Nude Sailing: A First Hand Experience

In response to my article on the history and basic idea of nude sailing, I received a couple of e-mails from people with a general interest in the topic. Some were asking questions regarding the “first move” to sailing naked (get out of you clothes) – so I asked a friend (Frank P. – thanks for helping me out) who just got started on it two years ago to tell me about his initiation to naturism on a cruiser. Here are his thoughts about it.

“I’ve never been a very avid sailor, but did sail occasionally ever since I was a child and my dad took me sailing. Once every couple of years, by wife and me would do smaller cruises for a couple of days either nearby (we live in New Hampshire) or travel abroad, mostly to the Caribbean.

Barbados is our favorite destination, but sailing really wasn’t that important to us. Nor was naturism, we never thought about dropping our clothes when we sailed in a group – but we did sail naked when it was only the two of us aboard. It think this is also why we generally felt comfortable with not wearing any clothes on a boat; at least it was something we would consider to be desirable, as it really is more comfortable, given that the temperature is right.

Sailing naked for the fun of it

A few years ago we then discovered that a colleague of mine was quite a passionate naturist. He was a member of a local naturist sports club and also spent his vacations in nudist resorts in the Caribbean. When he heard that we had been sailing naked, he told us that he used to attend organized cruises in groups of 10 to 20 people with naturist sailing clubs from Texas, mostly in the Gulf of Mexico. The advantage of sailing in a bigger group over sailing with my wife only is obviously that you can go properly offshore – as I am not a very experienced sailor, my wife and me always stayed near the coast when sailing on our own.

We have always wanted to do a bigger cruise with a group of people and a professional crew, but this was the first time we thought about doing that naked. Since my colleague talked about his experience quite comfortably, and told us right away that there were no sexual implications at all, we got some more information material through his naturist association and booked two seats with the same company my colleague had sailed with only three days later.

We went for a one-week cruise in 2004, early summer. We went in a group of about 12 people and my wife and me were the only first-time naked sailors. All other members of the group were long-term naturists, mostly in our age, so around 50. This actually helped us a great deal to feel natural and comfortable with the situation from the very moment we entered the boat. Over all, it was a pretty normal standard cruise – just that we got home with no tan lines.

Nude sailing for beginners

We enjoyed the experience, but haven’t done any other naturist activities since then. However, this is mostly because of time constraints and not because we had disliked anything about it. If we managed to go to a cruise again, we would definitely do it naked– it is just more comfortable and you relax more. Also, it kind of cuts your emotional ties with your every-day life more efficiently than a “normal” vacation.

So generally speaking, thumb up for nudism! The one thing I would recommend newbies is to check out information material from national naturist clubs and associations or from proper travel agents. There are plenty of dubious companies around, especially when it comes to booking online. Getting advice from people you can actually talk to just felt better to us and helped us to identify a cruising company that met our expectations."
 

Further Reading

Back to "vacation"

"Introduction to Nude Sailing"

Open Directory Project on Nudism

Nudist Club register and general info
 

sailingahead.com