I'm pleased that you took the "newbie's" feelings and understanding into consideration here. I too often (as do other TF Members/Contributors) get too self-centered and neglect to appreciate newbie feelings/concerns/needs....... I would like to assure newbies that owning a boat is not rocket science; although there is lots to be aware of.
This is all very true.
My wife and I, but particularly me, are really glad we got into boating (and flying and most of the other things we do) long before Al Gore invented the internet.
I heard a radio interview the other month with a well-known (but not to me) author who bcame curious about the differences between people who had grown up and lived at least part of their adult lives without the internet and people who had never known a world that didn't have the internet. He chose 1985 as the dividing year. He spent well over a year researching the topic, interviewing all sorts of people and so on. And then he wrote his book.
In a nutshell, his conclusions were this:
People who grew up without the internet and who have lived at least part of their working, adult lives without it are considerably more independent, are much more able to make decisions on their own, know how to look up or otherwise find information on their own, are inclined to make the effort to learn the truth about a subject themselves, are better able to tell truth from fiction, and are more resourceful.
People who grew up with the internet as part of their lives from day one are far less independent, are much more reliant on a group to make decisions than on themselves as individuals, tend to take what they read or hear in the media as gospel as opposed to making the effort to learn the truth on their own, and are easily swayed in their actions or beliefs by whatever they perceive to be the accepted way of thinking in the media they rely on.
And when confronted with a problem that they don't understand--- a power outage, a car that won't start, a toilet that won't shut off, etc.---- they tend to panic because they lack the mindset that's required to apply logic, common sense, and at least a basic understanding of mechanics or physics or whatever to try to fix the problem.
In summary, the pre-internet folks are independent, the post-internet folks are dependent.
This applies to cruising because most of us on this forum got into boating long before the internet. Which means that we learned from people more experienced than we were, but most important, we learned by doing and applying common sense and logic to the situations we encountered. We crossed each bridge when we came to it, and we had to rely on our own knowledge, common sense, and resources to decide how best to cross the bridge.
One of the challenges with getting into cruising today is there is too much information being dumped on everyone. You get on a forum like this and read an anchor discussion, for example, and the conclusion one can get is that it's easier to go to the moon and back than to figure out what kind of anchor to get.
Us pre-internet folks bought a cruiser, it either came with an anchor or we bought one, maybe we read a book about anchoring, but we simply started anchoring. It either worked or caused problems, and we either figured out or were told by more experienced folks how to do a better job of anchoring, or we tried a different anchor, or both.
The internet crowd looks at all the stuff that's talked about on a forum and thinks they have to learn it all before they can buy a boat. They ask for advice on what kind of a boat to buy, a question us pre-internet folks know is an impossible question to answer with any accuracy because of all the variables that apply. It's a decision that has to be made by the individual, not by a group.
A forum like this can be a great source of information. But I think it's really important to be able to see the forest for the trees.
The best way in my opinion to get into cruising is to first do the research necessary to make the decision of what boat to buy. Which in my book does not mean asking a bunch of people you don't know to answer the question for you, but to talk to experienced boaters in your area, friends who are experienced cruisers, read stuff about cruising, and perhaps look at boat evaluation sites like David Pascoe's. Chartering a boat is a fabulous way to learn all sorts of things firsthand about cruising.
Then, using your own common sense, logic, and "gut feel" to tell you what boat will work best for you, buy a boat that meets your requirements and start using it.
Taken the way us pre-internet folks took it--- crossing one bridge at a time, constantly learning along the way, learning by doing rather than discussing--- cruising is, as Al said, not rocket science.
You can easliy turn it
into rocket science by getting bogged down in all the information (correct or misleading) and discussions on the internet. But I think that's the wrong way to do it.
In my observation and opinion, the best boaters are the independent, self-taught folks who instinctively rely on themselves to deal with the challenges that come up. People like Eric (manyboats), Carl (Delfin), Al (FlyWright), psneeld, Art, Sunchaser, Rick Boggs, OldFishboat, Tad, Ted, Northern Spy, RT, Ron, and the list goes on.
The worst boaters, I think, are the dependent folks who are constantly looking for "input" and consensus when figuring out what to do.
How does this relate to minimalist cruising? Well, it doesn't other than to say that if you come across a fellow with a truly minimalist cruiser, it's most likely going to be a pre-internet boater.
Sorry for the ramble but I'm waiting for a computer to stop drawing a line across the screen and anyway, Art started it......
- Art
![10143[1].jpg](/data/attachments/32/32751-3035431face01e2f1d2e3443bcf8ecea.jpg)
