Another thing the answer will depend on is: how many times have you prepped a boat for an ocean crossing before? How about for a coastal hop? I have never been on such a voyage but I would guess prep time scales up at least linearly with distance, or maybe duration, which may or may not be the same thing. My first overnight voyage took several weeks of planning, and since then the prep time has gone down to an hour or so, since I have a better understanding of the boat, the crew, the local conditions, etc.
It sounds like this will be your first Atlantic crossing. Maybe you've done some sailing already off the East Coast, in which case you have a feel for how quickly things get done there. It also sounds like you'll be sailing a new-to-you boat, so no matter what the broker (and even the surveyor) tells you, you'll probably be doing at least a couple of coastal hops before crossing the pond, so factor in a coupla weeks for that plus prep time for those trips.
If I were in your situation I would probably be looking at one year from purchase to departure. This would include time for a shakedown cruise and other, progressively longer cruises on the same boat, say to the Bahamas. Plenty of opportunity there to work out all the bugs that the survey inevitably missed, and to get familiar enough with the boat that my wife and I could both singlehand her confidently in adverse conditions, building on experience with our previous boat. It was also give me time to pick and choose increasingly challenging conditions in which to drill heavy weather tactics, experiment with provisioning strategies, consider modifications, etc. This is assuming we can get enough time off from work to do all this, but it sounds like you won't have that problem. This is also assuming that winter is still sailing season in Florida.
So, for the purposes of rough estimation, assuming your experience level is similar to mine, I'd be looking at a year.
It sounds like this will be your first Atlantic crossing. Maybe you've done some sailing already off the East Coast, in which case you have a feel for how quickly things get done there. It also sounds like you'll be sailing a new-to-you boat, so no matter what the broker (and even the surveyor) tells you, you'll probably be doing at least a couple of coastal hops before crossing the pond, so factor in a coupla weeks for that plus prep time for those trips.
If I were in your situation I would probably be looking at one year from purchase to departure. This would include time for a shakedown cruise and other, progressively longer cruises on the same boat, say to the Bahamas. Plenty of opportunity there to work out all the bugs that the survey inevitably missed, and to get familiar enough with the boat that my wife and I could both singlehand her confidently in adverse conditions, building on experience with our previous boat. It was also give me time to pick and choose increasingly challenging conditions in which to drill heavy weather tactics, experiment with provisioning strategies, consider modifications, etc. This is assuming we can get enough time off from work to do all this, but it sounds like you won't have that problem. This is also assuming that winter is still sailing season in Florida.
So, for the purposes of rough estimation, assuming your experience level is similar to mine, I'd be looking at a year.
