Maiden Voyage of Mystic Journey

Well, as promised, a description of the navigation table and I thought I might as well add in the work table since they are next door to each other. But before I do, I have to tell you about much more exciting (for us) stuff. You may not see this blog for a few days so just to let you know, I am preparing it on Thursday, 21 February (We’ve been here a month and a day – wow).

WE SAILED TODAY – out of Nanny Cay and into a bunch of firsts – first time under the main sail, first time just Cheryl and I were sailing, first time we went swimming off the side of our boat, first time we used the ladder to get back on board!! first time we used our sun shower. It was wonderful!!! Small problems that we handled – our 3rd reefing line was caught so we had trouble getting the mainsail to the top until Cheryl noticed what was wrong (I was too busy grunting at the winch), and the depth indicator didn’t show properly (needed for anchoring, picking passages and just generally avoiding running aground) but I was able to fix that. All in all an absolutely great experience.


We sailed from Nanny Cay to Jost Van Dyke Island– Little Harbour, where we picked up a mooring ball. Tonight we are going to celebrate our day of firsts by eating ashore at a place called Abe’s By the Sea. We were there earlier and as you walk up the small dock, they have a cage full of lobsters in the water under the dock. We were going to splurge and have lobster but some other stuff looked good so we opted out of that. I am sure lobster will be on lots of menus down here. We may even get our own trap.








On to the boat details – the nav table is on the starboard side of the boat slightly aft of midships. It is there you find the controls for all things electronic and most things electrical. There is a circuit breaker board that has all the switches for all of the necessities of life – water, lights, heat (we do have a heater in the boat), bilge pumps etc etc. That is mounted on the side and behind that are the terminal boards that provide connections for the wires that “electrify” the various workings. The table faces forward and there is a bench that has storage beneath it. There is also a fuse board that is mounted on the forward upper part of the desk that provides switches for all of our external lights i.e. anchor, navigation, steaming etc. etc and electrical controls for the solar panels and the wind generator.

The nav table also has all of the radio and navigation equipment such as the VHF radio, the SSB radio, chart plotter/radar and the Raymarine navigation multi. This last controls the instruments that tell us our depth, speed, wind speed and direction, distance travelled and other navigation information. There is also a weather fax included in this array but it is mounted on the side of the work desk area and at this time, I have no idea how it works. The old owner never used it but it turns out there were a number of things they didn’t bother with a lot including the spinnaker sail and the chart plotter.


Lastly for today- the work area. I have a bench about 3’ x 2 ½’ with a double door cupboard behind the upper part, a bigger double door compartment underneath it and 5 drawers 10”x6” by about 20” deep. Overall it is a great place to work on smaller things as well as store things but we still require quite a bit of space in other places to keep spare parts. The storage in the work area is for the more immediate stuff I need like nuts, bolts, lubricants, and smaller parts for things like the toilets.

So – I am not sure what is next in our boat details but I do know we are sailing tomorrow to St Thomas again – well not really again because the first time we motored mostly – and I do know that on the way we will be stopping at Foxy’s, which we will write more about later and at Cruz Bay to check into the USVI (we can check out of BVI in the same area where we will be going to Foxy’s).
So - Later