We all know how this goes: the very worst thing you can have on a boat--worse than women, bananas, or priests even--is a schedule. Yet most of us sail to a schedule, for various reasons, and sometimes suffer as a result. This fall has been particularly interesting, as the usual gamut of cruising rallies here...
Good news: I've heard back from my people and can now share some pix and verbiage on how the voyage south went for Katahdin. Rather than paraphrase, I thought I'd share the raw dispatches.
Having been left behind on the dock, I've been obsessively following the progress of this year's Caribbean 1500 via the rally's online tracking page. For much of the fleet it has been slow going. After prudently waiting the better part of a week for Tropical Storm Sean to go away and then for a cold...
I decided I had to pull the plug on my participation in this year's Caribbean 1500 on Wednesday afternoon after rally HQ announced they were postponing the start once again until this morning. I was reluctant to do this, but the "squash zone" between my prospective arrival time in the BVI and the Thanksgiving holiday...
I've never seen this before... a subtropical storm with a name. But there you have it--sub-storm Sean, reportedly packing max winds of 40-50 knots, is stalled right over the Caribbean 1500 route and is going nowhere fast.
I should mention that I'm in Virginia right now, and will depart today (maybe) in this year's Caribbean 1500 cruising rally to Tortola, BVI. I'm crewing on a Cambria 44, Katahdin, which you see here, as of yesterday evening, all ready to go. Sort of. We launch this a.m. at 0900 and will be praying...
Editor's note: Later this fall I'll be crewing on a boat in the Caribbean 1500 cruising rally, which departs from Hampton, Virginia, on November 7. The prospect has me recalling the last 1500 I sailed in, way back in 1998, when the rally fleet had a serious run-in with Hurricane Mitch. It was a very...
Very sad news this week from the Land of Cruising Rallies. Seems a Jeanneau 45DS named Rule 62 that was sailing in the Caribbean 1500 rally between Hampton, Virginia, and Tortola, BVI, wiped out on a reef in the Bahamas and one crew member, Laura Zekoll, 46, was lost and is now presumed dead. Details...
