Where in the world is Pandora?

Patterson It’s spring of 2023, the winter cruising season is done and Pandora will be in New England for the summer.  The plan is to return to Antigua in the fall as part of the Salty Dawg Rally.

To see Pandora’s when we are underway,  click on this link which will take you to my Garmin page.  This link is updated 24/7 when I am aboard so any position you see won’t be more than a few hours old.  

When we are aboard I keep my tracker activated sending regular updates on our whereabouts.   My “track” will remain on the map for the entire season so you will know where our travels have taken us.

We also have our AIS tracker on all the time, even when we aren’t aboard and as long as we are not too far from shore, you can see where we are.   To see us on AIS, search for Pandora, MMSI #367600760.  This service only works when we are within VHF range so it’s primarily coastal.

A great AIS app “Marine Traffic” it can be viewed on a laptop or as a phone app.  With that app you can see our location in real time, updated every 15 minutes.   There is a feature within this app that will allow you to select vessels, such as Pandora and make them part of “your fleet” so that seeing us is that much easier.  It’s a pretty nice feature.  There is also a feature that will send you an e-mail automatically when we enter or leave a port. Pretty cool, if you ask me.

Yenagoa Our history aboard:

Since I retired in 2012, Brenda and I have spent our winters south including time traveling up and down the Intra Coastal Waterway, several winters exploring the Bahamas and two months cruising the south coast of Cuba in March and April of 2016.  In the September 2016 issue of Blue Water Sailing  Magazine I had an article about our trip to Cuba that sums things up nicely.  Check it out here.

For the last six seasons, we have cruised the eastern Caribbean, first the Leeward Islands and for the 2016-2017 winter season. I did a summary of our 2017 cruise to the Leewards in this post.  For the 2017/2018 season, we covered the southern islands of the Caribbean, the Windwards from Antigua to the Grenadines and I wrote an article about that area for Blue Water Sailing Magazine that you can see here.   Following that, as in past years, I brought Pandora back north to New England waters.

Regarding our trip to Cuba:  If you want to read more about the process we went through to gain US government approval to visit Cuba aboard Pandora and the “whole Cuba thing”, I wrote about the “12 reasons” U.S. citizens can visit Cuba.  In any event, after much back an forth, and let me tell you there was plenty of “back and forth”, we received approval and went.

For the last six years, I have worked with government and local businesses in Antigua to bring the Salty Dawg Rally to that island.  I am happy to report that in November of 2021 I was honored by the Governor General of Antigua,  a guy that is referred to as “his Excellency” and reports to the Queen, yes that Queen, in England.   The award, or medal actually, was in recognition for my contribution in bring the rally to Antigua over the years.   This experience was quite a thrill and I wrote about it in this post.

I do hope that you will be inspired to follow along on our journeys.

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