2008. We have completed the first stage (see above) of the plan and currently at anchor in Culebra, Puerto Rico! The next phase of the route will be to cruise the British Virgin Islands, the U. S. Virgin Islands, the Spanish Virgin Islands, then to head South to the Leeward Islands, the Windward Islands then take the boat out in Trinidad or Venezula in July 2009 to have some work done on it while we fly home for the summer months and hurricane season. We then plan to go back to the boat in September, sail across the top of South America over to Panama.

January 2009. We now have a new plan, we have not heard good things about Trinidad or Venezula right now so we decided not to go there. Our new plan is to still work our way down the Leeward and Windward Islands however in May we will sail from either St. Lucia or Grenada to Bonaire.

April 2009. The updated plan is in June to sail from Grenada to Blanquilla, one of the Venezulan offshore islands, then on to Tortuga, Los Aves andd Los Roques. In July and August 2009 we will sail the ABC islands and go to Ottawa for a three week visit. Then it will be on to Cartegena, Columbia for September 2009. We have decided to continue our trip and will go on to the San Blas Islands and through the Panama Canal around December 2009, then on to the South Pacific!!!

January 2010

The next leg of our journey will take us from Panama City to the Galapagos then the longest voyage yet, the passage to the Marquesas. We will sail the islands through the South Pacific then arrive in New Zealand around November 2010. That is the plan for now.

January 2011

In April or May we will leave New Zeland for Fiji, then Vanuatu. From there we will have a few options. Do we go North and spend the next cyclone season in Micronesia or stick with our original plan of sailing to Darwin, Australia then on to Malaysia, Indonesia and be in Thailand for Christmas.

June 2011

Okay it took us 6 months to finally make up our minds, but for now the plan is: Fiji, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Australia (either Syndey or one of the cities north of there like Bundaberg or Melbourne).

July 2011

Change of plans, Everybody knows that cruiser plans are made of jello and ours are no exception. We started thinking about spending the cyclone season in Austraila and the more we thought about it the more it didn't make sense for us.

So what are our options? 1. We know we cannot go through the Red Sea like originally planned because of the immensity of the piracy problem. 2. We have received quotes to ship the boat from Thailand to Turkey from three different companies, and the price they quoted was to say the least --jaw dropping. 3. Going around the bottom of South Africa -- too far and not sure if trying to get over there is safe either. 4. Where do we really want to cruise? We would really like to see Asia before we are done cruising for good so we decided we are not going to stop this year but continue on from Fiji through Vanuatu, the Solomon Island, Papua New Guinea, and into Asia starting at Indonesia. What does this mean for us? Lots and lots of research to start, plus having the charts of the area would be handy. The last bit of our plan is to return to Australia after our Asian cruise. This option can be tricky because of the ocean currents and winds but we feel it is doable and that is our plan (for now anyways).

October 2011

Cruising the Great Barrier Reef and the East Coast of Australia. It is awesome.