Keith:
I'm out here in the South Pacific on my Hunter 376. Left Texas 4 years ago to cruise single handed. Been all over the Bahamas, Northern, eastern, southern and western Caribbean and now doing the South Pacific. You want a real education on boats and cruising, come down and hang with me in the French Polynesia for a couple of weeks. You'll learn that a lot of stuff you read online is, well, entertaining reading.
I do agree with Centerline mostly on here. Good advice from him but let me make a few points: to make a typical coastal cruiser ready for cruising you want to do, will take substantial investment into the boat. If the boat is more than 15 years old figure on replacing everything before you go and adding another 10k of stuff and that is with you doing all the work. So much easier and cheaper to do it back home than out here. If you are single handling, I suggest 1 brand new auto-pilot installed and 1 brand new auto-pilot of same model stored away. That is cheaper than an autopilot and windvang setup most bluewater boats have and easier to deal with and much better for single handlers where the boat is sailing on it's own for several hours.
I also recommend you not even think about going cruising until you've mastered not only sailing, but weather patterns, weather forecasting, route planning, typical routes, typical world currents, and lots of topics most don't even think about when they talk about getting ready for cruising. Learning how to sail is only 5% of what you need to know and there are other subjects such as listed above that are just as important if not more important than knowing how to sail.
Case in point: a long time sailor but newbie cruiser just ran his expensive yacht into an atoll down here. As he says, he was monitoring his chart plotter and radar when it happened. What he didn't know is his chart plotter didn't have any detail to it for this area and he was running off of base charts. About the most stupidest thing one can do for this area.
The best advice I can give you is fine cruisers to crew for (such as my offer). That is the best way to learn what you want and what you need to study up on. You will also learn if this is something you really want to do. Most give up cruising before 2 years and never make it beyond the Bahamas or Caribbean or Mexico on the west coast. Cruising is hard and many times you will be asking yourself, especially if alone, why am I doing this?
As for the boats I see out here, all kinds and shapes and sizes and levels of quality and upkeep. Fact is, you can go around the world in just about anything if you know what you are doing. Tons of blue water boats are left at sea because the captain/crew didn't know what they were doing...or in some cases, got too complacent and made bad decisions. About 100 coastal cruisers cross the South Pacific every year and maybe half of that keep going around.
I'm out here in the South Pacific on my Hunter 376. Left Texas 4 years ago to cruise single handed. Been all over the Bahamas, Northern, eastern, southern and western Caribbean and now doing the South Pacific. You want a real education on boats and cruising, come down and hang with me in the French Polynesia for a couple of weeks. You'll learn that a lot of stuff you read online is, well, entertaining reading.
I do agree with Centerline mostly on here. Good advice from him but let me make a few points: to make a typical coastal cruiser ready for cruising you want to do, will take substantial investment into the boat. If the boat is more than 15 years old figure on replacing everything before you go and adding another 10k of stuff and that is with you doing all the work. So much easier and cheaper to do it back home than out here. If you are single handling, I suggest 1 brand new auto-pilot installed and 1 brand new auto-pilot of same model stored away. That is cheaper than an autopilot and windvang setup most bluewater boats have and easier to deal with and much better for single handlers where the boat is sailing on it's own for several hours.
I also recommend you not even think about going cruising until you've mastered not only sailing, but weather patterns, weather forecasting, route planning, typical routes, typical world currents, and lots of topics most don't even think about when they talk about getting ready for cruising. Learning how to sail is only 5% of what you need to know and there are other subjects such as listed above that are just as important if not more important than knowing how to sail.
Case in point: a long time sailor but newbie cruiser just ran his expensive yacht into an atoll down here. As he says, he was monitoring his chart plotter and radar when it happened. What he didn't know is his chart plotter didn't have any detail to it for this area and he was running off of base charts. About the most stupidest thing one can do for this area.
The best advice I can give you is fine cruisers to crew for (such as my offer). That is the best way to learn what you want and what you need to study up on. You will also learn if this is something you really want to do. Most give up cruising before 2 years and never make it beyond the Bahamas or Caribbean or Mexico on the west coast. Cruising is hard and many times you will be asking yourself, especially if alone, why am I doing this?
As for the boats I see out here, all kinds and shapes and sizes and levels of quality and upkeep. Fact is, you can go around the world in just about anything if you know what you are doing. Tons of blue water boats are left at sea because the captain/crew didn't know what they were doing...or in some cases, got too complacent and made bad decisions. About 100 coastal cruisers cross the South Pacific every year and maybe half of that keep going around.
