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The dream: placid seas, fair winds, breathtaking sunsets as you navigate your own course and destiny. The reality: your “house” drags anchor in the middle of the night in a 180° wind shift; you are without electricity or water. There are, then, horrifying moments when reality routs the dream. But there are other magical moments when the reality becomes the dream.
The dream is vivid. You are sailing downwind with the southeast trades to the tropical paradises of the South Pacific to experience the exotic cultures of the magical atolls. You are anchored in a lovely bay, drink in hand, enjoying the sunset with the background of gently swaying palms on a pristine white beach or accepting gifts of fresh tropical fruits and garlands of flowers from handsome natives. You experience the beauty and tranquility of being alone on the sea, the sounds of moving through the water propelled by wind and sail, the slap and gurgle of the sea as you lie down for a nap; you revel in the freedom and accomplishment of arriving at any destination you choose and staying as long as you wish. You experience no more six A.M. alarms ringing, insensitive and unreasonable employers, snow shovels and crabgrass, weekends that seem to last a few hours, or Monday morning syndrome. This is the dream of the ultimate freedom, the fantasies of all who say to themselves that some day, ah, yes, someday, they will cast off from the shore life and cross the great oceans in a small boat.
The dream is beautiful, uncluttered, uncomplicated, and in living technicolor. But what precisely are the realities of living and voyaging on board a small sailing vessel? The simple things landlubbers take for granted—mail, telephones, refrigeration, water, and a source of electricity—can become major problems on a small boat. Giving up the security and comforts of life ashore can have adverse consequences as well as wonderful advantages.
After five years of living on board a boat with my husband and sailing 20,000 miles, in northern European and Mediterranean waters, across the Atlantic, the Caribbean, and along the U. S. East Coast, we find that people interested in the cruising life ask us the
same question. What are the realities of the dream and the practical aspects of a cruising life?
Cruising Costs: The cruising life is not, contrary to public opinion, expensive. Given a well-found boat, reasonably new, and constructed of modern materials (i.e., fiberglass), upkeep costs will be low. Bookshelves are filled with almost as many opinions as to what constitutes a proper cruising boat as there are sailors. Here you will have to seek your own salvation. The average cruising sailboat is in the 40 to 43 foot range but can vary anywhere from 29 to 70 feet. Suffice it to say that the boat should be comfortable as well as seaworthy. Finding and equipping the proper vessel is undoubtedly more difficult than the task of purchasing and decorating a home.
Once you have a vessel equipped and paid for, you should have no difficulty living within the limits of U. S. Navy retirement pay. There are countless people, old and young, who are living the cruising life on much less by depending on the local economy and shopping in the local food markets. Anchoring out at sea or mooring at the town quay costs little or nothing. One charming British couple we met in Lar- naca, Cyprus, claims their budget is less than $100 dollars per month. We live very well on my husband’s U. S. Navy captain’s pension. We eat ashore frequently, don’t buy the cheapest wine, and our average monthly costs, including six-month winter mooring, currently run between $500 and $850, an amount based on the last four years we have spent in Europe and on the Mediterranean Sea. Included in this figure are clothing, boat maintenance (routine), fuel, food, wine, restaurants, entertainment, and transportation ashore (other than our ten-speed bicycles). We even dock at marinas when they are convenient, which most of our cruising friends seldom do, except for wintering. Retired British couples, of which there are many cruising in the Mediterranean, live on modest incomes and still do nicely. We have met many young couples with no regular income who get by with odd jobs, stockpiling during a winter layover, and working at those services always in demand in marinas like sewing, sailmaking, carpentry, or engine maintenance.
But there are nonmonetary costs resulting from leaving the conventional and secure life you live ashore. To many, the loss of their old identities as professionals, parents, or community- oriented individuals is an important cost. To others, the inevitable isolation from former friends and family may be intolerable.
The actual mechanics of communication are difficult; it just is not possible to stay in close touch. Writing letters becomes tiresome and is not a substitute for personal contact. The folks back home cease corresponding because, unjustifiably, they consider what they are doing as so mundane compared to what you are doing that they have nothing about which to write. Or they might not write because that forwarding address means that you won't receive their letter for many weeks or even months, and hy that time, the news will be so dated as to render it insignificant. What the folks back home don’t realize is that you still care about them and their lives and want to hear from them. To a cruiser, there is no such thing as old news. The rare mail pickup is like Christmas.
Also, the cruising lifestyle is so different from that of the friends you leave ashore that, after a while, you find you have grown apart. You may continue to take a lively interest in what your friends are doing ashore since you have lived for so many years in a similar way. They, on the other
hand, have little or no appreciation for your new lifestyle. Some may even feel you have abandoned them by leaving. So you may find as time passes that communication becomes a one-way street, and you can’t wait to get back to the community of boat people where the language and concerns are the same, and the mutual understanding is instant.
Then there are those friends who think you have chosen to escape from something, despite protestations that you were happy living a normal life ashore and have simply chosen to do something else. If, however, your decision to cruise is motivated by escaping difficulties ashore, then introspection may be necessary. Failure in your professional, marital, or personal relationships or the inability to cope with the stresses and strains of a fast-paced American lifestyle may indicate a general inability to face and solve problems, something that may be fatal on a sailboat in mid-ocean. Also, you may remain unhappy and be unfulfilled by the new challenge, trading one set of problems for another. So if you think you qualify as an “escapist,” you should identify and resolve the shortcomings or failures prompting your desire to flee.
For all these problems, though, there is a trade-off. The community of cruising people is endlessly fascinating. You will make new friends rapidly because you never know when you will see one another again. Knowing this, you quickly bypass the customary rituals of society ashore. This community contains people from all nations and walks of life: the retired military, wanderers, doctors, lawyers, architects, teachers, laborers, and business entrepreneurs. You have time to talk, to meet new friends, and to share a wealth of knowledge. And all these people, from all countries and professions, have one thing in common; they have given up the security of life ashore to go exploring, to live the dream, and to depend on themselves alone to get from destination to destination, solving their problems as they go.
And problems of navigation and seamanship you will have! Relying solely on your skills and judgment to navigate involves risks unshared and little understood by those who have the security of terra firma, the risk of injury or death at sea or serious damage or loss of the boat. You seldom worry about your neighbor’s house dragging anchor in the middle of the night in a 180° wind shift. But whatever malfunctions on board your boat requires that you fix or jury rig; you can’t pull into the nearest gas station for an engine repair. And fix it you will as you innovate by necessity—most often a challenge (wherein success entitles you to a tot of rum) and on rare occasions essential to save the boat or your life (in which case success entitles you to one half bottle).
Cruising safely requires not only good seamanlike skills and prudence but also luck since you have no control over the weather, something which most folks ashore don’t consider significant but is tremendously important to the cruiser. No matter how careful you are, you are sure to be caught in bad weather; shoals and lee shores are a never-to-be ignored hazard. Sea room is always the watchword. It is difficult to draw a clear distinction between prudence and fear, but there isn’t a cruising sailor who isn’t damned prudent.
We are unashamed to admit to a strong pucker factor with a rapidly falling barometer and a force eight or nine predicted and no place to run for shelter. Navigating safely means coping with anxiety and always being conservative. You must continuously maintain a healthy skepticism about your position. One old salt I know, my husband, claims that boats are only lost on the rocks in navigational foul-ups by people who know exactly where they are! Those who are not sure tend to be very, very careful.
You also lose many of the modem conveniences of life on land when you move on board a boat. For example, we have no refrigeration and seldom can or do buy ice; we have learned to live without them. The luxury of refrigeration requires electricity and maintenance. With a limited battery supply, we would have to run the engine for charging (esthetically unpleasant) or rig for additional generation capacity like a wind generator or solar panels. Even without refrigeration, we must still conserve electricity; otherwise, we could find ourselves in an emergency unable to start the engine because we have dead batteries.
Water is a problem, too. Again, you have a limited supply which must be guarded and maintained, especially in dry areas of the world like the Aegean or Caribbean seas. A water-catching system, like an awning, is essential to self-sufficiency. Having a limited on board water supply which must be used sparingly, we notice, is the most difficult thing for our shipboard guests to accept. The “shower generation” has great difficulty existing on board a small sailing vessel.
Marine heads can be a nasty problem. They all seem to have their own distinctive personality, one aspect of which is that they are biased in favor of their owners. The primary rule of marine toilets is that no one puts anything into them they have not eaten! Enough said about this foul subject.
Simply put, a boat is not a house. If you equate it to a scaled-down house, you will eventually find it cramped, inconvenient, and troublesome to tolerate.
Although the commercial yachting industry has developed appliances and electronic gadgets—electronic logs, wind speed and direction indicators, satellite navigation systems, marine heads, and hot water—to make the cruising life easier, we enjoy these labor-saving conveniences but are always ready to do without them. It is not a question of if they will fail, but when. You must always be mentally and physically prepared to do without them all.
You should also properly equip your boat to deal with equipment or engine malfunction or failure. To be self-sufficient and remain that way, you need a large spare parts locker and instruction books for your equipment. If you can’t fix it maybe the next cruiser you meet can.
Practical Matters Like Mail, Business Affairs, Finances, and Guests:
Mail is always a problem. You must have a permanent mailing address in the United States to which all correspondence, bills, and bank statements are sent and a way to have it forwarded in your absence. It is best to pay a reasonable fee for this service rather than to have it done by someone as a favor. In no time at all, the favor becomes a tiresome burden. Efficient and inexpensive commercial mail forwarders do exist, and we have found their services excellent.
When you are cruising in foreign waters, you need to give your stateside mail forwarder specific instructions as to when and where to send your mail. Allow two weeks for your letter to
On fabled Galapagos, naturalist Charles Darwin towers over a species common in his day, less in ours, the self-sufficient sea captain seen here with her husband.
reach him, and then allow two weeks for the mail packet to reach you. You can save time by making a telephone call advising your forwarder of your next mail drop, but you will suffer accordingly in hot, stuffy telephone offices waiting hours for your call to go through.
Caution your forwarder that not all mail is transported by air. “First Class” is a misnomer. Terminology regarding mail instructions is critical, even in the United States. For example, if your forwarder puts the words “Printed Matter” on your mail packet, and that packet weighs less than 16 ounces, then “First Class” for printed matter is equivalent to “Third Class” and will take several weeks to reach you. Whereas if the packet has the words “Mail” or “First Class Material,” the package will be sent “Priority” and reach you within days or a week. The class of mail is determined by its contents, destination, and weight. Since airmail overseas is expensive, your forwarder should weed out junk mail, catalogs, and unnecessary periodicals. It also helps to number the packages, so you know when something is lost.
Selecting a port of call to which mail is to be sent—care of Post Restante (the international equivalent of General Delivery), American Express, or other reliable address—is a trauma. Having chosen a port, you give up flexibility and freedom, the essence of the cruising life. You have to go there no matter what you would rather do or more importantly what the wind and weather say you should do. Since timing is important, you should remember that
Post Restante typically holds mail for two weeks and an American Express office does so for one month, unless notified otherwise. Consequently, never send mail to a destination unless you know you will go there; otherwise, this could complicate your business affairs unless you have planned ahead.
All business affairs should be simplified to the utmost. Arrange to have mortgage and real estate taxes paid automatically by your bank. If you rent your house, have your tenant pay the rent directly to your bank. Use a real estate agent to handle tenant or rental property problems; this is too great a burden to place on a friend. The cost of having an agent keep an eye on your home and tenant is well worth it-
If you charge anything on a credit card, immediately send a check to the credit card company calculated on the current exchange rate plus a bit extra to allow a margin of error. This is necessary because of the delayed mail pick up situation. If you wait for a billing 1° reach you by mail, your payment will be delinquent before you even get the bill.
Obtaining funds can be a problem without a major credit card such as American Express or Visa. Unless your bank is a worldwide financial institution located in a financial center, wiring funds always seems to take four weeks. It is difficult to understand why this is the case, especially in this age of technology and instant communication. The logical assumption is that the banks make money by holding your funds for one month.
Using your credit card to obtain money makes life easy. You can write personal checks in almost any major city in the world on your stateside checking account. Overseas, you can use a major credit card to buy up to $1,000 in travelers checks every 21 days. You should also stockpile a few extra travelers checks to cover those times and those places where there are no major credit card offices. This way you can still cash the travelers checks for local currency at any bank. If the town is too small to have a bank, try a local hotel.
Having guests on board can be a joy. It can also be a major problem.
Your guests will want to know months in advance where to meet you; they may even ask for a detailed schedule. You should not commit yourself to meet at a fixed point. Tell them to meet you at a transportation hub in the proximity of where you expect to be. Thus, your guests can take advantage
of air fare discounts by booking reservations in advance. As the day for rendezvous draws closer, shift to phone communications and refine the arrangements. The final steps will be by local phone or ferry or bus or train from the major city you have selected to the port where you are. Observe the basic guest principle: always have your guests come to where the boat happens to be; never commit yourself to take the boat to a predetermined meeting point.
Otherwise, you will find yourself sweating blood to get to the predesignated meeting place on time while contending with wind, weather, or engine problems.
Some guests may also have problems adjusting to living within the cramped quarters of a small cruising sailboat. Your boat is your home, and you live on board all year. It is crammed with your gear and supplies. Your guests may find that they have little room for themselves or their belongings. They may find the head difficult and onerous, the restrictions on water use a personal discomfort imposed by a couple of bad-tempered Captain Blighs, the limitations on the use of electric lights intolerable, and the requirements to remove shoes an imposition. To top it off, where they dreamily envisioned themselves sailing peacefully into the sunset with cocktails being served by a white-coated steward, they find themselves instead miserable and seasick with the boat pounding into heavy seas.
A cruise can mean the end of a beautiful friendship. Consequently, choose guests who are considerate people interested in participating in the adventure and willing to learn, take responsibility, and be good shipmates.
Other Common Questions: “Isn’t it boring?” “What do you do at night on a long passage, anchor?” “Do you sleep at night?” On long passages we always keep watch in or out of shipping lanes. Our watch system is three hours on, three off. Within a few days of the start of a voyage we get into the rhythm and are able to sleep on this schedule. During our Atlantic crossing, for example, we kept this watch system during the hours of darkness. During the day, we alternated watches depending on how each of us felt and who wanted to catch up on sleep. With this system, we usually have one meal together daily; otherwise, each of us eats when as and what we like. Once out of the shipping lanes, we continue the watches, and the watchkeeper has the option of reading (coming topside every ten or 15 minutes for a check), star gazing, trimming the boat to perfection, or dancing the hours away while plugged into the Sony Walkman.
Boring, it is not. The sea never looks the same from day to day, and there are porpoises, whales, and birdlife to entertain us. Fishing for supper is always a challenge, motivated by not wanting to open another can of beef stew! There is also work preparing meals, changing sails, navigating, and keeping the vessel tidy. We find long passages are one of the few times we have to enjoy the luxury of reading. As for anchoring at night, it is not practical. First, the water is too deep. Second, sea anchors or dousing sail to stop the vessel’s progress are silly; that is time wasted when we could be logging miles (not to mention the strain a longer passage puts on water and food supplies).
“Don’t you go crazy being with the same person 24 hours a day and in such a confined space?” The answer to that is easy, yes. Long passages, however, give each person privacy since there are few hours when we are both awake. We consider this a benefit.
Short trips, day sailing, and just plain living on board require an adjustment.
The man-woman relationship makes this even more complex. Living together within the confines of a small boat 24 hours a day, every day can be a disaster. Generally, you will either develop a closer and more supportive relationship, file for divorce, or move ashore to avoid divorce. There obviously is no simple prescription which will work for all couples.
In our experience, the most successful cruising couples are those who have developed the relationship of full and equal partners. While some division of labor based on experience, strength, and predilections is desirable, what must be avoided is the situation where the man is the captain, boss, maker of all important decisions, the knowledgeable sailor, and technical master, while the woman is the cook, the maid, and follower of orders. Aside from being demeaning for the woman, it is simply no fun, unless by nature she is a most submissive and passive woman. These traits, though, are difficult to reconcile with those of self-reliance and initiative needed to be a good shipmate.
So the woman should participate in all phases of boat handling and sailing, which after all is the fun part. Ideally, assuming she starts out as the partner with the lesser experience (as I was), she should become as competent in all aspects of sailing as he is. Each of us is qualified to sail and navigate. We have achieved this equality by alternating as captain on a weekly basis. All important non-emergency decisions are made by mutual agreement. However, when sailing, someone must be in charge. Often there is no time for full discussion and agreement as to whether it is time to reef or change from the Genoa to the Number One Jib. The captain of the week makes the decision and takes full responsibility. Adopting this system, the less experienced partner gets more hands-on practice and becomes a better sailor.
When we first started sailing together five years ago, I thought it was pure joy to go out in a force eight for the yo-ho-ho of it. My husband, on the other hand, would reef if the wind increased two knots rather than wait a few minutes to determine if it were just a puff or a trend. Where initially when we started alternating as captain our views differed radically, now we generally agree on a course of action, each of us having learned something from the other.
An equal partnership has another side, that of sharing the housekeeping, cleaning, and cooking chores. In practice, of course, differences in emphasis will develop. For example, my spouse has become a skilled diesel mechanic while I do most of the work to maintain the teak. We alternate as cook, in principle, and the one that doesn’t cook does the dishwashing. In practice, he cooks more under way, while I prefer my cooking to his terrorization of the galley while in port or when guests come on board. He takes more star sights while I prefer programming the satellite navigation system. What is most important in this partnership, if it is to work, is that the division of labor be based on personal preferences, not on assumed or predetermined roles based on sex.
The Benefits: Why do it? Why choose the cruising life? Well, there are the magical moments when the reality does become the dream: when the winds are fair, the anchorages look like the travel folders, and the sunsets at cocktail time are unbelievably gorgeous. But the real answer is freedom. The benefits of this marvelous and almost complete freedom to travel where we wish, stay as long as we like, learn new languages, make new friends, and the joy and challenge of getting there far outweigh the costs. Regardless of the minor inconveniences, the cruising life continues to be our dream.