Ice Sunk Our Sailing Dream

 

Our dream all along was to buy a sailboat and sail the Caribbean for at least one year. If things went well we might decide to go further but we were planning on sailing from the east coast down to Grenada and back. All our efforts were in this direction and if you have been following our blog you know that Ruth and I (Drew) completed many ASA courses including:

ASA 101 Basic Keelboat Sailing

ASA 103 Basic Coastal Cruising

ASA 104 Bareboat Cruising

ASA 114 Cruising Catamaran

ASA 118 Docking Endorsement

In addition, I have taken:

ASA 105 Coastal Navigation

ASA 106 Advanced Coastal Cruising

ASA 111 Sailing Docking Review

We bought a small 19' O'Day sailboat and dock it in Lake Nockamixon, Pennsylvania sailing dozens of times each year from April through October. To increase our experience we have bareboated in the Chesapeake Bay a half dozen times, the British Virgin Islands twice, Bahamas once, Spanish Virgin Islands once, and a big trip to Grenada two years ago. For those that don't know, bareboating is when you charter a large boat without a captain and you are in complete control of the boat. I am confident in our training and ability to take our sailing trip. So, why the change from a sailing trip to a RV trip?

In one word, "ice". Now there are certainly a lot of factors that have gone into this decision. Ruth's enjoyment of our adventure, COVID issues and difficulties moving between countries, not finding the boat yet, desire to be more accessible to our grandchildren, etc. What it eventually came down to was ice. I really enjoy a cold drink at the end of the day and ice is a scarcity on a sailboat. I am using ice as a metaphor.  Comfort on a boat is a big issue and we are confident that a tour across our great country is more our cup of tea right now. I know Ruth would have come along with the sailboat plan and this was a mutual decision.

Is the sailboat dream dead? I don't know but I certainly hope that it isn't. We might scale that down to just cruising the Chesapeake Bay and the ICW down to Florida. I can still see the possibility of heading to the Bahamas but I'm sure we won't go beyond there. Bareboating instead of buying our own boat is still on the table. 

Thank you for following along and I hope you enjoy our land adventure across the USA. For you hard core sailors, we should be back in sailing mode in some way next year.