Sailing, Florida Keys

After eating my fair share of lobster and soaking up the rugged shoreline last week, I’m still in a Maine mood. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to blog about my favorite Maine activities the rest of the week. We started with L.L. Bean yesterday. Today I want to delve into the Maine windjammer. Maine’s 2500-mile stretch of jagged coastline, where long inlets form sheltered bays, is tailor-made for sailing. No other sport gives you the freedom to anchor in a pristine cove, hike on an untrammeled island, and sleep with a lighthouse beacon as your nightlight. Yet, most people don’t have the requisite experience to charter a sailboat. A viable alternative is to crew those schooners of yesteryear that line the mid-Maine coast, the Windjammers. 

It’s hard to go wrong with any of these historic vessels, so choose whatever’s available. Each boat has a story to tell. Built in 1882, the Grace Bailey sailed to the West Indies in the fruit trade and carried granite to New York to help build Grand Central Station. In 1990, Captain Ray Williamson gutted and completely rehabbed her for commercial travel. The Victory Chimes was built in 1900 in Bethel, Delaware, to carry lumber within Chesapeake Bay. Today, she’s the only remaining three-masted schooner on the East Coast. The 92-foot American Eagle was built in 1930 as part of the Gloucester fishing fleet. It was revamped in 1984 and, along with Grace Bailey, Victory Chimes, J&E Riggin, Lewis R. French, Stephen Taber, Mercantile, and Isaac H. Evans, are all National Historic Landmarks.

See more information on Maine windjammers in the story I wrote last summer for Gatehouse Media.
 

I’ve been sailing the waters of this 32-mile long lake in the southern Adirondacks since I was crawling, or so I’m told. Growing up in these sylvan surroundings, I took its beauty for granted; the verdant mountainside that slopes to the lake’s edge on either side, the pine-studded islands that provide perfect anchorages for boaters, the narrow width that’s easily mistaken for a long rambling river. The cool waters and green hills serve as solace and repose for my weary urbanized body.

Far from the tawdry shops that line the waters farther south in Lake George Village, the Narrows, the middle section of the lake, remains relatively unscathed.  This is a popular region for boaters since many of the larger marinas on the lake like Norowal are nearby in Bolton Landing. Heading northeast, we usually catch a good wind as soon as we pass privately owned Crown Island. Large, aptly named Dome Island is always to our starboard as we head into one of the widest sections of the lake. If there’s absolutely no wind, we’ll simply drift across the lake and dock at Log Bay. You can tie up on the island, have a picnic, and afterwards, swim back and forth to the shoreline.

Thankfully, eighty percent of the time there’s a decent wind for us to cruise into the Narrows. As the name suggests, the lake here resembles a narrow river sprinkled with some thirty islands. These are popular camping destinations. Indeed, the islands are the reason Lake George is such an excellent cruising ground. They create shifty wind conditions which challenge the sailor, and, more importantly, they are sublime spots to rest your tired bones after a full day on a boat.

Try your hand at the tiller on a 2½-hour leisurely cruise offered by the Sagamore Resort’s sailing center. They use Colgate 26s, a sturdy rig with a cockpit so spacious an instructor has room to maneuver around his students. Cost is $100 per hour (minimum two hours), including an instructor.
 

Sailors know the British Virgin Islands as legendary cruising grounds. Here, in places like Virgin Gorda, Peter’s Island, and Tortola, you’ll find sheltered marinas where you can dock or throw down your anchor, shopping, restaurants, and small hotels that are popular with yachters. Even better, you can sail to these various islands without going outside the reefs into the open ocean. But you won’t have to worry about navigational charts on Madden Enterprises’ 6 day/5 night cruise around BVI, because a skipper comes with you. Their 45-foot catamaran, which sleeps 8 guests, has been plying these waters since 1980, so you can rest assured that they’ll take you to all their favorite haunts. That includes snorkeling with sting rays in the caves of Virgin Gorda, having lunch at the celebrated Bitter End Yacht Club, a stop at Cane Garden to listen to the steel band play at Stanley’s, and a night anchored off Norman Island, the treasure island author Robert Louis Stevenson made famous in his book. Cost of the trip is only $999 per person, including most meals, a berth onboard, and, of course, transportation. 
 

With first rate charts and other navigational aids, the Florida Keys are an ideal cruising ground for all sailors, regardless of experience. The famously warm, clear waters of the Keys are a snorkeler’s paradise—shipwrecks and coral parks are plentiful—and secluded beaches number in the hundreds. If you crave terra firma, you can always stop at Key West for a nightcap at Sloppy Joe’s, a favorite hangout of writer Ernest Hemingway.  One full day’s sail west of Key West brings you to the Dry Tortugas, home to Fort Jefferson, which dates back to Civil War days. This is a popular sailing route. If you feel like you’re off the charts, anchor at any harbor and ask the nearest boater for directions. Thankfully, yachting is no longer a sport only for the affluent. Florida Keys Bareboat Charter Company in Marathon bareboat charters a 27-foot Catalina for a cost of $899 per week (7 days/6 nights). 
 

For those of you who caught that small short blurb in the middle of the sports section last week, smack dab between Winter Olympics, basketball, and spring training baseball coverage, the America’s Cup is finally returning to American soil for the first time in 15 years. Software billionaire Larry Ellison and his BMW Oracle Racing team easily crushed the Swiss in Valencia, Spain. But did you take a look at his boat, a space-age trimaran that’s all sail, little deck? This is what the greatest sailing race has been reduced to, creating the fastest object on the water? Call me a traditionalist but I yearn for my childhood where we would head to Newport and watch the likes of Ted Turner and Dennis Connor sail large mono-hulled sailboats that at least looked like sleek yachts, not something better suited for Star Wars. One of the greatest thrills I had was racing on the winning 1986 Stars and Stripes boat in St. Martin, now used as a tourist attraction, racing against other boats from that era. It’s a far better way to introduce people to the exhilaration of sailing races, at least compared to Ellison’s high-priced toy.

 

Founded in 1982 in Newport, Rhode Island, J World has since added teaching facilities in San Diego, Annapolis, the Keys, and Sweden. The Annapolis-based franchise is owned by Jahn Tihansky, a former sailmaker and instructor with US Sailing. Tihansky’s philosophy of “more time on the water, less time in the classroom” will turn any landlubber into a sailing aficionado. You’ll learn how to set the sails, practice your knots, stop and start under sail, tack, jibe (controlled, of course), and anchor. More advanced courses will teach salty dogs how to put up a spinnaker, navigate, and moor. Learn to Sail 5-day courses cost $995 per person.