The Plan, the Boat, and the Background

Summary of the Passage
In the last week of May, 2010, I plan to depart from Beaufort, SC on my Flicka 20 sailboat, "Jubilee" for a passage that is expected to last about two months. The first stop will be Bermuda, about 820 nautical miles (nm) to the east. A friend, JD Shriber, plans to sail with me to Bermuda and then on to Nova Scotia as well. The leg to Bermuda is expected to take about 8 days. After a rest and re-provisioning, we will depart Bermuda bound for Nova Scotia, Canada, which is about 780 nm due north, another 8 days. After a short visit with my friends Kiersten and Bill Gilkerson near Mahone Bay, I plan to sail to Portland, then Newport, then Oyster Bay, NY. A fellow Flicka sailor plans to join me in Newport for the leg to Oyster Bay. Another fellow Flicka sailor will join me at Oyster Bay for the very exciting trip past New York City, down the East River and out the Narrows, to Sandy hook, NJ. Departing Sandy Hook, the plan is to sail south to Delaware Bay, up the bay to the Delaware-Chesapeake Canal, past Baltimore, to Annapolis. My patient and trusting wife, Alice Lynch, will join me at Annapolis for the sail down the Chesapeake Bay to the historic towns of St. Michaels and Oxford on the Maryland eastern shore. Then, with short stops at Hardyville, VA and Norfolk, I plan to return to Beaufort in the Atlantic (except to use the Intracoastal Waterway in bad weather). The final legs will include brief stops in the Outer Banks, Wrightsville Beach, Southport, Georgetown and Charleston, with various friends joining me along the way. I hope to arrive back in Beaufort by early August, before the serious part of the hurricane season.

A Flicka 20, and "Jubilee"
A Flicka 20 is a sailboat that, despite its relatively diminutive 20 foot length (on the deck), is built to take you anywhere in the world. These boats weigh about 6,000 pounds (empty) and have a cult following for their beauty and functional capacities. Numbering 434 ever produced, most of them were built by Pacific Seacraft between 1975 and 1996. "Jubilee" was built in 1993 and was hull number 418. She has a Yanmar diesel engine (one cylinder, using about a quart of fuel per hour), an enclosed head, a galley with alcohol stove, sink, and icebox, V-berths forward, and a quarter-berth aft. "Jubilee" is sloop-rigged, but I have also added a staysail to make her a cutter, and she carries a cruising spinnaker ("Gennaker") while reaching and running down wind. You can learn more about Flickas at www.Flicks20.com.

I bought Jubilee from Frank Durant in February 2008. Frank had just returned from a 6-week trip to the Bahamas where he bought some property and wanted to sell the boat to build a house. The original owner was a lady who lived in Iowa where she sailed Jubilee on a lake during the summers. The boat had never seen salt water until frank dipped her in the Atlantic in 2007.

Pacific Seacraft stopped making the Flickas in 1996 when the costs of production simply outstripped the price people were willing to pay. I have read that a new, equipped Flicka in 1996 would cost the buyer nearly $100,000, although I would think about $70,000 was more like it. Still, that would be a lot for a 20-foot sailboat in 1996.

In a later blog I will describe what it takes to get a boat ready for an ocean passage. I have invested over $30,000 (after buying the boat) and she is not yet quite ready.

Background
I have dreamed of making a passage like this since I was a kid. I am now 68 and plan to do this at age 69.
In the 4th grade I was drawing technically correct sailing ships although I had never been on a sailboat. Atlanta, GA was not a port city. I was just fascinated by the idea that boats could be pushed through the water by the wind. Lake Allatoona, near Atlanta, was created in 1949 by damming up the Etawah River, and my parents bought a Snipe Class sailboat and joined the Atlanta Yacht Club when it was formed in 1950. I crewed a few times but wanted to be the skipper as I understood quickly to the dynamics of sailing. After demonstrating competence at the helm of my father's Snipe, he passed it along to me in 1953 and bought himself a new one. Throughout the 1950s I raced competitively in regattas around the USA. I servesd as the Racing Team Captain (and Commodore) of the Tulane University Sailing club in the early 1960s. After graduate school at The University of Chicago I moved to new york City and sailed the summer Long Island Sound Circuit on a 35 foot yawl, "Escape", owned by Harlow Reed. This was heaven to me, although in retrospect, it was unfair to be leaving my wife and kids in the city for the sumer week-ends. After 2 years in NYC we moved to Florida and then back to Atlanta, and I was too busy developing my career and raising my family to be sailing off shore. I did resume sailing Snipes, 15 1/2-foot dinghies, both in the USA and abroad.

Gradually, I lost interest in sailing dinghies around the buoys. Lake Allatoona is not big enough for larger boats, and the sailing conditions, even in dinghies, are, well, not ideal. On a visit to Nova Scotia in 2003 to visit our friends, the Gilkersons, I was introduced to a Herreshoff 12 1/2 owned by Kerstin. After five minutes at the helm I knew I had to have one.

I had "Myrdie" built at Cape Cod Shipbuilding (www.CapeCodShipbuilding.com) and took delivery in May 2004. This boat was perfect for doing adventures in the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). I took he over to Beaufort (about half way between Savannah and Charleston) and sailed further and further distances until I started visualizing making an ICW "passage" from Savannah to Charleston. In April 2005, with the help of my wife and some friends, I made this passage, with overnight stops at Hilton head Island, Beaufort, Edisto island and Seabrook Island. It was a wonderful adventure. As other people heard about it they all seemed to think it was a neat idea, so the following year we did it again with about 10 other boats. This event turned into "The Classic Boat Rally", for boats of classic design in a size range 15 to 24 feet. See www.ClassicBoatRally.com.

By 2007 I was starting to modify "Myrdie" to be able to take her off shore, installing a battery-operated bilge pump among other things. Then it dawned on me....what was I thinking??? Taking a 15-foot open boat off shore was a dumb idea. About that time I tripped across the Flicka 20 web site, and just seeing pictures of these boats took me back to the days of my mid-life crisis in the late 1970s when I was reading books about sailing around the world and researching boats in which to do it. I remember thinking then, 30 years earlier, that the Flicka was one small boat that could do it. Excitedly scanning the list of Flickas for sale, I stopped when I saw "Jubilee". Uniquely, this boat was in near perfect condition, almost as new, with little time on the engine, a scant 6 weeks in salt water, and located in Florida, a one-day drive away. I paid frank his asking price when I picked her up in February 2008. Then I sold my Herreshoff 12 1/2 "Myrdie", getting almost what I had paid 4 years earlier.

It takes at least a year to prepare for an off-shore passage. I started serious planning for my 2010 passage in the spring of 2009. "Jubilee" will get me where I need to go.

Blog Site Plans
I am starting this blog at the urging of my friends for several reasons. First, I plan to document the process that I am going through to plan and prepare for this passage in the hope that other who are contemplating a similar undertaking might benefit from my experience. Second, I hope that those with experience relative to my planning and preparation efforts will respond with a reply that will be of benefit to me and to others with similar plans. Third, I plan to use this site for reporting progress and developments as I make the passage. I will share the joys and the challenges experienced along the way.

Pictures are worth a thousand words, and I plan to post pictures and a chart of my route when I learn how to do this.