just personal experience, but I find a smaller boat *much* better for going
somewhere, much easier to handle and underway all I needed was a place to
sleep, a way to fix food, and when anchored a place to take a shower and read a
book.

Staying tied to the dock, however, I found one hell of a lot less interesting
than staying in my apartment. Even large boats are tiny compared to even nyc
apartments, though large boats seem better suited to living tied to wood or
concrete than small boats.

It didn't escape me that every crewing op but two I got were for boats 40+ feet
(and of those two one was a guy planning on solo for 900+ who would rather have
crew and his boat was in my boatyard, and the other was a brand new owner of a
boat with no experience of sal****er outside a bay )

btw, I have been away from the EAA a long time, but my baby bro is and has been
actively involved. He has mentioned as well that those there now are more
interested in building masterpieces of flying beauty than of building flying
machines to go bore holes in the sky.

If the thought of purposely spinning an airplane is exciting to you, you will
do more than fine sailing.

You might also
consider joining the US Power Squadron.
yuk!

Yah, I'm not much of a joiner. Got involved with the local EAA chapter a
while back- went to one meeting; it was a bunch of retired airline pilots
with loads of cash to blow on airplane projects. I didn't fit in too well
While I am certainly no expert on sailboats, I'm kinda figuring I'll
just buy one and spend a year or so learning how to sail it. I think a lot
of these canned classes are simply designed as an introduction to a boat and
little more (other than money-makers); designed for people who want to do
something different over a weekend. That may be an over-generalization,
though. I feel that the "well here she is, she's yours, now what the hell
are you going to do?" approach, while drastic, will probably yield the best
results. Should be a lot of fun as well.

Yanno, when I got off the motor yacht (MV Little Cayman Diver II, there are
websites out there with pics), I swore I would never live on another boat.
Maybe waiting on guests hand and foot soured me on boats; I once did sixteen
weeks straight without a day off and simply got sick of it. That said, I
can't help but think that my own boat would be a different situation...

Wendy (at work and bored)