Ocean Crossing by a Lake Sailor

What’s the purpose of this trip anyway?

Blue Water Sailing School owns a couple of cruising monohulls and a cruising catamaran on which to train students. In addition to their main location in Ft. Lauderdale, FL they conduct classes in the waters of the US Virgin Islands and British Virgin Islands in the wintertime-- the “on” season for the Caribbean. Then, near the start of the tropical hurricane season in June, they move the boat out of the Caribbean and set up shop in Newport, RI for the summer season. In or near November, as the Hurricane season winds down, the boat is again moved back to the Caribbean.

There are a few reasons it’s done this way. First, while Ft. Lauderdale is a year-round school, the sailing/tourist seasons in New England and the Caribbean are well defined. The New England winters shutdown sailing in the area sending the tourists to the islands, driving the winter tourist season in the Caribbean. Having the school follow the seasons makes sense. Second, the hurricane season from June to November is no casual matter. Insurance companies actually will not cover a boat lost in a hurricane unless you pay an extra premium-- and it’s a lot extra.

The higher insurance premiums of the tropical storm season, the storm risk itself, and the northern winter all conspire to trigger, twice a year, a mass migration of watercraft from the North in November and from the South in June. These months happen to line up with mostly ideal weather windows for these trips. In the South in June, the tropical storm season has not wound up to be much of a threat to disrupting the predictable mild weather of the trade winds. Sailors have to try to dodge the “Bermuda High” high pressure system (read "no wind") and may have to motor through the doldrums but generally weather is not a factor. From the North the trip is riskier but the norm is to depart early in November, after the threat of hurricanes is mostly over and before the weather off New England gets unstable and unpredictable going into the winter.

As such, an entire industry exists to move hundreds of boats back and forth along this route every year. Employing sailors to sail the boats, weather services to advise delivery crews, ships onto which can be loaded yachts of all sizes and then transport them dry in the ships' holds to their destinations. Also an option to get North and South is an entire watery highway from Brownsville, Texas to New England known as the IntraCoastal Waterway for those wanting to take a route more scenic, more safe, but much slower than going offshore.

We were going to take the offshore route.