Korea, Japan, china, etc

[Scot McPherson]

Dan, what do or did you do for a living?

[Ex-Calif]

Originally Posted by Scot McPherson

Dan, what do or did you do for a living?

Commercial Aviation on the Engineering & Maintenance end.

[Scot McPherson]

Oh fun, I did avionics for the navy 25 someodd years ago. Ended up in IT and then project management and now compliance.

[SariTimur]

Scott,

We here Korea is opening up nicely. But still some paperwork challenges. The currents are a bit strong as well. But we have heard a couple of years back from a friend of ours in Singapore that over 30 marina are planned for Korea for fast track development. Apparently the officials there say golfing was relatively rare there thirty years ago when they put this kind of funding development in then. They now want to start with yachting. They had two teams here during the Snipe worlds so looks like they are moving forward.

Dan,

It would be nice if we spoke some Japanese. But we are managing. There is usually someone around to help.

[Scot McPherson]

I was wondering if a language barrier was part of why you don't hear much about east Asian cruising.

I presume the reason why the round the world track speak western languages is due to it being on the round the world route.

[Yowieboy]

Just to disperse the notion that there are no sailboats in Japan, here's a pic of the anchorage where I spent last night. It's at the end of a quite deep bay near the southern tip of the Miura peninsula, about two hours from Tokyo. There's a marina at the very end, and some buoys before that which are for emergency use (sheltering from typhoons and such) put there by the local admin, ostensibly forbidden to cruisers but many people (including myself) use them at normal times for a brief stay.



And just round the corner, there's a very posh marina with a somewhat misleading name...



With a few strokes of the paddle, we encounter another mooring field, one of several more in this area.



This is a region with a traditionally high level of boating activity (for Japanese standards), since it's fairly close to the capital and has some nice bays and such. However, I would wager that only about ten percent or so of these boats are being regularly used (which of course is true also of many other marinas around the world).

[Yowieboy]

Probably obvious, but I meant to say "dispel the notion" rather than "disperse"...

And I might have a few more pics to post, but first I gotta sail back from Miura to my home port on the Chiba side, across the always busy Uraga strait (entrance and exit point to all the shipping in the greater Tokyo/Yokohama/Chiba area). I've done it a fair number of times now, but there's always some excitement and the realization of how difficult it is to judge the speed and course of the myriad vessels large and small plying these waters (AIS would be nice, but my mini cruiser isn't quite there yet).

[bona2]

Yowie boy, may I ask where are you heading.

[Yowieboy]

Originally Posted by bona2

Yowie boy, may I ask where are you heading.

Nowhere in particular, unfortunately, at least at the moment. I am a land-based weekend sailor, only using my 21-ft boat for short trips of at most a few days, often just daysails or as a base for swimming/snorkeling and general lazing about. I do enjoy it a lot, though.

(My tagline is not to be taken literally...)

[Yowieboy]

This may not be of great interest to anybody, but here are a few more pics of yacht-filled marinas and mooring fields, all within spitting distance of each other, on the Miura peninsula close to Tokyo.









Bengel back in home waters

[Evan Burkosky]

Thanks primarily to the information shared in this thread by Yowieboy, I've recently found reasonably priced moorage and purchased a sailboat here in Japan. She's a Sparkman & Stephens 30, and I'm detailing the process of restoring her on my blog here: Sparkman & Stephens 30' Restoration – The ongoing saga….

I hope to have her in the water by spring, so if anyone's in the Tokyo area and would like to sail together or come along as crew, please send me a message!

[Sandibar]

If anyone's interested there's a cruising book called Tighdwads on the Loose

The author sails to Hong Kong & Japan. If I remember correctly it's a decent read, better than most of the self-published cruising memoirs. Then again I read it a few years ago.

Agree about China, give it a miss, except Hong Kong. Never saw recreational boats on the water, except lakes (also spent some quality time at a local lake based "yacht club"). That was some years ago as well, so maybe it has changed..