Midnight Sun III Story - Planning
We purchased a new Lagoon 40 Catamaran in La Rochelle France and brought her back to the USA. We have chronicled our trip in this series of videos.

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the Planck stage was an interesting time

in fact to be honest it was fairly

hectic and bloody awful towards the end

but anyway just a few words about that

started off after a hoarder at the boat

kind of a hurry up on wait-and-see kind

of approach and as things got closer and

closer we realized there a number of

things we had to do first of all we had

to figure out what was going to be on

the boat when we received it in terms of

safety equipments equipment for cooking

linens etc we have many conversations

with our broker but really didn't get

good answers on the answers that we felt

were reliable so we had a number of

issues that we had to solve through not

only equipment we had to think about

electricity the boat was being built in

u.s. standards 110 vaults of course the

power in Europe is 220 240 so we had to

address that how we're going to mount

electricity on the boat during the

delivery we also have to think about

cooking and gas propane gas is not

readily available in Europe so we knew

that we're going to have to use counting

gas until we got over to the Virgin

house so again logistics associated with

that boat we provided with a lot of

feelings and things we need to take

there to try to sort through all those

we'll be ready for those and we weren't

sure exactly what we were going to be

able to get locally particularly

adaptors for EU to to us standards we

felt that would be something will be

really hard to find in France we decided

the solution to to this was to ship a

pallet equipment over from the US which

is actually what we did logistics with

that were

considerable and again that was a lot of

Blaine itthere well yeah we found the

shipping company eventually that would

share a single pallet

they made all kinds of promises to us

and then really didn't deliver on those

but anyway powerpoints about three

months ahead of time was delayed a

couple of signs from storms in the

Atlantic and eventually we did get to

France clearing customs etc was a major

problem that in the end we had to make a

trip to a half to physically release the

pallet from customs before it could be

delivered to us in La Rochelle just to

add to the excitement I officially tie

it before we set off on the trip and

jairam said we were nice enough to throw

me a wonderful little party at Lancer

which was great and simple everybody

before we left

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marketplace and the big really

established company in the venerable old

firm and we had one or two a long

employees that had joined us at the time

I remember going down one day sitting

down and the officer Kirk escorted

remember and as in Kirk just tell me who

is the best engineer at law Bar None not

number two and number three just the

best engineer in your opinion yeah it's

this British guy was right no you're not

the best finite element guy in the world

you're not the best erudition in the

world but in terms of being a creative

intuitive and thoughtful engineer you're

the best person I've ever worked with

and it's been a great pleasure having

you in the firm these past 23 years

as a colleague and as a friend has been

and I mentioned that I'm going to

retirement party knees they said we was

retiring and I said Neil Davies and oh

oh he was the keyboard guy right guy

said yeah and they all my son started

laughing and I said what are you guys

laughing about they said well dad I

don't think we ever told you but and

when they were little they they had dug

into some wild albums and apparently

pulled out a couple my old Genesis

albums and they said we thought that you

worked with

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in my awkward letter there was a clause

that Neal Davies was going to stay at

Boca ratone and mentor me for six months

and when I joined the firm on day two he

patted me on the back and said you've

got this how many people were here

because you helped recruit them in and

help them grow within the firm Jimmy oh

you leave my legacy at the verb and

then we made a trip to Mexico the

purpose of that trip was to help our

friends Larry and Tracy bringing their

boat Tracy back from from Mexico they've

been to Guatemala and Rio Dulce

and we met up with them in Mexico and

helped crew back across the Gulf of

Mexico and actually left Tracy behind

our house rafted up with Midnight's onto

our hunter 42 before we set out for

France

very dark

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they're just a crowd things off before

we left for France a few weeks before

hurricane Michael hit and well that was

some excitement we really didn't need

but it really hadn't caused us too much

problems our home but we have a rental

house in Cape San Blas and that area was

hit pretty hard

Hurricane Michael came ashore in Mexico

Beach which is about seven or eight

miles from Cape San Blas

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we were very fortunate that we didn't

sustained major damage to our property

but still we had to get over there but

tops on the roof clear out the floating

entranceway remove sheetrock all the

kind of stuff that you need to think

about just before you about to sell it

to Europe and head out on a trip for six

months but anyway we got through it and

one last thing route planning Eve a

considerable thought to route planning

spent a lot of time studying the chart

studying the weather pattern is looking

worth trade winds will be most favorable

during our trip in order to come across

the route that's what I love reading a

lot of research on ports and where we

could go where it might be difficult to

enter all those kinds of things but it

works out in the end well this is the

North Atlantic Ocean passage chart which

I spent numerous hours looking over

during our planning stage just to recap

quickly our plan was to pick up the boat

in La Rochelle France come down the

coast of Portugal and down to Cape Verde

and then across the Atlantic until we

get to the leeward islands and make our

way from there so what is there to look

at there's a lot of wide open ocean when

you look at the chart really closely

there's a lot of great information about

different routes and trade winds and you

may be able to see some of the purple

lines on there which kind of recommended

route to take and if we take a look in

the back of the shop there's information

by month on statistical information

about winds wind direction so for

instance is November is December and if

you study these charts long enough you

can figure out where the probability of

wind is how strong it's likely to be and

from what direction it's likely to be so

obviously that's a great deal of help in

planning the route

Reed's nautical almanac was also a great

resource with lots of information about

ports of entry tides shipping you name

it there's a lot of information in there

big book lots of reading but very

condensed in terms of port information

but very very detailed at the same time

and of course there was lots of time on

the computer looking at different routes

different ports where we could go

distances how far we could make in a day

how many days it would take etc and

eventually I built up a spreadsheet to

make our best guess at what our route

would be and what our timing would be

and obviously we deviated from this but

it was a planning tool that we needed to

to get us started and get us some idea

of where we're gonna be and where we

were going to head for on any given day

or any given leg

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