Plain Sailing?

“Do-It-Yourself”, in certain circumstances, is probably a sensible approach for both sailing and financial planning.

For example, you don’t need much outside help to pootle about on a pond nor to set up a simple investment account with your first pay cheques. There are plenty of online kits that do a good enough job and with a little care and attention you won’t come a cropper.

Of course, a couple of simple sailing/investing skills might not go amiss but more than that is probably overkill at this nascent stage. If things go wrong, it is easy enough to swim to the shore.

But things change. From the pond you graduate to a river and from there to the open sea and an unavoidable journey across the ocean. This journey represents your financial wellbeing and your wellbeing in general.

Such a journey is best made with the help of skilled professionals. There is a world of difference between sailing on a pond and crossing the Atlantic. Your pond pootling will have honed some rudimentary skills no doubt, but not those needed to cross an ocean – beware the belief that you are as good as the pros.

Your young mortgage and kid free life is the pond, everything than comes after is the Atlantic. Your Atlantic journey will be more memorable and challenging and rewarding and dangerous – you can’t swim to the shore in the Atlantic.

To cross the Atlantic successfully aren’t you better off in a boat made by skilled workers? That comes with a skipper and crew paying attention 24/7 and with decades of experience of navigation, wind, swell etc?

Professionals know how to design, create, look after and adjust to ever changing conditions and circumstances. It is their day job, their very existence.

The tens of thousands of hours they have clocked up, that you have not, are easily overlooked. But it is those hours that will the difference especially in tough times.

Even the best boat in the world can end up at the bottom of the ocean if incompetently skippered – and that is a bad outcome.

Accounts of those who have build and sailed their own around the world solo are legendary, but also few and far between. These attempts are rarely successful – accounts of those that tried and failed would be more common if they were ever written.

You have no choice but to cross the ocean, but only once. We have completed the journey dozens of times with great success – there is no-one at the bottom of the ocean on our account.

Are you ready to start your journey? DIY or pro?