Since some people here do not seem to be very familiar with the many activities we use to fill our time on SL I am going to start a new series of posts, introducing some of them.
There are many different vehicles on SL, bicyles, motorbikes, cars, trucks, mechs and many other land vehicles of course, planes, helicopters, paramotors, blimps and others up in the air and of course sail- and motorboats of many different types.
Of course it is possible to just take some friends and make your own fun with these but there are also some organized group activities. Some are races and others are cruises where people just sail together on a route provided by some cruise director in the group. For some groups it is the same person every time, for others the role is shared by a couple of people.
These cruise groups are a great place to learn sailing since there are a lot of people to ask for help and there is always someone who has a moment to answer your questions.
If you don't have a boat of your own you can also ask and usually there is someone who has a free spot on their boat.
It is usually a good idea to take off any HUDs or attachments you don't need to make region crossings smoother. You also want to avoid crossing twice in quick succession since crashes or falling off your boat is quite common when you do (usually 3s is a good number to aim for). This is particularly important when crossing close to corners.
It is also helpful to enable property lines on the minimap (not supported by all viewers) which helps seeing the sim corners and also the open waterways (or roads for land vehicles).
There are many groups who have regular cruises during the week, this is just a small selection, feel free to mention more in the comments if you know any others.
(links go to the SL groups, you need an SL viewer installed to open those)
Leeward Cruising Club Phoenix Rising Yacht Club Rainbow Sails Yacht Club Tradewinds Yacht Club Topless Sailors Cruising Club Topless Cruisers
This post is already quite long so I won't explain in detail how sailing or navigation work or the SL continents and waterways but maybe I will add some posts about that soon.