Minimum requirements before you set sail

[DaveA]

Before you set sail on a journey that's over and outside of your normal cruising area, what would you want to know in advance ?
Reason I ask is that I just completed a passage of over 100nm, and only found out after we set off, that the skipper didn't have a chart plotter cartridge for the whole journey, had no means of checking the weather other than a h/h vhf which didn't work when the weather turned bad, had no contingency plans other than keep on going, wasn't plotting the course on charts, and hadn't even checked on the approach to destination so had to have a look at the local books before he claimed to know where he was