Happy New Year, Rich!
Great find! Thanks for the tip.
Quent

Rich,

That’s a great feature for day sailing, but if you’re cruising you
actually spend very little time at the helm. Most of the time you’re
snuggled into the forward lee corner of the cockpit, behind the dodger,
while the autopilot or windvane steer the boat. In that case, instrument
read-outs are more handy mounted on the coachhouse under the dodger.

Just a thought from the other side.

PS: Silverheels and I arrived on the south coast of the Domninican
Republic yesterday after a 1300 nm passage from Jacksonville, FL. The
boat behaved wonderfully.

Tor

I totally agree..Bill Shaw got it right.

________________________________

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I spend so little time behind the helm, I wish I had put the controls for the autopilot somewhere else, or maybe put in a remote under the dodger where the chart plotter and instruments are.
alan
sv UNABATED
lying in Georgetown, Exuma

— On Tue, 1/3/12, Joseph Steiner wrote:

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Alan,

What are you doing so far north this time of year? Carefull you don’t
catch cold!

🙂

Well, most of it, anyway.

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Tor,
Congrats on a successful passage.
What route did you use and would you recommend it?

Freezing my ass off in JAX (thought you would want to know). Still better
than my old berth on the Pax River.

John Stevenson
http://www.svsarah.com

On Tue, Jan 3, 2012 at 7:08 PM, Silverheels wrote:

Hey John,

I sailed ESE from Jacksonville, initially aiming for 26°N x 68°W, but
then changed that waypoint en route to 25°N x 68°W after catching a wind
forecast on SSB that indicated the trade winds were farther south just
then. As it turned out I wound up carrying on a bit farther east than
68°W due to an annoying SSE’ly wind. As soon as it backed to the east I
hung a right and sailed south (well, SxSE at that point) to the Mona
Passage and hooked around to the south side of the DR. In any case, the
point, of course, is to make all your easting before encountering the
trades. Then the final, southward leg is a sweet reaching sleigh ride
rather than a windward ordeal.

As for recommending it, there really isn’t any other way unless you do
the Bahamas island-hopping route, which inevitably turns into a brutal
beat into the trade winds soon after Georgetown.

Tor

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Not to bad here, although today the wind has been howling as a front came though. Been pushing 25 to 30 since this morning and on into this evening. Everyone here has confined to their boats. Working out some issues on boat before I head out of Georgetown to the Southern Bahamas.
 Glad you had a good passage. What are your plans?
Alan

— On Tue, 1/3/12, Silverheels wrote:

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Alan,

My plan is to poke along the south coast of DR for a week or three, then
to a laid-back little island, Ile à Vache (18°07.30N 73°41.21W), off the
SE coast of Haiti, and then across the Windward Passage to the south
coast of Cuba. (I have a journalist exemption to the US ban.) After that
it’s a bit up in the air. Either north or south. Or west.

Tor

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