When we started this journey last year we originally said we were going to cruise the Eastern Caribbean and then see where the winds take us. Here is our original plan. As you can see our map has expanded!!! 

The time has come where we have to decide where to go next…. and we can’t decide what to do. 

We are entertaining several options:

1.) Continue to cruise the Eastern Caribbean. For many reasons, this was what we originally thought we would do when we started out: Cruising the Eastern Carribean is easy. We are always in touch with the outside world. Weather is pretty predictable. Navigation is easy. But, for all the above reasons we are now bored. We’ve already explored every habited island, (except for Saba and LaDesirade) between Puerto Rico and Grenada, so there would not be the excitement of exploring new places. We absolutely love every island, and would be very comfortable cruising the chain, but we would not be challenged. 
2.) Sail back up the Eastern Carribean island chain and then head West past Puerto Rico and hit Dominician Republic and Cuba. Big question here would be where would we spend 2017 hurricane season? Would we sail back to Grenada or go somewhere else? We’ve been in Grenada for several weeks and we’ve had enough. It’s like a “suburb” of cruisers here with every imaginable activity going on. We are ready to leave, so we don’t really want to have to come back next year. 

3.) Sail back up the Eastern Chain and Sail through the Bahamas. But where would we go next? We would have to beat into the weather to get back to the Caribbean or sail across the Atlantic to Europe. But, with the current Schengen policy, we can only stay in Europe for a maximum of 90 days every 6 months, so going to Europe is out for now and beating into wind and waves sucks!!! 

4.) Head West through the Panana Canal. This is a big step!! Once you cross through the canal and sail to the Galapogos Islands there is no coming back, because of the trades winds and currents. To come back to the Caribbean (and our comfort zone) we would have to keep going around. There is an entire world ahead of us to explore, and the thought of sailing through Marquesas, Bora Bora, Tahiti and Fiji is definitely intriguing! But, this would be a 2-3 year plan or more depending on how long we would stay in Australia. Are we ready to make a 25+ day crossing across the worlds largest ocean? 

Hmmmmmmm, decisions decisions. Stay tuned!!!