PLANNING FOR THE JOURNEY PATH AHEAD

0830 Dec 11, 2014 GeorgeTown Exumas:  Raised anchor and headed to the south end of Elizabeth Harbour.  Unlike the harbour to the north, the Navionics Charts had a magenta line and two sets of markers marked the channel  between shallow areas and coral heads. Then when the navigation challenges increased as we approached the south entry with coral heads and reefs on both sides, the magenta line and markers disappeared leaving us to fend for ourselves.  Fortunately the Explorer Chartbook we had purchased at the Trawler Fest had waypoints.  However, some of these waypoints ran over Navionics located coral heads.  From reading the water it appeared that Navionics location of the coral heads and reefs were right on.  Not knowing the depth of the heads we steered off the Explorer Chartbook waypoint course to miss the heads.

We had stayed at anchor the day before, with the passing front, studying every possible route south we could imagine.  Google Earth is great for calculating distance of paths giving the answer directly in nautical miles.  Bouy Weather’s seven day forecast is also great for looking at the predicted weather at exact points along the route.  I like the detail in Stephen Pavlidis Cruising Guides as well.  We are also using Chris Parker on this trip.  I have been doing my planning using the above guides and then discussing the plan with Chris. Twice now the conditions predicted by Bouy Weather as being borderline passable were in fact mild as Chris Parker predicted.  To date Chris Parker has been right on.  The passage to Rum Cay today was an example.  Bouy Weather has predicted seas to 2.2 meters.  The ground swell was less than four feet, and winds were mild as Chris Parker had predicted.

As the Navionics charts for the Northern Bahamas run out at GeorgeTown we switched to the Caribbean Charts.  We are using the platnium charts for the Caribbean.  I was surprised to find that the chart did not have much detail for the Dominican Rebublic.  One of our possible stops was Ocean World on the North Coast of the Dominican Republic.  Although the Navionics Charts show the Marina they show no detail.  Fortunately we have other books aboard with detail