Itinerary

Go here for the 2001-2002 Season

2003 Season

The season that is supposed to start in late 2002 didn't get underway for the Goose... until March 2003. We vegetated early-on as cold weather discouraged us, then suddenly it was too late to be early and we were struggling to finish work by the end of February. Pretty soon it was March and we finally bolted for the door before we grew roots again! That's the trap of marina living: too much gets put off till the weather is cooler or hotter or drier or fewer bugs or whatever.

So with what was left of 2003 we planned to spend at least 3 months in the Bahamas making a giant loop starting in Bimini, to the Abacos, then Eleuthera and down as far as Acklins, back up thru the Exumas and back to the US. If you've been to the Bahamas before you know that was a very naive hope to cover that much ground and expect to enjoy what we saw. Weather is the driver for everything you do while cruising and sometimes you just don't get to move when you want. By and large the weather demons treated us OK, but still we had to use a lot of extra time to move the direction wanted.

Our planned 3 months didn't work out as we had to return in mid-May to take care of personal business in California. We stayed only half of our planned 3 months, then made a bee-line for the Florida coast. But even with this abbreviated trip we still were able to see cays around Bimini, the Beery Islands, Nassau and a tiny bit of the Exumas. Not nearly enough to say we've seen the Bahamas, but enough to whet our appetite for next season.

If I were asked what I most enjoyed during our short stay there, it would take less than a millisecond of consideration to say that it was the water. I've never seen anything to compare to the clarity and exciting tropical shades that hit the eye so hard they can't be ignored. I could sit for hours simply mesmerized no matter what direction I looked.

If we can finish in California in time we'll try to work in a trip north for a little while, maybe to the Chesapeake, but that's pretty iffy. We had originally thought of going to Maine for a few weeks in August & September but, considering my propensity for optimism, it's probably not realistic. Certainly cruising north would have been easier to do leaving from the Bahamas instead of Key West, but who knows?

Route

With all the northerly winds we'd had, it seemed like a north to south route starting in Bimini made good sense this year and by-and-large that proved to be right. We headed for Miami via Marathon, but as we approached Marathon we saw a good window about to close and we didn't stop, opting instead to continue straight to Bimini.

We stayed in Bimini for a almost 2 weeks first to get the outboard running properly, then to wait for weather. When the weather finally cooperated we went from Bimini to Gun Cay, then crossed the Great Bahama Bank on an overnighter and went to Bullocks Harbor on the west side of Great Harbor Cay. From there we rounded the top of the Berrys with a stop at Great Stirrup Cay, the east side of Great Harbor Cay, then took advantage of a good north wind and sailed down past the rest of the Beery chain to Nassau.

After a week in Nassau we were bleeding at the wallet and needed to escape. We also changed our approach to provisioning and spent almost $400 at City Market (owned by Winn-Dixie) getting many canned goods we could have gotten at a third the price in Florida. Don't take this as a recommendation... we were trying to fit a high-fiber dietary plan that our doctors recommended. Our inability to get fresh veggies easily pushed us into a lot of canned goods we would have preferred not carrying.

Chart

Here's a chartlet (it's a screen capture of the Nobeltec world chart with our crude planning route) with a crude line I've overlaid to suggest our route. Unfortunately Nobeltec's software gave us more than a few problems not the least of which was its inability to handle a large track of our route. Every 75-100 miles it would fail and we lost our track. We consider the track as part of our log and the loss a serious weakness in the software. We love the charts and the software features are OK, but its fragile nature has no place on a cruising boat!

With that whine out of the way, this is an approximation of our route from Key West to the Bahamas and back. Not the more exciting version I'd hoped we would be showing, but a lot of fun anyway. The labeling is a little strange since they have Northern Eleuthera Island writen across the top of New Providence Island, but the log below annotates our stops.

Log of 2003 Season

This is the log we built to get our estimate of distance, fuel needs and time enroute. The little ==> and the italics indicate no-later-than fuel and propane stops. These estimates are based on 0.52 gph average of fuel consumption (ignoring the possibility we will be sailing for portions of the route) through 500 hours of engine time and 17 days per tank of propane (refrigeration and cooking combined). We'll carry 55 gal diesel in tanks and jugs and we carry 4-20# propane tanks (2 in the propane locker and 2 more in the bow locker).

This is a revised version that adjusts for our late departure, chopping out about 20 days. Not too sure that's going to work cuz weather delays may stretch it back out by that amount. Insurance is the limiting factor.

Btw, we renewed our policy with Royal/Sun Alliance again this year (DH Williams of Ft. Lauderdale is our agent). We saw very little increase in premium for the year which was pretty surprising since others have told us about huge premiums they were quoted for the same coverage (East coast US including Florida & Bahamas, under $1,400 vs. $2,700). If we decide to go on into the Caribbean instead of coming back to the US, then we'd have to buy a policy with a different underwriter which would increase premiums to what others have described for East coast US including Florida & Bahamas (about $2,800).

1) Where no marina is listed, we were anchored.
2) No marina stops where we traveled away from the boat
3) Fuel consumption combines running underway and running at anchor (charging, making water)

To sum up the year (so far), the Goose...

• covered 757 nm,
• ran the engine 201 hours,
• consumed 91 gallons of diesel
• at an average of 0.454 gph,
• and used the engine 0.266 hpm (hrs per mile cruised)

The engine usage is down from 0.312 hpm last year (-15%) and not nearly as low as I'd hoped since we weren't in the ICW this year. It's the result of adverse winds or winds that were light as we pushed to cover ground before a weather window closed. We need to improve this!

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