Pacific Planning

I recently got my hands on a couple of cruising/information books for islands in the Pacific “Landfalls of Paradise” by Earl R Hinz and “South Pacific” by David Stanley.  They were FedExd to us here in the Uk by Jess, Ben’s girlfriend.  They should have been sent down to Grenada with all our other stuff but that all fell apart when our main order was not shipped. I have got back into reading and planning mode. The overall plan, as I think I’ve mentioned before, is essentially what’s called the Coconut Milk Run. The timing for this trip revolves around avoiding the December to March cyclone season in the South Pacific.

We finally have a rough timetable from Grenada through to New Zealand. The timetable has about three weeks spare time in the back pocket which we can add where we feel we want to stay longer. Passage times are estimated on covering 110nm per day, hopefully too conservative.

I have done all my calcs on a spreadsheet so the timetable comes down to specific dates. The chances that these dates will be stuck to are close to zero but the overall plan shouldn’t be too far off. After all, it’s not as though we can go back or divert a few thousand miles. There are also a few key dates we need to hit. In the spirit of not being held too closely to a calendar (for safety reasons) we need to arrive at certain places early to avoid complication or disappointment. It looks very much like Sam and his girlfriend will join us for Xmas in Panama. John will join us for six months at the same time and leave from somewhere near Tahiti the following June. We still want to be in the Southern Cooks for the July 11th eclipse.

So here’s the timetable as we currently have it :

We seem to have caught colds, would you believe, so it’s good to be sitting around reading. Still no luck on the internet order.