Friends -- Julie and I are about to shove off from Burley Creek in Annapolis aboard our 41-foot sailboat, Alleluia!, for a 1,500-mile sail to Gulfport, FL which is an enclave within St. Petersburg on Florida's Gulf coast. Our route will take us down the Chesapeake to Norfolk, then through the Great DismalSwamp route of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) to the coastal town of Beaufort, NC, where we will head out into the Atlantic just below Cape Hatteras. When we are on the ocean we will sail 24/7. But we plan to break up the passage with some stops. We hope to make a visit to Charleston, SC, then back into the Atlantic to Boca Raton, FL (where we have the generous offer of dockage from Joan and Bob Lipsig. Friend Glenn Horton has also offered dockage at his home in Key Largo on the east coast of Florida if we need a contingency stop. From there again south around the tip of Florida, along the Keys, through the Hawk Channel to Key West. From there we'll go north up to Tampa Bay and Alleluia!'s new home at the Pasadena Yacht Club near our condo in Gulfport. If we're lucky we hope to average 6 knots (about 7 mph). So you'll see it's going to take a while to make the 1,500 miles!
We will have with us a wife-husband team Beth Newbold and Pat Winkler, accomplished blue-water sailors and dear friends. They have made this passage themselves aboard their own boat, the "Irish Lass", a lovely Taswell 56
A number of you on this list have been aboard Alleuia! at one time or another so you know she's a strong boat. She's carried us safely through Chesapeake
squalls and Atlantic storms on former passages to Bermuda and Martha's Vineyard, but this will be her biggest test ever. We've equipped her with the
latest navigation technology, including color radar and an AIS collision alarm system. Still these bells and whistles are no substitute for a sharp lookout and prudent seamanship. I have made portions of this passage when I was a volunteer sailing coach for the Naval Academy and keeping a weather eye
out is good practice as the Atlantic Ocean can get ugly quickly this time of year.
Julie plans to keep a web log as we progress and if you're interested in keeping up with us, the link is below. If you click on, you can sign up at no charge and you'll then get updates automatically as Julie posts them. We figure this trip will take two or three weeks. We plan to leave Saturday,
May 14 and hope for landfall in Gulfport sometime after Memorial Day weekend. Cheers, Richard
Sailing adventure blog, if you're interested:
http://svalleluia.blogspot.com/?spref=fb
