The Plan

Cruise #1 - East Coast ICW Annapolis to Miami
The plan, as it stands right now, is to haul Cookie back to the Annapolis area when I am done with the refit. I really like the area and it is an American sailing mecca. I also want to see the East Coast by boat. Since Cookie spent her whole sailing career in the area, this is a natural starting point.

So, my first real cruise aboard Cookie will be down the East Coast following the Intracoastal Waterway or ICW for short. This route will force a good deal of motoring to be done but there are some stretches that can be sailed.

The following is the route I plan to take Annapolis to Miami. The green route is an alternate course through Pamlico Sound that can be sailed.

Once in Miami, or Ft Pierce, I will visit family and friends that I have not seen in years now. I will not linger long though.

Cruise #2 - The Keys
The next trip on the list is the Keys. This will be more of a "for the fun of it" kind of excursion. I love to fish and having my very own "home" in the backwater for a month or two (or three) is a temptation that I cannot resist. This route is motoring out of Miami in ICW to about Long Key. From there to Key West is all sailing except where I will duck in for extended stays in the outer keys. When my provisions are getting low, I will continue to Key West and stay for a couple of weeks before returning to Miami via an offshore route. The whole trip will look like this:

Cruise #3 - The Bahamas & Turks and Caicos
Next comes a very ambitious, nearly complete circuit of The Bahamas and Turks/Caicos. This will be more of a proper shakeout than the first two trips. By the end of this cruise, I should know what needs to be done to Cookie in order to complete a circumnavigation. The route will be as follows: Depart Ft Lauderdale - Freeport - Abacos - Nassau (provisions) - Eleuthera - Little San Salvador - Cat Island - Conception Island - Rum Cay - Samana Cay - Mayaguana - Providenciales (provisions) - Grand Turk - Great Inagua Island - Acklins/Crooked Islands - Ragged Islands - Long Island - Exumas - Nassau (provisions) - Green Cay - East coast of Andros - Berry Islands - Bimini - Miami.

Cruise #4 - Circumnavigation
And now the big kahuna! The circumnavigation! I will depart from Miami, cross the Atlantic Ocean, enter the Mediterranean briefly and cross the Atlantic again to South America. I will then hug the East coast of S. America to the Southern end of the continent. At this point I will be entering the Pacific Ocean and cruising North through Patagonia. This route will eventually take me to Valparaiso, Chile. From there I will cross the Pacific Ocean, through Polynesia to New Zealand. From there you should be able to follow the route on the map below.

This will take me at least five years to complete, if not more. Recife, Brazil will be the point at which the circumnavigation will be complete if I make landfall there the second time by.

So there it is! I will more than likely make some changes due to prevailing weather patterns, hot women and cheap beer!