Sail With Bike?
 

I don't want to be without my bike if at all possible. Has anyone shipped a bike and travelled on the boat with it?

One ships captain told me several years ago that its best to get down to the port and search for ships captains since they have the right to allow a passenger on board, may even get a cheaper deal for transporting the bike too.

Anyway seems like more of an adventure to do it this way than to take a flight.

Ship
 

Sailing along with your bike is a great idea, probably harder to do in practice but that all depends on where you are trying to go.

If you are looking at a short hop from Panama to Columbia, then a lot of people are doing just that to transport their bikes across. Check out the shipping section.

If you are looking at longer crossing like the Pacific or Atlantic, well it can be hard to find a sailboat to crew on at the best of times, showing up with a motorcycle would surely complicate that. For sailing, if you have a ton of experience, it is easier to find a sailboat looking for crew, but not many boats have a readily available place to store a bike. Having a 500lb bike flopping on deck in rough seas would be something everyone would be a bit worried about. Plus you would have to wrap the heck out of it on a journey of any duration as the sea air would do a number on your bike in no time. For cargo vessels, there are very few that do the longer crossings and will take passengers but with the price of flights it would likely be close in cost and take you much more time, even if you were able to arrange. You can always try, it would be nice to accomplish, but cost, hassle, and time may lead you to the easy solution.

Please check this URL for sailing along with bike :)

Grimaldi Group

It depends on what you mean
 

It really comes down to what you mean by sail? I sailed from San Diego to New Zealand two years ago on a 65 foot schooner. I wanted to take my bike (in this case a bicycle) since I was continuing on to ride OZ afterwards. I ended up sending it by UPS and it turned out to be the right decision. First off, few sailboats would have the appropriate space for a motorcycle and most skippers would deem it unsafe over any sort of distance as you really can't lash the thing down well for heavy seas. Even if you could it will keep getting in people's way, which won't make the rest of the crew happy... unless you're paying a lot more money than everyone else, in which case they still won't like it. Having two or three panniers down below won't make anyone happy either and could be down right dangerous. Besides, had I taken my bike (in this case bicycle) and lashed it to the gunwale, it would have been subjected to 9 weeks of constant sea spray and serious dousings in storms. Can you imagine what all that salt water would have done to it?

Now, if your talking about hopping on a freighter or container ship, that's a whole different story and opens up some new avenues. Let me know if you catch a ride.