Join a yacht club, it's only twenty bucks.

[Goathead]

http://www.niueyachtclub.com/index.php?option=com_wrapper&Itemid=7

And you don't have to have a boat. The really great thing about this is that you get reciprocal privileges from other yacht clubs. So, while the New York Yacht Club is having their trials for the Americas Cup in Newport, you can go out there and demand a table right next to Donald Trump and Paris Hilton. Don't forget to tell the Gar-con that you want the extra special champagne, not that watered down swill they're used to serving to their guests. YeeeeeeeHAA!

[flamingyouth]

1. I've wanted to visit Niue for a long time

Then again, I have a thing for remote islands very few people have ever heard of. :D

[Goathead]

2. For real?

I think the name means "Behold the Cocoanut" or something, it definitely has something to do with cocoanuts. Have you ever been to the So.Pacific?

[flamingyouth]

3. No, I never have been

But I really want to go. Mostly I voraciously read books about travel in the South Pacific. One of these days, I'm going to hop on one of those Air Micronesia jets and go for it. :D

[Goathead]

4. Check out Samoa

They are supposed to have the most intact culture in all of Polynesia. Robert Louis Stevenson lived there and is buried there. Read a short story by Somerset Maugham called Rain it takes place in Pago Pago at a hotel called Sadie Thompson's. Also I think Graham Greene wrote about the So. Pacific.:hi:

[flamingyouth]

5. I would really like to visit there

Particularly Western Samoa. Lately I've also had my eye on the Cook Islands. I need to take a few years off and just travel around to obscure places around the world. :hi:

[Goathead]

6. I was in the Cooks two summers ago

They call it a poor man's Tahiti. It is just as beautiful as Tahiti, yet, nobody knows about it yet. It is also way cheaper. It just so happens we were there for a week long "independence" celebration. There was a traditional dance competition in the national auditorium. Cook Islanders are reputedly the best at Polynesian style dance. I've heard people describe Rarotonga as the way Tahiti was twenty years ago.

http://www.polynesianairlines.com/poly_pass.html#Anchor-Pol-2567

[flamingyouth]

7. I've heard that too

I'm hoping to get there one of these days. It looks gorgeous and I know someone who is from there and is always telling me to go! Thanks for the link. :)

[DELUSIONAL]

8. Thanks I've forwarded this to my yachtie friends

There are lots of retired people cruising the South Pacific -- and this is a relatively cheap retirement. Generally there aren't a lot of places to spend their money -- and anyway the sailboats can't hold all that much "stuff".

One can find a good sailboat for perhaps $40,000 (some have found good cruising boats for less) -- then add on some more equipment. This is still far less than a condo. Larger boats cost more -- depends if one has a house to sell to buy the boat.

Then many cruisers anchor out -- saving morage and marina fees -- plus in the cruising areas marinas are few and far between.

You'd have to be fairly self sufficient -- and not prone to sea sickness. But many people tell me that after about 3 or 4 days most people get over being sea sick.

I know several young couples who have already been cruising -- and have returned to jobs but are already making plans to return.

There are several publicans dedicated to cruising and cruising organizations.

The majority who choose this life style are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet.

[Goathead]

10. It has been my dream to circumnavigate the globe

Hitching rides on other peoples yachts. A small backpack with a pair of shorts, a shirt, some sandals, my fins and mask, sleeping bag and that's it. Cruise into some exotic port, eat fish and cocoanuts, explore the island for a month, maybe pick up some work on an organic farm if I need some extra cash, hitch-hike and backpack cross country, get to another port, then crew out on another boat going somewhere else. Heaven. Hopefully my dream will be realized.

[DELUSIONAL]

12. People are doing that

Very often cruising couples need a third set of hands willing to stand watch. Some of the writer/cruisers have help for the long legs of their trips -- say from S.F. to the South Pacific. It helps to have nautical skills and those skills can be gained by crewing in races. I know some people who have been back and forth to Hawaii as crew members in races.

Yachtie friends just got back to me that they passed very close to this island on their way from Samoa to the Tonga group. Getting ashore is via a lift that hoists the sailboat's dinghy to a dock.

[Courtesy Flush]

9. Actually, I'm a member of a yacht club

Our club is more of a working-class sailing club, though we have our share of bourgeois. It's on a sparsely-populated bit of coast, and has less than 100 members.

The dues are $30 per month, and yes, that gives me reciprocal rights at other clubs, though I'd feel like a fish out of water at many of the upscale ones.

Being a member of a club gives you rights to only other clubs in whatever regional organization it's associated with. For me, that's the gulf coast. I couldn't walk into the New York club unless I got a waiter's job or something.

There actually are very cheap yacht clubs. I suspect that some of our ghost members only joined to have cheap access to upscale clubs. Actually, I wish more people would do that. We need all the $30 checks we can get.

As you might suspect, you don't get waited on for $30. We don't have a restaurant or bar, but you can get a beer out of the fridge for a dollar (honor system), and you can watch all the satellite TV you want.

[Goathead]

11. That sounds like my kind of club.

We had an informal "club" on 70th street in Virginia Beach during the summer of 1987. It was all catamaran sailors and windsurfers. It was great. The best summer of my life. Sailing, beer, and women in bikinis, yeeeeha!