Biggest argument while cruising

[crawdaddy282]

So my wife and I are planning to leave on a great loop cruise. BUT I think we may deviate from a one year cruise to a longer cruise. My wife wants a plan of when/where we wil be at times.
How do you plan a trip like this? Do I need to know I will be in the gulf by such and such date? I know we cannot go north by a certain date, but planning this far out seems to be tough for me to articulate.- because I kinda of want to maybe keep going. How do you do it and have you argued about destinations or dates? How far out should we plan? We will sell/rent the home and obviously have a live aboard boat...

[zboss]

It doesn't hurt to have a general plan, like "be out of the hurricane zone by a certain date" but planning on being a particular place on a particular date is usually a recipe for disaster. You find ourself making bad decisions just to meet that date and be in that place. Its irresponsible in some ways - like leaving port when you know a storm is coming. Its not like you have a seasoned professional crew to depend on.

We find that the harder the destination and time is set in stone (like having to be someplace to start a rally), the longer the planning and preparation it requires - up to months or years of planning. Its usually better to show up at a certain place days or weeks before you must be there. Everyone fights the clock once in a while but when you look back at those days, they are the least happy, the most stressful, and flat out unenjoyable.

[StuM]

Give her what she wants!

But don't make it too detailed. It should be a plan, not a schedule!

Something like
Jun/Jul - area xxx
late July - leave xxx for yyy
Aug/Sep = around yyy
early Oct - head for zzz
...

Then keep it quietly in the back of your mind that as things progress, that plan will probably see major change by mutual consent.

[s/v Moondancer]

We can always guarantee a place or a time but never a particular place at a particular time!

[SFS]

The most dangerous thing on a sailboat is a schedule.

[Mike OReilly]

General plans are fine. Detailed plans are not.

[john61ct]

As Ike said "Plans are worthless, but planning is everything."

[Sea Dreaming]

"As long as its fun". That is always the best "plan".

[Scott Berg]

You can tell everyone where to meet you
You can tell everyone when to meet you

But not When and Where!!!

[Paul L]

Why not give her the tools and knowledge so she can layout a rough plan for you to follow. Taking into account not early for cold weather, not too late for hurricanes, reasonable days travel, long enough to enjoy spots you want to hang at, etc. Feeling you have some control is often what matters.

[Jdege]

You don't need to give up on scheduling, you simply need to learn to schedule in larger units.

He went away from the basement of Building 14 that day, and left this note in his cubicle, on top of his computer terminal: "I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
-- Tracy Kidder, "The Soul of a New Machine"

[crawdaddy282]

I appreciate the responses. The 'plan' is to go. While I can present a timeline, I have a hard time saying this is where we'll be at a certain time. This is our argument. where/when. How to think this out in a timeline is difficult; especially when trying to be open to different locations but still trying to make a plan.

[valhalla360]

Let her have her detailed plan but with the caviot, that if the weather/conditions are not ideal, either of you has the right to VETO travel on that day.

Then once a day is lost, she simply has to update the schedule accordingly. The first couple times, she will spend a few hours adjusting the schedule out for the next year, then she will likely come to the conclusion that it only makes sense to schedule in detail a week or two out with the rest being generalized. Even the week or two won't be set in stone.

When we first started the Loop, we were starting in Michigan in the fall. The idea was Christmas in Key West. Then it became Christmas in Tampa, then Christmas in Mobile. We eventually had Christmas at Bobbies Fish Camp.

We were the only boat there and they invited us to their personal Christmas get together. We would have never planned it but it's one of our favorite memories of how they invited us in.

[chuckr]

We never ever sail to a schedule. Did it twice and it was a disaster both times. Saying that this past summer we sailed around the Black Sea and had to get a visa for Russia and we had to give them an entrance date. We spent a lot of time with OpenCPN doing a general plan on where we would stop based on conditions on the BS such as lite to good winds and seas in the am and by noon tuck in as winds and seas up and very uncomfortable - so we planned on 25-35nm days and put ports in on the chart. And we had 400nm to go before we got to the BS and wisdom is be out by end of Sept - So with planning we set our Russia date as July 10 and with 29 days we knew when we had to leave. So we set sail in April and made the BS about when we wanted to but the sailing and winds were at a good angle so we just kept moving missing a few ports we has scheduled and made ports we had not scheduled. But weather kept us at the dock in Georgia so we could not make Russia on the 10 but had to wait 3 days and when we left we knew we had a 350nm sail to Odessa and kept watching the weather in the Western BS and knew a high probability of major blow so we left 3 days before our visa expired to beat the weather which we did as it came with 50k winds
as for leaving we were having a great time sailing down the western coast that we dismissed the conventional wisdom and wx did set in and we had small windows to move from port to port and the last run was designed to be a day sail to leave Bulgaria and sail to a Turkish port for an overnight then on to Istanbul for check in but more weather was setting in so we did a long run to Istanbul and had to run the Bosphorus in the dark (not highly recommended) but beat the weather. We did not get out of the Black Sea until very late Oct and missed some stops heading south to our winter port because of weather that had changed and storms were coming through on a more frequent basis

We are currently planning this summer and have a basic idea and now looking at miles potential ports of call distance between ports or anchorages, what sights to see - we will plot all on OpenCPN and then adjust as we move along - it is fluid plan that can be changed by such things as this port is terrible let's leave or wow we need to spend an other day or two

In the Azores we went into one island for 2 days and found they had a small festival - St John - well small is an bit of an understatement - it lasted for 7 days and we stayed and had a great time --

Plan but be flexible

[autumnbreeze27]

all of our plans are written in sand, at low tide.

Don't worry about how long you'll be cruising, cross that bridge when you get there. You may not like cruising, it happens a lot.