You guys! I made an infographic of our sailing stats! It’s probably the most extra thing I’ve ever done, but it was a fun exercise and I’m pleased with how it turned out. I had to draw literally everything on it – including the entire map! Kyle couldn’t believe that I did it without a mouse (I used my laptop’s track pad).

Now that you’ve had time to bask in the glory of my creation (it took two whole days, y’all!), let’s dig into those numbers. I found the sailing stats themselves both somewhat disappointing (we only sailed 20% of the time?) and awe inspiring (2225 nautical miles)!

Let’s start with those top level numbers!

• 2225 nautical miles!
• Our season was 192 days long, with 59 of those being travel days.
• We traveled a total of 442 hours, we spent 80% of the time with at least one engine running and 50% of the time with at least one sail up. Only 20% of our time was spent engines-off sailing!
• Shockingly, our average speed was 5 kts! We had some pretty slow sailing days so I expected that to be lower!
• We had 5 trips that were over 24 hours long, and spent 11 nights at sea!
• We spent 3 months in the Bahamas and visited 25 islands.
• We put a total of 361 gallons of diesel into our tanks.
• We had 17 trips through the ocean, or ocean-like depths.
• Our longest trip was our last trip, Ft. Pierce to Charleston was 346 nautical miles.
• We took on one crew member, Kyle’s dad, for our trip from St. Johns inlet to Lake Worth – our second longest trip at 243 nautical miles. We also had two visitors while in the Bahamas!
• The highest wind we saw was 45 kts, which occurred at the dock right before we left on our last trip.
• The biggest waves we saw…weren’t very big. We learned our lesson from those 10-footers last season! I’d say this is the season we finally got good at planning our offshore passages.
• I wrote 33 blog posts this season, including the one you’re reading right now!
• We never dragged anchor. NOT EVEN ONCE.
• And, the one sailing stat that no sailor will believe: we have never run aground in this boat. And that’s not for lack of trying, I took the boat through places where we only had inches under our keel. Multiple times!

I say we have 17 trips through the ocean, which probably doesn’t sound right. I’m including the trips over ocean-like depths in the Bahamas (such as the Tongue of the Ocean and the Exuma Sound) because the weather planning required for 20-ft depths vs. ocean depths is very different! You can see on the satellite imagery the difference between the shallow banks and the deep sound.

Okay, let’s talk the biggest disappointment. We only sailed 20% of the time?! Why do we even own a sailboat?! Actually, a third of our sailing hours came from our second-longest passage this season, in which we had absolutely perfect beam winds for the entire trip.

We didn’t spend much time in the ICW, but it’s almost impossible to sail there. We struggled with winter weather in January and February, where I feel like I constantly complained that we thought we should be able to sail but the wind never seemed to cooperate. For a while, we had such strong wind that as soon as we had a calm day, we’d pull up the anchor and go somewhere new – but then the winds would be too light to sail fast enough to make it before dark! Another frequent problem was that the wind would be either too close to the nose or two light and variable to do anything but motorsail.

Honestly, we tried. My attitude was: I bought a sailboat and I’ll be damned if we motor everywhere. We definitely had some great sailing days, however, the numbers don’t lie. I feel like we gave it all we could, but island hopping means you’ve got to go in one direction to avoid the shallows, and you’ve got to get to your destination before dark. At this point I don’t know if I’m giving an explanation or making excuses – I guess that’s on you to judge us however you want! Either way, the boat is for sale and our lives have already become much less weather-based!

Now for the more exciting numbers! I didn’t keep track of the actual miles before season 2, but based on our total of 2225 nautical miles covered this season I can reasonably extrapolate that we put a total of 5000 nautical miles on this boat! (That would be 5750 real miles to all you landlubbers). I still don’t feel like a sailor, but no one takes a sailboat 5000 miles without learning a thing or two!

The longest trip we’ve ever taken since we bought the boat, in terms of both time and distance, is our delivery trip. We hired a captain and we crewed on the trip from Ft. Lauderdale to Charleston, but just before making our port we were hit by a gale and forced back south to the Savannah inlet. That trip took 4 days and covered 480 nm – if we’d made it to Charleston as planned then this only would have been our second longest trip, with last year’s trip from Ft Pierce to Southport being the longest. It is very likely those are the highest waves we ever saw but it was dark out when we got hit by the gale and honestly, I think I’ve blocked a lot of that night out of my memory!

I’ve got some fun non-sailing stats to share too, like how many sharks we saw (too many to count), how many fish we caught (3 mahi, 2 spanish mackerel, and 1 mutton snapper if I recall correctly), or how many times I got sunburnt (I think it was only two!).

While in the Bahamas, we only spent two nights at a dock. The rest of the time we were at anchor, or on a mooring ball in the Land and Sea Park. We snorkeled with a thousand fish. We saw numerous sea turtles. There was that time we saw a ridiculously big hermit crab. I loved seeing all the wildlife!

We’ve had some amazing experiences and we’ve covered a lot of ground with this boat. If there are any other sailing stats you’d like to know about, ask in the comments and I’ll see if I have the data! I’m proud of everything we accomplished and I can’t wait to see what’s next for us!