Preparation - Pacific Crossing Notes: A Sailor's Guide to the Coconut Milk Run - page 6

From Weekend Warrior to Ocean
Voyager: Stepping Up to Blue Water
Sailing
Day sailors with big dreams might leaf through the pages of sailing magazines and wonder
how to work their way up to an ocean crossing. It's a question we often asked ourselves
and one we field now that we've achieved a dream many years in the making. There's no
single right way, but we can tell you about our route to the open sea - one that eventually
led us across the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans aboard a 1981 Dufour 35 together with our
young son. Those four years of cruising gave us magical travel experiences and family time
we wouldn't trade for anything - a prize we earned by taking it one step at a time.
We started in our twenties, when we re-launched a long-neglected seventeen footer and ex-
plored southern Maine's Casco Bay. As our dreams and paychecks grew, we stepped up to
charter vacations and gradually got serious about the idea of sailing away from it all. The
next logical step was to enroll in a correspondence course to fill in our spotty knowledge of
navigation and seamanship. But after that… well, there's nothing logical about selling up
and sailing away, not the way our culture sees things. That may be why so many dreamers
stall out before upping the ante to blue water sailing. Because just how does one progress
from local sailing and textbook exercises to the wild blue yonder?
Looking back, we find three experiences that stand out in terms of making blue water sail-
ors out of the weekend warriors we once were. The first is obvious enough: gaining open
water experience, either by sailing with experienced friends or through a sailing course.
The second point is one that's often overlooked by people determined to fast-track their
way to the wild blue yonder - that is, getting thoroughly familiar with the boat you intend
to cruise. Overlapping with that is the third major point: developing a mindset of resource-
fulness. In many areas of the world, you'll be totally on your own in terms of repairs, and
every boat will quickly develop issues out on the open sea.