Sailboats Are Powerboats...and Skipping Georgia

Hilton Head to St. Augustine, Florida  – 146 nautical miles sailed

The next US state along the ICW is Georgia, but we decided to skip it and instead do the 26-hour offshore ocean run for two reasons. First, the Georgian portion of the ICW is shallow, very winding, long, and there’s very little to see besides marshy swamp grass – not much for towns or cities, besides Savannah which we will visit on the return trip. So you end up staying in very quiet and secluded anchorages and have to carefully time your passages through the shallow parts with favourable tides, which further lengthens the journey. Second, the government of Georgia has passed some decidedly anti-boater legislation which severely restricts anchoring. I understand the motivation was to cut down on the number of derelict or abandoned vessels clogging up their waterways, but transient cruisers got caught in the crossfire and have been made to feel unwelcome.

 

We were out of the marina by 8am and had an uneventful passage. As usual, the winds were directly in our face so we used only motor power until 4am when the winds finally shifted enough from south to west to deploy the headsail. It was another bumpy ride.

 

I want to let you in on a dirty little secret. Cruising sailboats like ours don’t sail much. They really don’t. Especially on this southward migration to the Caribbean. Until this point, we have traveled under motor power all except for a few hours when we were able to get both sails out and cut the engine. I think we did this once on the Hudson and once during our last daytime ocean passage.

 

Why is this? First, the twists and turns and currents of the ICW (not to mention the occasional lock) make it thoroughly impractical, and for all but maybe the purest die-hards, impossible to sail. But even on the ocean it’s not a given. That goddamn wind always seems to be in your face and it is a rare and magical pleasure when you get perfect sailing conditions. For example, during our two week-long sailing trip on Lake Ontario last year where we covered something like 500 miles, we did a grand total of about three hours of sailing due to either no wind or the wind blowing directly at us. Now, if we had the luxury of endless time, then we could wait for the right conditions, or tack back and forth to beat a path into the wind, but that’s not the way we operate, and when you are trying to cover well over two thousand miles to get to the Bahamas, you can’t be dilly-dallying around waiting for a nice wind. You have to keep moving, and you do this under engine power.

 

So when our buddy Ben told us that when you scratch the surface of a cruising sailor, you’ll find a trawler captain beneath, he is absolutely right. Because us sailors are already powerboaters. Simple as that. And there’s nothing wrong with it.

 

Crossing oceans is a different story as those passages can only be done under sail, so sailors choose their routes and timing carefully to coincide with historically favourable winds. And you need plenty of time to do these trips in case the wind does not cooperate. Sailboat racing is yet another different thing as engines are not allowed so you need to use what wind is there to make your way around the circuit, hopefully faster than your competitors. This is where you learn how to tack and jibe efficiently and quickly, choose the right sails, trim the sails, adjust your mast rake, and squeeze every bit of speed you can out of your boat and the available wind. This is how you become a great sailor. This, Ana and I have never done, so we are not great sailors. But we do use our boat more than many others and see it as a fun and efficient means to travel to new places. That’s why we sail. That’s why we’re here.