[sailingdog]

Welcome to sailnet.com. I think that billyruffn and the others above give some good advice....

My questions for you are this:

1) If you were going to buy a boat, how would you pay for it?
2) If you were to go to college, how would you pay for it?
3) How much experience do you have sailing?

If you're going to use the money you'd need to pay for college on the boat... I'd recommend you go to college first... then get the boat. Billy's recommendation about the Navy or Coast Guard is a good one as well. The skills and discipline that a tour with either will be a great help for anything else you decide to do later.

While, you could go to sea with just a high-school education, it may not make sense to do so...

If you're really set on going now... there are alot of ways to do it. First, you do need to get a seaworthy small boat. A good place to start to look for one is John Vigor's 20 Small Sailboats To Take You Anywhere. Many of the boats he lists in that book can be bought for under $10000 in fairly reasonable shape. The Alberg 30, Southern Cross 28/31, Albin Vega 27, Cape Dory 25, and the Contessa 26 are all good candidates for boats capable of doing this.

I would definitely recommend not getting a ferrocement boat. As pointed out above, most of the ferrocement boats were home-built and not very well built at that. Also, many are fairly large, as ferrocement wasn't a material very well suited to making sailboats <35' as a general rule.

Crewing is another good way to get some experience. If you're going to go this route, it would probably be a good idea to get your AB merchant marine ticket as well as an STCW 95 certification, CPR certification and some good basic first aid certifications...

BTW, I wouldn't necessarily look at the solo-sailor.com website as a good model for you. Heather is 40 years old, supposedly sold a successful real estate company to finance her purchase of boat and isn't really trying to do it on a limited budget so much.

Tania Aebi's book, Maiden Voyage, is probably a good one to read... since aside from being given the boat by her father, she was on a rather limited budget and about your age when she did her circumnavigation in a Contessa 26.

Robin Lee Graham, who sailed a small boat named Dove, most of the way around the world would be another good person to read about. He was only 15 years old when he set off in Dove, and the book about his voyages in her is titled "Dove" IIRC.