"Geoff Schultz" wrote in message
.. .
"Wilbur Hubbard" wrote in
news:46b1165c
:


"Paul Cassel" wrote in message
...
Wilbur Hubbard wrote:

It's my observation that people who have to have a phone so they
can
blabbermouth 24/7 while out cruising should just stay home. If you
need to be plugged in to the communications grid 24/7 you're not
cut
out for cruising - just stay home and leave the waterways open for
real cruisers, please. Today's men are turning into girly men.
Bunch
of sissies. Spend the money on a EPIRB instead. Cruise and try
shutting your mouth for a week or a month. You might learn
something
for the first time in your life.

Why are you so bitter? When hundreds of miles off shore, I could
have
liked to talk to my daughter who was anxious about my safety as I
was
singlehanding a rather large sailboat. It would have been something
to
make her feel better.

I tried calling her on my EPIRB but the thing just blinked at me.

-paul

I'm not bitter I'm just fed up with the way people don't seem to be
able
to prioritize these days. Why is it that fully half the people you
see
walking down a sidewalk or shopping in a store or eating in a
restaurant
or driving their automobile are having cell phone conversations. It's
not necessary to be doing so and it's dangerous and most of the time
it's rude.

If you're off cruising then enjoy cruising. If you can't enjoy an
activity without having to be talking on the phone 24/7 about it then
why are you really doing it? So, somebody is "anxious" about your
situation. Too bad! It's their way of thinking and their negativism.
Maybe if they weren't catered to 24/7 they might have a chance to
develop a more mature and realistic attitude. I was always taught
that
no news is good news. I have found that old adage to be very
accurate.

There are some things that people do like climbing a mountain, or
cruising far offshore or scuba diving where it's reasonable to expect
they will be out of touch with civilization. What makes people think
they are so important that everybody in the world must have instant
access to them and they to the world? Is it an ego problem or is it
just
a bad habit? I think it's some of both.

Family and friends should allow a man some space and some freedom
without making him feel guilty about having to constantly keep in
touch.
Having keeping in touch as a priority when you're way out on the
ocean
somewhere cruising getting away from it all seems an unnecessary
burden
to all parties concerned. How can anybody get away from it all while
taking it all with them?

Does anybody really know what it means to cruise or voyage anymore?

Wilbur Hubbard

Wilbur,

I think that you should understand that others don't share your view.
Up until this year we had an Iridium phone, which we used sparingly.
On
a weekly basis we would talk to our parents for probably 5-10 minutes
at
a time. When you have aging parents, it's important for them to hear
your voice and for you to hear the tenor of their voice. You can
judge
a lot more from a voice conversation than you can from an e-mail.



If it's that important to you then why are you willing to be so far away
from them?
What are your priorities. To cruise seems to be your first priority. So
cruise. If your priority is to comfort your aging parents, I'm sure they
would be much more comforted by seeing you and hearing your voice in
person and by a hug or two wouldn't they?

Your phone becomes a tool for you to abdicate your real responsiblities,
doesn't it? It makes you feel better about not being there for your
parents, doesn't it? You either care for your parents enough to be
there in person for them or you don't. Your telephone call comforts you
more than it comforts them.


There are also times when you NEED a reliable phone connection to
resolve a problem. You can't rely on e-mail. You need to discuss
issues with people and get them to do things in real time. One time I
needed to talk to someone to find out of some rollers on the top of
the
mast would support my weight as my main halyard was jammed and I
needed
to go up the mast while underway to un-jam it (I only have 1 main
halyard).

Sailing by committee. Oh yes, that's the way it's done today. That's the
way people these days think it should be done. What ever happened to
self-reliance, personal responsiblity and knowing your boat? You should
already know if the halyards and sheeves can hold your weight. You
should have installed mast steps beforehand oo you would not have to
wonder if relying on halyards was safe. But you didn't and you didn't
because your phone allows you to sail by committee. It allows you to be
uninformed. It allows you to be slothful. That's not sailing.


This year I had terrible issues trying to figure out how to ship a
hose
into the Acklins Islands of the Bahamas for my watermaker. You would
have thought that I was inventing a whole new process and I had to
rely
on my father to hold long, laborious conversations on what would
appear
to be a simple matter.

Any real sailor would have stocked spare hoses, filters, pump parts,
gaskets etc. before going offshore. The problem you had was BECAUSE you
rely on a phone. The phone causes you to not prepare. So you end up
using the phone to solve problems you should never have had to solve.


Wilbur, you can cruise anyway that you want, but don't hold in distain
others who don't share your view. The same thing holds true of
politics. We probably don't share the same views, but that doesn't
make
either of us wrong. We simply look at things differently. Have an
open
mind and try to accept differing views.

The disdain I hold others in is caused by their causing problems for me
and other real self-reliant sailors by their not taking sailing
seriously. They give sailing in general a bad name and make everybody
think sailors are just a bunch of lubberly dopes. Just waterbourne
accidents waiting to happen - an unwelcome pain in the arse. . .

If cruisers put as much time and effort into learning the right way to
sail or cruise under power and if they prepared properly they would not
be relying on a telephone to solve problems caused because they figured
they could get on the phone and holler for help. The phone becomes their
"out." Sooner or later this attitude will get you in real trouble.


Wilbur Hubbard