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A visitor recently asked SetSail: I started reviewing your site and found a ton of stuff to read I haven't gotten around to yet, but one burning question hasn't been answered yet for me, so let me try to frame it and see if you have some advice for us.
I am toying with the idea of a circumnavigation with my family and have floated the idea with my wife; she is slowly coming out of shock and is starting to ask questions... :-). There are a few big question marks (lots of little ones) in our minds, but the most burning one is, what sailing experience do you need to get started? My wife has never really sailed (we are planning for starters a sailing trip for all of us) and my sailing experience is limited to zero, but I have been windsurfing for almost 20 years and I paraglide, hence spend lots of time with the weather. Bottom line, we can't even start to make any risk evaluation or assess how long it would take us to get going.
Here are a few suggestions that I gathered from different sources:
Get out with the family to make sure we all like it (ASAP)
Go to sailing courses for both of us to get the basics
Get myself on a delivery to or from Hawaii to gain more experience
Get the boat and do 6 months of coastal sailing in as many different
and strong conditions as possible
Get a skipper for the first big crossing, e.g. to Hawaii from
San Francisco
Given where we are in our lives now, we are looking at a minimum of 6 months prep and 6 months active coastal sailing before anything goes. Does that seem reasonable? Are we out of our minds (or I guess I should ask am I out of my mind ...)?
In all of my life, learning has been very easy for me, intellectually, motoricly and intuitively; experience can only come with time, but how much before you feel someone can be ready? We would appreciate some honest feedback and input. Hope this finds you well wherever your are voyaging right now. Thanks, Robert
SetSail has posed a question from a reader: I want to sail around the world; what do I and my family need to do before we'll be "ready". My sailing experience is zero. How do I get started?.
Good heavens! There is no "Answer". That one question breeds hundreds of questions in return. I mean, whole books have been written about this subject, and each author has a different take on how to approach "readiness". For openers, read Steve and Linda Dashew's book Offshore Cruising Encyclopedia cover to cover, and you'll get some idea of the complexities involved in getting started.
Early in the 60's Al moved to California and took a small apartment in Newport Beach. He saw a lot of people hanging off the sides of precariously tilted sailboats and thought, "That looks like fun." So he bought a 20-foot sloop and had old Capt'n Van, an ex-square rig sailor, teach him how to sail it. He sailed after work, every weekend and through holidays. His persistence caught the eye of avid racing sailors where he kept the little boat; they asked him to join their crew. Thereafter his weekends were spent jumping around foredecks and hanging off the sides of precariously tilted racing boats. He loved it!
Al and I went sailing on our first date. Guess he was checking 'em out fast! I think he told me that very first day, that sometime he would like to have a bigger boat and go sailing away to distant shores. As our relationship grew, so did the desire to do just that. We decided the goal on our horizon would be Australia. We used to sit on the beach watching the big boats out sailing and say to each other, "All we need is a boat." So we sold the little boat, bought our first cruising boat BACCHUS, a 40 foot heavy wooden ketch, and sailed away. The rest, as they say, is history. Except--thirty-five years, and two circumnavigations later, we have never been to Australia!
These days we see people preparing to go cruising. They are reading books, watching "how-to" videos, or checking out the www sites for sailing knowledge. They are spending time on their boats, doing the varnish, or installing the latest "must-have" gizmos. What we don't see, are those same people out sailing. Practicing. Trying out those "how-to's" in the actual sailing environment. Sailing out to sea for 24 hours and back again just to feel the rhythm--learning to live with sea sickness, making a meal, falling asleep, or coping with the unexpected.
When SUNFLOWER was in the Seattle area for 2 winters we organized and presented a couple of small cruising seminars. The attendees all had boats and were working hard at getting away. We later met up with a few of them while cruising along the Mexican coast, and again in the Bahamas. We asked what had been the most helpful information in the seminars--a variety of topics popped up, mostly having to do with basic living aboard for long periods of time and in a small space.
OK. What didn't we prepare you for? One couple said, "The ocean swell." All their sailing experience had been within Puget sound waters, nothing open ocean until they went out the "gate" into the Pacific, into the long rolling swell. Another guy said, "Why didn't you tell us to go sailing more, in good and bad conditions? Then again," he reflected, "if I had done that, I might never have gotten this far!"
So read the books, check the web sites, buy a boat, and sail, sail, sail. You might find out that it is not nearly as romantic an idea as it sounded. Then again--you might find yourself in Australia!
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