Tags
falmouth cutter, outfitting a pocket cruiser, photography, sailing, simplicity, traditional sailing
Bernard Montissier once was asked how much cruising cost and replied “whatever you have”
My choices are simple, safe, and proven.
My 22 lb Fortress and 5/16″ chain cost less than insurance.
Hank on sails cost less than roller furling.
Buckets cost less than marine heads, are cleaner and will never fail.
Tillers cost less than steering wheels and rarely fail.
Tell tales cost less than electronic wind instruments and cannot fail.
Self steering wind vanes cost less to keep going than electronic steering aids and pick up every wind shift.
Jerry jugs cost less than water tanks and if one gets contaminated or leaks you still have many backups.
Using your eyes and traditional navigation is better than relying on radar, when you need it most it will fail you. Just like a skier cant ski without snow and a surfer cant surf without waves a sailor cant sail every day.
A sculling oar cost less than an engine.
a hard dingy cost less than an inflatable and doubles as an unsinkable life raft.
Natural ventilation and insulation cost less than heat, are safer and keep the boat dry and warmer in winter and cooler in summer.
Ice boxes cost less than refrigeration and never fail.
Hand held lead line is fail safe, cheap and saves one through hull.
Dead reckoning and traditional navigation is safer, more fun, and often more reliable than GPS.
Chilling on The’, the rain last night was a welcome break and and perfect for some much needed R&R.
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction. ~E.F. Schumacher
Amen Brother!!! K.I.S.S !!!!! Simple is better, cheaper and more reliable.
A business associate of mine works for a major industrial design Think Tank in Silicon Valley, doing work for Apple, Oracle, etc (amongst the things they “invented” was the “Human Interface Device”…. better known at the Computer Mouse).
……Anyway……. they just finished a 5 year, multi-million dollar study about the role of “modernization of everyday life”; Basically, has email, iPhone apps, Facebook, etc made life better/simpler/more efficient for people.
The results are mixed, but the overwhelming sentiment is that these “conveniences” don’t yield a Net Benefit in efficiency and quality of life. Moreover, while we are hooked on these devices, consumer preferences are shifting from “adoption” of these Technologies, to “assimilation”. In other words, our willingness to pay money for the supposed benefits to our life, is being met with increasing resistance (Anybody check the price of their Facebook stock recently!?!?). The ability to “monetize” technologies is becoming increasingly hard. This has Apple and others really worried, from both a hardware and software perspective.
Without sounding like a Luddite, I was intrigued by one of the metrix they used; What is the “global” VALUE of technology? What they confirmed is that we are spending more time, more money and more resources to accomplish that same thing Net Activity (often by a factor of 10x+). Only the availability (speed) of “information” was improved upon.
New design criteria will increasingly involve a “value factor”. What is the impact on time, money and resources by utilizing this new technology? For example, what is the Value of writing a letter versus the many hours do we spend on email? What is the Value of throwing a lead-line over the side and scribbling on a paper chart with pencil and parallel ruler versus the cost of a full Garmin navigation suite, networked together with GPS, charting map, depth sounder, DSC Radio, AIS, etc). Moreover, how is Human Decisions Making affected by the scope and value of an activity?
In therefore, Alan’s observations are not just the ramblings of an “old school” romanticist or the philosophical mantra of a counter-culteralist, but a trend that modern industry in increasingly aware of and concerned about. We are rebelling at the “noise” around us and figuring out that the “new normal” is not necessarily immproving our lives.
Sorry about the ramble! Having just read an abstract of the report today, the Art of Hookie blog hit home.
…………..now, back to my webcast and online banking. Hopefully I will be able to Tweet my fuel economy on the drive home in rush-hour traffic
I salute you as I raise my ouzo glass
Cheers
I’m laughing out loud at your tweet. Funny what you say as a local charter boat just came in. It has Radar, GPS, Chartplotter, depthsounder, paper charts, chart book, nav books, and specific warning of dangerous shoals. All of this and somehow they hit bottom hard enough that they all pulling the boat to inspect damage. This is a regular occurrence around here. Modern day electronics allow us to shut the most powerful toll of all down, the human brain.
I got yelled at about a month ago for sailing into the harbor. ” I don’t want you sailing in here when I’m on the water, its too dangerous”. I asked him what he would do when his engine failed, her shrugged his shoulders and said as he was walking away that that had never happened. I’m guessing that that statement was true as I’ve never actually seen his boat away from the dock.
Gentlemen, I applaud you.
Thoreau had a lot to say about this… a truth being that a lot of pleasure and contentment in life lies in figuring out what you can do without, rather than what you can acquire.
Enjoying looking through your blog. This is our summer of figuring out our boat. New to this, the learning curve is steep. Chasing down a leak, loving the Newport diesel heater, agreeing that an icebox is all we’ll ever want (no refrigerator to draw power and break down), glad for the electronics we have, would love to add a fishfinder (but not another hole in the hull or the expense) and then we come about 180 degrees and start thinking in terms of lead lines instead of depth sounders… The microwave was the first thing we moved off the boat – gave it away. Every damn thing we do is a mess the first time around, the second time a little better, and so it goes. We can actually dock this beast stern-in, no small feat with this particular model, (after much trial and error and coming to grips with the fact that this stern will not budge over in reverse, so you have to line it all up going forward, first). There’s a great line in the movie/book “The Shipping News” that applies to us. “Of course, you don’t know nothin’ about boats, but that’s entertaining, too.” I don’t know… How do you learn to sail and maintain a sailboat unless you get a boat and start learning to sail it and keep it together?
Cheers,
Jack & Barbra
The nice thing about a leadline is that it forces you to come in slow and look at your chart, In my opinion it is mauch safer than a depth sounder because you actually have to think about what you are doing. I love your boat and yes the learning curve is half the fun. Keep sailing