April 23, 2004

I spent too many years sailing to have much faith in the idea of "staying the course." There are times when the only sensible thing to do is to make a complete 180 degree turn and get the hell out of there. Times when the safest thing you can do is to go back the same way you came because that may be the only path that hasn't yet caused fatal damage. Any other course may be another dangerous unknown.

Imagine that you are sailing at night, enjoying the solitude, when suddenly you hear the unmistakable sound of waves breaking over a beach or reef directly in front of your boat, a sound that will strike terror in the heart of any sailor who thinks he's in blue water. In such a situation, anyone who would "stay the course" is an idiot.

I know, you're going to tell me that things like this shouldn't happen with today's technology. I agree. We've got Global Positioning Systems (GPS) that can be tied together with radars, autopilots, compasses, and so forth, all with their own independent battery back-ups and capable of telling you exactly where you are, even providing a simulated "roadmap" of where you're going with warnings anytime you stray off course.

We even have weather faxes that produce the same reports your television weather man uses to show highs and lows and approaching weather in your area. There is no longer a need for sextants, identification of stars, imaginary projections of earth upon our galaxy, taking declinations of the moon or sun or simply following latitudes as Columbus did more than five hundred years ago. Today, we have technology that eliminates the need for all of that even though we are still using charts and a form of dead-reckoning that requires some basic interpretation and judgment.

If you think that modern times make it next to impossible for anything to go wrong, then you are sadly mistaken. Not being poets or feeling it isn't "macho" enough (man against the sea) to talk about the good and beautiful things that describe being a cosmic speck sailing under the umbrella of the universe, old salts are still hanging around docks, marinas, bars and coffee shops describing the disasters they've experienced. They are still telling "sea stories" that scare the hell out of amateurs and novices who want nothing more than to realize their dream of being in control of their destiny and sailing off into the sunset.

Sailing has been described as 99 percent pure pleasure punctuated by a few brief moments of absolute terror. And when the salts are telling you stories about those brief moments, what you are not likely to hear are the errors in judgment that they made which can range from not checking or replacing parts through ignoring or misinterpreting their instruments or simply falling asleep at the wheel. Most of all, someone had to set the course.

A poll done in South Florida where there are thousands of luxury yachts, the jumping off spot to hundreds of islands in the Caribbean and the world's best cruising, found that 86 percent of these ocean going vessels never go more than three miles offshore. Instead, most of these expensive vessels with all the modern equipment spend their time docked, daysailing, or cruising the Intracoastal Waterway where, on weekends, you can often find waves caused by wake that make the ocean seem pacific.

The expensive investment, loaded with equipment and luxuries islanders or people who live off the sea would give their eye teeth for, becomes a mobile water home parked behind a house or in some friendly marina to be used for what resemble tailgate parties or to take a short jaunt to some waterfront restaurant with a dock. An entire industry has built up around caring for and catering to these vessels.

Fear is a tremendous demotivator. It can paralyze some people. If they can afford it, others turn to professionals for help and hire a seasoned crew. Many give up on their dreams and stay home because deep down they are convinced that they wouldn't be able to handle the sort of disaster tales they've heard.

The lucky ones will steel themselves to go off on long or short voyages into the lands of enchantment and blue water sailing or, like myself, being too dumb to recognize the dangers, will find themselves part of the background scenery for exotic vacation spots like Barbados, Aruba, Nassau, and so forth. Here they can regale the natives and fly-in tourists with their own sea stories or tales of heroically facing mother nature.

In all of this, however, you will never hear survivors saying that; We might have been there for the wrong reasons and our instruments may have been faulty, but the right thing to do was to plunge forward anyway, or that holding the course was necessary to bring peace and tranquility to the region.

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