When we set out for our first year of cruising, we felt that we were as prepared as any couple could be. We’d taken dozens of boating classes and read every book on cruising that we could get our hands on. There are just some things that you learn best by doing. Here are some things we learned that might be helpful:

Other Cruisers – Imagine a small, friendly town that spans and circles the globe, and is constantly shifting its location and population. That pretty much describes the cruising community. Although we tend to cruise by ourselves, we discovered that we got lonely once in a while. We found out how enjoyable it is to meet and learn from other cruisers. Everyone is so willing to share what they know. We have made some life-long friendships.

Boat Cards – Because you are constantly meeting new people, Boat Cards with your names and other contact information are essential. After our first year, we printed two-sided cards with a picture of the boat and a picture of us. We also included mailing address, email address, website, Jim’s HAM call sign, and our cell phone number. We also found out you can have the cards printed on the internet for much less than it costs to print them yourself.

Happy Hours – If you are in an area with a lot of other boaters, you can get so caught up in nightly Happy Hours that you end up subsiding on snacks instead of real dinners. We still enjoy occasional Happy Hours, but have found that it worked best for us to have our dinner first and then socialize for awhile after we’d eaten. Because everyone’s food and beverage inventories are limited, it is customary to always bring your own beverage when invited over to another boat. Our friends on Veranda used large insulated cups (equipped with lids and drinking straws) to carry their evening’s worth of mixed drinks or wine. We’re going to copy their idea next year.

Radio – We had no idea how important our SSB (Single Side-band) and VHF (Very-high Frequency) radios would become in our daily lives. We clustered around our speaker and microphone, much the same as our parents gathered around the radio for news and entertainment in their youth. We scheduled our morning activities around weather reports and cruiser nets. Our ears perked up when we heard the name of a familiar boat over the air and we frequently listened in on the “party line” when two other boats were talking to each other (Everyone does it, they just don’t always admit it). Our radio gives us added safety and it provides a link to the rest of the world, allowing us to send and receive emails from even the most remote location.

Clearing customs – We organized all our vessel and crew documents in a notebook: Boat documentation and registration papers, passports, kitty import papers, insurance policies, Coast Guard inspection reports, and our cruising permit. It not only makes it easier to clear customs, it’s is also handy for registering with foreign marinas. The marinas always ask to see your cruising permit and your insurance documents. We can’t be sure, but we think our organized notebook helped us to get a 12 month cruising permit and a six-month visa when we first checked into Bahamas. We also had a very easy time clearing through customs and immigration when we returned to the United States. We purchased our customs decal ($27.50) on line and registered for the Local Boaters Option that allows you to clear US customs over the telephone. Before leaving Fort Lauderdale for the Bahamas, we met with US Customs officials and each received a boater registration number. When we returned to the US, we dialed the phone number we’d been given, read our registration numbers, and answered a couple of questions – that was it!

Bring Money – Unless you plan to spend all your time in Nassau or Georgetown, there are very few ATMs or banks in the Bahamas; many of the smaller Island businesses do not accept credit cards. Bring plenty of cash. US and Bahama dollars are on par and are used interchangeably.

Security – We were a little nervous about carrying cash on the boat; but the Bahamas are very safe. We didn’t hear of a single instance of theft, except for Nassau and Marsh Harbor where a couple of dinghies “went missing”.

Anchoring – We heard all sorts of stories about anchoring difficulties and initially had some problems ourselves. Our CQR 45 works great in the muddy anchorages along the ICW, but is nearly worthless in the hard packed sand of the Bahamas. We ended up using our Fortress 55 and came up with a process that seemed to work pretty well. Once we’d set our anchor, one of us would dive into the water with snorkel and mask to check it visually, and push the anchor in deeper, if need be.

Wine, liquor, cigarettes, and cigars – We’d always heard that rum was very inexpensive in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, but in the smaller settlements, everything is expensive. Only in the larger towns - Nassau, Georgetown, Marsh Harbor, Long Island - is wine and liquor cheaper than the US. For example we paid $7 for a 40-oz. bottle of rum in one place and less than $5 for French wine when we bought it by the case. Box wine does not exist in the Bahamas – anywhere. Cigarettes are about the same price as Maryland ($$$$); and cigars (particularly Cuban) were far too expensive for our tastes.

Provisioning – As we were stocking up with six months of provisions last fall, people kept reminding us that they do have food in the Bahamas. That is very true, but supplies are limited and expensive in most of the smaller islands and we didn’t want to be constantly looking for groceries. We are fortunate to have ample storage lockers and a large freezer, so we stocked up on frozen and canned meats, pastas, rice, other staples and household goods. For the most part, our local purchases were limited to fresh seafood, produce, and eggs. Most of the time, we baked our own bread. We’ve learned to keep our eyes open for products that don’t require refrigeration; such as Parmalat UHT milk, Hormel Pre-cooked Bacon, Pepperoni slices, Brinkman Farms canned meats, and New Zealand Canned Butter. If you have special dietary needs, young children or pets, you’d be well-advised to stock up on those things while you’re in the States. There were only two places where we found cat food – and it wasn’t the brand that our finicky cats enjoy. Canned and dry dog foods were a little more common place. Fortunately, you can purchase canned tuna everywhere and that works in a pinch. We didn’t see cat litter anywhere. How did I plan what to bring? I started by figuring that we’d be gone 6 months (26 weeks) (about 182 days). I started with breakfast and estimated how many times a week we had eggs, how many times we had cereal, etc., and how much of everything was in a serving. For example, if the two of us had eggs twice a week with Jim having two eggs and me having one; then we’d need a carton of eggs every two weeks. I stocked up with some eggs and egg beaters when we left the Chesapeake, but also planned to purchase fresh eggs along the way. I did the same with lunches and with dinners. I built in one lunch out per week; one dinner of fresh-caught fish; and one dinner in a restaurant. I figured out how many beverages we usually drank per day and planned for a snack for each of us. I recorded it all on a simple spreadsheet and then built a shopping list from that. The method worked well enough that I’m using the same list as a starting point next year.

Navigator's Logbook - A small notebook, kept in the cockpit, was just the ticket for recording departure location, departure time, mileage, destination, arrival time, where we anchored, and interesting events during the day. I'd transcribe everything into a spread sheet every so often. At the end of our first year, I printed the spreadsheet. It is so handy to have as a reference, particularly going down the ICW.

We learned so many more things our first year that we ended up posting our experiences to our website (www.nancyjim.org) and untimately compiling them into a book about Sailing Solitaire from New England to the Bahamas.

The most important Lesson Learned - Get out there and do it. You won't regret it.