Back in the day, Sass heard an expression from people tired on the job, saying something like they wished they could “sail to Tahiti”.
So, for a complete beginner, with no experience of Sailing, how difficult would it be for someone to 1) Buy a sailboat, and 2) learn to sail good enough, and then 3) actually sail to Tahiti?
How do you know what size and type of boat is needed to survive on the open ocean? How much do they cost? How do they navigate–GPS? What if they don’t have GPS, do people still use sextants? Compasses?
I think Step 2 is the key one. The difference between a successful and unsuccessful sail to Tahiti is probably going to be how much experience the sailor has.
We took our ASA (American Sailing Association) bareboat sailing license last fall in Mexico. It took 8 days of study and practical and I still don’t know if I’d feel comfortable buying a boat just yet.
There are a number of things you need to know other then just ‘how to sail’. You need to know basic maintenance, radio procedure, docking procedure, safety requirements, how to read a map (very important one), night navigation, how to read the water, how to deal if you get caught in bad weather, how to do a man overboard maneuver, how to change the sails in the open water, how to do an emergency stop, what the various coloured pylons and signs mean, I could go on and on.
There are differing techniques depending on if you have a head or tail wind, different sails depending on the wind.
I mean really, you could do it, I just don’t think it would be a very pleasant or safe trip.
ETA: On re-reading the OP, if you successfully learn to sail, go for it, but learning to sail can take years, and I really recommend a course.
Anyway, you certainly shouldn’t do what you’re proposing. You really have to have quite a bit of experience under your belt before you attempt the open Pacific.
I don’t know much about sailing but until someone who does comes along I’d hazard the guesses:
It’ll be easy to buy the appropriate boat if you have the money. But the distance from California to Tahiti is 4000 miles of open ocean. I suspect that even for an expert that would be a dangerous journey requiring a huge amount of training, preparation and contingency plans for the whole host of things that could go wrong.
There are people who sail around the whole world in those kind of boats so it must be comfortably possible just to go to Tahiti, but unless you really were an expert with years of experience and did a lot of preparation it’d be too dangerous to contemplate that kind of journey.
If you have a lot of money you could buy a boat with GPS that steers the boat. Of course there is still a lot of danger with big storms to worry about or equipment failures.
No, you really couldn’t. It’s not that easy with a sailboat. The best an autohelm will do for you is keep the bow pointed in the right direction. As soon as you have to trim the sails or tack, you’d have to reset it. If you didn’t now how to sail, an autohelm would be virtually useless much of the time.
Buy a bunch of books on how to sail. Head immediately south to the Intertropical Convergence Zone (aka the doldrums). Read up. If you die a miserable death before you get there and have the chance to read up, that’s the risk you took. Plenty of people have learned on the fly.
Yeah, a boat that actually exists would probably be better suited to the purposes of a beginner sailor bound for Tahiti.
A fully automated sailboat has been talked about for quite some time, and is something that will probably be here eventually. However, it isn’t something you can just go out and buy.
