Crew Available: First Time Sailors, Looking for Excursion

[Cody_Stl]

Hello!

My wife and I are seriously considering sailing as an early retirement, but we live no where near an ocean! We live in Missouri and already have our vacation planned for this year. BUT, we are really looking for some like minded individuals who are already sailing/cruising to take us out and show us the ropes (pun intended). As I understand it the Caribbean/Bahama cruising season is winter/outside hurricane season? If so, we would LOVE to find someone and make plans to go on a cruise with them aboard their vessel late this winter (preferably after the new year).

The cost of chartering a boat is just ridiculous, and though we plan on getting our first sailing class out of the way this summer hopefully, we would be nowhere near wanting to take a boat cruising on our own(experience wise).

We are NOT looking for a free ride by any means either! We would be willing and happy to pay for food, fuel, entertainment? Whatever takes the burden off and makes having company for a short while worth it. I'm sure these costs, along with our own transportation costs, would still be far below the cost of chartering a captained excursion+ provisioning, transportation, entertainment, etc.

We are looking to learn, though we won't burden you with questions if they are getting old! We are also just looking to see how we like/tolerate being on a boat for a significant period of time. We would be able to take off from work for probably a little over 2 weeks, so the excursion can't be too crazy long as we have to account for travel time. Someone based in Florida would be fantastic, allowing us to drive in, and drive back out further reducing our cost (and freeing our purse strings even more for fun and food for all on board) :-)

We are only 7 short years from an empty nest and able to cast off our Missouri lines. I am 35, wife is 30 years of age. We are both in good physical condition. We both work in Public Safety, like meeting new people, easy to get along with (our job kind of requires it), we like movies/shows, boating(river jet boating currently), camping, hiking, dining, cooking, occasional theater productions, among many other things/interests! Oh, and I am a pretty mean cook, so I can cook for ya too!

So, will you help us to experience sailing and decide if this dream is for us? We hope you can! email me with any questions or to start making these grand plans!

cody_stl@yahoo.com

Cheers,

Cody & Jaime