Oceano - Re: Log Day 9 - Alpine sailing

As we were sitting in front of the instruments during a watch last night, trying to reduce the amount of brightness on every screen, so we could look at them without our eyes getting tired, I was wondering if all of these tools are really, really necessary. Do I really need to see the path of my boat gybing? Do I need to see the same information on three screens? Why don’t we use simple compass anymore? And finally - is it really fair to use the autopilot? And electric winch? Nowadays some yachts seem more like a vehicle from Star Trek fleet than a simple boat with a starboard.

Of course, all this equipment makes sailing easier. But with all these gadgets using your muscles, intuition, looking at the sky and analog, mechanical devices reliable regardless of the era, is being replaced by technology that seems smarter than us.

I feel like every aspect of being on this beautiful catamaran is gathered and put into an algorythm. It makes pleasure crafts like Bali easy to operate, the information you get is reliable ( and can check and double or even triple check on another device) but it makes sailing heavily attached to all the tech stuff I wanted to leave behind, at least for a while. Instead - I have a couple of computers, navigational apps, a few weather reports, lots of data and screens. My eyes hurt.

You can watch your numbers on your iPad, phone, from any place on the boat, you can compare various measurements, change your course constantly, accordingly, precisely. You can spot another boat from miles and miles. But still, even with all this knowledge - you need your eyes, sense of the wind, you need to look at the sails, check the barometer, understand the ropes - their dynamics, what to tighten, what to let lose. It is the very basics of sailing. Do we really need more? I feel it is a question similar to ones that are used in discussion in the climbing world. Are we spoiling being in nature with the stuff we bring? Should we be more pure and choose the minimalist approach? Or maybe we should profit of what we have on hand? I am not some crazy luddist that wants to destroy all the technology but I think that something is really being lost in the speed of the progress.

But there is still hope for balance - while rockets on foils are doing over 40 knots on the cover of Yachting World, a troupe of girls is crossing the Atlantic at a renovated wooden boat and documenting it on Instagram. In the preparational week of the ARC a lot of sailors attended workshops showing how to use a sextant. It seems it is something cool again.

I really like the comfort of sailing when I really don’t have to do much except seeping on my coffee. But I fell in love with sailing because I wanted to learn - how to rely on my senses, how to understand boats and sails, the oceans and its creatures, I wanted to know how to read the weather, how to use the basic tools of sailing that I’ve seen in books I devoured and movies I rewatched.

I have never experienced anything more educating then standing behind the wheel in the worst storm in my life, fighting for survival, making our way from Falklands to Brazil. We had no autopilot on this boat - and besides, no autopilot could have gotten us through the troubles we were in. Only our own resources and perfectly designed mechanics and architecture of the boat.

Today we’ve had a workshop on sextant on the board of „Oceano” - we used Davis sextant to understand the device. A fetish object from history of sailing, more intricate, more slow than today’s tools but harder to be broken, independent from electricity or petrol, dependent only on the sky - the mega plotter for sailors of the past.

Of course I am not suggesting we should reduce the safety by abandoning modern device that could save our lives but I think that understanding and simplicity should come first. Physics before technology. Intuition before the computer measurement. It is not sufficient to remember what to do. If you can’t understand what’s happening around you, you won’t apply your decision to a different situation - you will not learn.

I watched some beginners on „Oceano” just clicking on the right button of the autopilot because they remembered they had to but they didn’t understand at all why we can crash gybe. They were terrified and helpless, because they were given the tools but without the necessary story.

If you start your voyage with reading books, doing experiments by yourself before departure, asking captain to explain all the details about the boat, ropes, the specifics of the vessel, there is a good chance that every piece of info gathered will motivate you and help you look for more.

I never felt more powerful than when I was sailing in monstrous waves after a storm, listening to Guns and Roses, feeling like a surfer in the sun. Because I understood what I was doing, it was like a dance. I’ve had this amazing trust in the boat, I felt she was listening to me, protecting me, we where as one. I felt the wheel, the wind, the flow go the ocean, I knew that I really don’t have time for any electronics. I had to rely on instinct.

After all this I went sailing to Chroatia and crash gybed in 15 knot wind, just because I ceased to think about „here and now" - because "here and now” seemed so easy. There is no easy - there is only the present and reacting to it, studying it. Not without that kind of mindfulness anyone can sail - the rest is just something additional, superfluous.

I am not a radical saying that something is better or worse but I always treated sailing as the zone that lets me rely on my senses. And now I often see my senses blocked by too much information to process and this is exactly what I escaped from leaving the shore. I would dream for the sea to stay a place unspoiled, ruled not by money and technology but human intelligence, wit and resilience. It remains purely spiritual for me. And I hope it will for everyone regardless their style of sailing and perceiving the world.

Karolina