60 Knots Against the Wind

Our sailboat can go 60 knots against the wind -when on its trailer and pulled by the van. Recently my lovely wife expressed how glad she was we can do that. We are not the type of people to stay in harm's way if we can avoid it.

The current hurricane situation is what brought that out. She likes the idea of being able to pull the boat out of the water and move. 24 hours later we can be 1200 miles away. Under normal driving conditions, I've often traveled that many miles in a day. That's an average speed of 50 miles per hour. Of course, we travel 60 to 70 miles per hour. Our average drops to 50 when we account for meals, fuel land bathroom stops.

By the way, a lot of our fuel stops don't happen at gas stations. Usually we at least start our trips with a full load of 4.5 gallon jugs of waste veggie oil. When we stop at a rest area, I'll take a moment and pour a couple jugs of veggie in the tank.

While I've often traveled 1200 – 1700 miles with little rest, I rarely do that anymore. Traveling with the van makes it pretty easy to pull into a free parking area and spend the night. Rather than drive until I turn into a zombie, I get a good night's sleep on the full sized bed in the back. It takes longer to get somewhere, but I'm not totally beat when I arrive.

It is nice to know I can go the distance if needed. Looking at the current weather map of the United States, one might have to drive a longs ways to avoid nasty weather. My lovely wife became a bit unsettled by the size of the current hurricane induce disaster. She likes the idea of not being stuck on a boat that cannot be moved with a trailer. It's early to get damage assessments, but I'm betting not many boats survived anywhere near the hurricane. That's a sobering thought.

When and if we do get a bigger boat, we will always have hurricane holes in mind. We did get a small taste of that when we had our Ranger sailboat. While we didn't get a hurricane, it was an unusually active thunderstorm and tornado period. We often headed for protected areas to sit out poor conditions.

This coming winter we aren't going to worry about that so much. If conditions are too bad to be on the water, we won't be on the water. There are times I wonder if what I really want is a bigger trailer sailor. There are pros and cons, like anything else.

-Sixbears