A Journey of a Thousand Miles Begins Now!

Accord­ing to Lao Tzu, “A jour­ney of a thou­sand miles begins with one step.” 

Well, we have been in a hold­ing pat­tern wait­ing for that first step- get­ting our sail­boat on the hard. For over a month, the promise of next Tues­day has kept us hold­ing our breath in antic­i­pa­tion of “our turn.”

Final­ly, that day has come!

Making Progress

We can now start check­ing off the list of items required to get her back in the water- stuff­ing box, engine, paint. After week­end trips to check on, and drain the bildge, we can now rest assured that our boat is not going to sink. When we pur­chased our Allied 36, we had yet to real­ly exam­ine the bot­tom paint, and it turns out there is much less work than we expect­ed. Obvi­ous­ly, it could have gone the oth­er way.

At the time, our pur­chase was such a great deal that we sur­veyed her using a do-it-your­self sur­vey we found online and decid­ed to gam­ble on our abil­i­ty to repair/maintenance the items that need­ed addressing.

In the mean­time, we have been scour­ing Face­book groups,forums, blogs, books, and mag­a­zines to famil­iar­ize our­selves with the process­es nec­es­sary to com­plete these tasks. This blog, in part, is for us, as a way to gath­er, in one place, the best prac­tices, from the best resources. We are cre­at­ing the resource we wished we had, as we start­ed this process.

Trial and Error

We have begun this jour­ney know­ing there will be a lot of mis­teps. At the same time, we are try­ing to nav­i­gate this new lifestyle by avoid­ing some of the pit­fulls oth­ers before us have discovered.

• To that end, I am look­ing for­ward to the arrival of the first book I have pur­chased on Ama­zon, Sail­ing for Dum­mies by J. J. and Peter Isler.

Accord­ing to the descrip­tion on Ama­zon, it seems like just the book we need:

Inter­est­ed in learn­ing to sail but feel like you’re nav­i­gat­ing in murky waters? Sail­ing for Dum­mies, Sec­ond Edi­tion intro­duces the basics of sail­ing, looks at the dif­fer­ent types of sail­boats and their basic parts, and teach­es you every­thing you need to know before you leave the dock.

In Sail­ing for Dum­mies, Sec­ond Edi­tion, two U.S. sail­ing cham­pi­ons show you how to:

• Find and choose a sail­ing school

• Use life jack­ets correctly

• Tie ten nau­ti­cal knots

• Han­dle sail­ing emer­gen­cies (such as cap­siz­ing and res­cu­ing a man overboard)

• Launch your boat from a trail­er, ramp, or beach

• Get your boat from point A to point B (and back again)

• Pre­dict and respond to water and wind conditions

• Read charts, plot your course, use a com­pass, and find your posi­tion at sea

What’s In a Name?

I can’t wait to read this book to find out if the title is as accu­rate as I hope it will be. As a first time boat own­er and a true begin­ner sailor, I have no prob­lem admit­ting my new­bie sta­tus. Like­wise, I tru­ly believe begin­ning with the first step will take us far.

Hope­ful­ly, you will fol­low our jour­ney, at the very least, to lim­it the amount time spent try­ing to find the per­fect resource for repairs, orga­ni­za­tion, bud­get­ing, home­school­ing, etc.