What kind of cruiser are you?Which of these 4 groups do you belong to?

Do you know what one of the few best things about a sailing vacation is? Dreaming of and planning a boating vacation as the days begin to lengthen and summer begins to seem closer. But proceeding slowly, I have tried to put down a psychological profile of the sailor-nautical cruiser, between phenomenology and psychological profiling, dividing the types into four groups. I will tell you right away that the truly favored group is number two…. The categories identify those who this year: 1. They will go on a cruise in their own boat. 2. They will go on a cruise in other people’s boat. 3. If they rent it out. 4. They think about it every year but then end up in the vacation village with the family or, even worse, on cruise ships.

GROUP 1 – On my boat

The first universal law, if you have a boat of your own, goes something like this, “If you planned your Aegean vacation, because, as you had declared to friends on New Year’s Eve, ‘This year I’m taking the long vacation and the Greek islands are done by boat mica by ferry like the losers…. on the other hand you only live once, we have to realize what makes us happy,’ you will end up together with 70 percent of the Tyrrhenian nautical population (the Adriatic is another matter) with a week or maximum 10 days available between Corsica and Sardinia at the turn of August.”
Coming out: that was me on New Year’s Eve.
Second coming out: yes, of course I am going on a cruise vacation right around mid-August between Corsica and Sardinia.

GROUP 2 – On the boat of others

I feel toward this category of people a pure, crystalline envy. As in, all the wonders, the poetry of a vacation in the middle of the sea without the reality principle. That is, that persistent and continuous feeling that, as your guests sip their aperitifs, reminds you of the bills you paid to get there, but most of all that clear feeling that reminds you that sooner or later something that didn’t break during the year when you had all the suppliers, including the mechanic, within reach of the dock will break. In fact, the second law, even more universal than the first, says that if something has to break it will choose that very week when you are finally there happy and still unsuspecting with your family. In short, a nice sum of Murphy’s famous law and the lesser-known Cassandra syndrome in which prophecies of doom are self-fulfilling. This is of course after you have spent the year extolling at home the robustness/safety of your creature even to justify cash outlays under the heading “Love is maintenance and prevention, so then we can rest easy.” Moreover, this italic custom of closing all assistance in August is really nonsensical, it would be like closing fishmongers during lean days…. But that’s another matter.””

GROUP 3 – Charterers

On this category of people, I allow myself without judging to flaunt a certain slight and superficial feeling of superiority: it is true that, as the wise man says, in the end with the average cost of just the berth, equipment and insurance of a 12-meter (so without even having left the dock) you can afford two weeks choosing exotic destinations and the comfort of a catamaran … a total freedom without constraints and thoughts.
But do you want to put, I say as an owner in love with his own boat, the feeling of knowing it at every moment of your existence (for better or for worse as they say elsewhere), at the dock waiting faithfully for you to go out to sea with friends or crewmates without needing any notice?
Paraphrasing a phrase from the anarchist philosopher Elbert Hubbard (“If life brings you lemons at hand, you make lemonade”) one might venture a “if life brings you sea and wind, you make sail.”
Sometimes you just have to forget about it and go up by letting go of your moorings alone or even better with friends from your crew.

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GROUP 4 – Even today I am going on a cruise tomorrow.

This is a very crowded category.
Here are the most classic excuses for ending up elsewhere, maybe on a cruise but on a ship, or in a vacation resort: “My husband/wife doesn’t want to,” “the boat bends,” “the boat gets wet (spoiler for the inattentive: it stays at sea),” “I don’t know then who to have drive it, “then you have to pull the ropes it gets hard,” “let’s go to the mountains,” “let’s go on a cruise ship so we can enjoy the sea but be more comfortable.”
And here without pulling too much rope I would stop, not to go too far and fall into insults!