“Tack,Tack,Tack.”

A friend, reader, and donor commented:  “I just don’t know how you provision for so many days, on a 20 foot boat. I’ve never gone more then 7-10 days, that was a catamaran 45′, in the BVI where we moor every night, and island hop.” 

It sounds to me they have a pretty good start. I didn’t buy a boat yesterday. I started out small and short in my sailing trips and slowly and systematically increased the times and distances and challenges, gaining experiential learning and confidence. Even with Sampaguita, I spent the first two years staying at docks before I gained enough confidence to anchor. The third year I got my feet wet and the fourth year I improved my tackle and never looked back. Everyone has a different approach and pace to planning and doing. Some people jump right in on something and just do it. While I envy them at times, I know I have to do it my way. While an ugly aspect of life is that we are pressed into competing, there are different ways to winning and losing. (And ironically, winning sometimes turns out to losing and vice versa.) Don’t worry about how others are doing it. Figure out what’s best for you. That’s part of the fun.

Planning is simply academic. I know I’ll sound antiquated here, but lots of great books have been written about preparing your boat for cruising. They are still likely available from your public library for free. While of days gone past, they are still very relevant, because they provide the basic fundamental knowledge you need about preparing your boat and survival at sea. The good books provide systematic, focused, proven, and vetted information. Start there and then supplement that with internet research. Be aware, the internet is a trap that can deceive you, lead you astray, blind you with the bright and shiny, rob you of your focus, and worst of all, it’s mostly about selling you something. A good book doesn’t try to sell you anything and stays on target. Get the fundamentals first and use the internet to build on them.

Guidebooks are available for most of the cruising grounds of the world, and are written to not only help you succeed, but in holiday fashion. In the Pacific Northwest, I particularly liked the Dreamspeaker guidebooks. The information in them came from a credible source and I used them to circumnavigate Vancouver in 2018. They never steered me wrong and gave me confidence about destinations and anchorages. In fact, I had no depth sounder at the time, but the anchoring information allowed me to confidently know where to anchor without it. A good guidebook will hold your hand through the journey.

That said, my 2023 circumnavigation of Vancouver Island for my shakedown cruise, I did not use a guidebook at all. I already had a bunch of local knowledge. I did use Navionics which offers some crowd sourced anchorage info that needs to be taken with a grain of salt. I specifically did not want the hand holding this time. Ditto for coming down the west coast of America. And while there are a couple go-to guidebooks for Mexico, I did not have them either. I do however, have a couple guidebooks for French Polynesia. We live in a time with so much information about everything at the click of a mouse, it takes some of the thrill, exploration, and discovery out of a journey. But that’s just me. Most people prefer to have everything at their fingertips and make the experience as safe, comfortable and as close to the land experience as possible. Starlink has really allowed this. If Captain Cook was able to have Starlink, he would have. Of course, then, his voyages would also have been unnecessary. Do what’s right for you.

Provisioning is also not that hard. If you shop for a family of four, six, or eight at home on land, then you can figure out how to provision a boat. You have to know how much food you need and can carry. You need to consider your refrigeration capabilities, if any. I have learned a lot of things that they say need refrigeration, don’t. You need to keep it simple. While at sea, you won’t be making any fancy meals unless at anchor. And then you have limited space. And too many dishes to do makes no one happy. Stick to the basics, but also have some fun stuff that you can properly ration for morale boosting and special occasions. This too comes with practice and trial and error. Start with shorter cruises and build up from there.

When you go to a foreign country, be aware that they will eat different foods and you may need to improvise with what’s available. They won’t have the same stores or cultural tastes. They may not have the economy of scale that people in the States are accustomed too. Maybe you can walk, maybe you’ll need to pay for transportation. This is all achievable stuff.

Some people like to spreadsheet out their provisioning so they know what they have and what they’ll need to buy. Personally, I don’t bother with that. It’s just me. That’s a bunch of tedious book work that isn’t necessary and I don’t have time for. But if it helps someone keep organized, go for it.

A watermaker is very common. I used to think it was driven by a fear of running out of water. It isn’t. It’s convenience. The chore of resupplying water after a long passage to an underdeveloped country can take a huge amount of labor and time. A watermaker might get you thirty gallons of fresh water for 105 amps. You will need to produce and restore that energy regularly which, along with the watermaker, adds complication, expense, and maintenance to the experience. But this is all addressed in the books you have read about the fundamentals. Ironically, if you depend on a watermaker, there may be a higher chance of running out of water if it fails. Just in time provisioning (or planning) has its dangers. Remember the pandemic?

So, sure, if you don’t practice cruising, like many things, fear of the unknown can be intimidating. Fear of the unknown is normal, and often unwarranted, that provides a challenge to overcome. So often the things I am intimidated by, once I learn them, I have to laugh at how foolish I was to worry about them. Allowing fear to paralyze you is sad. So many people don’t try the things they could because they are paralyzed by fear. They are so concerned they have to have every little detail worked out that they never get to the thing. That’s also part of how they manage not having to face their fear. You’ll never figure it all out until you start doing it anyway. So get at it.

Check out the nautical books page. This is by no means comprehensive but it can get you started.

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