Rick Page > Quotes

“To live on the beautiful blue ocean is a gift to be treasured, not an achievement to be measured.”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“If you think the same as everybody else around you it is fair to say that you are not so much a representative of your culture, but a victim of it. Buddhist Proverb”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“It is much easier, cheaper and ultimately more rewarding to adapt to your new life than to try and create a floating version of your old one.”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“when you first embark on your new life as a watery wanderer, it makes more sense to pick an area you like and learn your seamanship and how your boat handles in local waters, rather than buy a boat at the boat show and push off around the world, fixing all the nasty surprises on the way. This approach has the added advantage of allowing you to buy the things you need over a longer time period.”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“Unless you intend doing a bit of illegal charter (see chapter 10), 36 feet is more than a couple really need (we have some friends who are bringing up two kids on a 36ft boat!).”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“I am not suggesting that you lie down and allow yourself to be kicked around by the vagaries of chance – if we find ourselves in a rotten situation, then we must fight our way out of it - but as is so often true, the source of our unease is not usually the quality of any particular situation that we are in, but our fixation upon the idea that it should be otherwise, or that we should be somewhere else.”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, the dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Good old Sterling Hayden again”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“Salt water and electricity are a worse combination than rednecks and religion.”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“What does a man need - really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in - and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all - in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention from the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, the dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed.”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“On a boat, you must think of every amp and where it comes from.”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“Being a sea gypsy means going with the seas, winds and currents, not fighting them”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“Smiles on deck, not miles under the keel!”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“The second time, we chose The Sea of Cortez in Mexico, which is protected by the Peninsula of Baja California and has spectacularly easy sailing, secure anchorages, good prices and wonderful, warm people (don't believe anything you see in the movies or anything Donald Trump says about Mexicans). There”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“boat on davits is a liability in bad weather – a big wave will eventually deposit itself right in your dinghy and either destroy the dinghy, the davits themselves, or rip the davits right out of the transom leaving a gaping hole. Also, if your dinghy is hanging off the back of your boat, where are you going to put your wind vane self-steering? (more on that in chapter 13).”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“book (you are SO going to need a copy of this!) The Boat Owner’s Mechanical and Electrical Manual. This is the sea gypsy's bible and one of the few things I won’t sail without.”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“The sea gypsy approach is more concerned with ‘enjoying something’ - rather than counting miles or joining up imaginary, man-made lines on the planet. If”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever

“A good sailboat (and skipper) works with the sea and therefore reaps the benefits of kinship with the world that no amount of money can buy. When you live in such a pristine environment as the ocean, there is a great deal of pleasure to be derived from feeling like a part of her, rather than her enemy. The rich boater, consuming all in his path (like some kind of marine Pac-Man) to feed his power-hungry leviathan will never know this feeling. The”
― Rick Page, Get Real, Get Gone: How to Become a Modern Sea Gypsy and Sail Away Forever