VOLUME EDITOR PATRICK GOOLD is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Virginia Wesleyan College. His current research focuses on defining rationality. He is co-editor with Steven Emmanuel of the Blackwell anthologyModern Philosophy from Descartes to Nietzsche. Patrick is passionate about sailing, and, in addition to maintaining a small daysailer and a cruising boat of his own, frequently crews on the boats of others. The bays and sounds of Virginia and North Carolina are his home waters but he has sailed the length of the East Coast of the United States from Hilton Head to Long Island Sound, made a Bermuda crossing, done club racing in Brittany, and cruised in the Lesser Antilles. SERIES EDITOR FRITZ ALLHOFF is an Associate Professor in the Philosophy department at Western Michigan University, as well as a senior research fellow at the Australian National University’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. In addition to editing the Philosophy for Everyone series, he is also the volume editor or co-editor for several titles, includingWine and Philosophy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), Whiskey and Philosophy (with Marcus P. Adams, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), and Food and Philosophy (with Dave Monroe, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007). His academic research interests engage various facets of applied ethics, ethical theory, and the history and philosophy of science. PHILOSOPHY FOR EVERYONE Series editor: Fritz Allhoff Not so much a subject matter, philosophy is a way of thinking. Thinking not just about the Big Questions, but about little ones too. This series invites everyone to ponder things they care about, big or small, significant, serious… or just curious. Running & Philosophy: A Marathon Serial Killers – Philosophy for Everyone : for the Mind Being and Killing Edited by Michael W. Austin Edited by S. Waller Wine & Philosophy: A Symposium Dating – Philosophy for Everyone: Flirting on Thinking and Drinking With Big Ideas Edited by Fritz Allhoff Edited by Kristie Miller and Marlene Clark Food & Philosophy: Eat, Think and Be Merry Gardening – Philosophy for Everyone: Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Dave Monroe Cultivating Wisdom Edited by Dan O’Brien Beer & Philosophy: The Unexamined Beer Isn’t Worth Drinking Motherhood – Philosophy for Everyone: Edited by Steven D. Hales The Birth of Wisdom Edited by Sheila Lintott Whiskey & Philosophy: A Small Batch of Spirited Ideas Fatherhood – Philosophy for Everyone: Edited by Fritz Allhoff and Marcus P. Adams The Dao of Daddy Edited by Lon S. Nease and College Sex – Philosophy for Everyone: Michael W. Austin Philosophers With Benefits Edited by Michael Bruce and Coffee – Philosophy for Everyone: Grounds Robert M. Stewart for Debate Edited by Scott F. Parker Cycling – Philosophy for Everyone: and Michael W. Austin A Philosophical Tour de Force Edited by Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza Fashion – Philosophy for Everyone: and Michael W. Austin Thinking with Style Edited by Jessica Wolfendale and Jeanette Climbing – Philosophy for Everyone: Kennett Because It’s There Edited by Stephen E. Schmid Yoga – Philosophy for Everyone: Bending Mind and Body Hunting – Philosophy for Everyone: Edited by Liz Stillwaggon Swan In Search of the Wild Life Edited by Nathan Kowalsky Blues – Philosophy for Everyone: Thinking Deep About Feeling Low Christmas – Philosophy for Everyone: Edited by Abrol Fairweather Better Than a Lump of Coal and Jesse Steinberg Edited by Scott C. Lowe Tattoos – Philosophy for Everyone: I Ink, Cannabis – Philosophy for Everyone: What Therefore I Am Were We Just Talking About? Edited by Robert Arp Edited by Dale Jacquette Sailing – Philosophy for Everyone: Porn – Philosophy for Everyone: How to Catching the Drift of Why We Sail Think With Kink Edited by Patrick Goold Edited by Dave Monroe Edited by Patrick Goold SAILING PHILOSOPHY FOR EVERYONE Catching the Drift of Why We Sail Foreword by John Rousmaniere A John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Publication This edition first published 2012 © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Inc Wiley-Blackwell is an imprint of John Wiley & Sons, formed by the merger of Wiley’s global Scientific, Technical and Medical business with Blackwell Publishing. Registered Office John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK Editorial Offices 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell. The right of Patrick Goold to be identified as the author of the editorial material in this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher. Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book. This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sailing : philosophy for everyone : catching the drift of why we sail / edited by Patrick Goold; Foreword by John Rousmaniere. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-470-67185-6 (pbk.) 1. Sailing–Philosophy. I. Goold, Patrick Allen. GV811.S25515 2012 797′.124–dc23 2012009766 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Set in 10/12.5pt Plantin by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India 1 2012 CONTENTS Foreword: The Craft and the Mystery viii John Rousmaniere The Philosophical Sailor: An Introduction to Sailing – Philosophy for Everyone xiv Patrick Goold Acknowledgments xxiii PART 1 PASSING THROUGH PAIN AND FEAR IN THE PLACE OF PERPETUAL UNDULATION 1 1 Ships of Wood and Men of Iron: Voyaging the Old-Fashioned Way and Seeking Meaning in Adversity 3 Jack Stillwaggon 2 Winning Philosophy: Developing Patience, Inner Strength, and an Eye for the Good Lanes 12 Gary Jobson 3 “Hard a’ Lee”: Why the Work of Sailing Can Be Great Fun 23 Crista Lebens 4 Solo Sailing as Spiritual Practice: A Phenomenology of Mastery and Failure at Sea 36 Richard Hutch PART 2 THE MEANING OF THE BOAT THREE SCHOOLS OF THOUGHT 47 5 Buddha’s Boat: The Practice of Zen in Sailing 49 James Whitehill 6 Freedom of the Seas: The Stoic Sailor 61 Gregory Bassham and Tod Bassham 7 Sailors of the Third Kind: Sailing and Self-Becoming in the Shadow of Heraclitus 72 Steven Horrobin PART 3 BEAUTY AND OTHER AESTHETIC ASPECTS OF THE SAILING EXPERIENCE 83 8 What the Race to Mackinac Means 85 Nicholas Hayes 9 Sailing, Flow, and Fulfillment 96 Steve Matthews 10 On the Crest of the Wave: The Sublime, Tempestuous, Graceful, and Existential Facets of Sailing 109 Jesús Ilundáin-Agurruza, Luísa Gagliardini Graça, and José Ángel Jáuregui-Olaiz 11 Navigating What Is Valuable and Steering a Course in Pursuit of Happiness 122 Jesse Steinberg and Michael Stuckart PART 4 PHYSICS AND METAPHYSICS FOR THE PHILOSOPHICAL SAILOR 133 12 Do You Have to Be (an) Einstein to Understand Sailing? 135 Sebastian Kuhn 13 Paradoxes of Sailing: The Physics of Sailing and the Import of Thought Experiments 148 John D. Norton vi CONTENTS 14 The Necessity of Sailing: Of Gods, Fate, and the Sea 164 Tamar M. Rudavsky and Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody 15 The Channel: An Old Drama by Which the Soul of a Healthy Man is Kept Alive 176 Hilaire Belloc Notes on Contributors 180 CONTENTS vii JOHN ROUSMANIERE FOREWORD The Craft and the Mystery This welcome collection of essays about the examined life under sail touches many of my nerve endings. A topic I call “the meaning of the boat” has been high on my agenda for many years, and I have long been fascinated by the passionate connection that so many of us feel with boats and the sea. Who reading this does not agree or at least sympathize with E. B. White’s declaration, “With me, I cannot not sail”?1 For most sailors, this intense engagement is much more than a mere intellectual decision. It is a transforming connection between mind and heart, thought and belief, boat and sea. This is what Joseph Conrad referred to when he wrote of “our fellowship in the craft and the mystery of the sea” in his seafaring memoir, The Mirror of the Sea, one of the crucial texts of meaning-of-the-boat studies.2 Here is a fine match: craft (what might be called “the physics of sailing”) and mys- tery (“the metaphysics of sailing”). Craft we all know – or at least we know we should know. It is the skills and equipment needed to get a boat from one place to another. Mystery, however, is a little more complex. Recently, during a panel discussion of an upcoming race across the Atlantic, the moderator, Gary Jobson, asked me to describe my most vivid memory of transatlantic sailing. I could have mentioned the thrill of starting a race to Spain, or exuberant days of fast running before westerly gales in seas seemingly as high as the boat was long. Stretching the subject a little, I might have said something about a brutal beat out to Fastnet Rock in a force-ten storm, or carefully skirting Bermuda’s reef after four days at sea, sailing the boat like a dinghy as we fought to win a Newport Bermuda Race. I might well have recalled many of those memories of great excitement, but, somewhat to my surprise, my mind went immediately to an altogether different moment. Deep into a moonless night during my first long Atlantic voyage, a perfect calm enveloped the big ketch. The skipper came on deck, took a look around, and cut the engine. He didn’t have to explain why; we under- stood. The boat carried her way for a few minutes as the bow wave trickled into silence, and our little world was inhabited by stillness. The only sound was the occasional flutter of empty sails or confused birds. The single sign of reckoning time was the slow march of constellations across the great dome of darkness overhead. We could have been anywhere, at any moment. After a while – I can’t say how long because minutes and hours were abstractions – someone switched on the spreader lights, and we tiptoed to the rail and peered down many fathoms into the clear, magical sea. Suspended between those two worlds in that moment, decades ago, I felt more connected to the eternal mysteries than any prayer or song or poem has ever allowed. I am reminded of this magical moment by a photograph on my study wall. An anonymous sailor, his back to us, stands on the deck of a sailboat becalmed on a still dawn, peering ahead at the rising sun. Is he searching for land? For wind? Or for himself? FIGURE F.1 Photo used by permission of Mystic Seaport. FOREWORD ix Many sailors of all levels of ability have told me that they have had similar moments afloat, when time stood still and they discovered another world. The mystery of the sea is shared by all sailors, even (perhaps especially) the most technically gifted masters of the craft. The man who took this photograph was one of the most successful ocean racing sailors who ever lived, Carleton Mitchell. The high naval official Samuel Pepys was taking a row on the Mediterranean in 1683 when he was overwhelmed by one of these moments. He later wrote in a journal, “I know nothing that can give a better notion of infinity and eternity than the being upon the sea in a little vessel without anything in sight but yourself within the whole hemisphere.”3 Pepys was no flake but a tough-minded inspector of warships whose outbursts (as anyone who has read his diary knows) tended to be sexual, not spiritual; yet on this day the sea took on a whole new meaning for him. More than two hundred years later, a self-promoting New York City magazine editor and ocean sailor named Thomas Fleming Day explained why he founded a race to Bermuda in this way: “Sailors wanted to get a smell of the sea and forget for the time being that there is such a thing as God’s green earth in the universe.”4 In short, they were seeking another world. So was an exceptionally experienced English writer-sailor, Maurice Griffiths, who laid out his feelings upon heading out in a small cruising boat in these words: I found my pulse beating with suppressed excitement as I threw the mooring buoy overboard. It seemed as if that simple action had severed my connection with the life on shore; that I had thereby cut adrift the ties of convention, the unrealities and illusions of cities and crowds; that I was free now, free to go where I chose, to do and to live and to conquer as I liked, to play the game wherein a man’s qualities count for more than his appearance.5 A few years ago the champion long-distance racer Ellen MacArthur wrote in her log as she neared the finish of a solo transatlantic race: I now feel so wonderfully in tune with the boat and the sea that I know I shall really miss this once the race is over. At night I watch the sun go down and in the morning the sky is there above me, a wonderful feeling of space and timelessness.6 And a pioneer British ocean racer of the 1920s, George Martin, noted that there are times when, “except for the knowledge of contact with the deck, one seemed to have passed right out of the world.”7 x JOHN ROUSMANIERE