How to Go South

New Bern, NC
No LL

We’ll be heading south soon for Florida, perhaps next week, if we get a good weather window. We prefer to do it by traveling “on the outside,” that means at sea. “On the inside,” means on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). The ICW in South Carolina and Georgia is not very interesting and there are a lot of problems with shoaling. Also, traveling on the outside is much faster. Roughly one day on the outside is equivalent to one week travel on the inside.

Last year we made it from Beaufort, NC to Fernandina Beach FL in 48 hours. If we get favorable winds this year we could do the same. If the winds remain good for 72 hours, we may stay outside all the way to Cape Canaveral.

Obviously, when traveling south, one avoids the Gulf Stream. So what does that mean? On the passage from North Carolina to Cape Canaveral, it means hugging the shore, never going more than 50 miles out. The small x dots on the following picture mark the north wall of the Gulf Stream on a recent day. Click on the picture to see it full scale.



Below is a much more beautiful, albeit less accurate picture showing the location of the Gulf Stream.