Sailing Mystic Hearts

As most cruisers know, when you have a good weather window, you take it. Paul meticulously monitors the weather (predicted wind and wave heights) any time we are about to go offshore and for the length of time we expect to be out. Days before arriving in Little River, we knew that we would be staying for just one night as we prepared to do our longest offshore passage yet.

The morning of our departure, we left Myrtle Beach Yacht Club at sunrise to begin what would be a 2 day passage to northern Florida. The first night got a little sporty with 14 knots of wind on the nose, gusting to 18. It calmed down overnight and we motored the second day and night (along with the following morning) all the way to St. Augustine.

In total, we cruised 50 hours and 293 nautical miles, bypassing the majority of the South Carolina coast and all of Georgia. We were exhausted upon arrival, but proud that we pushed ourselves to hustle south faster to escape the cold. We saved many, many days on the ICW by going offshore where we did and it was a relief to make it to Florida and be that much closer to where we intended to spend our winter.