The Slide Into Spring

We are just under two months from our targeted launch day of May 9 so it seems like the right time to take stock of where we are with our projects and preparations.

Winter Boat Projects
Mike has been super busy building, sanding and varnishing.  All of planned winter boat projects are either “ready for install” or are well underway.  He has even been able to add in a few other upgrades to make things super cozy for us on Wild Horses.

Our progress with our October 2020 project list.   

1. Building shelves for our hanging lockers
2. Resurfacing our wooden cockpit dining table
3. Replacing our teak swim platform at the stern of our boat
4. Re-engineering one of our aft cabins into storage space
5. Improving our boat energy inputs via a new higher-powered engine alternator, more solar panels and replacing our existing AGM batteries with lithium iron batteries

​In addition to the above, Mike has also built a stern motor mount for the dinghy motor and decided on the water maker that we will be purchasing this spring. We will be saying more on our water maker in a later post.

We have also ordered a new custom mattress and custom bedding from Sea Swag in Toronto for our V berth master cabin.  All the bedding gear will be ready for pick up in April.  Since our new lithium boat batteries and solar panels from Marine Solar Innovations (MSI) also need to be picked up in Toronto, we will be renting a cube van to take a (safe and restriction adhered) day trip there in early April.

Our 2021 planning for the Caribbean
We have also made great strides with our planning preparations.  We have realized, though, that a lot of this will have to be re-visited often as the COVID landscape is constantly changing, both in the United States and in the Caribbean.  Right now, most islands are open but require a recent negative COVID test.  Some islands remain closed or have been recently closed due to outbreaks.  We also don’t know how the variants and/or the vaccines will affect things.  We just try to stay on top of the latest info via noonsite.com – an amazing COVID info resource for cruisers.
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1. Re-vamp our detailed route planning to the Caribbean to ensure that we spend very little time in congested or overly touristy areas along our route.
2. Re-open our research into ex-patriot health insurance for the Caribbean as well as regular travel insurance for the time we will spend in the United States.  Unfortunately, Canadian health coverage will only take us three months into our journey so we need these additional insurance coverages the rest of the time we are gone (note: we plan to be south for several years).  We had already done this work for the pre-pandemic world but coverages and costs have likely changed (or will change) so we need to do new research on this. 
3. Re-open our research into customs requirements for us and for our pup Ocean.  Again, this work was done but COVID may have changed a few things. 

Lots of work done and lots of work to do but we are super excited about only being a few months from having Wild Horses back in the water.  Very exciting!