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Guide to Sailing and Cruising Stories

ABOUT THIS SITE

Dickinson Marine Heaters


Site Contents:


New contributions and suggestions are always welcome.  

Mail to the Editor

http://cruisenews.net

The "old" motto back in 1998:

No java junk, no frames frustration, no animation aggravation.
Text, pictures and a ton of content.

About this site...

I enjoy reading stories of people who have had adventures in small boats.  My goal is to find the best sailing and cruising stories for this site.  First hand advice from someone who has experienced a cruising destination,  used and repaired a particular type of sailboat or equipment, or faced a certain danger is valuable to those planning to follow that course.  Perhaps the most important piece of information in these stories is that cruising is possible, and not really that difficult to accomplish if that is your goal.  

This site started as an attempt to keep track of my own favorite stories during a long Lake Michigan winter, and was set up with an obsolete no name 486DX40, 85 meg hard drive, 20 meg RAM electronics project which was cobbled together from bits and pieces discarded from mightier machines, originally running Windows 3.1 and Aolpress html editor. Crashes and human blunder have made keeping this page alive on the internet very interesting.  On-line since January of 1998, I have been enjoying the task of finding cruising adventure stories very much.

New contributions and suggestions are always welcome.  

 Paul VandenBosch, site editor. 

Some words to guide you in your quest to travel the world by sailboat:

"Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort."
Quote by Franklin Roosevelt

There is no question about it, people are happiest when they are on the road to accomplishment. Success is not a place, a title, or a destination but a journey to be savored along the way. Human beings are unique among all of the creatures on this earth because we are the only ones that can set goals, plan, and execute them.

In your life's experiences, haven't you been the happiest when you have been in pursuit of something meaningful in your life? If you think back on all of the accomplishments you have achieved, I bet it wasn't necessarily the attainment of the goal - its possession - which made you happy. Rather, it was THE PROCESS of achieving the goal - the hunt - that provided the anticipation, the excitement and the fulfillment in your life.

We are literally goal striving, accomplishment seeking, servomechanisms - we cannot help it, we have been engineered this way. Witness people without goals and the state of their attitudes - what they talk about and how they perceive the world - versus those who have direction in their lives. It goes without saying that people who are going somewhere in life tend to be happier than those without direction. This is one of the reasons why it is so vital to our outlook and attitude that we are continually setting new horizons to conquer.

Meaningful goals invigorate us, cause us to be more creative, and lift the bar on our self-esteem and self-expectancy. Having something worthwhile to challenge us makes us stronger, lifts us from the mundane, and makes us become better in the process.

A sailboat is a vehicle, not a destination. Choose a boat which gives you the best fit for what you plan to do, a boat whose compromises favor your planned use. Use the vehicle to visit a distant coast, to retrace the path of a hero, to visit an intriguing port, or to explore the wilderness. Enjoy planning your trip and creating your goals, the process of learning and defining what it is that fascinates you is essential to enjoying life.

Sailing, and especially offshore sailing gives you an environment to test your mettle. It provides you with new challenges to grow and to succeed. It gives you new horizons to strive for as you grow. As you look over all the choices and opportunities before you, focus on what you want and where you want to go and not on where you are or who you perceive yourself not to be.

The PROCESS is simple: Decide what you want. Set a Goal. Make a Plan. Take Action. Don't Give up.

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