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Cruising with Kids
 Recently, a big hubbub was made in the national news about a family of five – the Craftons – who completed a circumnavigation aboard their sailboat! To landlubbers who are unaware of the global cruising community, the Crafton family’s circumnavigation seemed so audacious a thing to attempt, that it must be singular, so unfamiliar, it must be irresponsible. We know it is not. Books, Websites, Blogs
As a veteran dive instructor, Gwen has good ideas about how to prep your boat and yourselves for safely adding scuba and snorkeling to your voyage, and the Admirals have contributed photos from around the world! Books, Websites, Blogs
Wow! I just got my copy of Jimmy Cornell’s new World Cruising Destinations this last week – and I am in love with it! I’ve carried Jimmy Cornell’s books aboard my boat ever since I bought my first copy of World Cruising Routes in the late ‘80s. When I was finally lucky enough to have my boat and wonder “OK, now how do I get to these places?” World Cruising Routes had the answer for me, laying out all the major routes for any crossing I might want to make. World Cruising Destinations is a great companion to World Cruising Routes. What World Cruising Destinations does is give you the WHOLE world through a boater’s eye, and of course, not just any boater’s eye, but with Jimmy Cornell’s decades of experience. It covers every significant cruising destination around the world – 184 of them to be exact. STORIES
 I always thought that my fellow female cruisers experience the cruising lifestyle in a sort of similar way. That is, have similar expectations, apprehensions and passions. That fears they experience, the interests and dreams pursued and the skills obtained, would be generally the same. So, I asked some questions. In fact, I asked all the lady cruisers I had met during our 15 years cruising. In fact, I wrote a survey, resulting in a very detailed survey. A raft of questions tumbled out. Cruising with Kids, Press Releases
We call it 12 Questions to 12 Sailing Families, and the first contribution – the story of sv New Life and the Echenard Family of three from Switzerland — is already in place. Rich with detailed information about why and how this family chose to go cruising and the rewards their choice has brought them, the story is studded with terrific photographs that will melt your heart! Each of the 12 families answer 12 questions about the challenges of choosing this life, what they like best and least, how they handle family back home, schooling, safety, laundry, etc. Plus, they offer advice for other families pondering this life. Cruising with Kids
We would explore Mexico by skimming lightly off our savings if we needed to, but the monthly interest that we received off our conservative investments would be the bulk of our revenue… keeping us afloat financially. It was so perfect!And as Murphy’s Law so cruelly predicts… even before we cast the line off the last cleat on the dock, the dividends plummeted to such depressing lows that my husband and I all but went into cardiac arrest! The crash of 2008 had ruined our slick cruising plans for all of 2009. We had sold our business and our home. We had dumped major dollars into Windfall finalizing her cruiser ready status. We were on the line. We had a decision to make. We had just enough money to go back and start over. Or, we could go for it… no matter how crazy… and fulfill the quest. We opted for the quest! All we needed was a new plan. ASK YOUR QUESTIONS, Safety & Security
The Caribbean Safety and Security Net responds:
The situation is certainly getting more press, both legitimate as well everyone and his brother posting his version of a single incident in a blog. Most of these blogs are opinions only, often no basis in fact, but they do serve to get people riled up. …Read more Relationships & Roles Aboard
Smart, motivated, and capable people own these craft: doctors, lawyers, entrepreneurs, craftsmen, teachers, engineers, etc. They’ve sacrificed and saved and dedicated significant resources for years to buy, berth, and maintain their boats, yet barely use (90% leave their slip less than six times per year) them and very, very few actually end up out there living The Cruising Dream. Why? Not enough time? Life too crazy? Priorities changed? Out of money? I don’t buy it. No, the real reason is that she is not on board. While the registration may indicate joint ownership, this is most often (yes, there are many exceptions) his dream and this is his boat. You can bet that if she shared his enthusiasm, motivation, and The Cruising Dream, the boat would leave the slip more often and travel further. So why isn’t she on board with The Dream?Books, Websites, Blogs
Livia sends out a list of ten questions to cruisers who have cruised outside of their home country for at least two years and each week publishes an interview on her website. Livia asked us to participate. Gwen Hamlin immediately got on the ball and answered her ten questions. (Perhaps this will inspire me to do the same…) This week Livia published Gwen’s answers to her ten questions. What did Livia ask Gwen? Here are a few of the questions: Books, Websites, Blogs, Relationships & Roles Aboard
Through a sequence of connections it would take a page to recount, I’ve come back in touch with a cruiser I first met in a group of West Coast sailors getting ready to leave for the South Pacific from Puerto Vallarta back in 2003. A series of maintenance problems cropped up and kept Nick and his wife from departing with the rest of us. The fallout from those problems and the disappointment at the interruption ended up unraveling their cruising plan to the point that they sold the boat and got out. That was almost six years ago. What went wrong for them….and how did they fix it? Nick has since spent a lot of time thinking this all through and realized most if all of it came back on him. With the clarity of hindsight, Nick picked through the debris of his dream and identified a whole series of mistakes that he made that he has since discovered are made rather blithely by many men whose dreams are still tied to the dock. How We Learn, People Who've Inspired Us
 I have learned from many sailors over the years, but none so much as the years I spent in the cockpit of my father’s ‘old classic woodies’ on the Great Lakes. Being the youngest of 5 and having lost my mother to her nursing career, I tagged along behind the Captain (my father) and learned by doing; whether we were trading in old nautical antiques in the flats, scraping and re-packing the seams in the dead of winter or heading off on long legs to Canadian islands. Sharing Our Stories
We figured it would take just the four months left in the hurricane season to make the boat perfect, then we’d cruise back to St.Croix for the winter. Tony and I each had over 30 years sailing experience, mostly racing, but planned this boat to be a live-aboard cruiser, not a racer. We were fearless about sailing, clueless about cruising. |
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When our family of 4 began our exciting transition to the cruising life aboard our 35′ Cal Cruising 
I don’t know what your source is for saying that there is an increasing number of reported incidents against cruisers.
On even the most perfect weekend afternoon, we see only a handful of empty slips; most boats jostle restlessly in place like drunken tombstones.
In 1998, we purchased our first real cruising boat, sailed quickly from Tortola to Venezuela, and began converting her to a floating palace.
