Summarizing our 2022 sailing season

Year number four living on a sailboat. We aren’t newbies anymore. In fact, this year we both have been feeling the salt in our veins as we become veterans of this lifestyle. And with that tenure comes our biggest year to date, by far! In 2021 we traveled more miles then 2019 and 2020 combined. In 2022, we travelled nearly the same as all three past years combined! How’s that for some distance? The year included some huge views, huge sails, and our first ever crew member – going from Alaska to Mexico through out that time.

Our sailing season started at the beginning of May and ran all the way to the end of the calendar year. This is new to us; not having an end to our sailing season. All previous years would get too cold and uncomfortable to be out sailing by November (or earlier). This year we just kept on moving South, keeping about the same temperatures since leaving Washington state at the end of summer.

The stats for the year are as follows:

Over the year we sailed on 99 voyages for 3441 miles (just less than all three prior years combined), adding 708 hours to our sailing experience resume. This brings our running total to just over 1550 hours of experience – so, yeah, we are feeling pretty darn comfortable with our skillset at this time. The year included two more multi-day sails as well as numerous single-overnight sails. Our longest sail – to date – is now 482 nautical miles. We anchored 76 times this year and finally cracked the one-year-at-anchor mark, having spent more then 365 nights at anchor now – 393 to be exact.

As you can see, we moved a whole lot. It was a drastic change over our previous years, where we moved on weekends and tended to spend a work week in a single location. Through out Alaska and Canada we moved five and six days each and every week, often moving 40+ miles each and every day. By the time we “stopped” in Port Townsend, it was to get hauled out for a bottom paint an repairs – there was no relaxing to be had. Upon leaving Washington and sailed down the Pacific Coast to California, our sailing-lives began to slow down. Kerri and I both left the boat to take care of business in other states, and we had numerous family and friends to visit at just about every port along the California coast. Along the way we saw waterfalls, avalanches, icebergs, a zombie apocalypse, baby seals, toured the Broughtons and Desolation, visited a princess, repaired in PT for one last time before sailing down the west coast, visiting our home state of California, and finally getting out of the United States

 

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