Dated...

Somewhat nervous making, Liz Clark making a lot of sense, and this year's report from Project Censored...

The other day I read a review of Bruce Bingham's "The Sailor's Sketchbook" in which the reviewer called it "dated" and I'm having some real difficulty trying to get my head around that.

Now, I'll admit that it is an older book (published in 83 I think) but I can't seem to figure out what content exactly the reviewer finds at issue. More recent books of the same fix-up-your-old-boat-with-cool-and-clever-projects ilk seem to have the same sort of material quite a bit which seems cribbed directly from Bruce's book.

The funny thing is, I keep looking for new books about the various aspects of cruising and sailing but I'm not finding much out there. What there is just does not seem to compare to the stuff available thirty or forty years ago.

I suppose that dates me as well...

As it happens, I'm currently re-reading "Cruising Under Sail" by Eric Hiscock which is an excellent read and has held up extremely well over the years. I've yet to find anything within it that is not solid information well worth knowing for anyone considering going voyaging.

Sure, there are some things not covered because they did not exist or were impractical at the time (watermakers/GPS/chartplotters/AIS/microwave ovens & whatnot) but those are just "things" and have very little to do with the actual skills and knowledge needful to cruise and sail.

The more stuff we have and the associated tech involved these days has resulted in a lot of people who have pretty questionable sailing skills and understanding of what makes boats go. It's scary how little sea-sense a lot of people cruising actually seem to have and a small return to basics would be no bad thing for many.

Which is not to say that we should not take advantage of modern tech. I'm certainly not a Luddite, my mast is held up by high tech rope that's stronger than steel, we would not dream of cruising without AIS and GPS because it's good to be living in the future, and we'd be stupid to not take advantage where it makes sense. Then again, some time back I mentioned how I found that my chart plotter actually insulated me from sailing a better course and it is no bad thing to keep the tech input balanced with those from our senses.

Last time I looked, boats and the oceans were pretty much the same as they've been for ages...

Listening to Red Molly

So it goes...