When not racing, you are cruising, although always with the implicit understanding that whenever close to any other comparable sailboat, you will surely want to race for a while. Cruising is a philosophy, or mindset, that seeks to maximize comfort and safety while minimizing work. Racing, in contrast, seeks to maximize speed without regard for the work involved. Clearly cruising presents the greater challenge.
In the US, boats can sail in three kinds of water: inland waters like Buzzards Bay, Long Island Sound, the Chesapeake Bay and so on; ocean waters all along the coast; and the Intracoastal Waterway, or ICW. Each has its own set of rules and each takes its own kind of know-how. The line that separates inland from ocean waters is the Boundary Line (defined in 46 CFR 7). Another line, called the Demarcation Line, separates waters subject to domestic rules of the road (Inland Navigating Rules) from waters subject to international rules-of-the-road (Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collision at Sea, or COLREGS). The COLREGS Demarcation Line appears on charts. It is generally about the same as the Boundary Line except in New England and the Gulf of Mexico, where it is farther offshore.