Cruising (maritime)
Channel: all the knowledge of the universe PRINCIPIA
Date: 2021-12-11

Cruising (maritime), by Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=7806 / CC BY SA 3.0

#Cruising_(maritime)
#Sailing
#Types_of_travel
A cruising sailboat anchored in the San Blas Islands, in Panama.
Cruising by boat is an activity that involves living for extended time on a vessel while traveling from place to place for pleasure.
Cruising generally refers to trips of a few days or more, and can extend to round-the-world voyages.
"The sea, the great unifier, is man's only hope. Now, as never before, the old phrase has a literal meaning: We are all in the same boat." Jacques Cousteau Boats were almost exclusively used for working purposes prior to the nineteenth century.
In 1857, the philosopher Henry David Thoreau, with his book Canoeing in Wilderness chronicling his canoe voyaging in the wilderness of Maine, was the first to convey the enjoyment of spiritual and lifestyle aspects of cruising.
'Canal barges in Belgium', an image from Robert Louis Stevenson's book, An Inland Voyage.
The modern conception of cruising for pleasure was first popularised by the Scottish explorer and sportsman John MacGregor.
He was introduced to the canoes and kayaks of the Native Americans on a camping trip in 1858, and on his return to the United Kingdom constructed his own 'double-ended' canoe in Lambeth.
The boat, nicknamed 'Rob Roy' after a famous relative of his, was built of lapstrake oak planking, decked in cedar covered with rubberized canvas with an open cockpit in the center.
He cruised around the waterways of Britain, Europe and the Middle East and wrote a popular book about his experiences, A Thousand Miles in the Rob Roy Canoe.
In 1866, Macgregor was a moving force behind the establishment of the Royal Canoe Club, the first club in the world to promote pleasure cruising.
The first recorded regatta was held on April 27, 1867, and it received Royal patronage in 1873.
The latter part of the century saw cruising for leisure being enthusiastically taken up by the middle class...