Further reading:

Overnighting on your boat

The Overnight Guest

Keeping a Watch Schedule

 

The overnight guest

When you introduce novices to sailing overnight (i.e. cruising) it pays to do a little advance preparation.

An interesting lesson we learned is that if you tell people what to expect in advance, they'll be pleasantly surprised by the experience. If you don't prepare them, they'll be full of trepidation about the unknown. We can tell you from experience that the more you share about what to expect, the better preapred your novice crew will be and the more excited they will be about the experience.

Of course it helps to choose people who are likely to have a good attitude no matter what happens (attitude = the difference between ordeal and adventure, according to our guru Bob Bitchin of Cruising Outpost).

Here are a couple of little resources we've developed that might come in handy. The first is a primer about what to expect that you can send in advance to will make it easy for your guests to prepare. The second is an instruction sheet we encase in plastic and post in the head for all to reference. Feel free to adopt these for your own use. And do introduce new people to sailing. It's the only way to keep the spirit going and demyth the whole thing about it being a rich man's sport.

• What to expect from an overnight of sailing
• Instructions for use of the head