Hi, long time lurker here, first post...
I've been daysailing in the
SF bay area for about a decade, but haven't been able to arrange my life for cruising. However, the wife and I have decided to quit our jobs in July 2016. We would like to fly somewhere, buy a sailboat and
cruise roughly August through December. I've been researching a bit where to go through reading these
forums as well as some
guidebooks, but was wondering if I could solicit some opinions.
First, about us:
- currently own a
Cal 29, which we plan to sell
- Plan to
budget about 60 to 70k for the
boat purchase (hoping to get a good portion of that back by selling the
boat at the end of the cruise)
- extensive
day sailing experience in the
SF bay
- only limited
offshore experience, only off
California coast (but enough to know it is enjoyable)
- early 30s
- Wife is not a fan of overnight sailing yet, would be willing to do a few longer stretches between waypoints, but in general we're looking for mostly daysails between
anchorages
- not necessarily looking for the lowest
budget cruising locations, although we certainly don't mind saving
money by going somewhere cheaper.
The window we're looking at is of course
hurricane season, so that would seem to limit the more prudent choices of location. So far my top locations include:
- Southern
Caribbean (ABC islands, trinidad are obvious choices, but would you add in
Cartagena and San Blas islands to this? The islands in
Venezuela I think might be above my risk threshhold wrt pirates, from what I've been reading)
-
Sea of Cortez
What other locations would you recommend looking into, that might be a good location to step up our sailing experience for our first
cruise? Also, any places specifically that might be good to buy/sell the boat? I would plan on going through a
broker for simplicity.
My hope is to buy a boat that is nearly "turn key" and hopefully only need to spend at most 2 weeks
provisioning it. Is this realistic with the right budget?
Is my boat budget realistic if we're looking for something 35 to 45 feet, middle of the road in creature comforts?
I welcome any comments, thanks!