218 Days and 218 nights

OK, I confess. Yes, I am a bit compulsive about counting things. By recording facts in a log one gains the ability to see patterns that are interesting to me -- and perhaps to some of you. Actually the "log" is more of a diary than a traditional sailing log. It is the source from which the posts to this Blog are drawn, but has a lot more detail. Many have asked where we went and what we did on a daily basis or on a typical day, etc..  So here goes. No photos this time.

The on-board portion of last winter’s return trip adds up to 218 days and nights.  This began with ILENE’s splashdown into the brownish waters of St. David Harbor, on the SE coast of Grenada on November 7, 2011.
And it ended with our arrival at the Harlem Yacht Club, City Island, New York, on June 12, 2012. The 218 exclude our thirteen days in a hotel at St. David's while preparing the boat for her voyage after her summer on land in Grenada.

Where did we go? We visited 17 nations aboard ILENE, which are listed below in the order we visited them. Following each is a parenthesis with numbers in it.The first number represents the number of separate ports, anchorages or marinas at which we stopped for at least one night in each nation. Then, following a dash, the second number shows the total number of nights spent in that nation. Seven of the seventeen nations, those with an asterisk following the parentheses, are nations we did not visit on our way south the winter before  -- “new” nations to us.  An 18^th nation, also with asterisk, would be Saba, Dutch West Indies, but we visited this nation by ferry from Sint Maarten rather than aboard ILENE and we did not spend a night there.

          Grenada                                            (4-20)

          St. Vincent and the Grenadines         (4-8)

          St. Lucia                                            (2-3)

          Martinique                                        (4-9)

          Domenica                                         (1-1)

          Guadeloupe                                      (5-10)

          Antigua                                             (3-7)

          Nevis                                                (1-8)*

          St. Barts                                            (2-2)*  

          Sint Maarten  (Dutch)                       (1-10)*  (ILENE was in French Saint Martin last year)

          Anguilla                                            (1-3)* 

          The British Virgin Islands                (6-9)

          The US Virgin Islands                      (5-9) 

          Puerto Rico                                      (8-25)*

          Turks and Caicos                             (5-10)*

          The Bahamas                                   (14-34)*

          USA                                                (19-45)

We spent six nights “nowhere,” that is, underway, at sea.  (Two nights during which we got underway in the dark of the early morning hours are counted as if we “stayed” that night.)  All of the eight total and partial at sea nights were in the final 43 percent of the days of the trip. We stopped in 84 ports, but Lene spent 19 days in 18 of those 84 ports without going ashore. I had only 18 "stay aboard" anchorages because I went exploring at St. Louis on Marie Galante Island in Guadeloupe while Lene remained aboard there. Most of these stay aboard places were either due to high winds which would have made dinghy rides problematic, or because there was simply no nearby attractions ashore; and one was due to customs and immigration. You don't have to check in and out if you stay only one night and do not go ashore which we did in Domenica.   218 nights divided by 18 nations means an average of twelve days per nation; median - nine.    There are many other places that we would have liked to stay longer and many others that we had to skip, and any return trip would surely also include a return to some of our favorites.

How often and how far did we move?  ILENE made 83 passages which, with overnight passages taking more than one day, means she moved during 89 of the 218 days or 41 percent of the days --about two of five. So three of five days were "lay days."  When I was younger I would have despised such a lazy plan but now  ....  we had lots of sailing, thank you.
Our stays in any one spot ranged from one day, e.g. in Prince Rupert Bay, Domenica to ten days in the lagoon in Sint Maartin. Average duration in each port: 2.6 nights. Interspersed with longer stays in some ports were periods in which we made a new passage each of  four or five consecutive days, as in the lower Bahamas and approaching home.
The length of each passage (excluding the overnight passages such as 300 miles during all or parts of three consecutive days (from Boqueron, Puerto Rico to Big Sand Cay in the Turks and Caicos) ranged from 88 miles -- from Anguilla to Virgin Gorda in the BVIs -- to as little as two miles when we transited from Gustavia to Anse de Columbier, both in St. Barts.
Total mileage (measured by the shortest logical safe route from port to port (excluding additional miles spent tacking,  and searching through an anchorage for a good spot, and rounding each day’s voyage up or down to the nearest whole nautical mile) aggregated 3281 nautical miles. Not so very far – just a bit more than 1/8 of the earth’s circumference as a straight line. Our course, however, was quite jagged and generally was a gentle "S"-- shaped curve northbound up the Windward and Leewards, then west curving to WNW from Anguilla to Florida, followed by a curve to NE and North up the coast of the States. And we averaged 37 miles per day for the 89 days of travel, with a lower median because some long days skew the average.

How did we secure ILENE at night?

Six nights we were underway.              Three percent  

38 nights we were on docks.                 Seventeen percent

43 nights we were on moorings.           Twenty percent

131 nights we were on our anchor.       Sixty percent

We used docks more as we got closer to home:
First 81 nights, zero docks.              Zero percent
Middle 84 nights, twelve docks.      Fourteen percent
Final 53 nights, 26 docks.                Forty nine percent

Where did we eat our 218 breakfasts, lunches and dinners?

We ate three breakfasts off the boat, 52.5 lunches (a half is used when one of us ate out and the other stayed aboard) and  60.5 dinners (11 of the 60.5 dinners were on other people’s boats or their land homes rather than in restaurants. And we had 16 meals aboard ILENE with people from other boats: mango pancake breakfasts or dinners, in addition to many meals aboard with others during the 14 days that three sets of guests voyaged with us during the trip. These “social meals” aboard with others are simply accounted for as meals eaten aboard.)  So 26 percent of all lunches and dinners were off  ILENE, mostly in restaurants. Figure about one lunch or dinner "out" each two days.

So there you have our great adventure, statisticalized. I would be happy to try to answer any questions.