This is a collection of insights into the world of cruising, as seen by the founder and publisher of Cruising Outpost, Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine and the television show of the same name. See what makes people love the cruising lifestyle.
Sample Chapter (partial):
Okay, so it was a pretty near-perfect crossing. We’d
left Fatu Hiva and the Marquesas behind us, and for the last four days we had been sailing in paradise. There were 18-20 knots of wind coming from over our shoulder, the main, mizzen, staysail and headsail were out, and we were making a good 8 knots in calm seas. It couldn’t get much better.
Just after dawn on the fifth day we spotted Manihi in the Tuamotus. Andy won the beer for sighting land first, but I think he cheated, because he climbed the mast to do it.
That’s kinda taking unfair advantage of an aging and size-impaired captain, whose last trip up the mast was about 20 years and 50 pounds ago.
But beer-be-damned, it didn’t matter. I had been dreaming of visiting the Tuamotus since I started sailing. If there is one place that sets a sailors mind in first gear, it has to be seeing pictures of those one thousand coral reef atolls just laying in the crystal blue waters of the South Pacific.
In the 4,000 miles we’d sailed to this point in our South Pacific Expedition, we had learned a lot. I learned that, even though you may have been sailing for years, it just isn’t like what you’d been preparing for.
