The Philosophy of Long Distance Cruising

There is a lot of difference between the weekend and summer holiday cruising and going long term cruising. The latter has all sorts of terms to describe it. Blue water, long distance, live aboard, cruising, ocean cruising and many others. It is of course obviously different from spending a weekend on your boat or even a three week summer holiday. You will travel much further for one thing. However, the biggest distinction for the long term sailor is that the boat becomes your main home for a period of time. This leads to a very different outlook and way of thinking. At it's core is a sense of self sufficiency and the expectation that you will be thrown on your own resources.

A weekend sailor is on holiday when they go down to the boat and it is treated as such – time away from the office, family, garden or what have you. The blue water cruiser on the other hand is at home and the running of the boat and sailing places is the main show. It is of course a very enjoyable show and one that has been chosen and for which an awful lot of energy and planning has been expended to achieve.

The biggest issue with setting out on a long cruise is the number of ties you need or want to cut. At the furthest extreme, there are those who sell their house and plan to live on the boat for the duration perhaps spending multiple years in each ocean as part of a very leisurely circumnavigation. One couple spent twenty five years this way – albeit with a long break in the far east where they topped up their cruising funds. At the most modest end, are the ones who spend just a couple of months or so travelling a bit further than they would otherwise manage in the usual summer holiday. We did this with our cruise to Gibraltar in 2011. Now, we are planning a middle route with a probable Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean (not a fixed plan though!). People in these situations do not generally burn all their bridges at home. We will be renting the house after all.

The self sufficiency comes in as you will always be on a budget of some sort so cannot necessarily afford to get a professional to fix things. Even if you do have nearly unlimited funds, it may well be that you are in a place where the expertise to fix complicated and specialised equipment is not available. Thus, you always equip your boat with a view to being able to fix it yourself in a pinch. Or, you may have to accept that you will have to do without the latest whiz bang toys. For example, we do now have a chart plotter and will probably wind up using it more and more. However, we are going through a big exercise to acquire plenty of charts so we can still find our way around in the absence of the shiny touch screen box on the chart table. After all microelectronics and sea water do not make easy bedfellows. I am, once again, determined to teach myself celestial navigation so as to have even more independence from electronics.

Seeing cruising in this way makes it appear a much more serious affair and there seems no room for fun. However, the fundamental philosophy should still be: “If we aren't enjoying it, we shouldn't be doing it”. That means a willingness to curtail plans and amend them to fit new circumstances. It should still be fun and if it isn't there should be a very good reason for enduring the unenjoyable bit in anticipation of a big reward later on. The marina at Lagos might be a bit pricey and the area around it full of expats looking for a fry up breakfast but the pay off will be a chance to get fitted out and then reach the Cape Verde Islands in time for Christmas in the tropics and rum punch in Trinidad with a trouble free Atlantic crossing owing to a bit of essential maintenance being done in Lagos.