Wally wrote:
wrote in message
...


Do you think at 54 I am to old to become somewhat proficient at sailing.
I am in good health and in fairly good shape, but I am certainly not 25
anymore.


The helm of the boat I crew on is 74, and only has one arm (well, 1.5 arms).
When we sail two-up, and fly the spinnaker, I do foredeck while he handles
everything in the cockpit - minds the tiller, drops the jib, releases the
spinnaker pole up/downhauls, gets the pole up, and works the spinnaker
sheets to start it drawing until I come back to take them off him. Don't ask
me how he does it, but he usually has a sheet clamped in his teeth and
another wrapped around the end of his short arm (turning it blue as the
circulation gets cut off...).

My mother took up dinghy sailing in her mid 50s and is in the process of
moving up to bigger boats 15 years later. Given reasonable health and
fitness, its your mental age not your real age that counts. The former
commodore of my dinghy club has just stepped down from commodore to vice
commodore to concentrate on his racing and he's about to turn 80.

Go find an oldish cheap 27 footer monohull in decent sailable condition
but maybe needing a bit of TLC and sail it for a year while you brush up
your theory with some shoreside courses. Meanwhile grab every chance yo
can to crew on 40+ footers. You'll soon see if you really want that big
cat, and you'll have a good idea of what you are weak at before you take
the helm of the big cat so you'll have a better chance of avoiding a
$1000000 prang. You shouldn't loose much if anything selling the 27
footer on in a year or two's time either.



--
Ian Malcolm. London, ENGLAND. (NEWSGROUP REPLY PREFERRED)
ianm[at]the[dash]malcolms[dot]freeserve[dot]co[dot]uk
[at]=@, [dash]=- & [dot]=. *Warning* HTML & 32K emails -- NUL:
'Stingo' Albacore #1554 - 15' Early 60's, Uffa Fox designed,
All varnished hot moulded wooden racing dinghy.