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?