Fall Cruising…A Change in Scenery and Wind in Your Sails
By Kai Beasley
If the boating season were measured like days of the week, fall would be Sunday; the last day of fun and freedom before the beginning of a new work week. For many of us, fall signals that the end of the boating season is right around the corner. Or does it?
“Fall here is one of the best times of the year,” says Marcus Asante, founder of the Universal Sailing Club in the Baltimore-Washington area. “Fall is looked forward to by the majority of sailors here. The temperatures are a little lower and the winds tend to pick up quite nicely.”
According to Asante and other sailors in the northern Chesapeake Bay area, fall is the beginning of some of the season’s best sailing weather. The boaters of Baltimore observe a long season compared to other boaters in the mid-Atlantic region and farther north.
“I try to observe a fairly long boating season just because I love being out so much,” Asante says. “My season generally spans from March to November. But it depends on who you talk to.”
Sure, March to November is a pretty long season, but is it enough for the boaters that hunger for the water all year long? If only there was a place where boating never ended. Wait! Has anyone heard of a little place called… California?
“Yeah actually, you can boat all year round if you’re serious,” says Richard Clark, current parliamentarian and former commodore of the Ebony Boat Club of Antioch, Calif. “Especially if you’re a sportsman. You can catch the fish all year long.”
In “Cali,” fall isn’t just for sailors. Clark calls Discovery Bay home. Discovery Bay is a beautiful waterfront community about six hours from San Francisco by boat, which isn’t a problem in his 32-foot cruiser with twin V8 engines.
“Our area is kind of hard to beat because of the inland boating,” Clark says. “Once you get inland it’s really laid back. There are resorts and inland rivers you can pull into to go swinging, sleep, or do whatever for a night or two.”
There aren’t many who wouldn’t want to experience that through all four seasons, but even in California, staying out all year takes some will power according to Clarke.
“It starts getting cold around the end of October and into November,” Clark says. “It absolutely gets cold. It can get down into the 40’s, which is when we start whining.”
The 40’s! That’s It?
“I know. A lot of people laugh at us. But we’re just not used to it.”
California boaters aren’t the only ones that aren’t used to cold temperatures.
“Every now and then you might get a cold spell where it might stay around freezing all week,” says Al Donotto (Capt. Al), Commodore of the Water Baby’s Sailing Club of Galveston Bay, Texas. “But we haven’t seen anything like that in 10 years.”
The Water Baby’s Sailing Club is composed of members from all over the country. For the last twenty years the club has chartered boats for trips to exotic locales in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico.
The typical boating season in Texas lasts from spring break in March and goes through October. The season’s length isn’t determined so much by the weather as it is by school and work schedules.
Captain Al is one of the lucky few that never has to leave his boat. He lives aboard his 37-foot Tayanna sailboat, so being on the water really is a year-round affair. Yet, for some in Texas, fall cruising is the only cruising there is.
“For me, it’s all year, but some people only go sailing during the fall because it’s just too hot during the summer,” Capt. Al says. “We have some people from the north who don’t even go out until wintertime.”
You heard right! In most places, summer is the time where the boating season is in full swing. But Texas’ scorching summers can be a bit much. And you know what they say, if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the water (they probably only say that in Texas, but you get what we mean).
If you’re used to the cooler temperatures and you find yourself in the middle of summer in the lone star state, you could just wait until night.
“On a good day you can take off about sundown and stay out all night,” Captain Al says. “We’ve had people from up north who couldn’t stand the heat so they wouldn’t go out until the sun would go down. “
Or, you could just move up to the much cooler waters of the Chesapeake.
“It gets damn cold!” Asante says.
In the late months of the long boating season, Asante particularly enjoys cruising in his Tartan 30 and visiting places on the Chesapeake, like St. Michaels, Nick’s Fish House off of the Patapsco River and Annapolis. He admits that it takes a certain type of person to cruise in the late fall months.
“It’s really just me and one other guy because we’re both just crazy enough to do it. You have to dress like hell to deal with that cold.”
The bay lies right on what Asante calls “the freezing line,” the point that separates the really cold weather of the north from the mild winters of the south. So boaters in this region have to make the difficult choice of leaving their boats in the water, pulling them out to perform winter maintenance or winterizing their engines for the winter.
“In places like Maine, you have to take your boat out of the water because it could be crushed by current-driven ice; but if you’re in Georgia, there’s no real freezing going on because you’re well south of that freezing line.”
Though they may not have ice, most all regions have their own hazards that are intrinsic to the fall season.
“In the fall and winter you definitely have to be careful of fog, and you can also get some decent winds there too,” Clark Says. “In the open waters of the [San Francisco] bay it can get pretty crazy because you’re not protected by the levees.”
The key to fall cruising, no matter what region you boat in, is preparation.
“If you’re going to boat at any time, preparation is the key,” Donatto says. “If you’re prepared for the weather and the conditions, then you’ll have a good time. If you’re not, then you could get in trouble. That’s how it goes.”
