HELLO MY FRIENDS- I've missed you! WOW! 2012!! This ole' boy, here, has been trying to go cruising since 1983.....you would have thought that the gauntlet would have been thrown in by now.....my mother, bless her sweet now in heaven heart, was stubborn and hard headed.....and you know what they say...right?....."the fruit never falls far from the tree."........this is the year though.....it has to be....I'm running out of time. In two weeks I will be 65 years old...an OFFICIAL GEEZER.....got my Medicare Card the other day......Thankfully, I'm still strong and in relatively good health. Thank the powers to be for Corona, Diovan, Metoprolol, and Cialis! But, actually there is no reason why I could not cruise for many years; except, according to this months sailing pundit in the number one consumer sailing mag in the U.S. , my boat is all wrong....first of all its too small.....Zosha is a Westsail 28. This GURU OF THE SEAS.....he's got to be 'cause his blabber is the feature article in the #1 sailing mag for February 2012 has all but doomed me to failure. According to this expert sailor, cruiser, and delivery captain extraordinaire, I need or, if you will? we need: ....now get this either a C&C 41 or a Swan 46 or a Hylas 56 or a Beneteau Oceanis 53 or a Catalina 445 or a Jeanneau 439 or a Hunter 50 AC or a Lagoon 450 or a Fountaine Pajot 41 or a Leopard 46.....there's more....we must have electric winches for all sails....chart plotters with repeaters......100 gallon per hour water maker......hot water for the showers.....center line head.......OK OK OK......yeah this is all nice....and as I've said before in this blog.....I'd go for it inna minute. BUT being 'sparse of purse' ....this is all out of the question. I know that this guy is just another bucks up yachtie who assumes that we all are equally bucky, $, too.... My axe to grind here is the influence that this so called expert Ya Hoo has on new sailors .....newbies with limited funds but unlimited cruising dreams.....this kinda of crap is going to drive them away....discourage them before they even get started...... I was fortunate that my first sailing influences so many decades ago were Lynn and Larry Pardey and Wayne Carpenter and John Guzzwell and Robin Lee Graham. These are truly sailors extraordinaire who have completed monumental voyages in boats all around 30 feet or less LOA. The greatest of all are probably the Pardeys because they are still out there sailing the world in their 30' wooden, engine less boat.
Lets look at some facts......The Joshua Slocum Society International was created in 1955 to record, encourage, and support long distance passage making in small boats and to keep accounts of the adventures of small boat sailors. According to their website, 67 solo circumnavigators have been inducted into the Society as of March 2008. Now this is remarkable: 58.2% or 39 boats were 35' LOA or less, 34.3% of these boats were 30' LOA or less, 15% or 10 boats were 28' LOA or less, and 13.4% or 9 boats were 25' LOA or less. The smallest boat was John Guzzwell's TREKKA at 20'6" LOA ! The four largest boats on the list are 85' , 70', 60' , and 53' LOA. One last stat for you all: the average LOA of all the boats is 36.5' ! The Joshua Slocum Society is no longer. It was officially disbanded in June 2011. The website is being maintained for historical reasons. Go take a look.
For those of you that don't know, Joshua Slocum was the first person to circumnavigate the globe single handed. He completed a 3 year, 46,000 mile circumnavigation in his 36.75' LOA yawl SPRAY in 1898. He was around 54 years of age when he completed the three year voyage.
Sure those big, beautiful, comfy, expensive sailing machines are nice. But if you are as I....big on dreams short on cash, don't give up....there are wonderful, safe, comfortable, affordable small voyagers out there just waiting for you to come along and fulfill the cruising destiny of you both.
Keep the faith my friends....take care..
