THE GREAT LOOP

PART 2 FLORIDA TO GEORGIA

Carefully planning a trip that spans over 2000nm, especially one in which the end destination is not the same as the one you started from, requires meticulous groundwork. Above all you need to make sure the boat is ready for the sheer rigours it will endure, along with an inventory of spares and tools to cover the most likely failures.

With this in mind I arranged for my Princess V48’s engines and generator to have a full 1000-hour service, including checking the injectors, flushing the heat exchangers, polishing the fuel and cleaning the tanks. In addition to this I decided to completely replace 14-year-old Freon-based Cruisair air-conditioning system with three modern self-contained Webasto units. Having ordered them back in January 2021, they finally arrived from a Covid-locked-down Germany just three working days prior to our departure date. Even with an army of engineers on board there was no way the boat would be ready to leave on time, forcing us to delay our departure by a day. Having also updated the software on the new glass bridge Raymarine Axiom MFD and Quantum Doppler radar, I discovered it had turned our autopilot compass into a useless scrambled mess. The quickest solution was to swap the unit for a new one and deal with the scrambled one later. Fortunately, I had allowed a three-day stopover in Port Canaveral in case of any mechanical failure, so the loss of a