Imagine walking out your door and realizing you’re about to set sail onto the wide-open seas. Your boat is docked, you’ve done all the pre-planning and organizing, you have enough food, water, and emergency supplies to cover you for as long as you’re on the water. Take this a step further and prepare yourself for an exciting adventure in one of the most topnotch sailing locations in the contiguous United States. Welcome to Long Beach, California–home of some world-class sailing conditions and like-minded souls, all of this you can experience with boat rental long beach.

Long Beach is the quintessential location for sailing enthusiasts. It hosts numerous sailing competitions, the United States Sailing Center is located in the city, and it has the Long Beach Harbor which caters to cruising the Southern California coastline. Everything a seasoned–or beginner–sailor needs is perfectly accommodated in these special coastal environs.

The History of Sailing

As most boaters know, sailing is a whole different animal. It requires skill, thoughtfulness, knowledge of the ocean and its many nuances, and a crew that is prepared to work hard when the wind kicks up. Sailing is briefly described as using the wind to act on its kites or wings to propel the craft forward.

The history of sailing takes into account the many past excursions of settlers and traders who had to rely on sailboats as their means of transporting goods and trading with others. Sailing itself helped civilizations develop, as the early explorers sailed across oceans to locate places to settle in and find new areas with willing people to have trade agreements with that would hopefully last.

A few tidbits on the earliest recorded sailing trips:

• The first recorded sailing ship appears on the design of an Egyptian vase from around the year 3500 BC.
• The story goes that the Vikings set sail to North America about 1,000 years ago.
• Any forward momentum in the technology of sailing–from the 15th century onward– authorized explorers from Europe to embark on longer voyages into areas with more challenging weather and critical conditions.
• Expanded upgrades in sails and the equipment they used paved the way for the colonization of America, Australia and New Zealand, which ultimately gave world trade reasons to thrive in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Between the Lapita People and their culture in the years 1200 and 1000 B.C., this indigenous tribe were the first to reach the remote region of Oceania on their outrigger canoes with a single hull. From there, and around 3,000 years ago, the Polynesian skilled navigators located faraway islands to the east of West Polynesia, using only the wind and stars to return home safely during their ocean journey. Lastly, the New Zealand islands were the final settlement, which occurred approximately in 1300 A.D. These early Maori explorers traveled by sea eastward, only to discover the Chatham Islands several centuries before the first Europeans had reached the Pacific by sea travel.

So you see, populations have been utilizing wind power to sail across the oceans for thousands of years.