When we first decided to ardently go after our dream of living aboard, we wanted to take action right away. These were three of the things we were able to do with little investment and without a vessel. These activities provided us interaction with others who shared similar dreams and desires, and fanned the flame of our passion for reaching the final goal.
US Power Squadron We did our research and managed to get into the Boat Smart course right away. The US Power Squadron proved to be a fantastic way to get an education in most all aspects of boating, for a fraction of the cost of seminars or other training programs - and the certification they provide gave us a discount on our boat insurance. We signed up as active members and have so far completed the following courses: Boat Smart Seamanship Piloting Sail Weather There are still so many courses available. We highly recommend joining this organization and taking advantage of the great training. It is so important to be as knowledgeable as possible before you hit the high seas.	Amateur Radio License One undertaking was obtaining our Ham Radio licenses. Neither one of us was very motivated with this one, but we both understood how wonderful it is to be able to talk to, and e-mail far away family and friends for free. So we buckled down to the task in the winter of 2004. We first attempted to simply read the book in preparation for the test, but we soon discovered that almost anything would distract us from it. So I decided we should sign up for a class given by a local club - to force us to commit one night a week to the task. We persevered, and with the online help and the classes, we managed to get our technician licenses! We still need to continue on to obtain our General license to take advantage of the communication technology.
Seven Seas Cruising Association We joined the SSCA very early on. There are lots of publications out there, but this bulletin provides real information from real cruisers - good and bad. There is no advertising, so there is no conflict of interest. It was a wonderful way to gain insight on the realities of living aboard and cruising to help us decide that this was what we really wanted to do. We were also able to share the stories with family and friends who were totally unfamiliar with this lifestyle. It belayed their fears and helped them to understand that we were not going into this with some idealistic notions.
Copyright © 2007 Diana W Mulroy - SV Re Metau.  All rights reserved.