Gillian, Stella and I have been itching to get moving for a while. We’ve been trying to make it south and east to the Dominican Republic or Puerto Rico, but so far the thorny path has won. So we are going to try a different path. Tomorrow (9/4/2013) we will pull up the anchor for our first multi-day passage.

We’re headed to Charleston, South Carolina. How we decided on that is a bit of a mystery even to us. Once we get there we will find out if the voices in our heads were right once again or if we really have lost it. History tells us it should be the former. Fingers crossed.

Throughout this entire adventure we have learned to listen to our guts. When we’ve had a fleeting thought that didn’t make any sense whatsoever and all of a sudden it ignited an uncontrollable wildfire of imagination and possibility, we have listened. Yesterday that happened, the conversation started, and tomorrow we’ll be on the move.

The weather couldn’t be better, the sail should be fantastic, and all is aligned for what should be an uneventful yet exhilarating 605 nautical mile sail to parts of America we have yet to meet. Oh yea, the being far from land part! The first two days we will be within just a few miles of shore. If we have any reservations we can make a quick turn to port or starboard and be in a Bahamian civilization before sunset or after sunrise whichever the case may be.

We plan to spend two months or so in Charleston. Once we are reasonably certain that the tropical season has closed down, we’ll make a straight run for the British Virgin Islands. Oddly enough we will likely make it there sooner by doing that than by waiting here and continuing on our current path. This is the strangest thing, but with the wind patterns in the Atlantic this is how it works. We’ll miss DR and PR on the way down, but maybe we can hit them next spring on the way back. This is more or less the route that Baxter suggested we take all the way back in April whilst we were in Marathon. He suggested going north to Savannah then heading to the DR. We scoffed at the idea because we didn’t understand. Go north to go south? No thanks bro, we’ll go the “DIRECT” route.

Here we go again! And we’ll probably be listening to this song a lot…

For those of you curious about our route, I have exported it from Garmin HomePort, our routing software, in GPX v1.1 format then zipped it. I’ve tested it and I was able to open it with Google Earth. If you would like to follow along and compare the progress to where we actually are, the file is below.

GTW->CSC.GPX

This map SHOULD show where we are according to the last SPOT update. This is EXPERIMENTAL. If it appears we are off the coast of Africa it’s most likely bad data and NOT a pirate attack. 🙂 Hopefully you’ll be able to track our progress relative to our expected route. For full screen, CLICK HERE.