Sailing Alone Around the World, by Joshua Slocum

In this time of terabytes and drones and private space launches, I find it inspiring and grounding to take a genuine look back at times past, at events as significant in their time as any in ours.  Joshua Slocum was the first person to complete a solo circumnavigation, done over three years from 1895 to 1898.  Now there is a regular race run every four years, the Vendee Globe, with a dozen or more entrants, and the record stands at 57 1/2 days.  

Slocum was in no hurry, mind you.  As he sailed out of Boston harbor on a lively breeze, he notes, “A thrilling pulse beat high in me.  My step was light on deck in the crisp air.  I felt that there could be no turning back, and that I was engaging in an adventure the meaning of which I thoroughly understood.”  That line still leaves me a bit puzzled.  Perhaps he was simply saying that, by dint of his extensive experience aboard ships as a sailor, a mate, and a captain, having made numerous passages to far ports of the world in merchant ships and having witnessed the countless hazards, he fully recognized the dangers inherent in what he had undertaken.  But that sheds little light on why he was doing it.  I still don’t know the answer to that question.  The best I can speculate is the same reason for climbing high peaks and voyaging to the moon--”because it is there.”  

Once he had resolved in his mind to do it, I believe nothing short of death would have stopped him.  His plan was to sail from Boston across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal, and so on.  When he arrived at Gibraltar after a difficult passage across the North Atlantic, he was advised by British naval officers there that piracy was rampant along his planned route and he would be unwise to pursue it.  No worries.  Slocum was a prudent seaman, respectful of the knowledge and advice of other seafarers.  So he headed back across the Atlantic for South America, to go around the world the other way!

Here are a few essentials that Slocum did without: an engine, GPS, EPIRB (emergency beacon), radio, weather forecasts, autopilot, canned food, bottled water, refrigeration, a depth sounder, company, sleep. He published the book in 1900 when most of the items on that list did not exist so it was of little note to him that he did without them. I’m still astounded that his 37 foot sloop, “Spray”, would hold a course for hours, even days at a time without a touch on the helm.  No modern boat will do that.  

Slocum’s writing style is humble, relating actions he took and why he took them, without making too much of it.  For example while anchored in the Strait of Magellan at the southern tip of South America, he went ashore, cut a tree, and shaped and fitted it as a “jigger”--a mizzen mast--to aid in the long passage with the favorable trade winds across the Pacific.  Are you kidding me?  Adding a mast to the boat, changing the rig like there’s nothing to it?  That would have required additional shrouds, a stern sprit, a boom, lines for a halyard and sheet, sail hoops.  He never mentioned the sail but presumably he cut and sewed a suitable one.  

He apparently ate a lot of flying fish that landed randomly on his deck.  I know that happens, I’ve seen it often at sea, but they’re bony mostly meatless little critters, and covered in scales.  Smelly too, very fishy.  I think my stomach would have rebelled....unless I was starving, which I suspect was the case with Slocum a lot of the time.  On his arrival at Gibraltar, he described himself as “..thin as a reef-point.”

Strange that only now at age 67 I am reading this book.  I remember my Dad recommending it to me as a child, maybe ten or twelve years old.  I probably wasn’t interested in “that old stuff”, my attention drawn more to the likes of Tom Swift.  My dear 95 year old aunt, my Dad’s younger sister, offered it to me recently and I am thankful for that.  I only wish that my Dad could know that I read it and share his respectful appreciation.

Fastnet, Force 10, by John Rousmaniere

Why had I not read this book before now?   It’s a harrowing account of sailboats caught in a severe storm.  I’ve spend a good deal of time at sea in sailboats myself, delivering boats up and down the East Coast and offshore to the far Caribbean islands.  And Lord knows I’ve been in storms.  I guess it’s the racing aspect that kept me away.  In delivering a boat my priority is safety for my crew, the boat, and myself.  In racing you push things to the limit--the boat, the sails, the rigging, the crew--all in the search for speed.  You take risks I would never consider on a delivery.  So why would I be interested in a story about yachties taking foolish risks for bragging rights?

On a recent visit my brother offered the book to me, and I had a little time so I opened it and started reading.  I was quickly drawn in.  First, of course, by the photos, black and white and grainy, then by the preface which presents the key facts of the case along with the following quote from the official inquiry: “the sea showed that it can be a deadly enemy and that those who go to sea for pleasure must do so in the full knowledge that they may encounter dangers of the highest order.”

Six men were lost overboard never to be seen again, and nine more died of drowning or hypothermia.  Five boats sank, twenty-four more were abandoned by their crews, and 136 sailors were rescued by helicopters or other vessels.  Shocking outcomes for a sporting event.  

Rousmaniere’s telling is gripping and skillful.  He has been an acknowledged authority in the sailing world for decades.  He’s the author of The Annapolis Book of Seamanship, which is something of a bible for sailors, and which has occupied a prominent spot on my bookshelf for a long time.  His qualifications as an expert positioned him well to write this book.  More importantly, he was there...as a competitor on the forty-eight foot sloop Toscana. 

The race is a 605 mile course from the southern coast of England to a lighthouse on a rocky outcropping off the southern shore of Ireland known as Fastnet Rock, and back to England.  On August 11, 1979, a fleet of 303 boats started the race, with more than two thousand sailors and high hopes aboard.  Of those, only 85 boats finished the race; 194 retired (stopped racing and headed for port), 19 were abandoned at sea and later recovered, and 5 sank.  Gone.

Rousmaniere related in some detail the experiences of several unfortunate boats, as well as his own experience on Toscana.  He describes waking to violent pitching and rolling of the boat as the wind and seas built.  “I slid back aft to dress: damp long underwear, damp wool socks, damp green turtleneck jersey, damp gray wool sweater....  With a clownish balancing act, hopping on one foot, I shoved my feet into the damp yellow boots”. This is real.  Everything gets wet, and pulling on damp clothes is a struggle in itself complicated by the lurching motion of the boat.  He proceeds to tell in detail the harrowing and exhausting process of tying in a third reef in the mainsail and changing jibs.  I can feel the intensity of that effort in the dark of night with the boat pitching and rolling deeply.  The concentration required is extreme.  This part of the story can only be fully appreciated by those who have had similar experiences.  

To me Rousmaniere shows his maturity and wisdom in his commentary on the rash statements by the Monday morning quarterbacks.  Some claimed it was inexperienced sailors who lost their nerve, or small boats, or lightweight designs, or poor decisions by the race committee, and glib remarks were made like “The storm wasn’t that bad.  I’ve seen worse.”  One by one Rousmaniere presents data and reasoning that casts doubt on every explanation except the storm itself, and the extreme seas which broke and rolled over the hapless boats.  Nearly half reported being knocked down ninety degrees, and a third reported knockdowns beyond ninety degrees (mast in the water) including some that rolled a full 360 degrees.  That is well beyond my worst experience, and well beyond anything I hope to encounter.  

I guess this book isn’t for everyone, but it’s good reading for anyone who contemplates going to sea in a sailboat.