Planning a World Cruise | Sailing Blog - Technical Hints and Tips - Sailing Television

Planning a World Cruise

It's a very exciting time planning an upcoming cruise! Whether you are planning a summer cruise of a week or two, or planning something a little longer as we are… the planning stage should be a fun exercise as well as a chance to learn about your destinations and route.

In our case we're planning our first trip out into the Pacific Ocean to the Galapagos, Marquesas, French Polynesia and onwards. But first we will be back in the UK to collect our new Distant Shores III next spring, so our planning starts there.

The new boat will be ready in time to appear in the Dusseldorf Boat Show in January. Then she'll be back in the UK for final checks before splashing her in the Solent for our initial test-sailing in late March. Below is a section of the pilot chart for March in the North Atlantic. It shows winds around force 4-5 with a slight preponderance from the W-SW and only 2-3% of calms. The red "10" in the English channel indicates that 10% of the time the waves are greater than 12 feet high. The next red line indicates 20% so our sailing ground will be between 10-20 percent waves above 12 feet. The open channel is likely to be "perky" ;-)

You can follow the link for the US Government site to download the pilot charts yourself, which all include a handy section on how to read them. http://msi.nga.mil/NGAPortal/MSI.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=msi_portal_page_62&pubCode=0003

uk-pilot-chart-march
Of course it's still cold in March so we won't be planning very long passages. The Solent is a protected body of water with many nice harbours and uncrowded anchorages (that time of year) so it should be fun cruising while we get to know Distant Shores III.

We will also plan some "open day" events then so if you'd like to come and see Distant Shores III there will be an opportunity as well.

Year 1



Looking forward to May with the weather becoming more pleasant we will be heading off on our first longer cruises. We'll cross the Channel to Guernsey in the Channel Islands and visit France as well. Then after one more trip back to the UK we'll set off on the big voyage.

The summer plan is to head south along France, then Spain and Portugal to Gibraltar. Way back in 2007 we sailed this coast in December (Yikes!) so are expecting a much warmer cruise with a chance to poke in some of the harbours we missed that time!

Next we'll sail across to the Caribbean in November - arriving in Antigua in December to complete 2018 with a Caribbean Christmas.

Here is our recent video Q&A on planning the world voyage.



Are you planning a cruise in the next 1-2 years?
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