Apart from Weyalan, you are all missing the point. The rules are the criteria for "Fail Safe
FINANCING Of A Cruising Lifestyle" not "A Cruising Lifestyle".
And like I said, if it doesn't fit your mind set JUST DO IT.
Someone once said "All great voyages have started on a foundation of financial uncertainty."
To illustrate the "JUST DO IT" mentality, I will relate this to you.
About 20 years ago I picked up a copy of the "Courier Mail" which is the highest circulating news paper in the state of
Queensland, which has a population of around 4 million and along the coast of which the
Great Barrier Reef is located.
Port Clinton is located about midway along the north south coast of
Queensland. It is not a port in the usual sense of the word. No wharves, jetties, town or road to it. It is a beautiful almost fully enclosed waterway lying adjacent to the Shoalwater Bay Military
training reserve which will be familiar to many American soldiers and marines.
The front page of the news paper carried a most remarkable story. It told of a man who was found at Port Clinton in stressful circumstances.
He was 80 odd years old, wearing a pair of old army boots, his trousers were held up by a piece of
rope, he had run out of
food and he had little
drinking water left. His boat was 14 foot long in the style of a clinker built couta boat and it's
sails consisted of a patchwork of flour sacks.
Some 40 or so years prior, this gentleman had found that a "normal life" in the post depression years was just too hard and not for him. So he just got in his boat and dropped out and disappeared off the
radar screen of society.
Apart from the occasional fishermen that helped him out, no one knew of the man's existence for over 40 years.
The sad part of the story is that the authorities decided that he couldn't live like that any more and that they would "look after him".
In today's taped, tagged, bar coded and silicon chipped society it is no longer possible to achieve this sort of annonimity, when we have our
anchor down in a secluded bay, the only light is from the stars and moon overhead and your camp fire on the beach and the only sound is that of the tide thrown at the shore, we can still IMAGINE it.
Like Albert said, "Imagination is more important than knowlege." and some other guy said "When the Dream is big enough and strong enough, the facts don't matter.".
Just remember one thing:- "Nothing succeeds like a budgie!!" ;-) Cheers from Cisco.