So you have had a windfall. Dear old Aunty Audrey has popped her socks and bless her, has left you with some of the estate, enough to buy that boat you have always dreamed about.
So lets stop right there. I know the money is burning a big hole in your pocket but there is work to be done on the house and the car needs some attention or maybe replacing, so before you rush off to get the boat of your dreams without telling your wife and kids you may like to consider a couple of things.
Sailing on you own is fine but not recommended, so it's a good idea to involve the whole family from day one. There will be a million and one reasons for not buying a boat, but having successfully negotiated the budget apportioned to the windfall for each of the jobs around the house you can slip away one quiet afternoon and spend a small fortune! Well at least you have told the family of your intention.
Having found the boat of your dreams you will return home with a smug look on your face and offer to take the family for a ride in the car, down a quiet lane into a creek where your new acquisition is moored. Now this will have one of two probable outcomes, if you know what you are doing and have had the proper advice, the presentation will go relatively smoothly, if on the other hand you have decided to learn by your mistakes and just gone out and bought the first thing that takes your fancy, you could be looking at more trouble than you could ever possibly imagine.
I am not a marriage councillor, but I do mean it when I say involve the family. Sailing is for them all so do take them to the yard to see the boat and let them have an input into the purchase, no doubt you will have to make some compromises but it will be beneficial in the future.
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| For the inexperienced, joining a sailing club is a must
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Having decided you now want to go sailing and assuming you have no experience, join a sailing club, there will be plenty of people willing to help and advise. Get someone else to take you out for a quiet sail and I mean 'quiet', frighten the old girl or worse, the kids, and that will be the end of it, they will be sat in the car mad as hell and refusing to go anywhere near a boat ever again. So gently, gently.
I have always found it easy to justify having a boat. We, as a family always spent three weeks away in the summer on our 27 ft Ecume de Mer, 'Finesse' and most weekends through the season. Charter fees for that experience would have been prohibitive. What you have to spend will be a key factor. It's not advisable to over stretch yourself as there will always be unforeseen expenses, so stay within budget. Don't let the mooring fees be a shock; it's a good idea to select a berthing or mooring facility beforehand as the cost of it may influence the size of boat you are able to buy.
Learning to sail is a great experience, you will make new friends that you will sail with and meet in all sorts of places but it's also about learning about traditions; the weather, tides, tying knots, navigation and boat craft. There are a myriad of sailing schools where you can get your certificates from competent crew to offshore yacht master, depending how far you decide to go with your competency. There will be aspects of the experience you will enjoy and some you will shy away from, so having your partner involved means she or he may like doing those things you don't, then you begin to work as a team with each doing their job within the crew.
It then gets interesting, as you may like to do a bit of club racing, actually, there is no better way to learn about you and your boat than to get into a bit of competition, all clubs hold seasonal racing, usually around the 'cans' (buoys). Here you will find the hard core sailors, you know, the ones everyone tries to beat - at prize givings their table is littered with the club silver and everyone else is spitting feathers and making comments about how that race should have been theirs if it was not for that damn seagull that blinded them for a moment and they missed the buoy. Well clubs are full of all that stuff and willing hands to help, but if racing is not for you then cruising will be, and plenty of associations exist for many types of yacht so that may also be something you may like to know when choosing your boat because annual rallies can be great fun and an event where you can get to know more people who own a boat like yours.
So what happened to the bloke who went at it like a bull at a gate? I would rather not go there - very messy!!
