At a snails pace

Submitted by chrism on Sun, 2010-10-31 22:31

I average 7 mph on my boat.

Granted, my little boat is a terribly slow boat, but even the more modern live-aboards only average 8-9 mph. Sometimes I just have to wonder, why did we choose a sailboat? The average human walking speed is 3 mph so it would take me twice as long to walk somewhere. But luckily there are alternatives to that. The average bicycle moves at 10 miles an hour, nearly 1 1/2 times faster than my boat. But you can't live on a bicycle, or can you?

There is a lot of time to sit and think when you are sailing. The world moves by at an incredibly slow pace, and soon your mind starts to wander. Last year a good friend of mine, Captain Ron, told me that the Monarch Butterfly migrates to central Mexico. I had never heard that before so I looked it up, and its true. The monarch butterfly migrates nearly 1800 miles at a speed of roughly 12 mph. While traveling south this year on my own annual migration, I was passed by a Monarch Butterfly. This got me thinking, "Damn, I'm going slow." And because I am on a slow boat, with way too much time to think, I started to wonder how bad I would look stacked against some of the other slower creatures on this earth. Here is what I found..

A common turtle moves at 0.2 miles an hour. If you size his whopping 8 inches up to my 30 feet of boat he would then travel at 8.96 miles per hour - therefore I would be 33% slower than the average turtle.
 
The common garden snail moves at 0.03 miles per hour. If you sized him up from 1 inch to 30 feet he would be moving at 10.8 miles per hour - which means I'm 35% slower than a snail.
 
So there you have it - we can say we are moving "at a snails pace" and it would truly be an understatement.
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Submitted by Nikki (not verified) on Tue, 2010-11-02 16:41.

My goodness.. you don have to much time on your hands!!! Love ya and miss ya!!

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