Bumfuzzles Are On The Move and Sailing

[scoobert]

Originally Posted by Banjo

Nautical terms. Who cares.

shhhhhhh someone will make me "walk the plank" if i use the term ropes again. they are sheets and lines. lol, they are still rope to me.

[Unicorn Dreams]

Don't forget they're rodes also...

[CSY Man]

This thing about sailing with no "experience". Lets not confuse experience with "ability". I have come across lots of folk with tons of experience, yet they are pretty useless when it comes to basic sailing ability. I've gone offshore with rookies, but they had the ability to grasp sailing within an hour.

Agree, been there, done that:

Bought my first sailboat when I was in my 20s, a 44' Bermuda Racer and had never sailed in my life before.
Other folks at the liveaboard marina thought I was some kind of nut-case.
Thought myself to sail by putting up one sail at the time, let the boat move, then trim this way or that, finally got the basics down.
Somebody told me about reefing early and I followed the advice ever since. (After I asked what reefing is how to do it)
Figured out on my own to stay away from other boats and stay away from reefs and shallows.
Back in the 80s, before GPS that was fairly easy with a paper chart.

I have always taken my hat off to the Bumfuzzles for "just doing it", no Phd needed to sail a boat and stay out of trouble.

[scoobert]

i read their blog due to the fact i was about to do the same thing. i had considered sail school, and then i dismissed it. no point in paying big bucks to sail a dingy about the harbor. i will be setting out in oct/nov to go south, i will do it via the ocean, not the ICW, and will have learned much before landing in FL.

[avb3]

Originally Posted by scoobert

i read their blog due to the fact i was about to do the same thing. i had considered sail school, and then i dismissed it. no point in paying big bucks to sail a dingy about the harbor. i will be setting out in oct/nov to go south, i will do it via the ocean, not the ICW, and will have learned much before landing in FL.

I hope we don't read of you as a statistic. I am no expert, having only crewed on a sailboat with a friend of Vancouver Island's inside passage, but if you have no experience at all, that is a scary route your taking.

Read up on it, there are lots of comments here. You need to get outside of the gulf stream, which can put you a ways out into the ocean. If you try and go down the coastline, there is a reason some of it is known as the "grave yard of the Atlantic".

I am a pretty adventurous guy, and will do and have done a lot of things others thought were risky. Get to know your boat, do the ICW, and then learn off the coast of Florida. And you know, a few lessons won't hurt. Perhaps ASA 104 after you are in Florida?

Good luck. If you choose the Atlantic route, please make sure you have a certified life raft, and at least an EPIRB aboard.

Your not a small guy (I am 4 inches taller, but 70 lbs less in weight) so the question becomes will you be in physical shape to do this by yourself.

Sorry, but this is just scary, or am I the only one that thinks this way?

[VirtualVagabond]

Originally Posted by Doodles

At least they had the good sense not to sail off in one of those multihull things like those Polynesia crazies.

That's a bit harsh Doodles. Try to be a little understanding. Some folk need 2 little hulls... just don't have the confidence to manage with only one good one

[scoobert]

Originally Posted by avb3

I hope we don't read of you as a statistic. I am no expert, having only crewed on a sailboat with a friend of Vancouver Island's inside passage, but if you have no experience at all, that is a scary route your taking.

Read up on it, there are lots of comments here. You need to get outside of the gulf stream, which can put you a ways out into the ocean. If you try and go down the coastline, there is a reason some of it is known as the "grave yard of the Atlantic".

I am a pretty adventurous guy, and will do and have done a lot of things others thought were risky. Get to know your boat, do the ICW, and then learn off the coast of Florida. And you know, a few lessons won't hurt. Perhaps ASA 104 after you are in Florida?

Good luck. If you choose the Atlantic route, please make sure you have a certified life raft, and at least an EPIRB aboard.

Your not a small guy (I am 4 inches taller, but 70 lbs less in weight) so the question becomes will you be in physical shape to do this by yourself.

Sorry, but this is just scary, or am I the only one that thinks this way?

i read a book, forget the name, said the best way to learn is to go to the worst conditions you can find. train yourself there. then when you encounter them again, you are calm, having done this before. i have been out in short 6-8' seas off Nantucket in my 25' 4000# boat. it was no picnic, but i did learn quite a bit in half a day of that. including what following seas were.

(i always thought my sticker on the boat got cut off, the trim tabs say "do not use in following seas." i thought there was a list below that was missing. )
you learn quick out there, i learned the hard way in a hurricane in the same boat the second week i had it. but now i am talking about a boat 4X the size, and 8X the weight, i don't think i will be phased in 6-8' seas. doing it simply to learn. but then lesson one might to be bringing the boat home from the Caribbean the first week....

[Therapy]

OH how this new adventure of theirs is going to give some real insight to those mono vs cat arguments.

I can't wait to hear what someone with real experience has to say.

let's give it 6 months or a year and see.

I can wait that long before reading more of the slamming (heh) from one side and then the other.

[avb3]

Originally Posted by scoobert

i read a book, forget the name, said the best way to learn is to go to the worst conditions you can find. train yourself there. ....

Best of luck and hopefully you can let us know how it went.

[avb3]

Originally Posted by Therapy

OH how this new adventure of theirs is going to give some real insight to those mono vs cat arguments.

I can't wait to hear what someone with real experience has to say.

let's give it 6 months or a year and see.

I can wait that long before reading more of the slamming (heh) from one side and then the other.

I thought only cats slammed?

[scoobert]

Originally Posted by avb3

Best of luck and hopefully you can let us know how it went.

don't worry, i am bringing robot chicken to watch on the way.

[Weyalan]

I read the entire original Bumfuzzle blog about their circumnavigation in their catamaran. sure; there were things that they did or said that frustrated me (their almost pilgrimage-like search for american style fast food, for example). But they were also inspirational in that tehy got our there and did it. They lived their dream and they achieved their goals. Good on them. Their faults (and who doesn't have faults) were, for mine, the typical faults of their generation...

Their positives far outweight their negatives for me.

[TaoJones]

Originally Posted by Therapy

OH how this new adventure of theirs is going to give some real insight to those mono vs cat arguments.

I can't wait to hear what someone with real experience has to say.

let's give it 6 months or a year and see.

I can wait that long before reading more of the slamming (heh) from one side and then the other.

Other than this coastal cruise from San Francisco down to Puerto Vallarta (where their obstetrician resides), I'm not sure Pat and Ali will have much more to say about the differences between their Wildcat and the Spindrift than they've already put in their blog. Once they reach PV, they won't be doing much sailing for awhile. When Ali delivers the new baby, I imagine they'll be dock-bound for at least several months . . . maybe a year or more.

They love Mexico (and by the way, Pat has a cast iron stomach and eats local fare wherever they travel - the hotter, the better), so other than cruising the Mexican west coast and possibly Central America, I don't believe there will be any long boring passages any time soon. I could be wrong, though . . . if the fancy strikes, they could be off on another circumnavigation before the newest little Bum is even walking.

They are adventurers, after all.

TaoJones

[Jim Cate]

Well OK, having now read some 100+ comments on the BFs I have some feel for the things that lead to their general bashing. I don't agree with a lot of the comments, but that's ok too.

Now they are off on a new adventure. Why don't we all just sit tight and see what a few more years of maturity and a few more thousand miles under their keel will do for them. Dumping on them for what they did or didn't do years ago is kinda silly IMO.

As far as I am concerned they deserve as much respect as any other cruiser who is actually out cruising whether or not one agrees with all their philosophies.

Cheers

[Bash]

Originally Posted by scoobert

shhhhhhh someone will make me "walk the plank" if i use the term ropes again. they are sheets and lines. lol, they are still rope to me.

It's all rope until you give it a job, at which point it becomes a line.

There are many sorts of lines, including: halyards, sheets, whips (ie fender whips), gaskets (better known these days as "sail ties), vangs, rodes (not always made of rope), preventers, hauls (ie downhauls, outhauls), lifts (ie topping lifts, boom lifts), or just plain lines (ie dock lines or furling lines.)

The one rope that never becomes a line is the the rope you use to ring your bell.

The place where you keep spare line is still rightfully called a "rope locker."