NOTE: Members of the Patreon Crew will get (er, have already started getting) closer-to-realtime updates and exclusive audio of the upcoming cruise…assuming Hurricane Melissa doesn’t block us…in which case, it’ll be updates on our ruined trip.
Posted to Patreon: Wednesday October 22, 2025
For a while, me and Jay have been talking about going to the Tortugas. You may know Jay from Episodes 57-60…
Jay went with me and The Admiral to Sarasota and Bradenton last year…or more precisely, Jay and I brought the yacht around to Sarasota, where The Admiral boarded after a supposed “work” engagement. Then we proceeded up to Bradenton, where my unique installation of the Max-Prop caused it to fall off just as we were docking. (You can catch up on that here.)
Irregardless, as Our Friend Bill might say, we are planning that Tortugas run starting a week from Monday…and this damned possibly-last-storm-of-the-season is throwing a major wrench in the works.
Yeah. Although the image above shows one reasonable, coherent track…you can see from the spaghetti models…nobody really has a clue yet where Melissa is gonna go.
All I know is, based on how these things tend to go—and this season has been very typical—if any of the more westward models we’re seeing today is accurate, this damned thing is likely to get up into the Gulf and cause havoc.
I know, I know…there’s a lot more at stake for folks in the Caribbean and Gulf than our little cruise. But as Sondra put it:
The joy of hurricane season, watching storms develop and wishing the terror on any region but yours.
(Sondra has a lot of great quotes, as evidenced by Ep. 34, Not Always Utopia.)
Don’t worry, though…I am NOT planning a repeat of last year’s adventures, no matter how entertaining they might have proven. Below is just a skeleton list of what’s going through my alleged mind today.
Conditions which must not obtain:
- Will there be storm conditions preventing the drive down? (Oct. 30, or could delay til Oct 31)
- Will we be in danger from Melissa at the marina? (Including vehicle flooding.)
- Will our cruise be in or near any reasonable projection of storm area?
Things that won’t prevent us, but may affect us:
- Will any of our intended fueling or rest stops possibly be out of commission? (We WILL be carrying plenty of extra fuel!)
- Will Tortugas be off-limits due to government shutdown? (Tortugas are a national park…not sure they’re gonna blockade folks or anything…might not be able to go ashore.)
Anyway…that’s it for today. We’ll see how this shitshow develops.
What could possibly go wrong?
