hey eh dude, she is not qualified for a "Six-Pack" license. Not enough time.
Besides, a six pack license is as impressive to most sailors as a Crackjack
ring.

In addition, I have never personally known any sailor who took any sailing
course from anyone, though I have known quite a few sailors who *taught*
sailing courses. Sailing is the best, and cheapest, instruction there is.

Wendy, if you want to do more crewing and a bit offshore (usually no great
shakes) list yourself free on 7knots.com "crew available", save the URL and
send the URL out to anyone expressing a need for crew. It is probably the best
site there is (I have picked up a number of crew ops from there and had to turn
down a number more). Be aware that as a woman who wishes to sail you are in
short supply. Most of the women I have talked to re sailing found this to be
interesting, though of course one or two thought this terrible. I can not
speak for others, but I personally would not take a just-met woman onboard for
an extended passage if there were to be just me and her (some weird women out
there who can be hard to get along with, I assume the same is true of men from
a woman's point of view) but would not feel uncomfortable if there were several
crew onboard. A "captain" always looking for crew and with a bad rep both as a
sailor (justified, he is horse****) and as a scumbag with women is Captain
Jerry Eden, someone to stay away from (the Coast Guard contacted me regarding
various claims said "captain" may have made regarding having a Masters
License). As far as pickup crew goes, I have had only one bad crewing
experience myself, and I walked off a boat owners boat (not a delivery boat)
before it sailed (the boat sunk a few a couple weeks later, the other crew
having walked off as well, with new crew added).

Just my experience (meaning others may have had a totally different experience)
is that only and 1/2 of cruising boats (moving down the ICW) had couples
aboard, while about 25% had 2 or 3 guys aboard, presummably a guy pressed a
buddy or two into helping him move the boat (though some could have been
couples as well), and the last 25% were solo men (never saw a solo woman). The
solo men tended to have smaller boats (easier to handle, less costly to own)
and most were more than eager to say Hello to a woman, there simply weren't
enough women around. Some of the solo guys in big and fancy boats almost
seemed to be trolling in much the same way a 45 year old guy sometimes might
buy a Corvette to troll for chickies. And, like the guy in the Corvette,
seemed to sometimes get a bite.

Wendy, very good luck to you and fair winds.

"Wendy"
wrote:
I know
Westsail is a definite possibility, but what other boats should I consider
based on my plans and price range?

You are going to get a lot of advice here. I will withhold my valuable
(in other words, free) opinion until I know more about your plans. Are
you single-handing for instance? Are you fit? Are you able to go on a
foredeck in a storm and not fall off? Do you have lots of time or a
schedule? Fast or safe or both (that's the most expensive!)
Stuff like that.

I do not have a lot of sailing experience- some time on 30' Catalinas and a
Hobie Cat. I crewed on a 90' motor yacht in the Caribbean for a year and
also ran 40-50 foot dive boats out of a resort for another couple years, so
the basics of boat operations and upkeep etc are no mystery to me (I know
what I'm getting into here, and must admit that I am wondering about my
sanity

You have more sailing experience than a lot of people if you've crewed
for a year. I would suggest that the best course you could take is to
offer to crew on a transatlantic delivery in return for instruction
and practical experience. In conjunction with this I would encourage
you to take some sort of professionally recognized sailing competency
certification such as the "Six Pack" from the U.S. Coast Guard or the
"Yachtmaster" courses in the UK from the Royal Yachting Association.

Those bits of paper will make you desirable crew, which will inform
you directly as to what is desirable in an offshore cruiser. On your
off-watch, you can read the Smeetons, the Hiscocks, the Pardeys, Hal
Roth, Don Street and a few others from the last 40 years or so who did
things the hard way in ocean cruising so you don't have to. With the
exception of GPS/EPIRBs, hardly any of the "improvements" that will
make your journey a safe and pleasant one are particularly new or
involve electronics.

The good news is that there are a lot of unfashionable (narrow, dark,
overbuilt, no wet bar) old boats that are very suitable for offshore
work, can be altered cheaply and bought for a song because everyone
wants a big-arsed Beneteau to impress the yachtie crowd. There are
some excellent ocean going cruisers made today, but not at your price
point, and most of them are not the "popular" names. An example of a
"good old boat" is the Westsail 32 "Satori". You could look that up
and learn how a well-made boat can survive even a "Perfect Storm".
It's not like the movie had things, by the way.

Your mileage may vary. The best scenario, quite frankly, is getting
the boat of some fastidious perfectionist who died putting the latest
bulletproof roller-furling on his immaculately maintained old 36
footer, leaving a wife who hated sailing and just wants to get rid of
the thing.

Skip Gundlach's saga on this list will inform you mightily. It's worth
it to take the time necessary to decide, because a thousand miles
offshore, there's no tow truck, is there? G

Good luck,

R.