QUESTION
Is there a class that you can get involved with to prepare for cruising? We currently have a 30" Catalina, want to buy bigger to cruise the
Caribbean leaving from Seattle Washington. We have so many questions. I have read the FAQ but a class would be so nice.
ANSWER:
When we bought Watermelon Peter announced that we would start cruising a year later. Oops! Now I had to get serious about this liveaboard cruising life! I bought every Caribbean cruising guide I could find (Donald Street's were, in my opinion, the best) - also see
www.cruiser.co.za/books.asp . They're quite dated now, so there are probably better ones out there, but I would encourage you to try to find them and read them anyway). I read so many books, subscribed to several sailing mags (Cruising World, Sail, two others I can't remember now).
Pah! Talking with people would have been much better, but working and living in downtown Boston, Massachusetts, we didn't meet cruising sailors, and this was before the Internet. There weren't any classes, and I don't think there are even now.
However, nowadays we have so many more resources. There are cruising bulletin boards, such as
http://www.cruiserlog.com where other sailors can talk, post their logs, talk about their problems and float questions about just about everything associated with cruising. If you've read Watermelon's logs (
http://www.cruiser.co.za/hostmelon.asp ), you'll see that I have no problem admitting our mistakes. (I really have to type up my old hand-written logs for the first two years. Talk about mistakes!)
About the closest to a class that I know of would be the various "gams" that cruisers put together. The Seven Seas Cruising Association has various cruising stations, and occasionally they have a local get-together. I believe that the Seattle cruising station is quite active. And in November each year the SSCA has an annual party in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. They get various cruisers to chair forums and seminars on various topics. You can read more about this at www.ssca.org (Peter and I are rear Commodores who hope to be reinstated as Commodores next year when we are again full-time cruising.)
West Marine sponsors trawler fests (power boats, but still cruisers) in various locations. see http://www.trawlerfest.com/
They feature some seminars on issues of concern to cruisers.
I hope this helps.
Fair winds,
Jeanne