The Maddison Project: Take 1

I RECENTLY STUMBLED ACROSS some work by the late Professor Angus Maddison of the University of Groningen, in The Netherlands. Maddison, a Briton, died in 2010. He was a world scholar in the field of quantitative macroeconomic history.
If that sounds a bit scary, well, it IS. However, his work for the Dutch university included measuring the economic performance for different regions, time periods, and sub-topics. And, interestingly enough, his research reveals facts of great interest to anyone connected with ships and the sea, as I’m sure most of my readers are.
For instance, Maddison discovered that for 1,000 years after the birth of Christ, there was practically no advance whatsoever in ship design or navigation in the hub of European commerce, the Mediterranean. By the year 1000, he claims, navigation there had actually gone backward.
The old Greeks and Romans had had what were called periploi, or early cruising guides, giving details of anchorages, the movement of tides, the depths of water, and so on. They also had access to Ptolemy’s Geography, an atlas of the known world, and a charting system that provided positions in terms of latitude and longitude. But somehow, with the fall of the Roman Empire, these things had been lost, and it was only in 1400, for instance, that a manuscript copy of Ptolemy was discovered in Constantinople.
I had previously read that many things disappeared along with the Roman Empire, things such as the common plane, used for smoothing wood. I have always been rather skeptical about this. How could people, especially people working with wood every day, suddenly forget how to make a plane? It seemed impossible. And yet, after reading Maddison, I am beginning to believe that such things can happen.
In addition to losing the periploi, those ancient mariners also let their shoreside facilities run down. In the year 1000, harbors were “inferior to those constructed by the Emperor Claudius at Portus for the food supply of Rome, and Alexandria’s great port and lighthouse had disappeared,” Maddison says.
It is extraordinary to think that Western Europeans could descend into intellectual darkness and economic regression for 1,000 years or more. Century after century with even the brightest human minds just treading water, or even sinking slightly. No wonder they were called the Dark Ages.
According to Maddison, It wasn’t really until the 13th century that there were improvements in economic activity resulting from three significant changes to ships and navigation. I’ll tell you what those changes were in this column next Monday.

Today’s Thought
There are two problems in my life. The political ones are insoluble and the economic ones are incomprehensible.
— Alec Douglas-Home, former Prime Minister of Great Britain


Tailpiece
I coughed a cough into the air,
Germs fell to earth I know not where;
For who has eyes so keen and bright
That he can see a germ alight?


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Caveat, all you emptors

PEOPLE LOOKING FOR BOATS TO BUY find lots of good advice in the yachting magazines, such as where to look for rot and how to tell if the rigging is still serviceable. But I’ve never seen any advice on how to tell if the seller is honest.
I must admit that most of the boat owners I’ve ever had anything to do with have been fine, upstanding members of society. But not all. One in particular comes to mind occasionally.
I met him after he advertised a boat for sale, a sweet old Camper & Nicholson 32. She seemed to be going for a reasonable price, so I called him to make an appointment to see her.
“Yes, yes,” he said enthusiastically, “I’m the one who advertised her. Do come and see her.”
The boat happened to be quite a long way away, in Canada, in fact, so June and I decided to make a two-day trip of it. We dusted off our passports and drove north on Interstate 5 to the Tsawwassen terminal in British Columbia and took the car ferry for 1 1/2 hours to Swartz Bay on Vancouver Island. From there we drove south toward Victoria to connect with the highway running north to Port Hardy. When we had gone far enough north we came to a small town called Duncan, where we booked into a motel for the night.
Next day, after some false starts, we found the tricky way to Maple Bay Marina, where the Nicholson 32 was lying. The owner welcomed us aboard and showed us how everything worked. On the outside, she looked in reasonable condition for her age. She certainly was a pretty boat, and we knew her splendid reputation for seaworthiness. But when we stepped down below we fell in love with her immediately. She was all varnished teak, but bright and lively, with a proper chart table and everything.
The owner left us alone for a couple of hours and we explored thoroughly, becoming more and more excited as we discovered the fine workmanship that had gone into this gorgeous boat. June and I looked at each other and just knew she was for us.
When the owner came back we said excitedly: “We’ll take her.”
“Well, there’s just one little problem,” he said. “She’s sold already. Someone has put down a deposit on her.” But, he added brightly, if we cared to make a better offer on her, he would find an excuse and cancel the sale to the other person.
My first reaction was anger. How could this man have let us come all this way to see her, knowing that she was already sold? What sort of criminal con-man was this? Why couldn’t he have told us on the phone that she was no longer for sale? June was as disappointed as I was.
But my next reaction was simply to flee. I wanted nothing more to do with the man.
“We don’t do business this way,” I said curtly. We turned on our heels and stomped ashore.
We drove all the way home wishing that man nothing but ill and feeling very sour about our futile visit to Canada and the loss of that lovely Camper & Nicholson 32.
Today’s Thought The best-laid scheme o’ mice and men Gang aft agley, An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain, For promis’d joy! — Burns, To a Mouse
Tailpiece Dick Was sick. In his delirium He mentioned Miriam, Which was an error For his wife was a terror With the name Of Jane.
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Patience and good seamanship

BRITISH AUTHOR AND SAILOR Dylan Winter, producer of the popular video series Keep Turning Left, says patience is the sailor’s best friend. That seems to be one of the major lessons he has learned during his quest to sail around Britain in small boats.

“When correctly applied in large quantities, it will keep you out of trouble,” he says. “Patience can also be of great assistance when trying to get out of trouble.”

The problem is that many people find it very difficult to be patient in a modern world where we have got gotten used to instant results.

There seems to have been much more patience around in the days of the old windjammers. When people and cargo were moved around the globe by sail it was only natural to wait for a fair wind before starting your passage, out or home. Ships sometimes waited at anchor for weeks for conditions to improve, and everybody accepted this as the conventional wisdom. Patience was regarded as an important part of good seamanship, even though the owners of ships and consignors of cargoes did their best to hurry things along.

But we don’t hear much about patience in connection with seamanship these days, especially among weekend yachtsmen, many of whom are committed to be in their offices by 9 a.m. on Monday.

Last time I sailed around Vancouver Island I was accompanied by a buddy boat. Both of us were singlehanding, and we managed to stay together most of the way. But there came a time when my companion ran out of patience and broke away, running ahead non-stop for home.

I had stopped because the forecasts were for contrary winds in the open Pacific and I knew from experience what it would be like to try to beat 40 miles to windward to the next anchorage in a heavy cruising boat.

“But I have raced,” my companion protested. “I know how to beat. C’mon, let’s go.”

But I was stubborn. I waited three days for the wind to change. I went ashore every day in that deserted part of the world and smelled the wild roses. I was perfectly happy, in no hurry at all.

My buddy boat went on its way without me, though, motor-sailing down the coast, and I have to admit that my former companion made good progress and experienced no trouble.

I guess I can’t claim to possess superior seamanship because I was more patient than he was. Patience just comes naturally to me, though some people might describe it, in my case, as more of a combination of caution and laziness. Yes, I love the quiet, lazy days. And if other people think that my patience makes me a better sailor, who am I to disabuse them of that fine notion?

Today’s Thought

Patience, n. A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.

— Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary

Tailpiece

“Barman! Barman! Do your lemons have legs?”

“No, sir, of course not.”

“Then I guess I just squeezed your canary into my drink.”

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What to do when chaos reigns

PRESIDENT OBAMA says there can be no doubt that global warming is taking place right now, under our very noses. I, for one, am not surprised. Since the Earth was formed, it has undergone many climate changes. Ice ages come and ice ages go. I’d agree that we seem to be in a slow warming phase at the moment, though I’m agnostic on the question of how much of it is due to the natural changes that have kept happening repeatedly over the eons, and how much is due to present-day man-made pollution. After all, many climate changes took place way back in time, before there were enough meddling human beings to make any difference.

Anyway, the fact that the seas are rising, and causing a Native American  tribe here in Washington state to figure out a way to move their town to higher land, has me thinking about Plan B again.

Plan B comes in useful in times of man-made or natural catastrophe, caused by politics, financial crises, weather, or whatever. Plan B goes back a long way with me. Plan B goes back to a time when I was living in a South Africa dominated by apartheid, a time when many South Africans expected an uprising, a bloody revolution.

Plan B was always to steal a boat.

We had a boat, of course, a nice little C&C 28, a Trapper-class fin keeler, fast and pretty. But we wanted something a little bigger and more seaworthy, something that could take us around the Cape of Storms and across the Atlantic to America, my wife’s country.
So whenever we sat on the veranda of the Point Yacht Club in Durban with our sundowners, our eyes would scan the serried ranks of sailboats gleaming before us in the sub-tropical sun.
We were very picky. We had to be able to handle her ourselves, just June and me and our 17-year-old son, Kevin. We’d prefer a ketch, for easy sail handling, but a sloop or cutter would be OK, too. We particularly wanted a boat with wind-vane self-steering. Something between 30 and 35 feet. Four berths. A full keel. Fiberglass or steel or aluminum, no wooden hulls, thank you. Been there, done that. Oh, and a engine that was easy to start, because we probably wouldn’t have the engine key. Definitely wouldn’t have the key.
There were usually two or three contenders, and our current choice would change from time to time as new intelligence came in. Kevin was our main source. “They hide the cabin key in a flap of the dodger,” he’d announce after a sail through the ranks in his dinghy. “They have an Aries vane and a 10-foot Avon dinghy with a Yamaha outboard.” We promised him the best berth in exchange for his information.
Come the revolution, when the streets were dripping with blood, and there was shooting and stabbing and buildings ablaze and all that sort of thing, we would rendezvous at Plan B and make our escape, unnoticed in all the carnage.
OK, nobody’s expecting a revolution in America right now, but global warming is a looming threat to our very existence. President Obama  said so. Which begs the question: Where will you flee to when the time comes? What nice, cool, clean, peaceful, country have you picked out?

New Zealand, maybe? The Falkland Islands? Patagonia? Wales, god help you? And how are you going to get there? The airplanes will all be filled with people with much more money and influence than you, remember.  And there won’t be much time to prepare when the crunch comes, and everything goes down the tubes with a big, sudden swoosh.

Maybe it’s time you, too, started working on Plan B.

Today’s Thought

Chaos is a friend of mine.

— Bob Dylan, Newsweek, 9 Dec 85

Tailpiece

“Why’s Lulu so gloomy?”

“She got married three days ago.”

“Why is that making her gloomy?”

“Well, she gave all her life savings to her new husband.”

“And where is he now?”

“Dunno. She’s still waiting for him to come back from his honeymoon.”

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The bedlam of Friday Harbor

IN A MONTH OR TWO, scores of cruising boats will be heading for the beautiful San Juan Islands, in northwest Washington state, about 80 miles north of Seattle. Many of them will be attracted to the busiest and most famous town in the islands, Friday Harbor. And many will be disappointed.

Nearly 20 years ago, when June and I acquired a little 22-foot sailboat, Tagati, people said: “Oh, you’ll have to visit Friday Harbor. Don’t miss Friday Harbor. Friday Harbor is gorgeous.”

And it is indeed a charming little town in a wonderful setting. And that’s the problem. Everyone wants to go there.

It was August 7 when we rounded Pt. Caution to enter Friday Harbor, and there we ran into traffic galore — The Victoria Clipper, large Washington State ferries discharging tourists and vehicles, seaplanes landing and taking off, and half a dozen lost-looking souls on sailboats milling around the harbor entrance, where a young man sat with a hand-held radio and a list of mooring slips.

We ducked into the harbor and tucked ourselves into a little space that was vacant on the inside of the entrance breakwater, not realizing how lucky we were to be able to fit in there. Bigger boats clinging to the outside of the breakwater were being thrown around by wakes, jerking at their mooring lines, popping cleats, and gouging gunwales.

One woman on a Catalina 30 in a very exposed position told me they’d been there 24 hours waiting for a slip to come free. Channel 66A  was filled with pleas from boats wanting berths, and having to be put on the waiting list. “It’s a zoo,” said the Catalina woman.

All kinds of boats came blundering to the breakwater, some sideways in the current and out of control. People sprinted from their own boats to fend them off. I fastened our dinghy amidships on the outboard side to discourage any of the larger idiots from trying to raft up alongside, and that made more space aft of us which was immediately filled by a small Bayliner powerboat whose two occupants started to change their baby’s diaper on the aft deck.

I watched the berthing master at the end of the breakwater crack up with laughter when a 60-footer called on the VHF and asked if he could have a slip. But the berthing master was very polite when he replied, and offered to put the 60-footer on the waiting list. He didn’t say the wait would probably be days.

June went ashore and took a long walk all around the perimeter of the marina to find a hot shower, for which she was charged only $1. She came back all perfumed and smiling, and we cast off from the breakwater, heading for a lovely quiet lagoon called Fisherman Bay, just four miles away, across the San Juan Channel.

As we pulled out of Friday Harbor, the skipper of a boat from Portland, Oregon, said enviously: “Are you going to a real berth?”

“No,” I said, “we’re outta here.”

Fisherman Bay has one of those entrances that requires you to both navigate and concentrate, which probably accounts for the peace and quiet you find inside. We followed the winding passage without trouble, using the chart in Migael Sherer’s cruising guide, which I happened to have edited for the publishers a few months before.

Migael mentions a tavern/restaurant halfway along the east shore, so we went that way, located it, and anchored Tagati about 200 yards offshore in water about 8 feet deep.

That evening we rowed ashore and enjoyed a lovely meal of delicious clams boiled in their own broth at the Galley Tavern. We sat upstairs, where wooden tables and chairs were set out under colorful shade umbrellas, and we soaked up the sunset view out over the lagoon. We counted only six other transient yachts in the whole anchorage.

Fisherman Bay was calm. It was serene. It was beautiful. And you can hardly imagine how grateful we were to be safely removed from that utter bedlam just four miles away across the San Juan Channel.

Today’s Thought

The most common of all antagonisms arises a from a man’s taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.

— Robert Benchley

Tailpiece

 "John, what's my mother going to say when I tell her you kissed me twice?"

"But I haven't kissed you twice. I only kissed you once."

"Yeah, but you haven’t gone yet, have you?"

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The fear of sailing

THERE ARE MANY SPORTS whose popularity is due, at least in part, to the fear they generate. I’m thinking of sports such as mountaineering, car racing, skydiving, and, of course, sailing.

But there is one thing that separates sailing from the rest, and that is the length of time for which the fear exists. If you’re crossing an ocean, for example, you could well be in a continuous state of fear for 30 days at a time — sometimes more fearful than others, but never less than baseline anxious, if you are any decent kind of sailor.

Strangely enough, it is the presence of possible danger, and the fear it generates, that is attractive to many people. The rush of adrenaline appears to be sweet for many mountaineers and  car racers, but they don’t experience fear as the deep-sea sailor experiences it, relentlessly for days and weeks on end.

Luckily, fear has its uses at sea. It’s what keeps you out of trouble. It assists in the avoidance of danger, says Dr. Michael Stadler, author of Psychology of Sailing: The Sea’s Effects on Mind and Body (Adlard Coles, London).
“Fear in ample (though not excessive) degree can mobilize forces which sharpen up the senses and improve one’s capacity to anticipate and assess the risks inherent in certain situations,” he says.
Most landlubbers link gales at sea with fear, but ordinary gales should cause no undue anxiety to a well-found yacht. One of my boyhood heroes, Eric Hiscock, a very experienced circumnavigator, learned that lesson only late in his sailing career. He suffered greatly from anxiety most of his life, fearing that really bad weather might some day overtake his little vessel. Which it eventually did, of course. And when it did, he discovered to his enormous relief that both he and Wanderer III had what it takes to survive.
“Fortunate indeed is the man who, early in his sailing career, encounters and successfully weathers a hard blow,” Hiscock wrote. The message is plain: Don’t let fear of bad weather put you off cruising. Those who cross oceans find that gales account for less than 2 percent of their sailing time.
In any case, I think it’s fairly certain that all sensible sailors do feel at least a little scared from time to time. Sailing is a sport from which it’s impossible to remove all risk, and perhaps it’s the thrill associated with danger that lends excitement and satisfaction to even the tiniest voyage. How dull sailing would be if it were completely safe.

Dr. David Lewis, an experienced singlehander, did a study of fear in collaboration with Britain’s Medical Research Council. He found that four out of five contestants in the 1960 singlehanded transatlantic race experienced “acute fear.”
Interestingly, though, they didn’t remember afterward how frightened they had been. It seems to be part of human nature that we forget, or at least downplay, the bad times and remember only the good times. Most of the sailors recalled that they were scared, but couldn’t recall how bad it was. Their brains had expunged or subdued memories of their bad experiences.
Dr. Lewis concluded: “Observations noted at the time are the only valid ones.” He himself honestly forgot that he had been at all frightened during one gale until he consulted his notes.

Richard Henderson, one of America’s best-known sailing authors, says in his book Singlehanded Sailing (International Marine) that the best weapon against fear is self-confidence.
“This is best assured by careful preparation, attention to one’s health, seeing that the boat is sound and well equipped, learning all one can about the proposed route and weather conditions, preparing for all possible emergencies, and gradually building experience.”
All of which sounds remarkably like my own Black Box Theory.

Today’s Thought

The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds.

— Will Durant

Tailpiece

 “Is this the sound-effects department?”

“Yes.”

“Good, send me a galloping horse immediately.”

“What for?”

“Well, the script calls for the sound of two coconut shells being clapped together.”

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How to miss the other guy

ONE OF THE THINGS you learn fairly quickly at sea is never to assume that an oncoming ship is going to miss you. At first sight, it might appear that there will be no problem about a collision, but other vessels often make seemingly random changes of course for reasons known only to them or their autopilots.

It’s important to keep an eye on them until they’re safely out of sight, and even more so at night, when they are even less likely to spot you among the big ocean swells. There are many recorded instances of big ships coming well within striking distance of small sailboats in mid-ocean  during the day, but at night the chances are even greater.

I was once sailing through the Bahamas at night, en route to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, when I noticed a vessel gradually creeping up on us from astern. From her lights, I took her to be a tug, so I called on the VHF radio. I learned two things. She was indeed a tug, and no they hadn’t seen me. Still couldn’t see me, either on radar or by eye, although my stern light was shining brightly. She was about 400 yards astern when she veered off to one side and slid past us with a large barge in tow.

A question always arises in cases like this: How do you attract on VHF the attention of the specific ship that’s worrying you? It’s pointless calling: “Vessel overtaking me, this is the sailboat Moonbeam. Do you read?”

What you need to convey is a distance, a direction, and, if possible, a description of the other vessel. So you say: “Aircraft carrier about two miles northeast of me on my starboard bow, this is the sailboat  Fancypants . . .”

Now they know they should look southwest and set their radar range for two miles if they haven’t seen you already.

You can also call “Deepsea vessel,” or “Blue-hulled seagoing freighter,” or “Large container ship” — whatever might alert  them to the fact that you’re addressing them.  And always on Channel 16, of course.

If you have AIS or a DCS-equipped radio, you might even learn the other vessel’s actual name and other important information, but don’t count on it. David Burch,  director of the Starpath School of Navigation in Seattle, once wrote, in a booklet on Practical Navigation for the magazine Cruising World:

“On one occasion, in mid-ocean on a clear sunny day, flying a brightly colored spinnaker and blooper, we had to drop the blooper and alter course to avoid a ship that did not respond to the radio or alter course or speed in the slightest. It was a totally unmarked rust bucket some 300 feet long, without a soul in sight anywhere, and it still passed close enough for us to have recognized  faces on board, had there been any.”

It’s at times like this that you wish you had a couple of thunderflashes to lob on board the other vessel as she comes past. I know it’s naughty, but it would be quite justifiable in my view —and very satisfying.

Today’s Thought

He is safe from danger who is on guard even when safe.

— Publilius Syrus, Sententiae

Tailpiece

A limerick packs laughs anatomical

Into space that is quite economical.

But the good ones I’ve seen

So seldom are clean,

And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

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