Are you content to dawdle?

I SOMETIMES WONDER how many sailors are content to dawdle along at a couple of knots when the wind goes light. Not that many, I’m thinking. But I reckon the late Hal Roth was a kindred spirit. Like me, he wasn’t one to start the engine when his speed dropped below 5 knots, as so many sailors do today. When he was sailing around the wine-dark seas of the Mediterranean in the wake of Ulysses, he once took 6 hours to cover 15 miles in Greece — an average of 2 1/2 knots.

Like him, I grew up in an era when sailors actually sailed. The grumpy old salts I learned from frowned upon anybody who switched on an auxiliary engine just because there was no wind. I was actually quite shocked when an American yacht came past me once on a passage around the bottom of Africa. He was actually motor-sailing, and he didn’t look at all guilty about it. We were making a knot-and-a-half and he was making six. Such bad taste, I thought.

On another occasion I was sailing from the British Virgin Islands to Fort Lauderdale when two American sailboats, Pendragon and Escudo, came motoring past our 30-footer in mid-ocean. They were talking about us on VHF. They couldn’t understand why we weren’t motoring in the very light air. There was a lot of discussion about how much ice their freezers were making, with their engines running all the time.

When the wind hauled aft we were able to raise our twin running jibs. “Well, whaddya know?” said the radio. “The guy’s got his spinnaker up at last.”

“Yeah, slow thinker,” came the reply.

We thought they were very rude. I contemplated hitting back at them on the VHF with some powerful invective or some scornful, withering sarcasm, but in the end we held our tongues and slid over the calm waters leading to the Bahamas in stately silence, as all decent sailors should. Motors be damned.

Today’s Thought

One of the greatest sounds of them all—and to me it is a sound—is utter, complete silence.

— André Kostelanetz

Tailpiece
“What’s Monica’s last name?”

“Monica who?”

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