We’re back in Southern California following a second summer in British Columbia and Alaska. After looking at the engine hours, checking our log, and reflecting on the areas we’ve cruised, we’ve been astounded to find Wind Horse has taken us 25,000+ nautical miles since leaving New Zealand. That’s a lot of miles, but there’s something even more interesting. She’s done this in 17.5 months of on-the-water use. (The rest of the time she’s been docked and we’ve been land based.) That’s an average of 1400+ miles per month of actual cruising. If you add up the direct mileage, point to point, it is more like 18,000 miles. So, a lot of this time has been spent exploring after the ocean passages.

We’ve always put a lot of miles on our sailboats (40,000 on Beowulf, 25,000 on Sundeer), but nothing like this rate of travel.

Yet we don’t feel as if we were rushing things. With the exception of a couple of days on the trip from Hawaii to the mainland, we’ve usually been as comfortable at sea as at anchor – and far more comfortable than any of our previous sailboats.

When we started this project Steve was concerned with getting bored, and with the loss of the challenge which comes from driving a large sailboat efficiently with just two aboard. But traveling on Wind Horse has allowed us to see and experience a lot more than what has been the case in the past.

Granted, there is not a lot for us to do on passage. But we have not been bored. We’re enjoying being at sea more than in the past for different reasons. More time is being spent just relaxing, enjoying the scenery, and to some extent marveling at how cruising has changed for us. We now have the intellectual energy at sea to do creative work that in the past would have waited until we were at anchor.

Some of the adrenaline rush that came from sailing Beowulf has been replaced by choosing more aggressive destinations for Wind Horse. Many of the wonderful anchorages visited the last two summers would not have been attainable in one of our sailing designs.

Wind Horse’s five foot (1.5m) draft and maneuverability open up all sorts of possibilities. Of course, this does require a different approach when evaluating where we are heading, and we’re gradually learning a new set of navigational risk parameters.

We thought we’d be spending more time at anchor with Wind Horse than was the case with our sailboats. But for some reason we naturally gravitated towards moving around more than the original plan. With a boat that is so easy to run, when the urge strikes to see what’s in the next anchorage, we go.

When we finalized our design brief for Wind Horse, at the top of our list of priorities was comfort at sea, along with the ability to continue making long passages as a couple. We were also looking for a more comfortable boat in inclement weather.

Wind Horse has made it possible for us to enjoy the best of what the wilder regions of Alaska have to offer, without a comfort or ambiance penalty.

Cold and wet weather is no longer a deterrent to our cruising plans.

And the payoff has been amazing.

This combination of comfort, speed, and ease of handling has changed the way we evaluate where we want to cruise.

We still love the tropics of course.

And at the change of season they are never more than a week to ten days of comfortable cruising away from Wind Horse’s winter dock.

But now that the high latitudes are comfortably within reach, we’ll be spending a lot more time enjoying the wilder side of cruising.

The bottom line to is that we are spending more time out of each year cruising then has been the case the past couple of decades. There is one reason for this – Wind Horse is making the cruising life more fun for both of us.