What Do You Wish You Had Known ? What's Your Best Piece of Advice for Us ?

[DannySt]

heatherbrie you sure have a way with words, the writing on your blog is great.

I am not that experienced, but when I went out, I wish someone would tell me:
1. Take it easy, both on the boat, on yourself, and mostly on your partner. A boat is a very closed space, and its easy to loose perspective and go all out on your partner, so have patience with your partner and try to enjoy as much as you can together.
On this note, take some breaks from one another from time to time.
2. know some of the culture of where your going, especially financial habits of the place, when we found out that it is customary to pay for your use of knife and fork in some italian restaurants, we were not ready for that... or the siesta in spain when you wanted to buy some food for the boat...
3. Take good pictures, and lots of them, you will miss them when you are looking back at your old salty days.

Because you asked for the one piece of advice, I would go with number 3

[heatherbrie]

Thanks for all the wonderful advice, folks! Our renter will be in our house in less than a month so we're in the final prep stages of selling everything and getting the boat ready. Sometimes it feels like it's never going to get done on time but I keep having to slow down, breathe and remind myself that we'll make it happen! I'm looking forward to having the chance to take your advice shortly!

[rocinante]

I am so excited for you and your adventure, I remember quite vividly the planning before we sailed out of our home port of Everett, WA. August 2009. The last few frantic weeks of our preparation was spent on our 'necessary for safety' list. We had lists upon lists upon lists---every one crossed off seemed to spawn 10 more items. My husband and I finally realized we would never have the time or money to get it all done and created 3 lists, 'Necessary for safety' things like service our liferaft, secure batteries, polish fuel 'Nice, need in near future'were things like repair the watermaker, re-caulk decks, install new water heater- and 'We'll think about it later' which included new cushions for the salon, strip and re-varnish the companionway doors and the hatch screens, and on and on lists. This dropped our things to do down to about 10. We still have not done all the things on our lists, we have re-caulked the decks, and fixed the watermaker and have hot water, but we are safe and cruising!! Our 'deadline' was the Baja Haha, so we knew we had to get to San Diego by October-that was the best thing we did, we may still be tied to the dock if we hadn't committed to that rally.
Our boat is manageable for two, big enough to have guests and for comfortable sailing and safety in a blow. We spent many years researching which has paid off in our ability to do what we are doing-enjoying the world on a relatively small budget.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by DannySt

t...
3. Take good pictures, and lots of them, you will miss them when you are looking back at your old salty days.

Because you asked for the one piece of advice, I would go with number 3

Me too. We didn't, and regret it.
In our day, we only had costly "film". Go virtually free digital!

[Larry]

Hi Heather
Welcome to water world.

Agree with Notquite you can't beat gummy bears or ju-jubes in the middle of the night.

Never let the hubby go to the marine store without adult supervision or you will have no budget. Women are not the impulse buyers.

Get a windlass - you will be a much safer and a better anchorerer with automation. I don't care what anybody says. If they do it by hand the anchor has to be smaller and they eventually mentally say - good enough.

Get an anchor as big as you can stand you will sleep better and sooner or later some clown will snag your hook when its blowing like crap in the middle of the night, usually a thunderstorm and a charter boat, always an ugly combination. As they say in hollywood - much hilarity ensues.

You are going to have a great time!!
Cheers
Larry

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by swagman

Best advice? Go slow.

It is so easy to get a destination fixed and go for it, forgetting that you're missing lots on the way.

Best advice? Go fast!!

Sea Life set out to do 2 circumnavigations: 1st one fast second one slow.
1st one will be finished in less than 2 months making 2.5 years.
Now I know all the places to go sloooooow and all the places to skip and all the places people said: "how could you miss...."
This slow lap can take 20 years it just doesn't matter.

but if the first one had taken 20 years I wouldnt have seen Europe for maybe 15 years....



I know of some people who have 3 kids who were born on their boat. 2 are now getting off as they need to go to uni on land, they are 18 years old. They have never been out of the Atlantic.
Thats too slow.

[Stillraining]

Very interesting point of view mark...Hard to argue with it.

Id definitely go fast through some of where you have been..hence my lack of desire to do a RTW...there are many parts of it I care never to see in the first place...

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by Stillraining

hence my lack of desire to do a RTW.. .

'circumnavigation' is more a sentence than a word. It will be good when this one is over then when people say 'you're sailing around the world' I can say NO

We all have our thoughts on what is 'exotic' and to go see them is the name of the game. I don't think we should be worried about doing a few thousand miles here and there to go knock them off. If we happen to go RTW seeing our dreams then so be it.

Its funny that each persons idea of 'exotic' or 'romantic' or 'paradise' is so vastly different. French people think Australia is exotic. I think France is.

[VirtualVagabond]

Originally Posted by MarkJ

Its funny that each persons idea of 'exotic' or 'romantic' or 'paradise' is so vastly different. French people think Australia is exotic. I think France is.

Frogs vs Toads...

If all these goddam tv master chefs just came up with a few good "toads' legs" recipes we'd be laughing...

Vic

[David_Old_Jersey]

Originally Posted by VirtualVagabond

Frogs vs Toads...

If all these goddam tv master chefs just came up with a few good "toads' legs" recipes we'd be laughing...

Vic

Speaking as a Crapaud I find that not so amusing



"This statue of a crapaud (toad) in St. Helier represents the traditional nickname for Jersey people."

Channel Islands - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia