Please, Not Another Trip to West Marine! Ep. 25

This week’s update is a little unique – we haven’t moved anywhere! We have been at the town docks in Hampton, VA getting ready for the upcoming 1500 nm passage to Tortola, BVI’s. We have decided to join the Carib 1500 rally that leaves here, weather permitting, tomorrow morning (Monday). As some of you may have known, we had planned to have our friends from California, Martin and Nancy Thomas, join us for this offshore leg, but they had some medical concerns that arose at the last minute and had to cancel their trip. After some thought on our alternatives, we decided to join the rally here and also use their crew list to get 1 or 2 more people onboard. We were successfully in lining up Ray Smith, a sailor from the Washington DC area, who is here now and getting acclimated to the boat and the rally.

The folks that run this rally are very well organized. We have been spending quite a few days attending their seminars on a variety of topics including food/fuel planning, engine troubleshooting, medical issues and safety. We have been making numerous trips to the local West Marine and Lowe’s getting stocked up on additional safety equipment, spare parts, and anything we think we might need for offshore and while we are in the Caribbean. We rented a car earlier this week to run errands, including a super Walmart nearby, which was great for provisioning the boat, but comes with a challenge of where to put everything. Here we are trying to figure out that conundrum!

On one of our errands, we found simple Halloween outfits for the boys and attending an indoor celebration at the Virginia Air and Space Museum. This museum is very well organized and in some ways more enjoyable then the National Air and Space museum in DC.

Afterwards, they organized a short trick-or-treat walk around the area businesses in downtown Hampton, so the boys were able to still come home with a stash of candy!

And, of course, a Halloween would not be complete without a few pumpkins!

So, getting back to the rally, the weather is looking favorable for the start tomorrow. We will be in the company of 75 other boats and checking in on the SSB radio twice a day with position reports and any pertinent news. Apparently, they will be posting the positions of each boat on their website, so if you are interested, check that site out. I will also be trying to sending position updates to the Pangolin link, so you can also look there if you want to follow along with us. Don’t panic though if you aren’t seeing updates coming through every day! This rally is well organized and they have been doing this since 1989, so if there’s any safety issues with any boats in the fleet, they will be on top of it and getting the help that is needed.

If the weather is favorable for the trip, we should be there in 9-12 days. We’ll be staying in Village Cay Marina, in Tortola for a few days and enjoying the celebratory dinners they have been planned. After that, our cruising plans are up in the air. We’ll be staying in that general area of the Caribbean for awhile, but since none of us have sailed in those waters before, we are leaving our plans open.

On a final note, I don’t know how easily we will be able to get to internet connections, especially in some destinations in the eastern Caribbean, so we may not be able to post weekly updates as timely as we have done in the past; we’ll do our best, though, to keep you informed on our progress.

Take care!

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