First Year Cruising? How to Decrease the Learning Curve

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Part 2:

If it’s your first year cruising or owning a boat, you’re probably facing a steep learning curve. In fact, if you talk to any new cruiser — whether full-time or a weekender — you almost always hear the same comment: there’s so much to learn! Ditto if you’ve gone from spending weekends locally to taking some longer trips, or even seasonal cruising. No matter what you thought you already had figured out, there’s more. The good thing is that slowing down, learning to relax, and taking breaks can make the first-year learning curve easier to manage.

What Makes the First Year Difficult

In the first year cruising (or after a major change in cruising grounds or length of trips), nothing seems easy. Everything is a new experience. Bridges. Locks. Getting fuel. Water. Remembering the anchor light. How to hoist the dinghy. Plotting a course in the chart plotter. Using a cruising guide to decide where to go. Is our draft too deep for that anchorage? What do you mean, we’re out of water? The holding tank is full? How far can we go in a day? How can our batteries be dead? What’s a cruiser’s net? What clothes do I really need? Where/how should I store this? How much food should I buy?

And then there are the repairs and maintenance. Most of us just aren’t prepared for this! Ashore, many things can safely be put off until a convenient time… or we can call a repairman. Boat problems usually have to be dealt with when they pop up. And if it’s something you’ve never dealt with before, what seems like a “quick fix” can take all day.

Okay, so much for telling you how that learning curve seems to go straight up. If you own a boat, you already know about it. Over the years, I’ve talked to many new cruisers, and they’ve all commented on how mentally exhausting it’s been.

After the First Year, It Gets Easier

But here’s the good news and what I keep telling them: it really does get better. A lot better.

Suddenly, you’re not doing everything for the first time. You may not have things perfected, but you have a much better idea of what you’re doing. Things get rearranged as you find what you want in the most convenient places. You discover what you never use. You figure out what works for you.

For us (aboard our first cruising boat), the one-year mark seemed almost magical. Suddenly, cruising became a lot more of what we’d dreamt about. The reality is that it had actually been getting easier for a while, but arriving in a new cruising area just seemed a major milestone.

So how do you make it to that point without tearing your hair out, becoming a raging alcoholic, divorcing your partner . . . or deciding to forget about cruising and sell the boat?

How to Make Your First Year Easier

Here are a few things that helped us:

Slow Down

Get rid of deadlines and schedules. Don’t think that everything has to be fixed, learned, or decided today. Don’t be overly ambitious in how far you’re going at first. Keep daily mileage lower, and plan lay days instead of trying to be on the move every day. Be conservative in your weather windows.

Prioritize

Don’t try to do too much at once. It’s tempting with a new-to-you boat to plan a whole bunch of projects and buy supplies for all of them, try to learn all the systems in a day, and so on. It’s overwhelming. Obviously, you need to do anything necessary to make the boat seaworthy, but not everything has to be done immediately. We have a rule of only one major project at a time and ditto with learning anything new.

Also, choose your destinations carefully. Sure, you might have bought a boat with dreams of snorkeling in warm Caribbean waters. But if preparing your boat and yourself for a trip to a new country is stressing you out, choose a less ambitious cruising ground at first.

Share the Burden

Assuming there is more than one of you aboard, share responsibilities and respect that the other person is (most likely) having to learn some new skills. Even if one of you is super-mechanical or a professional chef, things work differently on a boat. Not everything will go smoothly even in your “areas of expertise.” And it’s not fair for one person to be responsible for everything. Even if your partner knows more about just about everything than you do, start carving out some areas that will be yours and begin learning.

Take Time For Yourself

Have some “me” time. For many couples, the sudden transition to being together 24/7 is tough, even if it’s just for the weekend. A little time apart can work wonders — even if it’s as simple as taking the trash to the dumpster. I tended to go grocery shopping on my own just for this reason, even though it meant lugging everything myself — it gave us a couple of hours apart. Walks, kayak/SUP/dinghy rides, and craft sessions with other cruisers are all good excuses for a bit of “me” time too.

Do Something for Fun

Try to remember why you wanted to cruise: explore new places, see wildlife, take photos, hike, snorkel . . . whatever. Unless there’s a true emergency, do something just for fun every day. Cruising shouldn’t be endless work and drudgery.

Ask for Help

If you’re stumped or just not sure what to do, ask other cruisers for ideas (or see what your favorite blog has to say <grin> ). Dave and I had a real problem with this when we began cruising: part of the allure of cruising was being independent and solving our own problems. Just a month into cruising, we learned the fallacy of this.

In a remote anchorage, we developed a fuel leak and couldn’t figure out how it could be repaired without pulling the engine. After we’d spent a day and a half on the problem, another cruiser stopped by . . . and had a solution that had it fixed in less than an hour. We learned that there’s nothing wrong with asking for help . . . and in time, we were the ones passing on what we’d learned.

I developed a series of courses to help make the first-year learning curve less steep, beginning with The Basics of Living on a Boat. Learn the important knowledge that makes cruising easier, all kinds of things most cruising courses don’t teach.

Remember, exchanging information and sharing horror stories is part of the joy of cruising. It is a community, after all.

Treat Yourself

Whether it’s a piece of chocolate, a long hot shower at a marina, a glass of wine, or whatever, have a little room in the budget for things other than just “boat parts and repair.” When every bit of time, energy, and money is going into the boat, it’s easy to start resenting it.

In fact, remembering to stock up on your favorites when provisioning is a great way to be prepared for bad days that come your way.

Take a Break

Just get away from the boat for a bit. Whether it’s a few hours, days, or even weeks, it can help to come back with a fresh mindset.

Embrace the Challenge

No matter how much we’d rather avoid certain things, sometimes there’s no helping it. The ability to embrace doing new things badly (because no one’s perfect in the very beginning) can make cruising much less difficult.

The Key is to Go Slower

As I look back through that list, it hits me that “slow down” encompasses most of the other items and is really the essence of cruising. And yet it’s hard to do, particularly if you have a limited amount of time or are coming from a career with firm deadlines and schedules.

Just know that things really do get easier. Soon, all the daily chores are routine. You get into a maintenance routine. You develop checklists for things you do over and over. And pretty soon, you find yourself telling a new cruiser to just hang on; it’ll get easier…

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