Armchair sailing

I mentioned before that I enjoy the Furled Sails podcasts. I was intrigued by the one I listened to today about the Atlantic InterCoastal Waterway caught my attention. The idea of taking a sailing boat on inland waterways from Boston to Florida is an intriguing one. Having spent several family holidays in the Outer Banks soaking up the history of shipwrecks along the Carolina coasts, I can see the attractions of missing that part of the ocean trek south although I'm not sure how much sailing you'd get in. Even if you join the AIW in Norfolk, Virginia , it would still be 1,200 miles which could be a lot of motoring in a small boat! The podcast was an interview with the authors of the Managing the Waterways books which sound like just the thing if you wanted to do this trip. Other interesting resources were here , here and here .

Once the boat is decided (an eternal process, of course), the next issue is to decide where to go to and from. My favourite resource for this is the encyclopaedic World Cruising Routes by Jimmy Cornell. If you wish you were sitting in San Diego, wanting to sail to Hawaii and on from their to Guam and Hong Kong, it can tell you when the winds and currents will be in your favour and, just as importantly, when the weather won't. Endless dipping-in fun. The next one on my wish list is the companion volume, the World Cruising Handbook . This tells you more about what to do when you get there. Noonsite is the related web site which includes updates and corrections to the World Cruising Handbook.