Dawg days on the horizon. Pandora’s heading home.

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I am just about ready to head back to Pandora in the BVIs tomorrow morning.

She’s been on a mooring in Soper’s Hole, West End, for the last two weeks while I traveled home to visit family and get our home and gardens in order for the coming summer.  After a winter all sealed up, our home was in good shape if a bit overrun with mice.  Fortunately, because I set a lot of traps, most of the mice we returned to were, shall we say, not a threat any longer.   I won’t dwell on that except to say that we seem to be a very popular winter spot for the local mice community.

Anyway, things are pretty well under control and I’ll be flying to St Thomas in the morning and then will catch a ferry to Tortola.  It’s going to be a long day.

This is Pandora on her mooring in West End.  It’s a very pretty spot. In the last few years I have become more involved in the Salty Dawg Sailing Association and will be participating in their spring rally north from Tortola. My plan is to participate in some of the events over the next few days leading up to a planned departure on or about May 15th.  A really neat feature of this event is that you can track the fleet as they make their way north on a dedicated page for the rally.

This link will take you to a shared page that will show all participants.  To see the group, as they make their way north, all you need to do is to put “SDR” in the group section on the left (see below) and then select the days that you want to see the positions for.   Once we leave, you can put in a range of 05/15/2017 to the current day and then see the track of the fleet for the entire rally period to date or just the dates that you want to track the fleet for.  You can also focus on a single vessel on the right and look at that track only.   This is what the page looks like.  I think it’s pretty neat. Anyway, it’s a nice feature and a fun event.  I’ll be leaving Tortola on our about May 17th, after my crew arrives so you’ll be able to follow Pandora on that map too.   The boats in the fleet are going to a number of areas such as Bermuda, Hampton VA, as well as areas in New England so they will be quite spread out.

I also have a dedicated page on my blog “where in the world is Pandora” that will allow you to track our progress with a new position report every two hours while I am underway. Or, you can go right to the shared page/map for Pandora herself by clicking here.  This page includes the track that Brenda and I took over the winter so you can see that we covered a lot of ground.  Here’s a screenshot of what that page looks like, actually. It’s neat that you can also zoom-in and right click on any individual position report and see the actual speed for us at that point.  We may not have much wind, unlike the gales that carried Pandora south in January, according to the long range forecast so we might be going pretty slow.  Of course, as Chris Parker, our weather router would say, “that’s a long way out, so conditions may (probably) change”.

So, that’s the plan and if you check back as we get closer to departure, I’ll report more on our plans.   As always, you can sign up on the home page to get a message when I post so you’ll have the latest.

I also plan on posting to my blog via the SSB radio most days while we are underway so you’ll be able to “be there” with us, minus the motion sickness, and follow how we are doing.

If you are ever considering a trip south to the Caribbean for the first time, or are an “old timer” and do the trip regularly, I really encourage you to join the Salty Dawg Rally to Tortola from Hampton VA.  It’s a great event and the trip itself follows a near week of seminars in Hampton prior to departure.  How about doing it in November of this year?  Join in the fun.   I’ll be there.

Stay tuned as, Yes indeed, there are Dawg Days on the horizon for Pandora.   It should be a fun trip.