How much planning do you do for an extended cruise?

[Nostrodamus]

We will soon be leaving our winter berth to go cruising for the next five or six months.
Hopefully the boat has been prepared over winter so all we need to know now is where we are going.
We have a very rough idea in that it will be Tunisia, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta and Sicily. Nothing is set is stone though and this may well change.
I suppose really we don't decide where we will go until the night before or morning of departure.

I just wondered how much planning and preparation people put in for an extended cruise?
Is it on a whim or where the wind is or do you have your whole cruise planned out?

 

[Sandy]

Depends if there is a target, e.g. Wellington by mid-summer, or shall we drift down the coast and see where we end up in August then decide if we want to go across the pond.

 

[pmagowan]

We have never gone that far but our general philosophy is to have an idea of where we would like to get to during the trip (reading pilots and looking online) and then we set off in roughly that direction but stop off where the wind takes us. Really you have plenty of spare time on a cruise to think about where you would like to go for lunch and where you want to spend the night. You need to have a good idea of what is in the vicinity, options for if problems occur and places where you can get supplies and a night in the pub.

 

[Poignard]

I don't like planning much, and prefer to set off in a general direction and enjoy (or cope with) whatever turns up. You never know what the weather will do and flexibility is essential. Most of my planning, if you can call it that, revolves around things like getting foreign exchange, insurance, documentation etc, arranged before departure. Also making sure flares are in date, the boat's gear is in reasonable order and that we haven't forgotten anything that can't easily be bought abroad.

Then just go and see what turns up.

 

[KellysEye]

We used to plan a route and put the waypoints in but in the log book we only put the departure point in the log not where we were going. Subject to weather changes you don't necessarily end up where you plan to go e.g. we left Curacao heading to the USVI's and ended up in Puerto Rico having crossed 68W three times getting pushed by a large un-forecasted swell. We always viewed cruising plans as being written in the sand at low tide.

Other than that provisioning was the most important thing.

 

[Champagne Murphy]

Leaving Harwich we figure we have 4 options; left, right, forwards, back. Experiences-some happy some 'learning' (a euphemism for chundering) have taught us that to plan any more is useless. We have aims but are quite prepared to sacrifice them in the name of common sense.
What we DO do is look long and hard at the currently prevailing weather pattern.

 

[Kelpie]

Plans are the best way to ruin a good cruise.

 

[GHA]

if there's any planning other that a very vague direction it's seen as a funny little hobby, not something which should have any place in day to day decisions

 

[[3889]]

Plans are the best way to ruin a good cruise.

Agree with this. Never cruised longer than 4 weeks and planning includes a target destination (rather than objective) and a quick look at potential stopovers en route. I used to micro manage passages down to ETA at each port - disastrous!

 

[SamanthaTabs]

For the first time ever there's no plan as such this year, happy days!
Plans have usually been created by stupidly committing to being somewhere for family to visit and has, on occasion, made us move substantial distances in conditions not to our liking simply to be there on time..
This season will be as relaxed as possible, just pottering around Sicily /Malta and who knows where else. If a particular anchorage takes our fancy we may well drop the hook and spend weeks there. Just writing that makes me very happy indeed

 

[jdc]

Is it on a whim or where the wind is or do you have your whole cruise planned out?

I think it's a matter of personal character trait. Imho it's good to have an objective, for instance a particular harbour or shore-based expedition (climb mount x from sea level, or visit Stornoway).

I agree that it's pointless to work out exact ETA for ports beyond a couple of days away, although I think that is often taken as an excuse not attempt to make any plans, and thus to achieve rather less than could have been done with little extra effort.

Voyage times are more predictable than one would think if averaged across a few days. An illustration of this is that for some years we migrated from Harwich to Cornwall and back pretty much every season, and it was always 52 hrs to Dartmouth whatever the actual weather, and more recently from Falmouth to Troon has always been 70hrs, again whatever the weather. The time duration of races like the AZAB or 3-peaks don't vary that much either (maybe +/- 1 day per week of average voyage duration). So 'Sardinia by June 12th' is perfectly reasonable to plan and would inform one over the preceding few days whether to crack on or if there's a day or two in hand.

Back to the personal character thing: I have noticed - but of course this may itself just reflect my prejudices - a correlation between more goal oriented crews ('this year we're climbing Rockall using only neolithic hand axes') and northern/cold water cruising, and conversely sybaritic cruising (aka aimless pottering depending on your prejudices) seems correlated with the Med. This may answer your question for you...

 

[Nostrodamus]

Back to the personal character thing: I have noticed - but of course this may itself just reflect my prejudices - a correlation between more goal oriented crews ('this year we're climbing Rockall using only neolithic hand axes') and northern/cold water cruising, and conversely sybaritic cruising (aka aimless pottering depending on your prejudices) seems correlated with the Med. This may answer your question for you...

You are probably right. The sunny windless days are more in the med and the season is probably longer. Quiet a few boats have already set off from the marina down here to begin their season. When you know there are several anchorages within a short distance and you have more time or less of a goal it is far easier to wait for the wind or go where it takes you so planning is less of an issue.

 

[Bru]

I happily spend many a dull, rainy, wintery day planning our Spring ("epic"), Summer and Autumn cruises. I get a lot of enjoyment and no small amount of learning from the exercise

Of course, it is then entirely possible that the best laid plans of mice and skippers will be thrown overboard in the face of the reality of an impending dire weather forecast!

Then I get the fun of planning something else instead - even if it is only how far we can manage to stretch the beer kitty and whether it will outlast the gales or not!

It doesn't really matter whether the plans I make survive the reality of being on board, if they don't I'll at least know the alternatives and have the information readily to hand to make alternative plans

 

[Slow_boat]

We're off for six months on 17th May. The only definite objective is the Falmouth meet, then we'll look at the weather pattern and decide on Scillies/Ireland or France/Spain. Or maybe Holland.

Once we're on the way, we have a vague plan of places we'd like to go but decide on the day where we're off to, or just stay put as the fancy takes us. We don't rack up many sea miles but we get to see some lovely places and people. For instance, two days in Weymouth turned into a week due to the music scene there, an overnight shelter from a gale at Calstock turned into a week due to the lovely people we met there.

The vague plan is to winter at La Rochelle but we'll see. Maybe we'll decide to head for the Canaries for winter and not come back at all.

It's called 'cruising' and we love it!

 

[mjcoon]

We will soon be leaving our winter berth to go cruising for the next five or six months.
Hopefully the boat has been prepared over winter so all we need to know now is where we are going.
We have a very rough idea in that it will be Tunisia, Sardinia, Corsica, Malta and Sicily. Nothing is set is stone though and this may well change.
I suppose really we don't decide where we will go until the night before or morning of departure.

I just wondered how much planning and preparation people put in for an extended cruise?
Is it on a whim or where the wind is or do you have your whole cruise planned out?

For stops outside the EU, is it best to have visas in advance? Or are we welcome anywhere, like in colonial days? ;-)

Mike.

Mike.

 

[Nostrodamus]

We don't need any visas for where we are going!!!!!!

 

[pmagowan]

I happily spend many a dull, rainy, wintery day planning our Spring ("epic"), Summer and Autumn cruises. I get a lot of enjoyment and no small amount of learning from the exercise

Of course, it is then entirely possible that the best laid plans of mice and skippers will be thrown overboard in the face of the reality of an impending dire weather forecast!

Then I get the fun of planning something else instead - even if it is only how far we can manage to stretch the beer kitty and whether it will outlast the gales or not!

It doesn't really matter whether the plans I make survive the reality of being on board, if they don't I'll at least know the alternatives and have the information readily to hand to make alternative plans

Yes, I love planning too but I rarely stick to a plan. The process means that you are familiar with the options when you finally decide where you will visit.

 

[johnalison]

Because we have now cruised to the full extent of the known world, or more precisely, as far as we can be bothered to go, from N Brittany and Ireland, to Gdansk in the east, our cruises no longer need any planning and consist of meandering around until one of us suffers from some mishap or other and we return.

I know people who plan every last detail of their cruise, but it's not for me. I like to chat to locals and take their advice about where it is best to go, and as a result we have visited small places that we wouldn't have thought of otherwise.

A major cause of overplanning is crew changes. We hear of friends having to be at a certain place, to take on or shed crew, which seems to spoil the main reason for an extended cruise - not to have to worry about time. My policy is to tell crew roughly where we are likely to be and set them the challenge of making contact, or getting home. Some of them have been known to come a second time, or more.

 

[chinita]

Where you are, Nostro, it doesn't matter a jot.

The wind will always be on the nose - at one stage or another.

Just go where SWMBO wants, less grief, more pleasure. And, if it goes tits up, you can blame her!

 

[TQA]

Current cruise is in it's fifth year.

Not much planning except going South in summer and North in winter.

So far so good.