While southbound cruisers like this one can pack a lot of spares on board, without an automobile hanging off the davits, getting around town can be a time consuming affair.

I was running late to meet a friend the other day, and apologized when I finally arrived, explaining that I’d been out on an errand. I’d recently met a couple who were cruising their way back to the Pacific Northwest who were temporarily docked in our marina and obviously without a car. With a free hour on my hands, I’d volunteered to save them the all afternoon bus ride by driving them to pick up some prescriptions, but it had taken a little longer than I’d counted on. “No problem,” my friend answered, “You’re just building up some good cruising karma.”

He would know—a veteran of cruising the East Coast and the Caribbean, he’s familiar with the particulars of arriving in a foreign place with no land transportation. I, on the other hand, have mainly played the opposite role: the guy with the car, called upon to drive to get ice, or medicine, or act as taxi to the local internet café. There’s a certain symbiosis between the cruiser and the locals, and I’m hoping to bank enough cruising karma points that when I do set off for a far-off port, maybe there’ll be some good luck coming my way.

I enjoy trips out to the Channel Islands, and up and down the California coast, but sometimes feel that I am a long way away from being able to throw off the dock lines and go cruising for long periods.

My first real exposure to the cruising lifestyle was from land, on the Mexican west coast, where I rented a small beachfront house. My little pickup truck packed with essentials carried me from a harsh Minnesota winter to a sunny beach near Barra de Navidad, Jalisco, a popular destination for cruising boats. I had a trailerable boat (unfairly left to suffer the brutal winter alone), but at that time, owning an ocean-ready cruiser seemed a remote possibility.

I was sitting at a palapa restaurant on the beach one afternoon when a Balboa 26 sailed in close, luffed up, and anchored. The skipper casually tossed a cooler off the transom, jumped in after it, and began to push the floating cooler through the water toward the sandy shore. He carried the cooler into the restaurant, where it was filled with beer and ice. On his way back to the strand, I commented on the simplicity of his well-practiced provisioning ritual. He invited me to swim out to the boat, and tack her around the bay. This afternoon led to a winter of crewing on his boat, sailing every day the wind would let us.

Evidence that landside assistance is needed--only while cruising could you find yourself walking around town in another country carrying a marine toilet on your head.

Sailing that boat was my first off-shore experience, and I was hooked. We’d sail up the coast to Tenacatita Bay, or to a little cove in between that required local knowledge to avoid a few rocky areas. In the evenings, we’d have dinner or drinks in local places, and eventually got to know some of the cruisers. Invitations to dinghy out or even have dinner on board would follow, affording me an up-close view of some magnificent boats. Although I’d sailed for years, being aboard these boats that were actually cruising and listening to the owners’ tales of their voyages was a whole new level, and surely fostered the idea that I would be able to do this myself.

I soon found that a pickup truck can make you a popular guy in a fairly remote anchorage. There were always errands to run on land, and garbage bags, water jugs, cases of beer, propane tanks, and even a basset hound all found their way across my tailgate. Lending a little landside assistance to these sailors was a cheap price to pay for the experience and lessons about the realities of cruising.

After I’d been back in the states a few years, I found myself living aboard a 26-foot Columbia in southern California. Not exactly a cruising boat, she was still bigger than my previous trailer-sailor and a capable ocean vessel. Living aboard brought me once again in contact with dozens of cruisers, some getting ready to go and a surprising number of returned cruisers who weren’t quite ready to give up life aboard, but needed to get back to work. I absorbed their tales of rounding Point Conception, or getting through the Panama Canal, and my long-term plans for escaping to the sea began to gel.

Visiting boats passing through your marina likely have a few stories to tell with some lessons that you may not have to learn again if you’re paying attention.

Being in the marina also brought some new friends in boats with far away home ports. We’d run into each other in the laundry room where, maybe not surprisingly, many sailors go as soon as they hit the dock. This time, they were in my home port, and I could offer the local knowledge, drawing cocktail napkin sketches of Channel Island anchorages, and opinions of local boatyard service or the expected weather, (including convincing one stubborn captain that despite what he’d heard, the Santa Ana winds DO exist). As always, my car was pressed into service to carry propane tanks or groceries. It had become clear to me that sailors are connected not just by a love of the sea, but by a willingness to pitch in and assist a boat in need.

I consider the past few years a period of intensive research: reading everything I can get my hands on regarding cruising and sailing, talking to sailors from all over the world about their past journeys and upcoming trips, taking my own coastal and local island trips, and finally buying the boat I plan on taking for the extended cruise. I may have a way to go before I can afford to take off for parts unknown, but I know now that it is only a matter of time. When I am finally ready to turn loose and go, hopefully some good cruising karma will go with me.