"Roger Long" wrote:

I'm not going to touch the posts in which this came up with a boathook but
it is a worthwhile question.

With the exception of cruise ship vacations, I think any definition for a
group like this has got to be pretty much in accord with standard usage. In
this part of the world at least, if you go out in a boat and are not
fishing, transporting anything to a specific place (yourself included) and
are free to alter your route according to whim, you are cruising. Since
there is a word "daysailing" for doing this for short periods, "cruising"
must include at least one night spent on board. Power, sail, makes no
difference. You just have to sleep aboard and be in "The journey is the
destination." mode.

The more restrictive definitions proposed would make this a rather
uninteresting place, just Geoff and Wayne posting back and forth as near as
I can tell.

I don't think it invalidates the definition of cruising to have a plan
or an ultimate destination in mind. If you include that in
"transporting anything to a specific place" than that's stupidity and
not cruising.

There's a very fine line between having a destination and making for
it hell-bent-for-leather like a delivery skipper, and having a general
destination in mind and deciding to go or not go on the next leg (or
going farther or not as far) depending on the weather or other
factors.

Some people are incapable of modifying their plans - the type A people
who have to have a goal. It may take them many years to relax into
the cruising mode. Some people are so fearful or indecisive that they
can never leave the dock. It takes a lot of courage for them to make
the leap into cruising. [I think that is why we see so many boats
traveling in a group in the ICW - I never quite understood that. If
you can read the charts and guides, why do you have to have a group
leader to go up and down the ICW or to the Bahamas?]