Sailing South

When winter is on its way in the northeast, I make way south in my sailboat. The Florida Keys is a great destination if you have the time to sail there. I have found the Chesapeake area to be most convenient. The waters there don’t freeze up as they do further north in December, so sailing is pleasant in the wintertime. Every trip, I find a new cove to explore. Nearby, you’ll conveniently find the Norfolk International Airport. Frequently, my trip extends down into the North Carolina area where the gulfstream warms the waters in the winter. You can dock at marinas such as Dowry Creek in Belhaven to Oriental and Beaufort (Bow-Fort) where they found Black Beards’ ship by the inlet. In Beaufort, you’ll find an interesting museum. The slip rates are really reasonable at about 7 to 8 dollar/foot/month. If you calculate the rate for a 40 foot boat, it runs around $280.00 a month/6 months $1680.00. There are so many slips available there and the internet makes them easy to find. The trip is a pleasant one and you’ll be addicted once you give it a go.

If you travel from Montauk to the Chesapeake, the trip takes approximately 54 hours (2-2 1/2 days). If you stop at Cape May Harbor first, you can anchor near the coast guard station. It’s a thirty hour trip. From there, you can either go offshore to the Chesapeake, another 24 hours, or travel up the Delaware Bay to the C & D canal, an 8-10 hour trip with tides helping. You can spend the night at a marina on the C & D and then travel into the northern Chesapeake the next day. A longer journey would be heading south to Norfolk, VA. I prefer to do as much of my journey offshore as possible so I can avoid all the obstructions you find inland, i.e, tide changes, buoys, etc. In October, the winds assist you in your journey as they come off the land. They make the seas flatter and give you lots of speed. With a rumbline to the Chesapeake, that would be a beam reach all the way down. Even with that Cape May stop over, the next day would have the wind aft of the beam,...

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