In article
,
pantagruel wrote:

Hi,

I've done some day sailing before but not really cruising, and not
anything difficult, I was thinking of buying a new houseboat and
cruising Europe with it, the boats I've got my eye on aren't really
suited to long journeys (most houseboats aren't although these
certainly function fine for short jaunts or going on rivers, lakes and
so forth, there's one I'm looking at that is but my girlfriend is also
casting a vote and she might negate that one) - for example going
directly from Denmark to England would be pretty risky (even waiting
clear weather) so I was thinking about basically doing fairly short
trips along the coasts on the supposition that I won't get into
conditions I can't handle, but obviously this is still somewhat risky,
even a day out can turn bad.
This would of course make a trip between various parts of europe
loooong (main parts that I am thinking of - (Norway, Denmark,
Amsterdam, Belgium, England, Portugal, Italy) as I have connections to
these. Obviously to do it the way I am thinking of would also
basically mean hitting every country in between for stopovers if
conditions were not good.

Obviously I realize I will have to do quite a lot of preparation to do
this. The question is whether I should nix the plan because it is just
too dangerous, I'm personally rating it not exactly dangerous but not
clever either, just a compromise between choices.

Any advice, including of course just buy the good boat, I could use
that to help convince my girlfriend of it.

There certainly are more experienced people out there in this group, but
I would not want to be out on the sea with a boat that's not built for
foul weather. Weather can change unpredictably not very often but if it
does, it is dangerous. Certainly being very cautious with regard to
weather and being well informed about it would be the cornerstone of
safety. Still some of the areas are known for rough weather at times.
I would not risk it.

HTH

Marc

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