Century Club: mike pitchford

Wish it was more.  However, duty calls and so I find myself leaving Florida in winter to fly to San Antonio, on a mission.

Working is definitely getting in the way of enjoying the baot in Florida this winter. I got back to the boat late on a Thursday and left it mid day on Monday bound for San Antonio TX.

Winter on the boat will be different this season. I have a consulting gig that takes me to San Antonio TX mid week for several days. Generally this will be every week.

So, we have a boat in Florida, to escape the cold winter in Annapolis. I have a small corporate apartment in San Antonio. It is a work focused and monastic life there. And, of course, we need to be in Annapolis and home home some days over the winter.

The biggest part of all this is logistics. Flights are a challenge (but getting lots of Southwest points). Rental cars, Ubers, trains and time zones all add to the mix. It is a wonder I don't run out of underwear.

For this ten day run I was supposed to be in San Antonio but my favorite crew-mate and life partner was sick, the Flu. So, I worked from the boat while making her meals every day for a week. She survived the Flu and my cooking, so it is all good.

Sometimes you travel the ICW at a slow and enjoy the ride. Sometimes you do it fast, a "delivery pace" because the schedule called “life” said fast was required.

The trip from points on the Bay, like Annapolis, to various warmer South Florida destinations is at least 1100 miles, more if you are headed to the west coast. In the fall, daylight limits the long days to maybe 10 hours. The sun angles in November, in particular, make the earliest and latest of those hours problematic.

Traveling inside, in the ICW generally means you don't worry about offshore weather. However, the run down the Bay and the crossing of the NC sounds do call for manageable weather.

In most sailboats, you are pushing to get 50 miles a day. In an eight-knot trawler, you can push it to maybe 80 miles. No wake zones and slop passes can limit a planing powerboat but 160 mile days are a possibility on some stretches.

On this trip, we did it in eight days of travel, averaging 142 miles a day. We waited on weather for two days. Run times were between seven and nine hours a day.

To read more about this trip, look for a story in the January issue of PropTalk.