It's All About The Sailing For Us
05 May 2012 | Falmouth Harbour, Antigua
Jeff
The other day Pam and I were discussing what was the most fun for us in this cruising lifestyle. Unlike other cruisers we don't fish, heck Pam doesn't even like seafood that much. Also, unlike other cruisers, we don't scuba dive we only snorkle. And quite frankly for us one reef has started to look like another so even the snorkling doesn't give us the charge that it did eleven years ago. Seeing the beauty of the islands again was interesting last year but now the islands are looking a lot a like. So what is it that we enjoy, you say? Well for us it has always been about the sailing I guess. The Caribbean is one of the best places to sail in the Atlantic and it was because of that we came here. So how much have we sailed in the fifteen months since we started this cruise? Well today I sat down with our logbook to answer that question for myself. In the last fifteen months including our thirteen day passage from North Palm Beach to Antigua we have sailed eight per cent of the time. That's an average of about 2.5 days per month. If you remove the thirteen day passage from the calculation which means you only look at the time that we sailed while here in the Caribbean we have only sailed five per cent of the time. So basically Pam and I tend to stay in a place where we are comfortable. We don't tend to pull the anchor up once it appears to be set. Given our tendency to do this we have decided "we don't sail enough to be cruisers". That is the reason that we are heading back to the marina life where we, given our tendencies, will be free to cast off the lines with ease to go out for a sail. Not having to worry when we come back if we're going to find a place to anchor or if the anchor is set well enough for the next squall. It is our hope that, this time round, North Palm Beach will afford us the opportunity to sail more than eight per cent of the time. Its just fun for us to go sailing for a day with no strings attached and that is what we hope we will have in North Palm. If we're wrong at least we'll have cable TV, movie theaters and friends to enjoy.