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The future of the sailing world. Why are there so few young people cruising??

119K views 908 replies 179 participants last post by  captain jack 
#1 ·
I'm curious on opinions on this one. When Baby boomers were in their 20's there were lots of them in small capable sailboats (some they made themselves) cruising across oceans; but now-a-days the majority of twenty-year olds appear to be utterly useless. I just don't get it, and I'm in my twenties, and cruising.


I'm also curious as to where people think the future of the sailing industry is going if there are so few young people involved?

Any thoughts?
 
#373 ·
Arrr, said the thoughtful pirate. Yee'll hev som women aboard? - he growls, smoothing his 'stache... List'ee, have fun, but pray take thought aforehand. Many wondrous vistas await, yet amongst those sweet roses lurk some bitter thorns.

More to the point, the cities of Mexico have have changed since that foolish 'war on drugs' began. Have you yet read through the pirate threads in this place?
 
#374 ·
I believe the reports from Latitude 38, the West Coast sailing magazine more than sailnet. From their November Edition of letters to the editor, which can be found here:
Latitude 38 Letters - November 2012

PIRATES IN MEXICO?

I appreciated your recent editorial response to a letter regarding cruiser safety and Mexico. In that response you wrote, "As we reported last month, we can't recall a case of a violent attack on a cruising boat in Mexico in decades. When we asked our readers last month, they couldn't either. If anyone has evidence to the contrary, we stand ready to be corrected."

Well, I would like to remind the sailing community of Alameda sailor John Long, who was killed off of the coast of Southern Mexico in '08. And I would encourage the sailing community to read David Vann's moving piece, Last Voyage of the Culin, which is about the incident. It appeared in Outside magazine, which can be found at tinyurl.com/8m6ypmy.

Perry
San Francisco

Perry - We're very sad to hear about the death of John Long, and wish we'd been told about it earlier.

We'll gladly alert our readers to that incident, and to the article in Outside magazine. But frankly, we hardly know what to make of it, especially when Vann claims that Long "was killed" as opposed to simply having died. After all, Vann's tale not only is colorful, but also seems to be full of exaggerations, embellishments, admitted speculation, and what we find to be questionable conclusions. Speaking as an editor, it seems to us that Outside went hook, line and sinker for a sensationalized bit of writing, assuming few of their readers knew anything about sailing in Mexico.

Consider, for example, the following paragraph: "The truth may be elusive in other places, but here in Puerto Madero and La Cigüeña, I believe it never actually exists. Even as events occur, they immediately become something else. An outsider can never know anything for certain, and this is partly because we are mythological creatures, born of conquistadores and sitting on our mountain of gold in El Norte. We aren't believable ourselves, even our existence, so we're told stories, and every story is about one thing: money."

We're pretty open-minded as an editor, but we'd have suspended Vann's poetic license for at least six months for writing stuff like that. Furthermore, it doesn't sound anything like the coast of a country we've visited countless times with our own boats over a period of 30 years.

Mind you, there is no doubt that Vann knows something about Puerto Madero, for he writes about his misadventures with his own boat there 15 years ago:

"My sailboat was a 48-ft ketch, just like Long's, and in the late fall of 1997 I hired another captain to deliver her from San Francisco to Panama while I finished a semester of teaching at Stanford. My plan was to pick up the boat in Panama and continue to the British Virgin Islands, where I would run winter charters. This boat, Grendel, was my business and my home.

"But the captain I'd hired, an accomplished sailor in her thirties, took on some bad diesel in Acapulco, diesel with water in it, and limped into the town of Puerto Madero on a bit of wind. For some reason, she waited a week before calling me. Then the cook took off on another boat for la pura vida in Costa Rica, and took my $2,000 in emergency cash with him."

It would have been helpful had Vann identified his accomplished female skipper, as it would have allowed us to ask her why she supposedly waited a week to call him about the boat's problems, and generally get her version of the events that took place. Anyway, when Vann got down to his boat in Puerto Madero, things were grim. Really grim:

"My sailboat was large and broken, tied to the one crumbled chunk of concrete on the shoreline, visited by rats, snakes, begging children, prostitutes, the police, the navy, drunken fishermen, and the crooked port captain's men. At first I tried to have the engine fixed, but a mechanic with a disco shirt, gold chains, and a group of thugs at his shop held the high-pressure injection pump for ransom, demanding $900 instead of $100 for the repair. So I tried a new tack, spending $3,500 to buy a used engine and have it trucked down from California. This engine was stolen before it ever arrived, only to reappear mysteriously months later, a 500-lb hunk of metal dumped on the beach in the middle of the night."

Nothing but rats, snakes, begging children, prostitutes, the police, the navy, drunken fishermen, and the crooked port captain's men - do tell! We find this description to be just a wee bit dramatic, even for Puerto Madero, which admittedly was for a long time the most corrupt port on the Pacific Coast of Mexico. It's now home to the new Chiapas Marina, which we're told is being run by the much-liked former harbormaster at Huatulco.

We also find it interesting that in the 35 years we've covered cruising on the Pacific Coast of Mexico, we can't remember anyone - but Vann - using the incendiary word "pirates" in Mexico. Pirates who Vann claims sometimes transport drugs nearly 2,000 miles up the Pacific Coast to California in pangas powered by 115-hp outboards. Boy, their asses must be sore when they get to the States.

The other thing that gives us pause with regard to the veracity of Vann's speculations was the 78-year-old Long's physical and mental condition at the time of his death. Long is said to have been in such poor physical shape that he could hardly climb the bleachers at baseball games. As for his mental abilities, Vann reported that Long twice left San Francisco and turned north, somehow thinking that Tomales Bay was on the way to Mexico.

Vann speculates that Long was the victim of an attack by 'pirates'. It's possible. But we're skeptical. Very skeptical.
 
#376 ·
The easiest answer is the economy....economy is always a convinient scape goat....but I'd say the main reason would be cultural (which is in part a result of the economy) , the mindset is not the same anymore, on the whole or culture has become alot more "static", people would rather stay in an uncomfortable situation than venture into the unknown.
 
#377 ·
One interesting fact about boating is that basically you can cruise with what ever your economic position will allow. Which is why one sailor might have a $15,000 electronic navigation system and another has a $30 used handheld GPS. This applies to everything across the board.
Then you have the sailors that can afford the latest greatest fanciest stuff and realizes they can function quite comfortably on what they have and put the money to better uses. I have a couple of GPS systems, Radar, VHF, SSB, etc all bought really cheap because someone wanted the newest model, I have alot of nice "previously owned" stuff the only problem I can see is cosmetic.

But marketing leads people to believe that they have to have the fancy new exotically expensive stuff.....which scares away the sailors who could only cruise on a shoestring.
 
#378 ·
One interesting fact about boating is that basically you can cruise with what ever your economic position will allow. Which is why one sailor might have a $15,000 electronic navigation system and another has a $30 used handheld GPS. This applies to everything across the board.
Then you have the sailors that can afford the latest greatest fanciest stuff and realizes they can function quite comfortably on what they have and put the money to better uses. I have a couple of GPS systems, Radar, VHF, SSB, etc all bought really cheap because someone wanted the newest model, I have alot of nice "previously owned" stuff the only problem I can see is cosmetic.

But marketing leads people to believe that they have to have the fancy new exotically expensive stuff.....which scares away the sailors who could only cruise on a shoestring.
One person's electronics budget, is another person's entire boat budget!
 
#379 ·
>and another has a $30 used handheld GPS. This applies to everything across the board.<

I'd rather have a couple or three hand-held AA-battery powered GPS units rather than any single expensive one. A hand-held can be used in a dinghy or ashore in a rented jeep. Plus there's that fall-back factor.

There's a queer 'gear' mentality among Americans that may coincide with that fascination for their grandmother's underthings.
 
#382 ·
Maybe the young get so little respect. When you go out of the way to help a young person sail You will see a few more sailors. Young people have a lot more choices than ever before it is a good thing they are smarter than ever. It takes time and $ to sail one can only do so much. When I take my dingy out to the park I offer a ride most of the time. I let one young couple 20 somethings take it for a few hours. They seem to be on the way to becoming sailors.They just bought a house. i stay in contact and they can sail from time to time. When they get ready maybe a boat will be next? Lots of boats are just rotting away. I was at a race in West Virginia and met a man that does a kind of habitat for humanity boats. The kid helps fix a boat or two the next one is his/hers fixed up by kids. Small boats, small repair bills. Sunfish and other small craft put back to use. If you want more sailors make them ! Kind regards, Lou
 
#384 ·
Truth is there's plenty of younger sailors out there, I'm one of them, crewed all over the Medt starting at 22 and got my first tiny little cabin boat shortly after getting back to the states. You rarely see them here because this place caters to the "must have a 40 footer with Epirb and 2 liferafts to leave the bay" type cruisers. Why come here and get yelled at about not buying things that I could never afford?

Go to the crappy marinas or look out in the anchoring fields where the rough looking but serviceable boats hang out and you'll find plenty of us younger types. I only pop up here on cold nights when there's football on and I've got nothing else to do.
 
#388 ·
|I am not from Port Townsend.....actually I have been trying hard to get out of here since I got my boat. I have a wooden boat but am not what I call a "wooden boat snob" There are people who have wooden boats, keep them looking pretty, take them out on sunny days and show them off at boat shows. The boat are pristine and "historically correct". I live aboard and am finishing up getting her ready for extensive passage making. If I continue about my opinions on the culture in this town I might get someones nose out of joint. I have been here long enough, basically lived in the boatyard, to gain the skills and get what I need to get here to the point where I can sail away.
An no I do not have a beard.
 
#391 ·
Nah......you didn't offend me. Though the really kewl wooden boat "sub culture" isn't what it used to be and the wooden boat festival has become more of a tourist attraction/money maker. People ask me why I don't put my boat in the wooden boat festival and my response is "I wouldn't pay money so other people can pay money to look at my boat when I can park it between two plastic boats for free (well no more than what I am paying anyway) and they can look at it for free."
The kewlest funkiest people in the "wooden boat sub culture" don't have anything to do with festival.
 
#392 ·
"I wouldn't pay money so other people can pay money to look at my boat when I can park it between two plastic boats for free (well no more than what I am paying anyway) and they can look at it for free."
Lol! I thought you said you weren't one of those "wooden boat snobs"! Calling fiberglass and composite boats "plastic" is a classic wood-snob dig isn't it?:rolleyes:
 
#398 ·
I am a young guy- I am 25, a recent college graduate, and have a decent sales job. I don't have an excess amount of money but I am not in debt over my neck, either. I live in Kentucky- there are plenty of places to sail within three hours of me, but I never knew that until I was actively looking to learn. I took ASA courses because I did not have other handy resources (aside from the library). And now, I don't have many outlets to get on the water. My peers don't participate. I don't have the financial ability to buy a boat. And, despite my knowledge of THEORY on sailing, I have less than 15 hours of experience and don't have a great way of rapidly increasing that. And to think, there are a lot of 20-somethings who would love to get involved....
 
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#400 ·
Hey James, See if you can get a job near the ocean if you really want to learn to sail. I like your need though, you are moving in the right direction. Maybe in a year we will give you a working ride from the Caribbean to the Canal you find your way to the Carib. and back from the Panama and the rest would be on us. If you really want to sail you will find a real way to do so and just about screw everything else.
Good Luck
 
#407 ·
Dude get a ride at a local phrf fleet for the wed or thurs night windward/leeward races. It's the best way to apply theory to practice, and cheapest way to get out on the water. Racers are generally pretty friendly on these nights, and if you just show up a little early and ask around you should have little problem catching a ride.
 
#405 ·
If you are thinking about getting into the cruising world and pick up a magazine on the subject you are going to see 6 figure boats, stocked with equally expensive equipment and a matching lifestlye....something that a "young person" (or most of us for that matter) counldn't afford. Now if you hang around boats long enough you can discover that the rich ""yachties" aren't the only people that can cruise, that there is cruising "sub-culture" that live at the other end of the economic ladder. But if the appearances put forward by marketing has dissuaded you from even considering it....
 
#410 ·
If you were just barely squeaking by in life you would not entertain the idea of "sailing off into the tropical sunset" except as a distant dream. If such a miserable life costs so much...something as wonderful as that must be waaaay more expensive right? So people don't even try and explore the possibility, if they did they would find out it is possible to live a better life for less.
 
#411 ·
Again, It has nothing to do with expensive or not expensive. What it has to do with is a rare desire so strong you lay awake at night thinking about it every night. Everyone has big dreams and they are just that big dreams. If it means everything to you to sail to distant lands you will find away. I see the 20 somethings that have done it myself included 40 years ago and that has to be the only goal. They have it planed out and get it done one step at a time and not much else gets done in life. Those who do and don't explore the possibility 99.9% of them do not have the desire it takes.

You have a great boat you are working on, I hope it is being worked on for one thing, to sail to distant lands if that is what you want. If your more interested in sailing it from 2 PM to 4:30 PM on the summer winds of PT back and forth in front of town chances are great you won't make the grade.

It takes so much desire to do it at 20 something but it is being done by a fair amount of them, as many as ever.

Cheers
 
#423 ·
I've enjoyed your posts Hannah2. People like you are pretty rare. I agree, cruising and sailing are not necessarily the same thing and I think the definition means different things to different people.

For me, it's a lifestyle change, away from all that is not cruising really. It's a big commitment in how I would approach it. The leaders of the cruising trend that became more popular in the 60's, 70's, seemed closely linked the the Nearing exodus that many took moving "back to the land".

One of the more amazing things I remember about simply taking a winter off and heading down the coast, was the number of people we met that had taken the "sell up and and sail" route. Quite a few! They had traded in real estate equity to follow the dream nicely set out at the time by the cruising media like Cruising World(good magazine in it's day). These were people in their 40's and up. Some even had families!

Cruising as many have done, and you are doing right now, is a wonderful way of life. But it's not for everyone, it's a lifestyle very few experience.

I learned to love to travel by sailboat, for short term, and now do that quite happily here in Maine. I'm not a big fan of living aboard(one winter was fine), at least not on the boats we like to sail in. But we so enjoy the sailing life on the water, sailing is a passion for me. And we like to snowboard here and travel(and we're working full time with 2 in college!).

My favorite way to travel is with a carry on bag. I love our boat, but it's a bit too much baggage for how we travel these days.

I'm not sure our kids will want to follow a cruising lifestye(who knows?), but they've traveled far already and have studied abroad.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm thick in college kids right now(our two in now), and we're just in mid winter break with 3 to 5(friends) staying with us.

These are the lucky kids(most of us in the US are), the ones able to find some way to be in college. But most of us are not wealthy(you find a way(cruising, college, we always have), yet, I can't think of many of these kids I've gotten to know, that haven't traveled abroad.

Semesters abroad are the rule now, woofing trips(our daughter studies in Scotland and travels widely for peanuts, woofing, youth hostels) semesters at sea(our son just finished one). Gap years, between years, they take right off and go places around the world. In fact, compared to my age, I would speculate, kids are traveling more today(there I've done it...).

Thanks for your input, it's nice to hear what you're seeing. I knew sailing was alive and well, I'm glad cruising will continue as well.
 
#424 · (Edited)
Tom, I've enjoyed your posts also. You have a positive out look toward the young and you really do enjoy sailing from what I can tell. I love your Alberg, my favorite boat that I've owned up until recently was my Rhodes Chesapeake. 32 ft made in Denmark in 1962. I had always kept her even when we owned the Mason44. She was our coastal and weekend cruiser.

What you say about cruising is correct, everyone has different ideas.

Just this week I had a visit from an old friend who just gave up cruising after 25 years strait and he sailed everywhere in the world. His Knees gave out and now he is flying planes to keep himself busy. I was talking to him about our plans for cruising for the next 5 or 6 years and his first comment was "Oh your going sailing for 5 or 6 years." I knew what he was saying I didn't have to have go into detail. But as you can guess cruising meant something different to him from us.

What I have been saying here is that if you are happy sailing like you do or like Wolfe does in Port Townsend that is great. Sailing is such a great rush of Freedom no matter when or how you do it.

But also for those I see on this site that torment over big ideas of sailing all over the place and are so far away from ever living that dream. They would be much happier coming to terms like you have to do the stuff that is more important to you, kids in college etc. and still enjoy sailing. You can always go back and pick up on the idea later. But to always have it on your mind and in your dreams can't be good for you if you except the responsibility of other things in life. Remember, sailing all over the world is a total and complete life change and very hard to do for most because of other commitments. At the age of 20 something and 57 to 62 something is the two best times to do world cruising for most who really have the desire to do so.

These types of discussions never come up when your out there sailing do they.

Cheers all.




Cheers
 
#425 ·
I don't know about the number of sailors in general, but I think the number of young cruisers is going up. We've been out for five months now and we have met plenty of people in the 40 or under crowd out there who have up and left everything behind to go out cruising.

Just going down the ICW so far we've met:

Brian and Stephanie (30 & 29) of s/v Rode Trip, a Westsail 32 who left from Portsmouth, NH in July.

Scott & Kim (41 & 35) of s/v Anthyllide, a 38 ft aluminum origami boat, who left from Detroit, MI in 2005.

Ryan and Tasha (40 & 35) of s/v Hideaway, a Catalina 34 that left from Manhattan, NY, NY in October.

Frank and Yu (30-35? & 30) of s/v Moitessier, a Hans Christian 41 that is being prepped in St. Augustine, FL and will hopefully be leaving in late 2013.

There have been more out there, those are only the ones we've taken time to get to know on a friends basis. We also know another handful of young cruisers that plan on leaving in the next year or two. I think the number of young cruisers/sailors are on the rise, we just have to keep getting the word out there that it can be done, no matter your age bracket or income!
 
#438 ·
I think the number of young cruisers/sailors are on the rise, we just have to keep getting the word out there that it can be done, no matter your age bracket or income!
The last 4 years, I would say, has dramatically shifted the perspective of a lot of young people, I would say. Being in my 30s, it became obvious that:
1> The 30 year career, gold watch, retirement life path is no longer anywhere close to guaranteed. Those jobs don't exist anymore, the perks and pensions don't exist anymore. So sacrificing the NOW for LATER, no longer seems like a good deal.

2> The internet changes everything. Money can be made on the move. I've read tons of cruiser blogs of folks who make money while sailing. If you're willing to figure it out, there's a financially viable life afloat or on the move.

Many of my friends and myself included, have decided the better trade-off is the NOW over the LATER. Cut the cable, sell the house, and seek experiences that enhance your life. It may or may not be sailing, but the groundwork is there to boost sailing adoption by young people, and the more I look, the more I find people in their 20s and 30s try their hardest to seek those experiences.
 
#426 ·
Part of my plan is to find a "young person" who would otherwise not be able to cruise and sign him on as crew, with everything taken care of from my end. Not only would it make my cruising possible, I can give something special to someone...the chance to sail the tropics, with no worries.
 
#427 ·
one of the things I am intending on doing is trying to invest a love of the sea and boats in my niece. For reasons I will not go into, I am the "father figure" to a lovely 12 year old.. who, while doing decent in school, has no true "loves" beyond playing on her computer.

I think if I can get her into boats and even cruising, it will be a boon for everyone.. (hopefully her eventual "one")
 
#429 ·
Do the twenty somethings have to be cruising to far off lands ? Do they get any credit for unloading a sunfish of the top of the car? Some of the youth do not want to be married in the teen years. They want to finish school and have a degree. Good Ideas. If we live longer do you think they might wait longer to have children and sail off to the islands ?
Then the same folks say the young want it all right now. How can they win ? You rig the game. The young are smarter faster stronger. When they get old the young will be smarter faster stronger. Thats the way it is. Our job is to be wize Wisdom can not help when you have contempt. The great blessing is most of us reconize the trap and then remember when we were smarter, faster, stronger so we help the young to build wisdom. That is why so many of the postings have been positve. Kind Regards, Lou
 
#430 ·
It is our society stressing "getting the corner office" and all the other trappings of modern day life, house in the burbs etc....that have changed the priorities of a whole generation....the ones that can't afford to aim that high are just barely squeaking from pay check to pay check in menial jobs....they are too busy surviving to think about "sailing off into the tropical sunset".
 
#431 · (Edited)
I can't comment on whether there are fewer young sailors out there as we've just started cruising ourselves (we're on s/v Hideaway), but we've met a lot of young cruisers out there.

I come to the sailing world from the backpacking world, though, and I can definitely say there are fewer young Americans out traveling than, say, Brits and Europeans.

I do think debt has a lot to do with this - Americans carry a LOT more debt from college than other nationalities because virtually all kids take out large loans to go to college, and therefore there is a lot of pressure to go to work right away to pay off that debt. Then when they get into the cycle of working, they build other debts - mortgages, car payments, etc. And this prevents them from taking off and going traveling or cruising.

I was lucky in that I didn't take out any loans for college. Between working and scholarships, I left school carefree to travel and do what I wanted. I didn't realize it at the time, but this in itself was what set me up to live the life I live now. I got used to owning very little and I liked being able to pick up and move to another country at the drop of a hat. Plus I was an English teacher so I could get work anywhere I went.

Transitioning from backpacking to cruising was very easy for me and my husband because we were already accustomed to moving often and living simply so we could do just that.

I don't know for sure, but my guess is that if more American kids chose not to take out $100,000 in college loans to go to private universities and instead went to state schools for a quarter of the price and/or worked while they went to school, we'd see a lot more young people traveling and cruising in their twenties and thirties.

Just my two cents...

Tasha (Turf to Surf)
 
#432 ·
I don't know for sure, but my guess is that if more American kids chose not to take out $100,000 in college loans to go to private universities and instead went to state schools for a quarter of the price and/or worked while they went to school, we'd see a lot more young people traveling and cruising in their twenties and thirties.

Just my two cents...

Tasha (Turf to Surf)
I went to a state college and graduated debt free thanks to the US Military. My father is medically retired out of the Navy and therefore paid for my education as a part of his benefits.

I do agree though. This economy does not help at all either
 
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