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Getting to the Tropics

We made it! El Gato owners Annie Gardner and Eric Witte, on the right, stand atop the cat’s house after making the 1,500-mile passage from Virginia to the British Virgins. 

El Gato
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Do you know the three reasons that it’s much harder to get to the tropics from the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states than it is from California?

1) It’s twice as far to get from the East Coast to the Eastern Caribbean, meaning the British Virgins, St. Martin and so forth, than it is to get from San Diego to Cabo. It’s about 1,500 miles versus 750 miles.

2) When you go south from the East Coast to the Caribbean, you have to expect every kind of weather from every direction — at least until you get to ‘Highway 61’. Furthermore, the hurricane season and winter storm seasons overlap in the Atlantic/Caribbean. When you sail from San Diego to Cabo — and farther south — you can count on the wind being out of the north or northwest, and that it will rarely blow over 25 knots.

3) The only possible place to avoid bad weather on the way from the Northeast to the Eastern Caribbean is Bermuda, and that’s often not an option. When you sail from San Diego to Cabo, there are plenty of places to duck in. Indeed, about a dozen Baja Ha-Ha boats ducked into San Quintin for the night when it got breezy on the first leg of this year’s Ha-Ha.

We know of three boats that recently sailed from Virginia to the British Virgins as part of the Salty Dawg Rally. Their crews included Annie Gardner and Eric Witte on the San Diego-based Catana 47 El Gato. The couple bought the boat in Europe, did a summer in the Med, a winter in the Caribbean and a summer in the Northeast, and are heading back to the Caribbean where they’ll do some charters. Yes, you can charter with the only woman to navigate a boat to victory in the America’s Cup.

Jim Fair and Linda Powers of the Berkeley-based Outbound 46 Chesapeake also did the Salty Dawg to the BVIs. The couple have sailed most of the way around the world during the last eight years. Fair noted that West Coast and tradewind sailors "have it easy" compared to those sailing on the East Coast and to the Caribbean.

And then there was Bill Lilly and his all-woman crew on his Newport Beach-based Lagoon 47 Moontide. One of the women racked up 18 knots going down a wave, breaking the ‘fiberglass ceiling’ speed record on the cat.

All three of the above boats took between eight and nine days to make the passage, with a combination of light air and motoring in the early going, and fine sailing the last couple of days.

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Shot during a pre-start practice session, either a very large shark — or perhaps orca — is keeping pace with Alex Thomson’s sleek IMOCA 60 Hugo Boss, or we’re getting a look at the tip of his starboard foil, which is now broken.