The Route Continued

     Over the last few days we've started to think ahead in the trip. Feeling we needed to set a timeline for our return journey, we sat down to map out how far south we want to go, which islands we wish to visit most, how long to stay in each place and what route we want to take to get back home. Originally we'd thought to get all the way down to Grenada and several other of the windward islands, but after creating a loose timeline we realized that this wouldn't give us much flexibility and could cause us to rush into poor weather at some point. So we've resolved to explore many of the leeward islands before heading up to the Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas.

     I thought it might be good to post our rough plan so everyone back home has a better idea of what we are thinking. At the moment we don't want to have to do a long ocean passage again, but that may change. Also the dates are a guess and we may end up spending more than a week on some of the leeward islands. There is a gap of one day or more between many of the dates to account for a day of travel between islands.

February 8-15: Dominica
February 16-23: Guadeloupe
February 24- March 1: Antigua/Barbuda
March 2-9: St. Martin or maybe Anguilla
March 10-17: Puerto Rico (To break up a long passage. Likely we won't explore much.)
March 17-24: Turks and Caicos
March 26- April 2: George Town, Bahamas
April 3-10: Nassau, Bahamas
April 11-18: Freeport, Bahamas
April...? Passage to Charleston, South Carolina

     Leaving several weeks in the Bahamas gives us the leeway to take our time elsewhere and leave on a passage to the US at any opportune time. Likely a lot of this will change as we go, but I hope this gives a good outline of what we have in mind for the second half of the trip. Once along the coast of the United States we will work our way to New York City, and then traverse the Erie Canal back to Lake Ontario. Hopefully it will be open by then! If not, we will have to work something out, because doing the St. Lawrence the other way would be a much longer trip than we want to do.

Nicole.

Almost ready to go

After a few hectic days of replanning the trip and working on final preparations we are all ready to get going. We have decided to go the long route down the St. Lawrence Seaway and around Nova Scotia before heading south along the Atlantic Coast of the US. If we had planned this route from the start we probably would have left a month or two earlier. We will do our best to get to Halifax as quickly as possible and the make our way south before it gets cold in Atlantic Canada.

Mor' Childs Play is anchored in Prinyers Cove in Prince Edward County.
Brooke, Nicole, Terri and Jon are aboard.

The list of must do jobs has been completed and it is time to go. We can't wait for Wednesday.

Our New and Hastily-Planned Route

Because of recent hurricane damage throughout the eastern United States we have been forced to completely alter our plans for getting down south. Our new route involves heading east from Lake Ontario along the St. Lawrence River system to Nova Scotia. This trip is longer than our original route and with hope we can pull it off in two weeks or so. From Nova Scotia we will probably sail down the coast to Maine, Cape Cod and Boston then onwards to New York City, which puts us back on track with the original route plans with a few adjustments where timing is concerned. More details on this later as we figure out the logistics.

Our departure date remains the same and we will be joined by our friends aboard Raftan too! I imagine we'll encounter many people thrust into a similar situation by the unexpected damages that Hurricane Irene has caused. Our hearts go out to everyone affected by the hurricane, especially those whose homes were devastated and property was destroyed.