Aspiring to sail!

[Astraeus]

Evening all.

Recently discovered this forum having long searched for an encyclopedic portal for sailing. Love sailing, love living aboard, love all of it. Live 170 miles from the sea and so have limited opportunity but forcing myself to commit this year and next to getting my Day Skipper qualification. Already blown away by how forthcoming members are with helpful information and looking forward to exhausting that 'search' function as my journey begins. [emoji4]

[boatman61]

Hi.. Welcome to CF...

[JPA Cate]

Welcome aboard, Astreus,

Good success with your plan.

Ann

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, Astraeus.

[thomm225]

Originally Posted by Astraeus

Live 170 miles from the sea and so have limited opportunity ....... [emoji4]

Is there a pond or lake near you?

I started sailing when I was 500 miles from the sea.

I traded an old deer rifle I had for a beatup dinghy with centerboard, mast, and an old rag of a sail on a trailer.

I few years later I bought an old Hobie 16 ($1,700.00) and started racing that. Then another newer Hobie 16, then two new catamarans for racing over the next 10 years , then a 27' monohull, next will be .......a 32' to 35' ?

Beginning with the 2nd Hobie 16, we traveled to the sea and many inland venues to race and learned lots

There are large inland fleets of Laser and Lightning Sailboats here in the US that race in many places. Check in your area. A Lightning is a beautiful little sailboat

[Astraeus]

Originally Posted by thomm225

Is there a pond or lake near you?

I started sailing when I was 500 miles from the sea.

I traded an old deer rifle I had for a beatup dinghy with centerboard, mast, and an old rag of a sail.

I few years later I bought an old Hobie 16 and started racing that. Then another newer Hobie 16, then two new catamarans for racing, then a 27' monohull, next will be .......a 32' to 35' ?

There is a reservoir. I sail dinghies most weekends; my comment was made in the context of keelboat sailing which I have found to be massively more enjoyable than dinghy sailing. Having said that, for theory and practical experience I cannot fault my experience on dinghies.

Thank you for your kind words of welcome, all. [emoji3]

[thomm225]

Keelboats are great but slow.

When I finally did get to move back near the sea, I was talking with a broker about a "keelboat" and he asked:

How much time do you have?

Point is, if you are still working and have only a few weeks of vacation a year, your keelboat " cruising" dreams are very limited. You can do the math (and don't forget to add or subtract the current, wind conditions, etc)

But with a small, fast boat like a catamaran where you can easily reach speeds of 20 knots (and "cruise" for hours at 10-15 knots) on the inside you can do 100 miles a day more or less (as in daylight hours) just coastal cruising/racing and gain lots of experience from sailing and also from watching the mistakes keelboat skippers make ......

with bridges, inlets/passes, groundings from hitting shoals to going on the wrong side of a channel marker, improper sail selection etc.....

[Astraeus]

I will certainly look at multihulls in future but would sooner learn to sail on a monohull for the simple reason that it is more technical, in my view.

For the next decade, at least, there is little chance of me becoming a cruiser and thus any trips are likely to be no more than a couple of weeks in length, thus not requiring the additional living space or comfort afforded by a multihull.

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