Thinking about sailing to safe places, and realizing I have no seaman skills at all, made me look up these links.
On this page, look for the list of topics about halfway down the page on the left hand side. Those are what I found helpful.
http://sailing.about.com/This one, seriously, you could probably pose an evac question and get a decent answer about size of boat, where to get instructions on sailing, ect...
http://www.sailnet.com/forums/cmps_index.phpIf you're planning a big voyage, like US to New Zealand, I think we'd need a tall ship. Here's some info. Definately need a crew, and a boat! The knot tying page is a link from the first, just put it seperately because it's useful and you might get bogged down looking through all the tallship info.
http://www.apparent-wind.com/sailing-page.htmlhttp://www.apparent-wind.com/knots/Recommended beginner sailor reading
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Sailor-Learning-Art-Sailing/dp/0070571317(there is the sailing for dummies book on that page as well)