Comments on: Where to begin? http://www.womenandcruising.com/blog/2011/04/where-to-begin/ Women cruisers share their experiences, info and news Sun, 09 Mar 2014 21:56:12 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.8.41 By: Sailing Crew Member http://www.womenandcruising.com/blog/2011/04/where-to-begin/comment-page-1/#comment-6038 Thu, 15 Aug 2013 20:42:44 +0000 http://www.womenandcruising.com/blog/?p=4090#comment-6038 “All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveller is unaware.” Martin Buber
http://www.nomadicliving.com

]]> By: Rich http://www.womenandcruising.com/blog/2011/04/where-to-begin/comment-page-1/#comment-3550 Sun, 01 May 2011 17:04:26 +0000 http://www.womenandcruising.com/blog/?p=4090#comment-3550 Amy, my wife Donna and I moved on to our Morgan 38 in 1978 here on the San Francisco Bay. After 10 years we had lots of experience sailing in a variety of conditions and had done some bareboat charters in the Caribbean. We were comfortable with the smaller, closer quarters of living on a sailboat but didn’t have any cruising experience. We felt it was important to get some experience actually cruising before committing ourselves to a retirement of sailing. We decided to take a six month leave of absence and sail the west coast of Mexico. It took us a year to prepare but in the fall of 1988 we set sail for Mexico. After the trip we had a better idea of what we wanted and knew that yes, cruising was a lifestyle we would enjoy. Acquaintances of ours had focused their retirement on cruising without any real experience and after six months found that was not for them and returned to land. We spent the next ten years getting prepared both boating-wise and financially to go cruising. We bought a Catalina 42 and equipped it for long distance cruising. In the meantime Donna skippered our home in weekly races on the bay.

When we first moved aboard we sold our three bedroom, two bath house on a corner lot with a swimming pool and put the furniture in storage until we decided it this was going to work for us.

Gwen’s suggestion of doing a chartered cruise is excellent. It will be an enjoyable and valuable learning experience.

The realities of cruising will be very different from the dreams, bad weather, equipment failure away from easy access to replacement parts etc. but the experiences of what you will see and the people you will meet will stay with you forever and be memories you will always cherish.

We met many cruising families and the children had wonderful experiences. I think one of the most interesting arrangements we cam across was a family where they had an agreement that if any one person decided they wanted to stop that they would stop cruising. The kids got to experience the responsibility of being on watch and responsible for the safety of the ship and crew in addition to seeing places they had only read about.

Cruising isn’t for everyone so you need to take some tiny steps first to see how you and your crew react to this lifestyle.

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