offshore cruising seminar

We attended the Offshore Cruising Seminar from John and Amanda Neal this weekend. Learned alot and threw buckets of gas on the fire. Like we needed any more motivation. Just a few snippets of what we learned:

• Emergen-C packets work for seasickness


• Pelican cases make great ditch bags


• write up a sail reduction plan, at what windspeed do reefs get put in and working sails swapped out for storm sails, etc


• charts, be they electronic or paper, are consistently inaccurate! navigate with your eyes

We also ponied up $350 as a consultation fee for them to help with our boat selection. He's already got us looking at a few boats which we hadn't considered including:

• Waquiez Pretorian - not sure how offshore capable they are


• Pearson 424 - 42 feet is ha-yuge!


• Pacific Seacraft 37 - he said these are slow boats though


• Espirit 37 - by Bob Perry, supposedly a fast boat

Best moment of the whole seminar. John asks everyone who's leaving within a year to stand up. We do. In turn he asks everyone who stands up where they are going and what kind of boat they have.

me: "We're going to Mexico for starters and then we'll decide if we turn right or left."

John: "What kind of boat do you have?"

me: "We don't have a boat."

everyone in the room: [gales of laughter]

John: "Wow. You guys deserve a hat."

So we are now the proud owners of a 48 Degrees North hat courtesy of John and Amanda Swan in honor of having The Most Ridiculous Plan In The Room.