Dinghy Sailor looking for Keelboat Crewing Experience for Open Ocean Voyage
I grew up sailing intensively for our school in the UK, team racing 420 and Firefly dinghies twice weekly for five years in sun rain or snow, lulls or gales, and racing my Laser weekends at our local inland reservoir for many more years. My training reached the level of RYA Dinghy Instructor. After emigrating to the US to marry my wife and join her family in inland Georgia, I lost the opportunity to continue sailing, but after moving to coastal California a few years back I'm now excited to get back on the water again.
I'm particularly interested in learning and gaining experience as a keelboat crew for coastal and open ocean voyages. I am a whole Earth ecologist and poet advocating for the care and protection of Earth's sacred and crucially important life support systems - I studied Earth systems science, including oceanography and ecology - and I'm looking for a way to travel that's consistent with the values and ethics put forward in my poetry. I am planning a pilgrimage in 2025, crossing North America by foot and train while performing my poetry, then sailing across the Atlantic to visit family in Britain, starting in Kent then northwards to our ancestral home in the Scottish Lowlands.
I'm certainly a novice at keelboat crewing, on the coast or offshore, beyond all the inland dinghy sailing acumen that's in my bones. However I have also lived for the last 10 years in our small RV in quite a remote location, and some of the skills and life experience I have built up there also applies to yachting I would think. I am well used to living in small spaces, maintaining off-grid systems, provisioning for long trips away from stores, and cooking with dried goods such as beans and lentils - and I bake all my own bread!
Let me know if this sounds like a good fit for your voyage! Best wishes, David
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