Crewing
Illusion has quarter berths on either side of the galley/saloon that are available for people interested in coming along. I enjoy meeting new people and introducing them sailing as a lifestyle as well as method of travel. You don’t need to have any prior sailing experience, though it is helpful — just a positive attitude, good work ethic and a laid back demeanor.
Cruising often means long periods of downtime, so people who love to read, write, cook, photographers, web designers, widdlers, fiddlers, artists and jugglers — really anyone looking for time to focus on all those things that modern life can get in the way of will enjoy it. I play guitar and am looking forward having the time to focus on learning more and my girlfriend Lara is an aspiring artist, photographer, jewelry maker, seemstress, etc. so anyone with interests parallel to ours is always welcome.
I will teach you as much as I can about sailing and boat maintenance, it’s a great way to get introduced to a lot of different things, see some beautiful places, experience different cultures and find uncrowded surf breaks. I’m learning to surf and love to snorkel and spearfish so hopefully we’ll find some good mellow breaks and plenty of unspoiled reefs to dive on.
I’ll be putting up a contact form soon, but for now just email me at brian at chasingtheillusion.com with some information about yourself, when you’d be available to crew and any questions you might have. We’ll definitely want to have some crew for the crossings, like from Key West to the Yucatan and then from the Yucatan to the islands of Honduras. Two weeks is the minimum you can stay for, it’s just too much of a hassle for less. It’s always better if your dates are more open ended — nothing is more dangerous in sailing than being in a hurry to get somewhere.
Crew will be expected to make a weekly contribution to the boat of 90 US dollars and then we’ll divide supplies by the amount of people on board. In general it works out to be pretty cheap since we’re eating meals together on the boat most of the time, most of my experience with cruising is that it works out to be less expensive then most other ways of travel and a whole lot more rewarding.
