If you’ve known me for a few years previous to this blog post, you’ll know that this whole birding and photography hobby is actually relatively new. In fact, getting into it was something of an accident: in September of 2013 I purchased my first DSLR. Originally I’d gotten it because I’d just left my job and was taking a several month break before looking for a new position. I’d also just adopted the second of my two parrots, and really wasn’t satisfied with the photos I was able to take with either my smartphone (at the time and still as of this writing the excellent HTC One) or an older Panasonic Lumix.
I want this to be me
You can find some pretty inspiring or intriguing stuff just looking around at satellite views on Google Maps. Like this cruising catamaran, anchored on the southern end of an incredibly remote atoll in the Indian Ocean. (it’s called Egmont Atoll, and you can find it–and that catamaran–right here: 6°40’54.0″S 71°23’02.9″E). As best I can tell based on the scale of the satellite image the catamaran is somewhere between 30-50′ long, which puts it into the category of catamarans I have experience sailing on, and the kind I want to someday own.
I found this a few months ago, and my first thought was what inspired the title of this post: “I want that to be me.” I want that to be my boat, out in the middle of nowhere, nobody but me and my crew for hundreds, maybe thousands of miles in any direction.
Someday it will be.
On planning a sailing vacation
Some of the things covered in the American Sailing Association’s 104 certification course (“Bareboat Cruising Standard”) probably won’t seem surprising after you hear about them, but really aren’t things people think about when they think of how amazing a sailing vacation might be.
I’m talking of course about the planning stages: there’s a lot to do. I could run down a pretty extensive list and most of the items on the list would clearly be common sense. Things like planning flights, provisioning for the trip, and getting all the money put together between the people going on the trip aren’t all that different from other vacations.
But then you really get into the planning and realize just how much there is to do, and how far ahead you need to do it.