He was
talking about the workings of what he called a primitive principle known as the
universality of quanta.
Well, it
might be primitive to him, but it's way above my fire-make place, as they say
in Afrikaans.
Nevertheless
it reminded me of a remark I overheard at a dockside once long ago. A yacht had
just arrived in port after taking a long, bad beating in a storm at sea. She
was a beautiful wooden cruising sloop, 37 feet long, with the long graceful
ends and short waterline of the CCA era. She was, in fact, Francis S. Kinney's
lovely Pipe Dream design made famous
in Skene's Elements of Yacht Design.
Her skipper,
Dave Alexander, had just stepped ashore to make fast her mooring lines. He
looked bleary-eyed and exhausted after days and nights without adequate sleep.
A friend walked along the dock, greeted him, took a quick look at the battered boat
and said: "Wow, how many systems are still working?"
Until that
moment I had never imagined a sailboat as having "systems." But I
gave it some thought and concluded tentatively that the man was right. There
was a steering system, a communications system, a cooking system, an anchoring
system, two separate systems for propulsion (sail and power), a system for
pumping bilgewater, a system for removing human waste, and so on.
You could,
of course, break some of these systems down into smaller components. For
instance, the steering system on this boat consisted of a tiller and a rudder.
The rudder, in turn, consisted of a stock and a blade. The blade, in its turn, was
probably made up of separate pieces of wood to form its whole.
Nevertheless,
as far as I could see now that I'd figured it out, none of these systems
impinged on any other. In my estimation, each was a closed system. I mean, if
the rudder failed, you'd still be able to anchor. If the mast fell down, you'd
still be able to motor. If you ran out of beer you'd still be able to radio a
Mayday.
Yet
Steinbeck indicates that all these systems affect each other. He maintains they
are separated from each other by only the smallest steps — steps that they can
take in their stride.
He is
certainly right when he says that such systems are not entirely
"closed," because that would mean they could exist and do their work
without outside help or interference. But I still don't accept that a broken
toilet affects the steering system, or a fault with the VHF affects the cooking
system. So I really don't understand what he's getting at.
I could be
misinformed, of course. Perhaps in my youthful ignorance I wrongly regarded the
whole boat as one unified system to move people from one place to another by
sea. Or, even more simply, as a unified system to bring joy and pleasure to
those who love yachts.
For all I
know, a sailboat might well be a universalitied quantum, as Steinbeck insists. Or
maybe — just maybe — Steinbeck might be wrong and I might be right. (And pigs,
the universal units of the breakfast system, might fly.)
Today's
Thought
In utter
loneliness a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.
— John
Steinbeck
Tailpiece
"Why
are you crying, my love?""Oh John, I cooked you a lovely supper and the dog ate it."
"Jeez, don't sweat it, darling. Tomorrow I'll buy you another dog."
(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)
