Sailing the Eastern Seaboard: The Outside Route

Wind-shaped dunes and wide beaches mark Bald Head Island at the mouth of North Carolina’s Cape Fear River. Courtesy Dan Kerpelman

Our first foray into salt life—sailing nearly 2,000 nautical miles from Lake Ontario to Maine—taught my wife, Sandy, and me just how much more there was to experience than lake sailing. We’d spent years cruising the Great Lakes, but our taste of long-distance coastal cruising led us to forgo our plans to return to...