Our plan was to sail from Charleston to Nova Scotia and explore that area for the summer. Because of the pandemic, the US/Canadian border is closed and it doesn’t look like it will open up any time soon.
Since we needed a new plan, we narrowed down our choices to two:
1) Sail out of the hurricane zone to Virginia or Maryland and pull the boat out of the water for the summer. From there we could rent a house and wait out the virus.
2) Put Current Life on a container ship and ship it to the West Coast.
The first option is much more practical, cheaper, and a lot easier, so of course we chose the second option.
We’ve been enjoying traveling on the US East Coast, but eventually wanted to get back to the Pacific Northwest. Sailing the boat there ourselves would mean going through the Panama Canal (impossible right now for non-commercial boats), sailing to Hawaii, then back to Washington State. A trip like this would be a dream but the timing isn’t right, so we decided to have the boat transported via cargo ship instead.
We signed a contract with Seven Seas to transport Current Life to her new home. Shipping from one US destination to another is prohibited because of the Jones Act, so she will be delivered to Canada instead of the US. Around June 5th, Current Life will be loaded onto a container ship, the BBC Rainbow, in Port Everglades and will arrive in the city of Victoria, British Columbia approximately 21 days later.
Our next challenge will be to transports ourselves, and the little dog , from Florida to Seattle. We’re going to rent an RV for most of the trip and we’ll take our time making our way across the US. Jennifer found a one-way rental “deal” – if we drop off the RV in Northern California instead of Seattle, we’ll get a significant discount on the rental price. We will have to rent a car for the last portion of the trip but at least we’ll be able to self-isolate and be comfortable in the RV for 2900 of the 3300 mile trip.
Once in Washington state we will have to figure out how to get across the Canadian border to pick up Current Life. Non-essential travel into Canada is still prohibited so we anticipate that this will be the biggest obstacle in our plans to spend the summer sailing in the Pacific Northwest. Hopefully travel restrictions will be lifted or eased before the estimated delivery date of July 1st. If not, we’ll try to get an exemption that will allow us to fly to Victoria, take delivery of the boat.
In summary:
-Sail Charleston to Fort Lauderdale
-Load Current Life onto the container ship
-Rental car to Miami to pick up the RV
-RV trip to Northern California
-Rental car to Seattle
-Ferry or flight to Victoria Island
-Sail back to Seattle
-Enjoy the summer!