Sorry, no gear or gadgets today. I was reading a thread entitled “Ideal Cruising” over at C-Brats, the online community for C-Dory owners. As a new C-Dory owner myself, I’ve still got a lot to learn about these great little boats.

Anyway, in this particular thread, Pat Anderson said a lot that I can really relate to. Remember, C-Dories are smaller, outboard-powered boats that are cruised inshore, almost (but not quite) exclusively. There are extremely shoal, ideal for exploring coastline almost as you would in a dinghy or kayak. So for this discussion, “cruising” does NOT mean multi-day bluewater passagemaking, OK?

“Ideal cruising would start for me with unlimited time. A month, three, six—hard dates where we ‘have’ to be somewhere are just not ideal.

“Ideal cruising would have zero or very few miles of running just to get from somewhere to where the good cruising ’starts.’

“Ideal cruising would be about exploration, not covering miles. Set the RPMs at 2800 on the BF150, and let the speed float with the current and wind; 5 – 7 knots. It is good to know that we CAN boost it up if need be, but most of the time, what is the need?

“Ideal cruising would let us cover maybe 30 NM per day, arrive in time to enjoy the anchorage and explore the shore in many varied places.

“Ideal cruising would let us stay anywhere we really liked as long as we felt like it.

“Time is not unlimited, so we will have to compromise. A week, two weeks, four days, a weekend—I think we are going to slow down and scale back our ambitions a bit.”

That’s just what I’ve been thinking! I would love to be able to just meander in my little boat, with no real schedule or itinerary. But it’s difficult, for some reason, to make this happen. When I analyze the issue, though, I realize something: Mostly, I think the difficulty is in my mind. If I’ve got a three-day weekend, I start thinking “How far can I get?” instead of “Maybe I’ll finally explore that nearby estuary in detail.”

Pat’s right, time is not unlimited. But that doesn’t mean we can’t scale our ambitions in such a way that we create the sort of cruising experiences we dream about. Right here, right now, with the boat we’ve got.