Back on the hard for annual maintenance. This year includes pulling the mast out, and there's a fair bit of prep work needed before the yard can roll the crane up. Anyway, the mast comes down without incident and I begin the inspection without delay. But just as I was about to pronounce a clean bill...

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Sailing through the narrow, dredged channel into Broad Creek on a cold, blustery day was quite the season finale for 2025-26. Now it's time to get to work. This is a mast pull year (every 5 years for me), so it will be a longer than usual haulout. SUPPORT HOW TO SAIL OCEANS ON PATREON: https://patreon.com/user?u=12372934 HOW...

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Despite forecasts of moderate southerlies, I spend hours drifting off of Cape Lookout in near calm conditions. But alas the winds fill in, though never as strong as forecast, and send me on my way around Cape Hatteras and on to the Chesapeake Bay. This will be the last passage of the season, as I...

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The winds freshen from the east, kicking up the Gulf Stream. While getting into the head compartment the door flies open and tears off the top hinges. OK, another repair to make. Southerly winds a head of an approaching front blow me into the narrow entrance to Taylor Creek, in Beaufort, NC. There...

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Waiting for favorable offshore weather can drive you crazy. Even the kinder, gentler northbound run in the spring (as opposed to the southbound run in late fall, invariably a bear) can have you sitting in port for weeks. Of course it's tempting just to sail and hope for the best. In time experience...

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I enter Biscayne Bay via the Cape Florida Channel on the faintest of winds. Then an entire month passes as I shuttle back and forth between Key Biscayne and Dinner Key, all the while looking for a weather window to head offshore for the Chesapeake Bay, or Beaufort ... I'll even take Fernandina Beach....

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The first segment from Key West back to Biscayne Bay has you steering ENE, which frequently means that either one is going to slog into the prevailing easterlies, or wait for a southerly slant. Being gaff rigged and engineless, I opt for the latter. But that does mean some waiting, and as the weather...

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One month and one week was the nine-hundred mile loop I sailed from Key West, to Panama City, to Boca Grande, and back. My mini-mid-winter odyssey. It was certainly better from an educational standpoint than laying at anchor in the Keys all winter while waiting for warmer weather to head back north....

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Still lots to see of Boca Grande and Charlotte Harbor, but the winter cold fronts are coming through fast and furious. Which means that tourism has to yield to the exigencies of finding safe anchoring ahead of severe weather. SUPPORT HOW TO SAIL OCEANS ON PATREON: https://patreon.com/user?u=12372934 HOW...

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I finally enter Charlotte Harbor, four days out of Panama City, FL, owing perhaps more to the flooding current than whatever wind there was. But an afternoon sea breeze works up to propel me to the anchorage off of Boca Grande Marina. Boca Grande is certainly scenic, although the nearest Publix supermarket...

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I'm off to a glorious start from Panama City, bound for Boca Grande and Charlotte Harbor, romping down the Gulf with fair northerly winds. But in total defiance of the weather maps, the winds just south of Port St. Joe shift southeast--dead on the nose--so I find myself tacking and barely making any...

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I find my way ashore to St. Andrews State Park, where I can land the dinghy, dump trash, take on water, and ride my bicycle to the Publix. So that's a win, even though it cost me $4 to get back into the park. Anyway, there's a window to head back south to Fort Meyers, and I'm going to take it as the...

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