Boat hitchhiking

There's always the option of taking the sea route between two places. People have taken advantage of the seas for as long a time as civilizations have existed.

With boats, the procedure of hitching is not so much about finding someone going to your destination, but more about finding the right boat and/or captain for you. In general, a lot of captains are ready to take persons (crew members) on their boat to aid on the most mundane tasks, or just purely for company.

Be prepared to change your schedules and plans accordingly. Boat rides are not happening every day, and it can take days and days to reach your destination, unlike with cars. The weather can be unpredictable. All these things together mean that you can't really plan on arriving at place X at time Y. Time takes a different shape and form on the seas.

Perhaps the best way of encountering a suitable ride is to visit popular marinas that outbound captains frequent. They are probably there for overnighting or waiting for suitable weather and winds. Or possibly they're short of crew because of some force majeure (people change their plans and get seasick and so on...) This might mean that they could actually need your hand on board.

Be helpful and interested in their trade. Even if you do not have any experience in sailing, be honest with the fact and state that you are eager to learn. Show respect towards their skills, their boat and the seas and the elements of nature. There are lots of good captains out there, with good intentions. But there are lots of different "classes" of captains out there, lots of different boats for different purposes. So how do you find the good captains out from the hasty, less benign ones? Well, start by analyzing how good care they show at their crew. Or their boat. How prudent they are about security. What kind of personal imbalance they might be experiencing based on their insistence on getting certain types of crew (like young, good-looking females).

Then there are some websites that can be helpful for getting the right crew and boat find each other. I would recommend Crewseekers.net [1] since FindAcrew.net [2] fools either you or the captain to pay exorbitant prices for the ability to communicate.