Crawl (for a few months)... walk (for many months to a year- or even a few years)... run (far more subjective). In my flying days we had a saying: You have 2 bags; one (full) is luck, and the other (empty) is experience. Try your best to fill the empty one before the full one is emptied.
Everyone has done things that in hindsight were probably not as well thought out as we felt they were at the time, and we expended some luck, but learned from those
mistakes. That process never ends.
The problem is when beginners (it happens to experienced people too) make a fatal flaw in judgement by not taking the time to evaluate, understand, and successfully mitigate the risks.
I
sold my first “big”
boat to a guy in
Hawaii years ago. Really nice, middle-aged guy who had never sailed, but dreamt of sailing the islands. I offered to take him out a few times, but before we could get our first sail scheduled, he decided on a quick day sail with his girlfriend. He left at 1:00 and told me that he’d be back in an hour or two.... I called the Coast Guard When he hadn’t returned as night fell. 2 am, the coast guard calls me and tells me he’s off Diamond
Head waving at the helicopter they had out looking for him (he wasn’t aware that the
VHF radio onboard was a thing). 4 am comes and I get another call. He ran up on the reef off Waikiki Beach. The boat broke up after a few minutes and he and his passenger swam to shore. Similar outcome to this story- he made the news, state fined him $100k for reef damage and
salvage.
From an armchair you could find a million things that went wrong on that excursion, but just taking the time to ease into this stuff would have paid dividends then- as I assume it would have here.
Our
boats afford us a
license to dream, but the risks are real, and the liability we expose ourselves to can be unimaginable if not managed.
By all means, get the boat now if that’s the dream- but there are no prizes for being the first to cast the docklines.