Of Sails and Engines

You want to know the difference between Sailors and power boaters? Presumably both love the water and being on it, at least so I heard but after being on the water, around it, in it, above it and observed others around me, I’m not so sure. It is so much fun watching children, the young and unspoiled by older persons and others as they splash around swimming, jumping and generally just have fun, without a goal versus those who have incorporated competition disguised as fun into their activities.
Now, I have been told that I’m very weird in many ways and wear it like a price tag on some really highly valued items and I’m proud of it. After many years of examining and scrutinizing people and their attitudes I came to a point from where I’m standing they are weird.
First things I noticed when I went to school, we had contests in almost anything. There were prizes given to the best from who read the most books to who could piss higher and farther than another. Someone had to win and all the others lost. I saw more hanging heads after competitions than flowers after a long dry spell. But we had fun. Well, some did anyway. As soon as awards where introduced into those activities, fun became exclusively the privilege for the winner and the losers looked for other means to be winners.

Are you wondering yet what all this has to do with sailing and engines? What is the purpose of all this talk about winning and loosing?
Okay, here comes first another thing to consider before I come to the point. When started the idea that there has to be a winner and who are those who uphold the idea of being better than another? And how come we think it is important to be a winner? Why do we need to choose sides? Why do we need to go somewhere to have fun and why do we need to have something to show?
Is it really important to have something to show, to whom and why? A pile of money that has no uses other than to have it, a trophy that collects dust?
We seem to make even saving someone’s life like a trophy. A person was besting me after I related to a group of friends a rescue I took part in challenging me how many people I saved because he saved more than a dozen. I couldn’t resist reply: “Only one who’s life really mattered and he saved many other life’s by refusing to go to war in Iraq.”

Are there any awards for those who loved and shared the best? I think the moment we award anything, that moment we corrupt the deed. Is the result not its own reward?
We make a big deal out of who did or said what and forgetting that the person is not the important part. People die, thank you, but the idea may live on perhaps for a long, long time.
I have my ideas about those posted questions and I think if you really look around you and go into an inquiring mode, you will find answers that come close to the truth.

So here we have the beginning of the dividing line that I see between sailing and power boating. Be it far from me to think one is better than the other, I would like to say that only the attitudes are different. But hey, things are merging, as it is evident in regattas. The fun going sailing is replaced with the “fun” if winning.

So here is a definition I use often: A power boater gets on his boat and goes where he wants to be and a sailor gets into his boat and is where he wants to be. The emphasis is on being. Could we possibly be joyful without going anywhere, or without triumph over someone, perhaps even having nothing to show?


I have often experienced how a power boater goes with a smile, a case of beer and other assortment of alcohol, fishing gear, baseball hat and usually a bunch of other man, also with baseball hats and more beer and booze to his boat, loads up the gear and other stuff and then heads out into the bay with the obvious intent to have a good time. Where they go and what they do I only can guess but when they return, red faces, a kind of stupid grin, watery, red eyes and slurred speech replace their smile. Their voices are loud and boisterous and they are pissed off at the fish who got away just inches before they had them aboard, and admit that the fish outsmarted them. Wow, that tells me a lot about the fisherman’s collective intelligence.
Here is where I pause and ask myself. What need was there to go out fishing when their fridge is filled with last weeks fish? Was their goal to get drunk? To get pissed off and getting frustrated because of a fish showed more intelligence then a bunch of them? I wonder; how many fishermen does it take to outwit a fish? I come to think the fish, which end up on a boat, must have committed suicide because death was preferable over living in this polluted waters. Then that would show more intelligence also because we pollute our planet and still want to live.
Why spend so much money to go chasing fish and then come back bitching and complaining and tell others what a good time they had? Had a good time doing what? And if they had a good time, why bitching? Or is bitching having a good time? Goal orientation and the prospect of some form of reward that has been taught from early childhood, continued throughout our life is the difference. Some of us escaped this conditioning and are then considered by the broken in masses as weird. Anything outside of their concept of what is normal and what life is about is strange.
As a sailor I go to my boat and enjoy fiddling with it to keep it good looking and functional for my own pleasure. Then I take it out to enjoy sailing, the waves, the wind, the sun, rain and going nowhere in particular. I may enjoy a drink but I don’t drink to enjoy. We sailors do not complain about “lumpy seas”, in fact, when the waves come up we go sailing and power boaters go for cover. Our fun starts when theirs is finished. It seems that we have fun enjoying life without the goals as such. The goal is to have fun. The game is what we want to enjoy not who wins.

I have observed among sailors also a trend to win and those are what I would call power boaters at heart. It is true, when there are two sailboats on the water, there is a race but it is not about awards and the results are not leaving hanging heads in its wake. It’s for the sake of a personal triumph and not to have the satisfaction to beat the other. But that is changing rapidly. There is this spreading sickness of egotism to be number one at any cost. We have the Americas Cup as a prime example of egos at large. Big promotions of companies are displayed, crews are bought to man the ships and the winners are paid big monies.
Competition is the driving force and awards are the goals and winning is everything. How can we have fun if we worry about losing? Participation is fun I heard. Then why are we not doing it when there is no award to be had?
I believe, if we let go of the competing aspect of our life and just enjoy life as itself, the award is satisfaction of the achievement itself. There is no need to reward it. Why is it not enough to sail around the world alone or with a crew and have the experience of it as the reward? Do we need to be in the book of records as the youngest, the oldest, the boldest or the first gay, man or woman? Is that not ego talking? Everyone accomplishing something great or even small is contributing to a world of wonder to be enjoyed by all. A janitor in a space agency doing his work is just as valuable as the scientists and their projects because without him or her scientist would be working in filth and their work would not be what it is.
Without those fishermen in a powerboat I would not be writing this story. It is time we acknowledge all men and woman equally without grading who is better, has more, done better than others. Nobody gets up in the morning saying they will do the worst screw-up today. We all do our best every day, even when it has been better yesterday. We just want to be our best every day to the best of our ability today. And would it not be nice to be seen for our efforts and for who we are instead of who we can beat?
Remember, at the time of our death no one will talk about how much money we made, who we beat but who we were. Death has a way to make us all equal.
While sailing I had an experience, which made me look at death as the best friend I could ever have. She taught and showed me that life was not about getting things or accomplishing tasks but of how well I love and of who I am, living in the here and now with intensity and not to worry about how much I did but how well.
We all would do well following our own hearts and not what others want or expect from us.

To your question about sails versus engine, well here it is then.
Sailing is using the airflow and our skill to go where it allows us to go and enjoy even when there is no wind at the time, it will come while with an engine no great skills are necessary but force our way to where we want to go as long as the motor is functioning. How much more skills does it take to turn a key, push the throttle lever and turn a steering wheel that a six year old could not do?
So we need something to show and a fish for a trophy is the proof we are grown ups.
Granted, there is fun in catching a fish and I hear there is something called Catch and Release and I ask myself: We need to torture a fish to have fun? This fish we caught is exhausted and week and often injured and will either become easy victim for other predatory fish or die on its injuries.
And all this is for us to have fun. When I intend to catch a fish, I bait the line and if an edible fish takes the hook, it is dinner. I have been taught young not to play with my food.
In many countries there is this fascination about death and animals are raised to fight each other for “sport”. Bets are made, money is involved in most cases and we are attending this spectacle with mixed feelings, are repulsed and attracted by the brutality of it. In Mexico as well as in Spain people go to watch bullfights and defenders of this activity use flowery words to disguise their thirst for blood and brutality. They will claim it is to demonstrate the superiority of man’s intellect over brut strength and I think if we need to demonstrate that, we are having a big problem. Cockfights, dogfights, praying mantis and whatever can be used to entertain us on the pretext of “sport” is spread all over the world and all is a form of competing. We like to take credit even when an insect is victorious over another. That must certainly be the pinnacle of human intelligence.
Nevertheless, it seems to me the sailing community is affected by this trend and I see sailboats heading out with lines in the water and it is not to supplement their dwindling provisions as much as for entertainment either for themselves or their guests who want to have the thrill to catch a fish. They sure have a thrill when the fish takes the hook and then we may watch the crew scramble to lower the sails, start the engine and clear the deck to enable the lucky fisherman to play the unlucky fish around the stays, other guests, the super structures and handle the rod frantically encouraged by all the others with good advise. Oh, it is so much fun to reel the fish in and then observing secretly the faces of children and woman when the fish has been boarded and now comes the killing that it is delegated to someone who has the job to look tough. The fish is flopping around and usually suffocates to death because no one really wants to kill it and everybody feels a kind of sheepish. But in the end we can say that we got something, sailing was not enough. We need to have something to show that we were out to do something and get something to show. Who wants to come back empty handed?

Characters

Wherever you go, there you are. This statement is enough to create a character and I would travel long and far to meet them. Yet I found out to find characters I only have to look around me. I embarked on this journey to meet them and the circumstances that created them. On occasions I find characters I’m not so sure I wanted to meet, but they make good story material and so do others but there is not much to tell about them, most likely because I did not get to know them well enough to tell a story about them.
They appear to be the kind of folks that are middle of the road, although I’m sure their lives are just as interesting as anybody else’s but they act and behave a way that is not provoking ideas to write about.
And then there are the others. Some are funny, some dramatic, others sad and again others slap my thigh, double over, and being in stitches kind of folks which make travelling so much of a pleasure that it is nearly impossible to stop it. And of course there are others that want me to give up any hope for human kind but I guess they are needed to create a contrast and we may see how much we enjoyed the first kind.
I’m sure there are stories about me also, at least in forms of rumours, gossips and maybe even the truth but I have not seen anything in writing yet and given the nature of most people, they find it easier to talk about me when I’m not around hence this story is on characters I observe around me. I will write about me when they’re not around.

In the anchorage where I tied up “Symbiosis” are several boats at anchor a little ways off, mainly without anybody on board and a few of them are live-aboard vessels. Those are boats occupied by their owners with sometimes living beings walking on two legs unless something or someone has forced them to consume unpaid amounts of alcohol, which they swear, they will never, ever do again until tomorrow. One of them has a life size toy dog, stuffed and often more alive looking than his owner and definitely better behaved than him. Unlike his owner, he never barks at anyone and is al least passive with other living beings, doesn’t mess the boat and is not asking for anything. What I like about this dog is the fact he does not command god’s blessing on anyone with a forked tongue. He also is well groomed and looks clean and I never saw him behaving like a human, but rather humane, very much the opposite of the captain, his owner.
This individual’s vessels is an old-timer, a wooden hull boat that has seen better times with a dock attached to it. Yes, you read correctly, the dock is attached to the boat. The boat is at anchor and where the dock came from is only the boat owner’s interpretation of legal but it serves him as a work platform and what else he deems fit.
I met him some time back and he greeted me in a gruff way, then proceeded to chat about his ear that was split in half from the back to front from a fall he had and now proudly displays like a war hero a lost leg in the old days where man were man and swords and cannons a way to make money. He likes to call himself “Captain Split ear” (“Schlitzohr” in German language and it denotes someone cunning, sneaky and crafty) and although nobody calls him that, I heard talk about him and he’s been called anything else, non-very complimenting, but was curious to see what kind of person he really is. He continued telling me what he is doing and asking if there is anything he could do for me because he needed money. Being broke myself I could not use his skills and told him so and he told God to bless me. Being a suspicious person about these kinds of folks, I kept contact to a friendly hello and the occasional tow of his dinghy when I saw him labouring with oars on windy days and each time I got a “God bless you” for it.
The towing itself was not a bother but when he brought up his problems and complains about his friend with whom he drunk daily until he fell down, I suggested:
-Work out your problem with him and not with me. It’s your friend; he needs to know what you don’t like about him. And if he is your friend and you talk about him in terms that are used for enemies, how do you talk about your enemies?
His face turned a hue of purple and he cried:
-Posh you! All of you. I don’t need you. I live alone and leave me the #*±! Alone. Posh you!
I got an earful of curses and dropped offering a tow.

A few days later I hear from my mechanic’s wife that “Captain Split ear” was rude and insulting to her husband. He confronted him while drunk, calling him names and in return was told to stay away from the shop or will be kicked out from there. The owner of the shop has assisted “Captain Split ear” with tools and other things and now that gone, “Captain Split ear” blames him for undermining his business and keeps “blessing “ him.
-Shootskees, he said. -I did a lot of work for them and they hate me. Everybody hates me, Posh them all!
I wanted to know if there is perhaps a possibility that maybe he is the one who hates everybody.
It seems I have a knack to make myself a target for mentally deranged, lonely sailors because his face twisted into an expression as if he unexpectedly bit into a lemon, his eyes like slits, he pulled his lips tight over his teeth and snarled:
-I don’t care! I love everybody. I don’t care what they think of me. I live on my boat; I’m captain split ear. See this? And produced a middle finger to demonstrate his love.
I was convinced.
A day later he asked me to lend him my generator for two hours so he can do some sanding on his boat and I asked him to bring it back when he is finished with a full tank, the way he’s got it.
In the evening I went to his boat to save him a rowing trip and to pick up my generator. He was full of gratitude and blessings and we talked for a little while before I returned to my boat with the generator and empty tank. The following day he asked me to help him to find a generator to buy and I directed him to another sailor who had one for sale.
-I don’t have the money now but will have it when I sold my property in Montana.
-Okay, I said. -When you have the money, you can buy it from him.

For a few days I did not see him and enjoyed the peace of a settled anchorage with a friend and we prepared “Symbiosis for a short sailing stint on the bay, when he came to my boat and telling me that he now bought an older generator, noisier than mine but more power and then began “blessing” me with so called four-letter words, waving his hands at me, which I would have loved with all of the fingers, not just one, and put a healthy distance between me and his dinghy. Was he worried my laughter would lead into an all-out madness and I would hurt him? It was a relief to have him off my back and not have to worry about lending him tools and getting it back empty and dirty. Why would I not be happy?
The next day while I answered some emails he came to me as if nothing happened, reaches his hand out for a handshake and was surprised when I asked him what the hell was that yesterday all about. First he pretended he did not remember a thing and then the amnesia lifted and he told me I was like all the others who hate him. My surprise was complete.
I thought he liked to borrow things for free and have people giving him jobs and support him with beer and share their catch with him but I stand corrected. Maybe some folks must like to be charged, insulted and treated harsh or they never feel validated. He continued to blabber on about his opinion about me, all the others who are like that and that I know what he was talking about, (I wish) theatrically dropped on his knees, hands raised toward the sky and begging for my forgiveness at the same time coursing me. Passer-by’s stopped and wondered if this was perhaps an open-air performance and started digging into their pockets for coins to reward us for the show.
Suddenly he remembered that he is “Captain Schlitzohr” who bends his knees for no one, jumped to his feet and shouted, he needs nobody, lives alone and posh you all, made his exit.
Curtains.
The by-standers, stuffed their coins back into their pockets and dispersed slowly, stunt by the authenticity of this sailor, they even forgot to applaud.
That made my day because it reassured me that I’m okay. With a relief I realized, how scary it would be to imagine people like this would love me.
Personally I think if there were no folks like him, we’d better invent them. They really bring out the contrast and make travelling interesting.
Once I watched a soccer game with a great player out-dribbling the other teams players, zigzagging around them, stumbling, getting up, still in possession of the ball then kicking the winning goal into the net, his own. Blame dizziness!
This sailor reminded me about this game and on some days when I’m swamped with things to do and I’m pressed to do many things that all seem urgent, I score like that too, but thank heavens, not every day. Could it be that this “Captain Schlitzohr” is a very busy man?

TERRORISM

ter·ror·ism n
Violence or the threat of violence, especially bombing, kidnapping, and assassination, carried out for political purposes

Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.

I'm not sure if my cat has any political connections or affiliations to the local Taliban, IRA or Al Fattah but there is a possibility that she has connections with local blow-up artists and assassins. If she is politically motivated, it has not yet surfaced, but that she has an agenda is evident.
She is my second acquisition, as a playmate for my male cat-friend who I thought in my deluded ways needed one. So I went to the local adopt a pet (more appropriate it should be called the "adopt a terrorist" shop) and there was this innocent looking, big-eyed, purring and face-licking hairball, which apparently could not make up it's mind if it was going to be white, red, grey or tabby and instead became all. I got suckered into her charms and in my trusting ways paid the adoption fee and proceeded to take her to her new home and introduce her to my cat-friend Csiko who I hoped would be not too harsh with her. He wasn't, she was.
I should have smelled a rat when I got this fuzzy thing on my shoulder and rode the bicycle toward the marina and she put those daggers that were concealed in satin paws in my back when a cab roared past us. The friendly doctor who surgically removed the kitten from my back wondered if anyone had ever given birth to a kitten before through the ribs. He heard about a story that once a woman was born from the ribs of a guy named Adam but a cat was never mentioned before or after for that matter. This was a first for both of us.
On the boat things soon became clear. Csiko was no longer allowed to reside on the boat. There was a hissing and growling going on that would scare the wits out of a tiger and Csiko reluctantly ceded ground to all teeth and claws in front of a huge sound wave that followed. It didn't matter much that Csiko was first on the boat, he had all the privileges that one earned over time, this assault was not he had anticipated and he did not return to the boat and demonstrated his disapproval in a way only cats know how.
Whenever I called him before the arrival of Miss Kitty, he answered, when he returned from a night on the town, he announced his return with a MIAU loud enough to wake me from deep slumber and snuggled into my arm and pawing my face with soft caress. Now he did not even come home. When I saw him ashore, he just looked and then turned away like a scorned woman, his tail twitched and he sauntered into the thicket without another glance in my direction.
Guilt flooded my heart and I contemplated to return the kitten to the shop and make up with Csiko by buying the juiciest fish I could find and let him gorge himself. Then I thought if I just give them more time, they would get over their dislike and all would be well. Oh, female cats easily foil the hopes of man. Csiko knew that this kitten was set in her ways. She was born to be a single-minded terrorist and like the bad joke of what the difference between a woman with PMS and a terrorist is, this kitten proved that you couldn’t always negotiate with a terrorist.
No gentle handling was possible with this kitten. She was always in attack mode and when I broke with brute force through her claws and teeth, her hissing and growling was such that I was afraid to let her go out of my grasp lest she ripped me into shreds.
Csiko the wise had better sense to stay away and let me take the brunt of her attacks. On the rare occasions when he showed up near the boat, and I suspect he just wanted to check up on the situation to see if I was still alive, he was looking from the cover of the thicket toward the boat and like a ninja vanished into thin air. How wrong I was thinking that in a few days the situation would resolve into a happy after. Month later Csiko finally condescended to visit when he figured this snarling, hissing ball of fur was sleeping and as soon as he jumped onto the boat, I eased the lines and moved a bit forward to get away from the wall where he could retreat. As long as I was around to take the first line of defence against the kitten, he was able to have a few bites of the food that was there and then he took off again. But with the boat now farther from the wall, that escape route was gone and he had to find sanctuary somewhere else. Alas, on a boat you can run but you cannot hide and he found out very fast how true that is. The gel coat on my deck was worn thin from their chasing around and once I got of the boat to have some peace, Csiko jumped into the water and swam to the docks to escape. If you know cats, you will understand how desperate he must have felt.
One day a heard a splash near the boat and thinking it could have been a large fish jumping, ignored it but then I heard this wailing that was like a sound out of a horror movie. I try to write the sound but it will not do justice. YOAUW! I jumped up from the table and into the cockpit to see a wet Pussy with eyes as big as dishes floating at the transom of the boat frantically trying to come back into the boat. (This kitten is clever enough not to wear a dynamite vest) Miss Kitty, the female terrorist.
For a moment I thought, (shame on me) this is the answer to my prayers and the solution to all of our problems but my humanitarian side broke surface and I put my arm into the water which the kitten grabbed in an instant and scaled like a monkey up onto my head and then jumped off onto the deck. Cussing and as yaouing like the kitten, spurting blood like a fountain, I grabbed the towel hanging on the lifelines as if placed there just for this purpose, I tried to stop the bleeding before I died without first had a chance to kill the cat. Miss Kitty sensing her doom elected the only strategy that works, looked at me, her eyes still big and round like saucer cups and let out a wailing sound of a kind that made me forget everything about murder. Bleeding to death disregarding I picked up this soaking fur ball and wrapped her into the blanket to dry her off. I’m not sure if fear made her shiver or the water but she was the most vibrating thing a man can think of.
As I dried her, she pushed her head into my armpit as if she wanted to take cover from a mad bulldog. My heart melted and compassion overpowered my reasons to kill this mortal enemy. Oh, what a sweet kitten this is was all I could think. Poor thing, so scared and cold and salty. Ah! Salty! She needs a warm rinse to get her to warm up and get rid of the salt. Into the head with her. Her we go, turn on the water and give her a nice warm shower. But oh, what a mistake that was. Never in my life did I see anything so fast, accurate and powerful escaping the head compartment through a porthole. She must have had the best Ninja warrior training that has been developed since the Shogun in Japan.
In any case, this kitten has not forgiven me that treacherous attempt on her salty cat status even now. Whenever I have a shower and enter the salon to sit down, she attacks me and bites what is available on me. The bites are no longer as vicious as they were in the first few weeks and that may be because I had to restrain her a few times with considerable force, but she still gets me when I’m lowering my guard. She also has developed a technique to get me when I’m sleeping and bites my arm, chest or any other part of my body that she can get at even if she has to pull the blanket off me.

Recently we got into a truce that seems to hold and I encounter her on my pillow or even snuggling up for a few minutes and I have gotten a little hard rubber ball that she is very fond of. It bounces and she chases it all over the boat, hides it in my berth and has a blast when I toss it for her and when she had her way with it, she brings it to me to show her what else to do with it. Still, I can’t get rid of the suspicion that she just wants to put me at ease before striking me down. So far so good.
Often when I return to the boat she greets me on deck and rub herself on me as if I was her favourite toy, which may very well be the case.
I wonder when she will try to recruit me for her hidden agenda. So far she has not demanded anything worst than to catch a fish, kill it and let her eat it but I fear in the near future she will tell me to take them hostage and exchange them for imprisoned cats around the world who have been impounded for obscure reasons. I believe I could be talked into that and hope it will not escalate into an all-out war against all human kind with slogans like “death to all humans”. My hope is that she is more humane than humans. And what is a little suffering among friends?
Now as time has gone by, this kitten has grown into an almost adult cat and there is a reconciliation process happening between Csiko and her that also includes my First Mate and me and we have her visiting us in bed where she is plotting her sinister plans to overthrow the human race.
Irma has a fondness of her, it must be the female aspect in her, and they spend hours together that is almost eerie was it not for the genuine affection of my mate and her authentic being to me. I can only presume that it is me who get close to agree with the ideologies these two females represent that allows me to live in relative peace.
Albeit, we are living in a harmonious and symbiotic space and have learned to live with each other and if we can do that, there may be hope that others in the world come to learn from us animals and create a better world where all can live in peace and love without the need to convert the other or enforce our views onto others. If we all can learn to respect our differences and see them as flowers of all kinds and not want to create a “Read my Two-lips” only world, we could at least have a better understanding of others even if we do not agree with their ways. We can rest in peace knowing that they will not agree with ours if they don’t want to. By allowing ourselves to observe and to be observed, we may discover the other has ways to see the world in ways other than we do and it may even be better than we thought. We may call this attitude open-ness to change.
It is amazing how the statement: “I know” has closed our minds and created rigidity in our being that is stagnant and fouls our being.
It is time to re-think our ways to think and act because it has brought us to the brink of our self-destruction and if we want to survive as species, we must re-create our ways. Thinking for us would be one good step in the right direction. Sharing the world with another and respecting our differences a second and to add some spice to it: Let’s work on our sense of humour about our selves. Taking our achievements and us too serious creates a sense of self-importance that has made life all over this planet a zest pool of greed, disrespect and a struggle for supremacy over others. Focusing on things that makes us and everybody around us feel good can change it.