South Florida to Lesser Antilles in January

[SailorKeddy]

Hello forum!

I am planning a trip on my newly restored Allied Seawind 30 from south Florida (West Palm area) to the lesser antilles in January. What would be the best route for this? Sail directly west until I'm at the same longitude as Guadalupe and then head south? Sail up the coast in the Stream, out to Bermuda and then down? Or just through the Bahamas and down the thorny path?

I'd really like to go offshore for a week or two, something I've always wanted to do. Grand plan is to make it down there by mid January and take my time over the course of 4-5 months making my way back to south Florida via Bahamas.

Any thoughts or suggestions are more than welcome!

[rourkeh]

I did the trip south a few years ago. Started in Florida and jumped over to Grand Bahama, then the Berry Islands, Spanish Wells, and kept going south.
The southern Bahamas is really great and worth spending a lot of time sailing around. You can day sail from island to island all the way to Turks and Caicos then jump over to the DR then PR, BVI, Etc. This is a slow trip, I took a couple of months and it was a great experience. Going to be BANG, BANG, BANG the whole way though and a lot of motoring.

[SailorKeddy]

Thanks. Yeah I'm trying to avoid that BANG stuff and the motoring. I was looking at the pilot chart for January and if I sail up to Charleston and then to Bermuda, that should give me a very nice reach down to the lesser Antilles.

I could then work my way back and spend March/April in the southern Bahamas before heading back to FL in May.