As sad as I am to admit, that was the last time I had gone sailing. It is December in 2008 now and it has been months since I have been on a boat. Like I had mentioned before, sailing is expensive so finding the funds to rent a boat for a day is difficult. I can to it when I have enough people willing to pitch in, but even then it's about $50 a person. Plus it is difficult to get people together for a weekend to travel to St. Augustine from Orlando.

But that hasn't stopped me from learning. I have spent the past year reading and studying everything I can about sailing. Learning how to do it wasn't all that difficult, but it left me with many more questions along the lines of cost of cruising, how I can pay for it, what kind of boat do I need, what sailing opportunities are out there, etc. etc. Along with learning the specifics, reading these books revealed what long term cruising really is and it allowed me to soul search to decide if this is something I really want to do.

I think for the next leg of posts I will go through each book and give my review of them and what I learned. I would like this blog to be a springboard for others to learn how to sail and join the cruising life. I did not know where to begin when I decided I wanted to learn all of this. If I accomplish all of my goals, this will be a map on how to get there. So reviewing these books will give some people a good place to start in my opinion.

For those who are interested, a surfer named Gregg Drude did the exact thing I want to do and went on a 2-3 year circumnavigation in search of surf. He spent most of his time in the Pacific, and I believe he is still out there. Surfer magazine covered much of his journey and has a lot of the photos and entries on their website. The big difference between what he did and what I plan on doing is funds. The beginning of his story describes how he came into his money, but regardless, he has a better boat than I could hope for, and many more connections in the surf industry to keep his boat going with sponsorhips and of course, the Surfer magazine writing job. Regardless, check it out:



http://www.surfermag.com/photos/travel/drudevandiemandisptch1n2/

http://surfermag.com/features/onlineexclusives/drude/drudedispatch/