S.V. Escapade

After spending several months in the Caribbean on their boat Escapade, Larry and Diana Caillouet will be sailing home. We will leave Tortola in the British Virgin Islands on May 15 and sail north to Bermuda. After spending a few days there, we will sail on to Newport, Rhode Island, leave the boat there, and then fly home. To follow our progress, go to https://wx.ocens.com/everon/tracking3.php to open the OCENS Snap Track website. When it opens, you will see a meaningless close up map of the Seattle area. Enter the word Escapade in the blank for name, and set dates as 5/15/2017 to the present date. This will show you our location on the map. When it first opens it may be extremely close up or far out. Zoom out or in as the case may be to see our position in context of the map. To see all the boats sailing in the Salty Dawg Rally, remove Escapade from the name blank and enter SDR in the group blank. We will report our position twice a day until we reach Bermuda and again when we leave for Newport.

In addition to Diana and me, we will have two crew sailing with us, one from New Hampshire and one from Toronto. We will each stand watch for 3 hours and then be off watch for 9 hours. The onwatch person will be at the helm and will usually be the only person up during the night unless weather requires more hands on deck. During daylight hours several of us or perhaps all of us will be up. People have asked me, “Doesn’t it get boring sailing the ocean since the scenery never changes once you are out of sight of land?” No, because that’s not true. The ocean and the sky and the wind change constantly. All require constant monitoring because changes may be needed in the course heading or the set of the sails, but usually they invite monitoring for their beauty. Our shifts will rotate so that everyone will have the opportunity to see the sun set, the moon rise, the stars shine, the dawn break, and the day evolve.

And what about safety? Well, there are plenty of true stories of lives lost at sea, but each day they are far exceeded by lives lost on highways. Escapade is designed for blue water sailing and is loaded with safety equipment such as a life raft and flares and many forms of emergency communication equipment such as VHF, SSB, satellite phone, InReach, and EPIRB. We are safest once we lose sight of the shore–no rocks or reefs to hit, and very few boats to hit or be hit by.

Well, I may have painted the sea as a bit more benign than it actually is or can be, so pray for fair winds and following seas for us.