Appachian State University
Mr. Childress
RC-2001
10/29/2022
Freedom of the Sailing Life
A primal attraction to sailing is the idea that anyone with a reasonable boat and enough gumption can leave the rat race in their wake and sail around the world to a life of perpetual vacation. Farley Mowat, in The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float writes in a first-person narrative to chronicle the transition to a life of sailing. The novel is humorous by way of hyperbole – a seemingly ridiculous avalanche of problems experienced, as it tells how when a sailor’s world is reduced to a boat the boat becomes the rat race. The reward in the end is not freedom or endless vacation though, but an accumulation of disaster stories.
The long-distance cruising idyll is envisioned as tranquil days sailing under sunny skies to “Bermuda, The Azores, Rio de Janeiro – the world lay waiting!” (11). But after months of preparations, Mowat’s boat, Happy Adventure, leaves port under full sail – in reverse, a glitch of the “Bullgine” (98). It is a common refrain when preparing for a sailing voyage: the boat will never be ready enough. At some point one must call it and just throw the dock lines and live with whatever quirks and scarcities are left, otherwise they will never leave. “We were as ready as we would ever be to begin our voyage” (73), Mowat declares.
When a boat is first launched, or after extensive repairs, seaman traditionally call that launch her “trials” (70), when the boat is put into action to see what works or not, and what can possibly go wrong. This process is now commonly referred to as a “shakedown.” Since it is expected that there will be unforeseen problems, a shakedown is usually planned as a short run to the next harbor where the inevitable repairs can be made. On Mowat’s shakedown, halfway through the first day the boat begins leaking so badly it is in danger of sinking. By the end of the day sinking is averted only by accidentally running aground in the nearest harbor on the highest tide of the month, where the boat sits hard aground for 28 days.
Many sailors would not consider this fictitious first day at all unrealistic or even a failure. Not sinking and nobody dying is an achievement.
In The Dream and the Reality of Blue Spaces: The Search for Freedom in Offshore Sailing, the research subject sailing in Indonesia likewise begins his voyage with a major issue, a blown-out sail, and then is chased out of a harbor early one morning by a boatload of men who claim to be police. The subject did not think the men were exactly “pirates” (Orams, 204), but he did not feel safe letting them on his boat either, so he hurriedly left with them in chase for 40 minutes. The research sailor’s experience of a low speed boat chase almost seems more unlikely and comical than Mowat’s novel. In both cases though, a normal life on shore has been scrubbed of safety nets such as stop signs and hospitals and the thousands of expectations of what one is likely to experience on any given day and is replaced by a fear of pirates and the basic challenge to remain alive and afloat in unpredictable conditions.
In Mowat’s time and telling, his only source of nautical knowledge were the old time fisherman and boat builders, a breed of men who looked down on boating that did not have a purpose. They understood the dangers and hardships, and themselves often went to sea only because they knew of no other way to make a living; it was foolish for anyone to do it by choice for fun. In marinas everywhere now though, harbors full of fishermen and wooden boat builders have given way to recreational boats, and there is now an overwhelmingly large community of sailors of various aptitude to commiserate with and learn from.
The narrative stories accumulated from living the alternative lifestyle of sailboat cruising is the reward. By sailing into the middle of nowhere a sailor can test themselves in sometimes life-threatening situations to then come to port with the story. All sailors share them, it is the common topic of communication that demonstrates how hard they have had it and that they survived. The stories often include a lesson learned to share: remember to check your chainplates, they might rip out.
The novice mistake is not looked down upon by this group as Mowat’s old-timers viewed him but is now seen as a stage of gaining knowledge, an opportunity to learn something that might save their life another day. Long-term cruisers are a niche group, but most other sailors in a harbor envy them and may even wish to try cruising as a lifestyle themselves someday. A way to gain instant credentials in a group of sailors is to tell of completing a voyage of some respectable distance, to The Azores or Bermuda perhaps, that includes a harrowing experience and how it was overcome. Then you are part of the club.
Works Cited
Mowat, Farley. The Boat Who Wouldn’t Float. 1969.
Orams, Mark B. and Mike Brown. “The Dream and the Reality of Blue Spaces: The Search for Freedom in Offshore Sailing.” Journal of Sport & Social Issues 45 (2020): 196 – 216.