Where we're going, we don't need roads

Route planning on a sailboat is kind of a tricky thing. You see, usually when you're planning a trip you know exactly where you're going, how you're getting there, and when you'll arrive. Like if you were taking a flight to the USVI's you'd know that you were flying American Airlines with a connection in Newark and you'll arrive at 8pm on Sunday. On a sailboat, things aren't quite so easy, you have to account for the typical wind directions during the season you are leaving, currents, seasonal factors, and dominant weather patterns. Usually, these are the factors that determine where you go. So when you're sailing you usually start out with a few general plans that inevitably change like the winds during your passage.

Basically, the plan is to leave (the cold) Nova Scotia as soon as possible and arrive in (the warm) Virgin Islands sometime in late December or early January. The routes in which we take to get there are still up in the air. All of those factors like wind, currents, and temperature make it so you have to have a few choices of paths to take when the time comes to make the voyage. It's much more confusing to type it all out here, so we decided to show you!

All of our routes share the same first leg. We plan on going from Nova Scotia to Cape Cod and then through the Cape Cod Canal to New York. From there we have a few options on how we plan to get South.

Plan A (yellow): For this route we originally thought that we would go from New York to Bermuda and then continue on to Antiga, where we could work our way West to our final destination, the U.S Virgin Islands. The awesome part about this route is that the wind would be going with us the entire way, which is a pretty solid thing to have. Some would say the negatives outweighed the positives. The Northern Atlantic, especially in November, is a cold beast of an ocean. There is the potential for violent (cold) storms in that stretch of water and it requires you to travel far distances from land (4 days from land when you're half way!). Considering we still have a lot left to go on our journey around the world, we figured we'd ease into it, especially considering the time of year we're leaving. This was our original plan back in July, but we've pretty much ruled this one out for now.

Plan B (red): In this route we would still go through New York , except from there we would set our sights on Norfolk, VA. We would then enter into what is known in the sailing world as the "Ditch". The "Ditch" as it is known, is the Inter-Coastal Waterway (ICW), the ICW is a protected canal and river system that goes all the way from Massachusetts to Flordia. We would take the ICW from Norfolk to Moorhead City. once we pop out in Moorehead, we'll point as high as possible into the wind, which will hopefully get us to one of the Eastern Turks and Caicos Islands, or maybe even Puerto Rico.  This plan is nice again because the wind would mostly be with us and we wouldn't have to sail directly upwind through the Caribbean as much as in Plan C and D. So far, Will and I are thinking this will be most likely the route we go.

Plan C (green): This option is pretty similar to Plan B except that we would point south for the tropics closer to Savanah. All it would mean is cruising down the coast of the states a little more, which would be great fun, but the further we head south, the harder of a trip we're making it for ourselves to get to St. Thomas. We would be fighting against the wind for the majority of the time going through the Bahamas and The Turks (which still wouldn't be that bad of scenery), but we would be less likely to be caught by any storms or violent weather. Which is always a bonus...

Plan D (pink): This option is the "if weather is sh*t" option, or the "when all else fails" route. If we can never seem to find a weather window and December starts to creep up on us, we'll go this way just to get to warmer climates!  In this plan, we would take the ditch (ICW) all the way from Massachusetts to Florida and then fight our way upwind to the US Virgin Islands. Plane and simple. Again though, still not bad scenery and would be a fun time, just take a lot, lot longer.

Will and I trying on our immersion suits, also known as Gumbi suits. 

To be honest, it's all going to be determined by how comfortable we feel after our first leg of the journey to get to New York.  During that leg we'll have a better idea on what the boat can handle. This will ultimately be Tilly's first test for the Northern Atlantic, and also the furthest South the boat has ever been!