>>1043321Sailor here.
Sailing is a serious skill that takes lots of time to learn, its not just steering a boat like you drive a car, there's lots of things you need to know before you are able to sail a boat by yourself.
We tend to get a lot of people here dreaming of having solo sailing adventures around the world in small boats, and the truth is, for most people this isn't possible just because people dont have the skills and dont want to take the time to learn them (I'm talking years to learn these skills, while you can get the basics down easy enough, to get to a level that is safe for you to do it takes a long time and much practice).
As someone that's been sailing for decades and that's a sailing coach (mainly race sailing mind you, i dont teach long haul travel stuff), even i wouldn't dare go on a long journey by myself on open waters, too much that can go wrong and without the resources it can be pretty dangerous (not that it cant be done though).
Having said that, its never to late to learn, if your serious go join your local dinghy club (aka, small boat sailing) and there you will learn the basic principles of sailing on a small scale, and when you are ready you can scale up to yachts and stuff fairly easily.
As the poster above said, crewing is a good learning tool, though people normally look for people with some experience, but if your a good cook or know how to fix motors and are a handyman, people will normally pick you up no worries.
Honestly thats what i'd do, and ive been looking to crew on a boat to some miscellaneous PNG islands for a while now (cause im too young and poor to own my own boat), but uni and work have killed that idea for the next few years.
If you want any sailing advice you can ask me.
