What Would Your Sailing Vacation Look Like?

Remember the old Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner movies, Romancing the Stone and Jewel of the Nile? In Romancing the Stone, Douglas's character wanted to find a giant emerald so he could buy a boat and spend the rest of his life taking a sailing vacation, and at the end of the movie, he rode that boat up the streets of New York City to Turner's apartment. When Jewel of the Nile opens, Douglas and Turner are on board the boat, living his dream and taking a permanent sailing vacation around the world.

You don't have to find a giant emerald or kill an alligator (like Douglas did) to take your own sailing vacation. You can sign up for a variety of different types of sailing vacations, anything from a day of sailing on a local lake to a fully-crewed, around-the-world sailing vacation cruise. You can go to a sailing resort, where everybody stays on the boats and you take day trips. You can take an instructional sailing vacation, where you learn to sail. You can buy, rent or build a sail boat and crew it yourself (with a little help from your friends and family)

One thing your sailing vacation is sure to entail is, uh, sailing. Even if you're a passenger, it will be helpful for you to know a bit about sailing. One way you can prepare for your sailing vacation is to take a few sailing lessons and a Coast Guard boating safety course.

You may not be able to - or even want to - take a permanent sailing vacation. Your sailing vacation, no matter how long it is or how far you go, could, however, be the most memorable vacation of your lifetime