I have been known to extol the virtues of group cruising… well, ad nauseam. I’m still doing it, but it’s not for lack of new ideas. My inspiration to raise the topic this month is precisely the opposite—cruising in a group for the umpteenth glorious time recently has once again delivered me a fresh perspective.
In August, I had the good fortune to lead our annual 48° North Cruising Rally. As always, it was a truly great time with remarkable people, and I’ll share more of that story next month.
For now, I want to elaborate on a takeaway from this trip, one that’s sticker in my reflection than expected. It has to do with cruisers’ relative risk tolerance, and the ways we learn from one another. If you’re lucky enough to share a watery path with another boat or two or ten for a while, there’s a something beautiful in exchanging, considering, and balancing different “default” settings when safely navigating the world of seamanship.
Any group of boaters traveling together brings varied experience. Even lifelong sailing pals wind up with divergent boating backgrounds and mindsets. I’ve long promoted cruising together (and our rally specifically) as a rewarding opportunity for direct information interchange. But the practice of evaluating plans, conditions, and anchorage choices in respectful community is subtler, almost incidental. You get a window into another person’s approach to a cruising puzzle you may have been solving in a different way for decades. There are scenarios with a binary right or wrong choice, yet my time on the water suggests we’re mostly dealing in slight shades of correctness or misstep.
The foundation, of course, is trust. That’s why the stranger swinging on the hook next to you won’t move the needle of influence too much; you have no cause for faith in their wisdom. On the other hand, when you have even a small base of shared experience—and especially a measure of admiration for someone as a person and a mariner—it’s surprisingly impactful to observe their decision calculus unfold in reality. When a cruising compatriot says, “I’m going to stay on this side of these rocks,” or “I think I’ll anchor over here instead,” or “Are we concerned about this northerly?”—it might slip by like flotsam in your wake, or it could infiltrate your read of a situation and leave you asking what was missing in your own evaluation. Most often, it’s unspoken; a glance at what your cruising buddies are doing. In that simple look is an opportunity to learn so much; about cruising, about them, and about yourself.
One reason why I got to ruminate on this so much is that all aspects of the trip were blissfully smooth. I’ve led plenty of trips when some fire (thankfully not literally) burns hotter and requires an outsized proportion of my attention. Everything went so well with this special group of rally-goers that I had the bandwidth and brain space to dwell on the subtleties—what luxury!
In line with the success of this trip, and in the interest of clarification, there wasn’t an iota of conflict in this tangible or tacit dialogue of discretion within our group. It’s just a notable component of blending cruising styles, skills, and histories into a single collective adventure. Personally, I find it unendingly enriching to lean-in to a fellow cruiser’s point of view, their unique barometer for “this feels risky,” or “relax, it’s going to be fine.” Somewhere in there is a refinement of my own seamanship just waiting to be logged for a more prudent future.
I always leave these trips with renewed appreciation for both these cruising grounds and this cruising community, and that’s never been more true than this year.
Joe Cline
Joe Cline has been the Managing Editor of 48° North since 2014. From his career to his volunteer leadership in the marine industry, from racing sailboats large and small to his discovery of Pacific Northwest cruising —Joe is as sail-smitten as they come. Joe and his wife, Kaylin, have welcomed a couple of beautiful kiddos in the last few years, and he is enjoying fatherhood while still finding time to make a little music and even occasionally go sailing.
