I was in the boat business in the early to mid-80s. It was the first business I ever owned. We were the dealer of a line of sailboats, and we had one in leaseback from the owner that we used as a demonstrator. I’d frequently sail that boat from Seattle to Victoria, BC, on Vancouver Island. The distance was about 75 miles or 65.2 nautical miles (120.7 km), of which about 30 miles (48 km) were spent crossing the Strait of Juan de Fuca, across the Canadian border and into Victoria Harbor.
In the mid-1980s, there was no affordable GPS just yet. SatCom and Loran were expensive, as was an autopilot, and the only thing most sailboats had was a paper chart, a compass, a plotter, a stopwatch, and a pair of binoculars. It was all I needed.
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