Tom’s Tips on Changing your Cruising Dreams

1. Start with guide books. Go to a good marine bookstore or similar source on the www and see what interests you.
2. Don’t take all guide books as gospel. Often they will have something to sell, directly or indirectly, they may not be completely updated even though they may claim they’re updated annually and no matter how thorough the author, things change daily. But this doesn’t mean that you can’t use current guidebooks to help you formulate some new cruising dreams.
3. Talk to people who’ve been to the places you’re thinking about.
4. Look at web sites for charter companies and, if you think you might be interested, call them. Some companies have helpful information describing not only their boats but where you can go and what you can do.
5. Pull out magazines (new issues and old ones) that may have had destination articles about the area(s) of interest.  Some magazines have web sites with archived articles that allow you to search for articles.
6. It’s a lot of fun going, but it can also be a lot of fun learning about the new possibilities.

Copyright 2004-2009 Tom Neale