What ever happen to the REAL cruisers?

[sailorboy1]

Well that certainly cleared the OP's attitude!

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by bcripps

...My real beef: Twenty or thirty years ago I would enter a far-flung anchorage and be greeted by two or three boats; folks who had worked hard to get there. Going ashore, the immigration man was happy to see me, welcomed me to his country. I was a bright spot in his otherwise humdrum workday. He shook my hand, stamped my passport, and offered to show me around his village. Fees? There were no fees. I was supporting his community with purchases of food, gas and diesel. That was enough.

Today, that same anchorage is bumper to bumper with eighty white elephants; everyone jostling for a mooring ball. (Thank you GPS!)

Bry, there are still places you can sail to where there aren't "bumper to bumper" boats. Even in my much more limited cruising time I've managed to mostly stay away from the watery parking lots most people seem to congregate to. It just means getting off the beaten path.

[AgPilot]

The younger generation can't be blamed for something they don't know. Perhaps there weren't enough good old parents or mentors to educate their children properly. I'm pushing 60 years old, I'm a crop duster pilot and flight instructor. I teach at a crop dusting school in my off season. Talk about a dying industry! Come on you guys, invest in someone's future and take someone under your sail and teach them what you know!

[robert sailor]

Mike of course is correct but humans being humans seem to need lots of other humans around, most of the time to feel secure. Just imagine if you were in that anchorage on that island that hardly anyone goes to, well you might be boarded and killed, you get the picture. There are just a few cruisers that strike out on the road less traveled and they usually have wonderful experiences that are not available on the milk run but that takes more balls than most cruisers have.

[robert sailor]

Originally Posted by AgPilot

The younger generation can't be blamed for something they don't know. Perhaps there weren't enough good old parents or mentors to educate their children properly. I'm pushing 60 years old, I'm a crop duster pilot and flight instructor. I teach at a crop dusting school in my off season. Talk about a dying industry! Come on you guys, invest in someone's future and take someone under your sail and teach them what you know!

Been flying my whole life and I hope you spend your time instructing. Crop dusting over the age of 50 has had a bad history in my neck of the woods.ll

[AgPilot]

Actually teaching a pilot how to fly close to the ground and within inches of trees and wires has its hazards. None the less, I have my faith in God and know that He's in control. I live my life being ready to go to heaven when it's time. Whether it's getting caught in a wire, boarded by pirates, or just crossing the street to get the mail, be ready when the call comes.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by AgPilot

The younger generation can't be blamed for something they don't know. Perhaps there weren't enough good old parents or mentors to educate their children properly. I'm pushing 60 years old, I'm a crop duster pilot and flight instructor. I teach at a crop dusting school in my off season. Talk about a dying industry! Come on you guys, invest in someone's future and take someone under your sail and teach them what you know!

I'll say it again...the op was not talking about young people. Only a few confused members here were.

Originally Posted by bcripps

But please, you people hopping from resort island to resort island, proudly flying the Skull and Crossbones from your spreader and wearing funny tee-shirts; watching your fifteen-inch chart plotter mounted in front of your wheel, (or wheels, as seems the fashion these days), don't fool yourself into thinking you're a cruiser. You're just another dumb tourist; no different from the ones that fly in on the plane.

You forgot the silly Captains hat. If you want to look truly stupid...always wear a Captains hat.

[Hudson Force]

I first learned to sail 8' prams in the cove at the west end of the old Las Olas bridge in Fort Lauderdale in 1956. Then, as now, Fort Lauderdale had a concentration of large yachts owned by wealthy people. My family has always had a modest income and I've always owned inexpensive vessels, but I've known a good number of people with great economic advantage.

To demean wealthy people as a group seems to be similar to evaluating people by age or ethnicity. I do experience clusters of megayachts in areas or marinas that I don't visit, but then, I also don't dock in some waterfront areas that are impoverished.

In most cases where I encounter people who are different from me by culture, wealth or ethnicity; I'm able to interact with them well.

[jtsailjt]

Lots of fun reading the posts in this thread but I do think the OP makes a good point, that there is a seemingly ever increasing percentage of cruisers who are not as self sufficient as most cruisers used to be, and expect their gold or platinum card to fix any and all difficulties they may encounter. Also, many folks have less background knowledge about many subjects, including but not limited to navigation, than cruisers used to have. This has impacted us all because it has allowed a different type of person to range much further "afield" than was possible before GPS.

Prior to GPS and chartplotters you really had to understand something about navigation theory in order to stay off the rocks, but now all you have to do is buy several GPS's and as long as they all agree with each other, you're good to go, or so it seems. The rocks used to quickly weed out most of those who tried to go cruising without learning much about navigation but GPS has changed that. I recently heard a boater (successful businessman) on his 40' cruising sailboat in my harbor mention, without any apparent embarrassment, that he could never keep it straight about latitude and longitude which was the up and down one and which was the sideways one! I'm sure he's never even heard of deviation or variation or true heading and TVMDC would mean absolutely nothing to him. I'm sure there are no paper charts aboard his boat. That may seem unbelievable to many of you and even frightening to some but in his experience he hasn't needed to know that. He just looks at the little boat on his chartplotter(s) and magically knows right were he is and where all the rocks are.....as long as all goes according to plan. I wouldn't feel comfortable operating that way but it seems to work OK for him so far. But most of the time, to the casual observer (and the guy I mentioned above if he ever came sailing with me), unless I'm offshore, I don't use paper charts (but they're onboard) or plot my position, so I'd appear just like him, using my charplotter at the helm, with my iPad and laptop at the nav station backing it up. So, as a relatively recent (within the last 10 years) boater, I can see how he'd get to the place where he'd have no understanding of basic navigation beyond watching for the little boat on his charplotter screens.

But this same sort of thing isn't restricted to boaters and there's a pretty good reason for it. I'm 59 now so grew up when it was still possible to do things like work on your own cars engine and since my family didn't have a lot of excess money but we liked to pursue many interests, we simplyhad to learn to do it ourselves and learn to improvise and make do. Since I was brought up that way, it's carried over all my life so it seems natural to do as much as I can and learn as much as I can about everything aboard and work on it as well. But it's gotten harder because systems are much more complicated now than they were, and just like in the non-sailing world, you simply can't work on many things, you just throw them out and replace them. So, why learn about how they work? I don't think that's a good mindset but I understand how someone just getting into boating would tend towards that because that's how things generally are in the rest of his/her life, and to learn about all the things he "could" still work on seems overwhelming, so he reverts to what he knows for virtually everything, writing a check to pay someone else to fix it or throwing it out and buying a new one.

I'm currently involved with helping to raise two stepchildren and I see this mindset all the time in them, and as much as I disapprove, I seem to be nearly powerless to change it because that's the way they've been socialized and the way all their friends are so it's seems normal to them and you are facing a very uphill battle convincing them otherwise. Yesterday we had our first 80+ degree day and my older (17 and athletic and bright) stepsons bedroom was quite hot so he just went down in the basement and was planning to sleep there. So far, so good. But he also complained to my wife that he wanted the window air conditioner put in his bedroom window so my wife mentioned to me that I "needed" to do that right away! I was too busy.... My problem is that I've carried that air conditioner from the back of his walk-in closet to the window and installed it and plugged it in, and done the reverse each fall for the last 4 years, and each time I've made it a point to have him on hand to show him how it's done. But now, even at 17, when all he has to do is to carry it about 15' and insert it into the open window and secure it and plug it in, he just doesn't, and instead complains that somebody else should hurry up and do it because it's hot in his bedroom. He's a good kid and very "normal" and well thought of at his school and he's certainly strong enough to carry it and install it himself in not much more time than it took to walk down to the basement and complain about it not being done. It's seemingly instinctive(!) and 95% of his friends would have the same approach so I'm not picking on him as an individual. This younger generation generally just don't see it as their place to be "hands on" about almost anything. I don't know where this leads or what it means, but to this crotchety old fart, it doesn't seem good. But I don't think it's going to change anytime soon, no matter how much we old farts moan and complain. The good news is that it's not going to be my problem. I'm just glad I was brought up "old school" and have gained some background knowledge and the mindset that I can and should be able to fix most things on my boat (and life) and if I don't know how, I can probably look it up or ask another "old fart" (and vice versa) in my harbor who's already run into the same problem to get me pointed in the right direction.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by Hudson Force

To demean wealthy people as a group seems to be similar to evaluating people by age or ethnicity.

At no point did the op demean anyone. Merely stating that with the advent of GPS, it changed cruising forever and filled anchorages with affluent people with little knowledge of boat maintenance or navigation.
If they appear foolish, they do it to themselves.

[Paul54]

Originally Posted by Rustic Charm

And I'm really really struggling to work out this changing oil with a GPS thingy

Does GPS stand for the usual 'global positioning system' or is it also an acronym for I don't know,

You got it all wrong. He is talking about changing the oil "in" your gps. Look at your accumulated miles, then consult your owner's manual to see what they recommend.

[fatherchronica]

"Old Guy Rule". I am fairly sure that is one of the major problems on earth. I am old, I used to change my own oil. I even changed it on my cars and trucks. Until those darn eco nuts didn't want the planet uninhabitable for the next generations I would just pull over a newly dug footing and dump the oil and filter to be buried by concrete the next day. But in my old age it is so easy to have someone else do it it and dispose of it legally and safely. And my Yanmar is way down in a hole, I am not so svelte, plus I have had 3 back surgeries and 2 right shoulder surgeries, and I am getting 14 stitches out of my right ring finger Friday where they sewed the meat back on last Sunday when I removed it and fractured up the last knuckle. Of all the things on my boat, I decided a few years ago that changing oil once or twice a year, depending on the weather, was a really good job for someone else. It gave us time a few years ago to have a vivacious and cute little Spanish woman teach us Celestial in Mexico. In truth, we only use it for fun and to do a little math, but we can do it now. And all things being equal, the closest I have ever put myself on the map that way is about a thousand feet from where the GPS said I was. I used to have a next door neighbor/ best friend who started getting crochety in his late 20's. I told him at that time that " someday Fred you will be shooting at jets that violate your air space". Eventually the authorities did have to to prosecute him and take his guns away, not for that that though. Thankfully for him, in California, where he lives still, as far as I know, he was able to rush out before his prosecution and buy up a new little arsenal to protect him the new neighbors and people who might use the bike path going past his side yard. The last time I saw him, several years ago at about 9:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning ( that being the only time of the week I saw him sober in many, many years) he told me again,as he sat at his computer, that he just wanted to sell his house and move to Idaho to live next to and luxuriate in the warm glow of his dream neighbor Mark Fuhrman. Then he crawled down the hallway to very nearly make to the restroom in time and I slipped out to never see him again. Sorry, the " you kids get off of my lawn" ( although Fred did not water his lawn for 30 years to spite his neighbors) story reminded of the guy who we were Best Men at each others weddings. He did make it in marriage for a couple of years, my wife of 39 years does better navigational math than me and when I retired at 55 she said" what do you want to do? I said I wanted to sell th Bill Lee design and get something a little less athletic and sail to Tierra del Fuego. So she promptly quit her job and we took off. In truth I like warm weather too much it turns out to probably ever get there now, but we are cruising.

[four winds]

Hey bry, cool, I bought my CP for $300 on sale too.

I'll have to look up snit, but don't think I'm in one, I'll check.

Been reading this forum daily for ten years now. One thing I learned years ago is that I'm not and never will be a real cruiser. Never been more than 100 miles offshore or seen seas over 10 feet.

I'm just an old guy that loves my boat and living on it. And loves sailing the coast from place to place or just sailing for no good reason other than to have wind in the sails.

Sometimes wonder if I belong here at all.

[jtsailjt]

Originally Posted by robert sailor

Been flying my whole life and I hope you spend your time instructing. Crop dusting over the age of 50 has had a bad history in my neck of the woods.ll

I've done a fair amount of flying close to the ground (F4 and F16) and don't think age has much to do with it at all. Reflexes really don't have much to do with it if you're doing it right. Much more important is to ALWAYS keep your priorities straight and never for even a second forget that hitting the ground has a near 100% probability of killing you. I know that sound obvious but lots of dead folks forgot that basic tenet for just a second or two at the wrong time. They allowed themselves to be distracted by lesser issues when they shouldn't have. If Ag's been crop dusting for a long time, it's really obvious that this necessary instinct is hardwired into him and there's virtually no chance that he'd forget his habit of NEVER forgetting where the ground is relative to him for ANY reason.

One technique we used to use to determine where your low altitude comfort level was would be to roll into about a 3 or 4 g level turn for about 180 degrees and when you roll out see if you are still at the same altitude you started at. If you're below your comfort level altitude you will have instinctively climbed a little but if you're comfortable at that height above the ground you will actually have done a level turn and will be at the same altitude. I'm betting that Ag pilot could do 50' AGL level turns all day long and I wouldn't make that same bet about someone with less than a couple of thousand hours as a cropduster or regularly flying very low for some other reason. It's not physical, it's almost all right between your ears. One caveat is that low level flying is something you have to do regularly to stay good at it and I can see where someone who used to be comfortable at low altitude but has semi retired from the business so isn't as current as they used to be could get into trouble if they didn't take a little time to step themselves back down to the levels where they used to be very comfortable. Maybe that's what's "done in" the older crop dusters you mention?

[sailorchic34]

I'm not a real cruiser, as I don't do real cruiser stuff. I don't hang around bars for one.

But I do change my on oil and filter. Heck, I rebuilt my yanmar on deck using a nail file bobby pin and a blow dryer. OK a slight exaggeration. Though I did use my oil filter wrench as a ring compressor and the main sheet and boom vang were my block and tackle.

Mind you I need to go check the oil level in the GPS...