Friends of ours are about to cut their docklines and start cruising, after years of preparation, and their excitement made me think back to our departure from the dock in June 2010 and the ensuing summer we had gunkholing around Vancouver Island. Good times.

It also made me think back to when we were preparing to leave. We would occasional met "doners" -- people who had gone cruising and returned. When it came up in conversation that the person I was talking to had been to the South Pacific, I would feel butterflies in my own stomach and start bubbling over with questions about the trip, the area, and their experiences. These people had crossed an ocean, visited South Pacific islands, on relatively small sailing yachts and I respected that (and still do).

Now that we are doing it, I look around and I think (with a sense of love and self-inclusion), we're just a bunch of yahoos out here. We learn as we go, sometimes fumble along, and we're having the time of our lives. Most of us sailing the South Pacific this year are not super salty, born sailors, but rather people who came late to the idea, have done our due diligence in preparation and are now out here winging it.

To me this is a very freeing thought. If cruising were a sport, the South Pacific would be one of the "just for fun" marathons. You have to prepare and take it seriously. You have to put in the time and put in the miles, but if you do, it is a trip that is accessible to the average person. You don't have to have superhuman powers like Lance Armstrong*, you just have to have the determination and commitment to make your way through a long series of to do lists.

Now, when I meet sailors who have done something that I feel is extra salty, for example the couple we met on the French flagged boat Eclipse who sailed to Antarctica, instead of letting the butterflies fly, I need to apply this same realization to the next level**. Baby steps...

*Perhaps the wrong time to make that comparison, n'est-ce pas?
**No, we aren't sailing to Antarctica...brrr!

There is a saying among pilots that "a superior pilot uses his superior judgment so he does not have to use his superior skills". The idea is that if you are regularly displaying super flying skills to pull yourself out of dangerous situations, you need to ask yourself why you keep getting into those situations. During a long conversation during our Marquesas passage, we changed the saying to fit sailors:

"A superior sailor uses her superior judgment so she does not have to use her superior skills and she uses uses her superior skills so she does not have to rely on her superior equipment."

The idea is that the first line of defense for keeping yourself and your boat safe should be good judgment. For example, in choosing the time of year to sail a particular ocean, or choosing a weather forecast for departure.

Often, even using good judgment, you will need to use your skills to keep yourself and your boat safe. For example, big squalls hit during a good weather forecast and you have enough observational weather skills to assess the weather on the horizon and reef down the boat.

When you get hit by something despite your judgment, and despite your skills (or in the case of failure at both, particularly while learning), you lean on your equipment. You start muttering to yourself "she's a strong boat, she's a strong boat" or "I'm glad I changed the rigging". For example, you are on a longer passage and a bad weather system overtakes you. You use your storm tactic skills but at the same time start praising Henri Wauquiez for building strong boats.

There is no such thing as risk free ocean voyaging. Actually, there is no such thing as risk free living. Even when we were commuting to work and living in a house we accepted the risk of driving on a freeway, the risk of forest fires, the risk of crazy violent people in our neighborhood. We all try to minimize our risk but we all choose a level of risk that we are comfortable with.

We have seen a lot of lightly built boats in the South Pacific. Every boat owner has to decide how much they want to have the strength of the boat backing their judgment and skills. It is quite a personal decision, cultural too in our experience, which depends on a lot of things including your own level of comfort with risk. We believe that with enough good judgment and skills, you can sail most boats across oceans by sailing them within their level of strength, as long as you are comfortable with the presumed risk. This combination is, we believe, how good captains can deliver lightly built boats across oceans. Of course, we feel more comfortable in a strong boat, but we chose a fin keel over a full keel despite the opinions propagated by desk cruisers on sailing forums. People say that you should have a full keel boat in case you hit a reef or hit a submerged container. We decided to work on our not-hitting-reef skills, to accept the risk of submerged containers (and carry a life raft), in order to have the fun of a boat that sails well in light air and points high.

Sometimes acceptance of risk means increased fun – that is the logic behind leaving our couches to go cruising, right?

If you look at this saying another way, it might be more important to prepare to go cruising by working on your judgment (learning about weather, learning what conditions your boat feels comfortable in so you know which to choose), and by working on your skills (what is your procedure for reefing your main downwind in big swells) than working on your boat.

We have never stayed in one place long enough to become a part of the local community until this portion of the trip. Through kiting we've made some strong connections with other kiters who have included us in their kiting lives and over time into their home lives. By being a regular presence, meandering about on foot, we have made friends with the shop keepers, the vegetable stand owners, and even found ourselves having beers with the local police. It is difficult to say goodbye to these people.

Everyone seems related to each other on an island and once we know a few people, we start to meet their cousins, brothers and sisters and those people, once the connection to their family member is revealed, welcome us even more than they already did when we were just a random stranger. When we move on to a new island, the people we met on the last island tell us to say hello to their friend/cousin/father and we arrive with a new set of connections already in place.

There comes a time, however, when we start to wonder if we've overstayed our welcome. The shop keepers, friendly as ever, say "you are still here?". We reach the point where we wonder if we have transitioned in their eyes from visitor to "possible new inhabitant" and now they must start to evaluate whether we will be good to live with, whether we will pose a problem for limited resources, etc. We always try to tread lightly but in a small island community every visitor has an impact for good or for bad no matter how lightly they tread.

At that point, we look around at the paradise we are inhabiting, the world class kiting we are enjoying and the friends we have made and think "why would we ever leave?". We leave in part because we have a fear of getting stuck somewhere, as cruisers sometimes happily do, and are inherently wary of becoming too comfortable in a spot. Oh, and we leave to avoid hurricanes. Beyond fear, we leave because part of the reason we voyage is adventure and settling down in one spot too long is not part of that for us right now. We also start to miss sailing itself. Despite our comfort, we start to feel strong urges to pull the anchor, raise the sails, set a course and make new landfalls.

For me, cruising is a delicate balance between comfort and novelty seeking. For me, comfort = reduced anxiety, reduced excitement and novelty = increased excitement, increased anxiety. Because we voyage with our home, I have more creature comforts than I would if I traveled with a backpack. I can take a day to relax inside my comfortable, no-longer-novel home instead of exploring. I can use that chill day to reset my internal gyros and gather energy to enjoy my new backyard. When we are in a place for a long time, I have the additional comfort of knowing the town, seeing the same people, having a handle on the resources and options for play. But, too much comfort, too much settling into the community eliminates the reasons that we personally chose this lifestyle: the excitement of travel. We want new experiences, to see new sights and cultures. So we set aside the comfort we have established, and sail on to a novel place.