More on Chiles and Moitessier

EARLIER THIS WEEK a New Zealand reader named Zane commented on my column about Webb Chiles. He referred to my statement that “Webb is not shy of the publicity that helps sell his books.”

Zane pointed out that Webb’s three best-known books are available free on his website.

Well, Zane, that doesn’t mean he shuns publicity. Far from it. He actively seeks it. Before the start of his most recent voyage he sent out the Press release repeated below[1] to newspapers and magazines, complete with pictures of himself and his boat.

 Neither does it mean he gives all of his books away. Amazon.com still sells them in Kindle form and in printed form.  And, remember, those books go back to 1977 — they’ve already earned royalties for nearly 40 years. Furthermore, it’s not to be supposed that Webb is totally disinterested in making money. On his website he says:

“You are welcome to download whatever you want from these pages to read at your leisure or to share with others. But everything on this website is copyrighted and under current law, if during most of this century you make any money from it, I or my heirs want a cut.”

 Zane also asked: “Are any of your books available for a free download, John?”

No, they’re not. But you can go into a public library and read my books for free.

In any case, I don’t have the legal right to put my books on the internet for free. The digital rights to my books belong to my respective publishers, and it would be ludicrous to expect them to publish the books for free.

There is an important principle involved here, as expressed by a national professional body of which I am a member:   

“The Authors Guild remains committed to the notion that the digital revolution cannot come at the cost of authors’ rights to preserve writing as a livelihood.”

Zane, may I ask if you expect your car mechanic or your plumber to do work for you for nothing? Are you surprised when they hand you a bill? Do you ask them, too, why their work isn’t available free to you?

I am a professional writer who sails, not a professional sailor who writes. I try to earn a living by writing but I have yet not managed to become rich. When I was writing my sailing books we lived for seven years in a rickety 30-year-old mobile home in a trailer park on an island north of Seattle. My dear wife June, a prize-winning journalist and former editor-in-chief of South Africa’s largest parenting magazine, snagged a lowly job for $6 an hour on the local newspaper on the island, and we lived on that.

I wish I could afford to give away books to anyone who wanted one. That would be a wonderful luxury. But it’s out of my hands in any case.

Finally, Zane, you question my comment that Webb Chiles reminds me of Bernard Moitessier, and you say that you can’t think of two more different personalities. Well, good for you. You’re entitled to your opinion, and you say that Webb is a gentleman, a great sailor, and an even better writer.

Naturally, not everybody agrees with you. Here’s a book review of the Kindle edition of Storm Passage, taken from the Amazon.com website: 

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful

I really wanted to like this one

By Scott C on January 25, 2012

Format: Kindle Edition Verified Purchase

When the story centers on the actual voyage itself and its many challenges, it essentially works. The main problem I had with "Storm Passage" was the fact that the writer, "Webb," comes off as a self-absorbed, pompous windbag. He whines about EVERYTHING. And alternates in personality between "victim," worldly and cultured "gentleman" and "narcissistic bore bursting with boneheaded pride." He will also inexplicably throw in descriptions about himself out of nowhere — at one point mentioning his "full lips" and his "cleft chin" (which he says is his best feature). Really? Hmm. So, any interest in the story of the voyage (s) is literally sucked dry by the fact that you have to hang out with this egotistical and largely miserable person. It's too bad really, because his voyage and his achievements are extraordinary. Who knows, maybe in the years since this account he grew up a little bit.

For another opinion go to:

http://sailing.agyra.com/2010/08/moitessier-or-chiles.html

[1] Finally, here is the Press release detailing Webb Chiles latest proposed voyage:

“Webb Chiles, 72, five time circumnavigator and the first American to round Cape Horn alone, sailed from San Diego, California, this morning on his 24’ sloop, GANNET, beginning what will, time and chance permitting, become his sixth voyage around the world.

“GANNET is a Moore 24, the first ultra-light displacement class built in the United States.  Moore 24s have often been successfully raced from California to Hawaii, but no one has ever before attempted to circumnavigate in one.

“Chiles will sail first to Hilo, Hawaii; then make his way across the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand where he will decide whether to continue west or turn east for Cape Horn in 2015.

“You can follow GANNET’s track at http://my.yb.tl/gannet; and learn more at www.inthepresentsea.com.


PS: I nearly forgot, Zane:  There are 866 columns on my blog, half a million words or so. You can find all of them on the right. All free to read, you'll be pleased to hear.  

 

Today’s Thought

Ah, pensive scholar, what is fame?

A fitful tongue of leaping flame;

A giddy whirlwind’s fickle gust,

That lifts a pinch of mortal dust;

A few swift years, and who can show

Which dust was Bill, and which was Joe?

— O. W. Holmes, Bill and Joe

Tailpiece

“Do you know a man with one eye called Falconetti?”

“Not sure. What’s his other eye called?”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

 

Lucky Bernard

EVERY NOW AND THEN I hear somebody praising the late Bernard Moitessier for his wonderful seamanship. They’ve usually just read one of his books and are smitten by his wonderfully carefree attitude toward life combined with his renowned boat-handling skill in heavy weather.

But it wasn’t always like this. I knew Bernard quite well when I was a schoolboy. I used to practice my schoolboy French on him, and he practiced his schoolboy English on me.

Although he became world-famous for his sailing exploits, he was a lousy sailor in some respects. He lost two of his boats on reefs after falling asleep, and he abandoned the most famous one of all, Joshua, on a beach in Mexico after he anchored too close inshore.

One of his favorite stories, told in his book The Long Way (Sheridan House), involves a large dose of sheer luck that was presented to him by a pod of porpoises.

Unbeknown to him, because he hadn’t checked his compass course, Joshua was being carried at 7 knots toward the rocks off mist-shrouded Stewart Island in the South Pacific.

Suddenly “a tight line of 25 porpoises swimming abreast goes from stern to stem on the starboard side, in three breaths, then the whole group veers right and rushes off at right angles, all the fins cutting through the water together and in the same breath taken on the fly.”

They did this more than 10 times before Moitessier understood their message, checked his compass, and turned Joshua to starboard onto a safe course.

Then something wonderful happened, he said.  A big black-and-white porpoise jumped high into the air and did a double forward somersault. “Three times he does his double roll, bursting with a tremendous joy, as if he were shouting to me and all the other porpoises: ‘The man understood that we were trying to tell him to sail to the right ... you understood ... you understood ... keep on like that, it’s all clear ahead!’”    

Moitessier seemed to have as much luck as skill, but I dare say he earned his luck one way or another and always had enough points piled up in his black box.

Today’s Thought

Diligence is the mother of good luck.

— Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanack

Tailpiece

“Waiter, there’s a fly in my soup.”

(18) “Just leave it there, sir, and I’ll fetch the goldfish.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

You put your coffee where?

THE WOMAN WHO CUTS what’s left of my hair went to barber school. That makes her one of the boys, so it’s quite natural that she is interested in sailing around the world.

But she surprised me the other day by lending me a book by Bernard Moitessier, one of her sailing heroes. When I say “by Bernard Moitessier,” I should explain that it wasn’t by Bernard Moitessier in the normal author/publisher way. It was a book assembled after his death in 1994 by his self-styled “companion,” one of a string of females dear Bernard left wallowing in his wake. It’s called A Sea Vagabond’s World.

He was indeed a vagabond when I first befriended him. At least that what’s he called himself. The rest of us called him a seaborne Hippie, a bumbling, mystical doofus who couldn’t sail very well and who built boats (knowing hardly anything about boatbuilding) and promptly lost them through bad seamanship.

But this is heresy to my barber, bless her heart, who worships the very waves he sailed on, so I do my best to encourage her enthusiasm without revealing the facts that would shake her faith in this French guru of long-distance cruising.

And yet the facts are right there in this book she lent me. Moitessier always was infected with a slight case of the Tristan Jones syndrome. As an educated reader, you will know, of course that Tristan Jones suffered mightily from hyperbole and self-aggrandizement, to the extent that you could never know where the truth ended and the lies started. Dear old Bernard wasn’t in his league, but perhaps that wasn’t for want of trying.

For instance, in A Sea Vagabond’s World he tells starry-eyed barber girls how to exist on a tropical atoll. This, apparently, calls for plenty of garden compost, tropical atolls being notoriously short of the stuff. But luckily we all have it within ourselves to make compost. I quote:

“Make a chicken-wire cylinder, stand it on end, and fill it with minced leaves and stems and lots of chopped sea cucumbers, fish guts, kitchen scraps and other organic matter … Urine and excrement complete this mixture. I figured that on Poro Poro my family — two adults and one child — produced 50 to 80 gallons of human fertilizer a year.”

Now once your human-fertilizer compost heap is complete you have to leave it for a week, says Bernard, before “adding more sea cucumber, human waste, urine, and kitchen scraps.”

After that, things heat up, apparently. “A thermometer stuck into the heap would burst at 130 degrees.”

Now, if we wanted to we could pause here for a moment and ask why the heck a thermometer would burst at 130 degrees. That’s not very hot. However, intriguing as that question is, we should waste no time in hastening on to his next statement: “I’ve even used this amazing heat to brew myself a cup of instant coffee.”

Yeah, right, Bernard. You stuck your coffee cup into a pile of steaming human waste to warm it up? And then you drank it? Oh, sure. Of course you did.

I haven’t found out yet if my barber lady drinks instant coffee. I feel compelled to warn her not to use the Moitessier method but I don’t want to shatter her dream of settling on a compost-starved South Sea atoll. Damn you, Bernard, I knew from the moment I first set eyes on you that you would cause trouble wherever you go.

Today’s Thought
There are people who will say that this whole account is a lie, but a thing isn’t necessarily a lie even if it didn’t necessarily happen.
— John Steinbeck, Sweet Thursday

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #30
Chart table size. The minimum size for a chart table in even the smallest boat is 28 inches by 21 inches. Ideally, it should measure at least 42 inches by 28 inches, but not many of us can afford that luxury. Incidentally, 100 paper charts folded in the normal matter fill a chart drawer measuring 28 inches by 21 inches to a depth of two inches. If you’re like me and don’t have a chart drawer, you’ll find you can stow about 100 charts under the saloon cushions in three neat little piles on either side.

Tailpiece
He who laughs last probably had to have the joke explained.