Month: October 2010

Posted on

Home is where the slip is

Actually I am a bit confused lately about where home is; the boat is home, of course, and we carry her with us (or the other way around, rather) just about everywhere. But it does seem to matter where it is that we keep her, so home can variously seem like a mooring ball, a particular spot at anchor, or a transient slip in some other marina somewhere, depending on how long we happen to be there. Sometimes, just hanging around in a particular group of islands or cluster of bays can make the whole little region seem like “home.”

We’re in our “home” home now, our regular slip at Shilshole Bay Marina, but for all that, we still feel a little unsettled, a little bit still out at sea.

This seems especially odd because we are glad to be back, seeing friends we haven’t seen all summer, having a spot where we are guaranteed to have electricity, internet, and a good night’s sleep safely tied up without worrying about dragging anchors or drifting neighbors. If there was ever a place to feel settled and secure, it ought to be here and now. I have an instinctive intellectual response that associates “Seattle” with “home” but now, when I think that to myself, there is no associated warm and fuzzy emotional attachment. Seattle’s just another place.

It seems like home has become sufficiently diluted, or compressed, or something, that nowhere really feels like home anymore. We travel not just onboard, but overland, and sometimes it seems like just about everything I really need to get along with can be crammed into my aging Jansport daypack and carried along to set up a “home” any old place. When you boil home down to such an ephemeral location as that, perhaps it’s no surprise that any old place can turn into no place in particular.

Maybe this feeling will fade over the winter as we narrow our prospects down to only a couple of places, ping-ponging back and forth between the boat and my parent’s place in Port Hadlock, where we are once again chicken-sitting (yes, you read that right) as they head for warmer vistas to the south. But maybe it’s just a chronic condition to be adjusted to.

Sailors make trade-offs constantly and it’s only now that I am beginning to realize how subtle some of those can be. It’s a benefit to be able to travel comfortably and enjoy places you go without pining for some distant bed. On the other hand, it seems like I am missing a little something by not having that pining at all… as if some emotion has been completely withdrawn from my repertoire of feelings.

With the freedom to feel at home anywhere, there is less and less keeping us here.

Posted on

Ordinary Catastrophes

So the other night, we left a few candles burning as we went to bed to help ward off chill and condensation overnight. Around midnight, while both of us slept, one of them burnt its wick overlong and started smoking excessively. Our superbly over-sensitive smoke alarm duly began to screech, shocking us both awake.

I knew instantly what the problem was, as the same candle had looked suspicious to me earlier in the day, and I bolted out of the v-berth, blew it out, and ran back to hit the silence button on the smoke alarm. Then I popped a few vents to air the place out and went back to bed.

The next day, Mandy told me, sounding a little surprised at herself, “I thought the boat was on fire, but it didn’t even scare me. I just rolled over to grab the fire extinguisher to put it out!”

I was very proud of her. There may be some people who routinely react to potential catastrophe with such calm, practical action, but in my experience they are few and far between. Perhaps unsurprisingly, though, quite a few of them are sailors.

I am sure there is probably some psychological or scientific rationale for this, or perhaps it’s simply some figment of my imagination, but when I think about it, I attribute the tendency to the general experience that sailors have with catastrophe in all its forms. As with anything, I think you simply get used to it. At first every catastrophe is overwhelming… trying to tack in a narrow channel and have a jib sheet over-ride on the winch? Petrifying. But after it happens a few times, it’s ho-hum, another #@$*# over-ride, time to fix it. The same thing happens with broaches, engine failures, torn sails, parted halyards, stuck anchors, dragging anchors, shorted electronics, broken hatches, and any other number and manner of ill-favored occurrence. These are ordinary catastrophes, and after a time, they all fade into one, so that a fire simply becomes an occasion to roll over and grab a fire extinguisher, flooding simply means it’s time to grab a bucket, and sinking, I imagine, simply means it’s time to step up into the life raft. If sailing can turn my lovely but excitable wife into such a practical creature in only a few years, who knows what powers it might wield over the fullness of time?

None of this is to suggest that the occasional catastrophe isn’t capable of getting the blood flowing, but that is all part of the fun of it. There is something satisfying, the same something I suppose keeps parachutists jumping out of planes and bungee jumpers leaping off bridges (only we get lovely sunsets and dolphins as well), that imparts a tremendous sense of confidence and well-being from knowing that one won’t panic during these episodes.

Posted on

Every man for himself

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. – popularly attributed to Edmund Burke

Obion County, Tennessee, is a long way from the water, but very near to the vision that some folks have for the future of our Coast Guard and other maritime rescue agencies. Obion County is where, in case you hadn’t heard, a fully equipped and prepared fire crew responded, then stood by and watched burn to the ground, the house of a county homeowner who had failed to pay the nearby city of South Fulton a subscription fee for fire protection service. Then, the house fully destroyed, pets within it dead, the fire crew calmly cracked open their hoses and put out a patch of fire that had spread into a neighbor’s field… the neighbor, you see, was all paid up.

When I read this I thought immediately of what I wrote earlier this year on the growing trend of agencies billing survivors for the costs of their rescue. This is an insidious development in that trend that I didn’t see coming… because the curious thing is that the homeowner offered to pay any amount to the firefighters for them to put out his house, and they still refused. I suppose they were worried that a commitment made in the heat of the moment might not be honored. Nonetheless, it gave me visions of a helicopter winchman dangling at the end of his cable, credit card machine in hand, waiting for your charge to clear before hoisting you off the deck of your sinking/burning/capsized boat.

Completely apart from the high-level philosophical and socioeconomic debates over moral hazard and the tragedy of the commons, what sort of person could call themselves a firefighter who would stand by well-equipped and prepared and watch a home burn to the ground because they hadn’t been paid first? I don’t personally know any normal, untrained civilians who would so callously hesitate to help in such a situation where they had the ability to do so and the means at hand already provided for.

But maybe that’s because a lot of people I know are sailors, and that’s just how sailors are. I read the auto-biography recently of Harry Grattidge, a commodore for the Cunard Line, who emphasized his first and most important lesson in seamanship as an officer apprentice: “…when you’re in sail you don’t always thing of yourself first. You do your damnedest to help the other fellow if you can.”

I find it interesting that some of the most well-prepared and rugged individualists I know are sailors, and yet that they have more compassion and sense of community than all the chest-thumping, lubberly neanderthals that keep calling for these pay-as-you-go emergency services. I don’t think that is just a coincidence. If you sail, the reality is that you must be personally prepared; there are too many situations in which no one else is going to be able to help, where you must rely on yourself and your boat. But perhaps that also forces us to realize that even that isn’t always enough. Community and cooperation are necessities in any important endeavor. None of us are immune to forces larger than we are individually equipped to deal with, and separately many of us would surely fail. Every man for himself only gets you so far, and community is not a zero-sum game; it results in benefits that are more than the sum of its parts. And maybe that is part of what makes the nautical community what it is. You may curse that jerk who leaves you rolling with his huge wake, but if he starts to founder, or you do, the other will certainly be there to help, no questions asked.

Maybe I’m just too shell-shocked by the sudden availability of news now that we are back from the isolation of sailing, but these and other stories of mindless contention have been enormously depressing to me lately. I suppose it’s always been like this, but it makes me a bit sad to be back; moreso when I see the infection starting to spread to the place where I have so far been able to take refuge, out on the water. Enjoying freedom and independence don’t have to mean every man for himself.

Posted on

Bringing them in

It’s a generally accepted piece of cruising etiquette that one should help newly arriving boats with their dock lines when one is at the marina, and I am happy to say that this is one nicety that is observed almost universally wherever we have been along the Salish Sea. A component of that protocol which one finds in most of the literature discussing it, that the line handler should simply stand by with the line and await instructions from the skipper of the boat, is however much less in evidence.

I like to think I honor this more in the breach than in the observance, and on joining a fellow transient here in Friday Harbor in greeting a 42 foot Catalina that was just coming in, I was gently but reasonably chastised by the other gentleman on the dock, a fellow with a laid-back attitude but considerable sailing experience. Seeing the Catalina skidding out of line with the slip it was coming into, I offered to take the bowline with the intention of moving forward and hauling the bow around as the boat powered in, which seemed the likely course of action. The other fellow shook his head and said, “I prefer to wait for them to tell me what they would like,” thereby setting off a micro-debate in my head.

His position was, of course, quite proper, certainly reflecting the “book” approach to docking courtesy, or in fact almost any nautical matter. The captain runs the boat, no question. My fellow helper had misread my intent slightly, I think; I wasn’t actually going to haul away, just move into position, but no matter… what he assumed was something that in fact happens frequently. It also made me realize that in other circumstances I am more aggressive than the recommended policy would dictate. In the event, the skipper decided to back off and go around again, a decision I will never scoff at, so we stood around and chatted idly about docking while waiting for his return.

As it happened, I might have been more sensitive to the matter, because my own approach into the marina here a couple days ago was in fact blown by a well-meaning bystander, who pushed off my bow without my direction, and who then misheard or misunderstood my requests that he haul in on the bow line before we were blown away. I had to go around again, too… frustrating work on what was a much windier day than today.

Still, I am not sure that I entirely agree that just waiting for the skipper’s direction is always the thing to do. For one thing, it’s been my experience that a captain who knows what he is doing and what he wants his line handlers to do will be loud and up front in telegraphing his instructions. If you’re left standing there with a slack line in your hands for more than ten seconds, you are not likely to receive any decisive direction from the bridge thereafter, and in my view, it’s time to start providing the sort of assistance that is really needed, which is usually action of some sort. If you’re only going to be a spectator, you may as well stay off the finger dock and out of the way. I’ve never been inclined to simply hang around waiting for unforthcoming direction while things are going sideways, even if it isn’t my boat; right, wrong, I’m going to do something, not just stand there with a limp line in my hands. And yeah, I get how sometimes doing nothing is better than something. But something that we both agreed on today was that we could indeed have brought the boat in on the first pass. Today it didn’t much matter, but sometimes the first chance is the only one you get.

It’s arrogant to assume that one knows better than the skipper how to land a boat, but it’s also a situation that you see time and again. Goodness knows my own docking skills leave much to be desired. I have had my bacon saved innumerable times by more experienced hands helping from dockside, and on more than one occasion have followed their directions rather than giving any to them, and they’ve brought me in successfully. When it’s obvious the skipper coming in is inexperienced or uncertain, I don’t have a problem taking steps to get them in the rest of the way without their explicit direction. And there are also those times where it is clear that everyone is of a mind about the proceeding, and it’s more imposition to make them state the obvious than simply to do it. Maybe it’s still “wrong” but it’s also the most commonly done thing, and maybe sometimes the safest.

The rub, of course, is knowing when those times are and when you are stepping on someone’s toes or messing up well-laid plans. I suppose that’s simply a job for experience to determine. The more I am out sailing, and perhaps the longer I live life, the less inclined I am to put faith in blind rules and the more I ascribe to exercising judgement instead. Taking responsibility for a bad call every once in a while may be a necessary part of the package. In my view, it’s still better than standing by when someone may need help that they don’t quite know how to ask for.

In making my judgement, though, I’ll confess I had some inside information on the vessel today that my companion on the dock lacked: though there was a completely different crew aboard, the boat was the very same one that anchored too close aboard us in Ganges two weeks ago and tangled her bow roller in our lifelines around midnight. She’s a charter boat and the skippers aren’t likely to be familiar with her handling or have a great deal of experience docking her.

But this skipper came around again and slid her in nicely on the second try with hardly a push necessary from on the dock. I did push, though; one fender was set too high for the notoriously low docks at Friday Harbor and I kept the hull from scraping without being so told. I also made fast the stern line after I took it and she stopped moving. I suppose those were both transgressions. I check or adjust my docklines after anyone else helps me with them, I expect any other competent skipper can do the same… I don’t need to stand around and make him come down and do it himself the first time, as was apparently the other fellow’s policy. Of course, I’m happy to do as I’m told, but if not told to, I’m still capable of exercising my own brain muscle slightly and doing something.

I guess what it boils down to is that I agree with and respect the sentiment of waiting for the skipper’s direction, and I will certainly follow any that is given. But I don’t think it’s necessary or desirable to allow hesitant, uncertain, or frightened skippers to flail around without taking a more proactive role if one is able. Communication is golden in these situations. Many of them simply aren’t confident enough to tell you what they want, and my thing lately has been to just ask… “Where do you want me?”; and to follow with more leading questions if I don’t get an answer… “I’ll haul in on the bow while you power forward, okay?”

Miss Manners I ain’t; but bringing them in, I can do.

Posted on

Sailing Stories

I’ve about had it with the “voyage of self-discovery/history-lite travelogue” that most sailing narratives settle into. These comprise probably fifty percent of our on-board library, and are frequently found in the book-swaps common to marinas in these parts, and so I have had ample opportunity these past months to sample the breadth of the field. And I have to say, I find it wanting.

I feel bad for the authors, because these are the easiest things to talk about when it comes to sailing, and in truth there is not a lot else beyond the purely technical. You’re cooped up in a small cabin in a big ocean for long periods of time, one day of sailing is just like the next, self-discovery is pretty much what you come out with. And you visit some neat places that are off the beaten path, the history is often fascinating and usually somewhat necessary to understanding them. I often catch (or, unfortunately, don’t catch) my own blog posts slipping in those directions. So I get why it’s coming up in all these books, I just wish that someone would find a different way.

It’s not even that the books are bad, just repetitive, and I suppose they’re only that if you are reading a lot of them in sequence, which I know not everybody does. But it turns out that most of what all these authors find out about themselves and the ocean are the same things… the ocean is big and relentless and unforgiving, and they are small and humbled but ultimately become tough and self-confident and resourceful in the face of it. There is often some discussion of adopting new rhythms in their lives, something more “natural” and gentle than the rat-race they have come from.

I get all that and I don’t deny the truth and power of the message. But once you’ve heard it… there are few fresh takes. Joshua Slocum may have penned the last truly original sailing narrative (if you don’t care about hard copy books, you can also get the text for free as an electronic download). That was in 1899.

The psuedo-history also becomes problematic, because most all these authors are circumnavigating, and circumnavigators tend to stop in all the same places… the Caribbean, Panama, Polynesia, the Azores. The history of those places can be truly fascinating. But the amount of that history you get in a snapshot sailing narrative is limited, and everyone is cribbing from the same sources. If I read one more Cook quotation, I may become seasick.

Again, I sympathize; it’s hard to write about places without writing their history to some extent. I spent most of my summer in Desolation Sound and it’s damn near impossible to write about the place without noting the irony of the name and explaining Vancouver’s original exploration of the place. But if I did that, I’d just be telling you stuff you had already read ten times before, probably written much better and in more detail. I only wish that someone would find a more original approach than the recycled tourist brochure drivel.

I find that I have begun to prefer the historical exploration couched as travelogue, instead; Tony Horwitz’s Blue Latitudes: Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before is an excellent example of the genre. Beth Hill’s Upcoast Summers was good, despite the dearth of original text and the extreme reliance on the original sources. Following the Curve of Time by Cathy Converse also looks to be a promising entry (as The Curve of Time itself is an outstanding exception to my original complaint; but then, so are many of the classic cruising stories, which I suppose is what makes them classic), although I haven’t had time to get to it yet, and likewise Sam McKinney’s Sailing With Vancouver.

And there are still decent examples of the sailing narrative itself coming out. Maiden Voyage, albeit repleat with most of the self-discovery tropes I noted above, manages to avoid the historical pitfalls. My Old Man and the Sea is an altogether different approach, refreshing and interesting, and covering unusual territory as well as offering a new take.

But I’m afraid I am about through all the more unique sailing narratives I have been able to find. Soon, I’ll have to start in on their evil stepsister, the sailing disaster story. Those never get old!