Do you enjoy your sailing, or do you minimise your passage time?

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BelleSerene

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You like sailing, right? Me too. OK.

You know when you’re planning a passage and you take account of the tidal flows to minimise time spent at sea? Why do you do that? I thought you liked spending time at sea?

I don’t get it. I don’t get it in myself either. If we find peace, space, independence, adventure, whatever it is, while sailing... why do we go to such lengths to minimise the amount of time we actually spend sailing?

 
What you are talking about is cruising. If you simply want to go sailing then you can just go out, sail about and come back to your mooring. When you are cruising you are mixing your sailing and your other enjoyments such as, arriving somewhere new, enjoying food and drink, exploring etc etc. When you compine multiple passions then you need to compromise.
 
pmagowan said:
What you are talking about is cruising. If you simply want to go sailing then you can just go out, sail about and come back to your mooring. When you are cruising you are mixing your sailing and your other enjoyments such as, arriving somewhere new, enjoying food and drink, exploring etc etc. When you compine multiple passions then you need to compromise.
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I agree, there are times when I just take the boat out and sail around, not going anywhere in particular, but possibly practising MOB on the odd occasion just for the pleasure of being out there under sail.
If I’m cruising from port to port then there is an impetus to go the quickest route, not to avoid the sail but for the pleasure of visiting a port that is not your home port and perhaps meeting up with other similar travellers.
 
We enjoy being on the boat, but are perfectly happy being on the boat moored in a marina. We enjoy a few hours bumming around the Solent, but long passages are the price of getting from one place to another - hence the effort to optimise the route.

We've had the current boat for about five months now and have spent more than 50% of that time aboard, but we have actually been at sea with it about 12 hours.
 
BelleSerene said:
You like sailing, right? Me too. OK.

You know when you’re planning a passage and you take account of the tidal flows to minimise time spent at sea? Why do you do that? I thought you liked spending time at sea?

I don’t get it. I don’t get it in myself either. If we find peace, space, independence, adventure, whatever it is, while sailing... why do we go to such lengths to minimise the amount of time we actually spend sailing?
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Good sailing is satisfying. Good navigation/optimal passage planning is satisfying and is part of sailing. Not having enough time on a passage to enjoy it is maybe poor passage planning :) Sometimes sails are too short, mine usually are :). But I will put the motor on rather than drift at a knot, I don't feel comfortable in busy parts of the Solent if the sails go floppy more than 10 minutes........ That is a different question. But really I try to passage plan to have the right amount of time on the water with my family. This weekend finally I might achieve a decent length passage for me, a whole 20NM. Hopefully a breeze in the afternoon. I'll wait for that rather than take a windless tide in the morning.
Apologies for my waffley reply, a bit rhetorical like the OP!
 
BelleSerene said:
You like sailing, right? Me too. OK.

You know when you’re planning a passage and you take account of the tidal flows to minimise time spent at sea? Why do you do that? I thought you liked spending time at sea?

I don’t get it. I don’t get it in myself either. If we find peace, space, independence, adventure, whatever it is, while sailing... why do we go to such lengths to minimise the amount of time we actually spend sailing?
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Tidal flows? What are they? ;)

Richard
 
The OP has raised an interesting paradox that I have commented on myself at some time. Why, if we love sailing so much, do we do our damndest to make the experience as brief as possible? The answer in terms of cruising is, I imagine, that too much of anything can become wearisome and there are physical restraints on what the average sailor can put up with, in terms of concentraion, comfort, and motion.

There are times when I enjoy drifting along slowly and enjoying the whole experience, but generally I see sailing as a purposeful activity in the sense that I am trying to get somewhere, and doing this efficiently is part of the pleasure.
 
maby said:
We enjoy being on the boat, but are perfectly happy being on the boat moored in a marina. We enjoy a few hours bumming around the Solent, but long passages are the price of getting from one place to another - hence the effort to optimise the route.

We've had the current boat for about five months now and have spent more than 50% of that time aboard, but we have actually been at sea with it about 12 hours.
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Wouldn't a thatched cottage with roses around the door suit better?
 
johnalison said:
The OP has raised an interesting paradox that I have commented on myself at some time. Why, if we love sailing so much, do we do our damndest to make the experience as brief as possible? The answer in terms of cruising is, I imagine, that too much of anything can become wearisome and there are physical restraints on what the average sailor can put up with, in terms of concentraion, comfort, and motion.

There are times when I enjoy drifting along slowly and enjoying the whole experience, but generally I see sailing as a purposeful activity in the sense that I am trying to get somewhere, and doing this efficiently is part of the pleasure.
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Very good.

Unless you sail locally for a day, most other places on the East Coast are a whole tide away. For small boats anyway.

I hate punching tides so one knows what speed is required. We rarely sail the whole way but kid ourselves that we do.

Lots of yachtsman love eating out after a hard weeks work so that is nice too.
 
maby said:
We've had the current boat for about five months now and have spent more than 50% of that time aboard, but we have actually been at sea with it about 12 hours.
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Well you definitely don’t like sailing! 5 months x 30 days x 50% of that time spent aboard is some 75 days aboard. During which you have been at sea for 12 hours, half a day. Out of the time you’ve been aboard your boat, you have spent less than one percent of it sailing. Wow!
 
Getting the tide about right, in this part of the world, is a necessity. An adverse tide can have the boat going forward through the water but backward over the ground.
 
alant said:
Wouldn't a thatched cottage with roses around the door suit better?
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I think that that is an unfair comment. I travel as far as Camaret from the east coast most years & i really enjoy sitting in different marinas just watching the world go by.
I find it quite restful & i read more books in marinas than I ever read at home. I do have a problem in some ie. St Peter Port as, like others, one can stay there for days with no drive to move on. In my own marina I often go on the boat just to chat to the vistors who arrive in the berths next to me (the ones next to mine are reserved for vistors). Often it is just to do minor jobs on the boat- cleaning, polishing & just re arranging things. It is not all about sailing from A - B.

But going back to the OP's question I always plan the passage with an eye to the tides. On Saturday I am off to Ostend. (93M). The whole trip is scheduled with tides in mind. If I am behind schedule due to lack of wind anywhere then the engine will be turned on. I will certainly not spend hours drifting for no reason.
 
LONG_KEELER said:
Unless you sail locally for a day, most other places on the East Coast are a whole tide away. For small boats anyway
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I judge my journeys by the impossibly-ancient units of 'kennings'. A kenning is basically as far as you an 'ken', ie to the next headland, or about 20 miles. A day's sail might be one, two, or maybe three kennings. I would like to think that it will catch on.

'Kenning' has another meaning in Old English to do with metaphors but I would recommend that you ignore this.
 
To answer the question all you need to do is make the same mistake as we did couple of years back and buy a motor boat, you can fairly well ignore tides, changes of wind direction, shape of sails or anything else that makes sailing interesting, to compound the boredom you fit it with an autopilot. The damn thing could go three times as fast or any speed you liked and was almost as interesting as going in the bus.
 
BelleSerene said:
You like sailing, right? Me too. OK.

You know when you’re planning a passage and you take account of the tidal flows to minimise time spent at sea? Why do you do that? I thought you liked spending time at sea?

I don’t get it. I don’t get it in myself either. If we find peace, space, independence, adventure, whatever it is, while sailing... why do we go to such lengths to minimise the amount of time we actually spend sailing?
Click to expand...

For me, the first answer is - Yes BUT.... Yes again for the 2nd answer.

Racing coloured my sailing life and without competition I would be doomed to going to places I would not otherwise want to visit.

Sadly the cruising life leaves me uninterested and I know that I miss so much, when in conversation with my other club members- but we are what we are :(
 
6-7 hours is my ideal passage time for day sailing. After that it becomes tiresome up to 36 hours. Then it is proper passage making with a routine established on board and I always feel a bit sad when the journeys over and the microverse bubble is burst.
 
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