wrote in message
oups.com...
... So you can cruise and you can
telephone. But it's not the same as doing one or the other and doing
it
well. ...

I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying that I'm cruising less well
when, lets say, just for the sake of historical accuracy, I'm anchor
down in Kanton Atoll on a day when it's so calm I can't tell where the
air ends and the water starts and so hot that even the flies have
taken cover in the shade I call my father on my Iridium phone? Are
you telling me that this offends you in some way? Do we need to be
reduced to sail cloth pants and latitude sailing to be cruising
"well"?

-- Tom.

As long as you aren't doing sailing and telephoning -at the same time-
it doesn't offend me. What offends me is people doing both, trying to do
both, at the same time and sooner or later that's what it amounts to. I
don't want people answering their telephones when they're at the helm of
their boats. It's as bad as doing so while driving a car and sooner or
later those who carry cell phones with them in their cars end up using
them when they're driving.

And sooner or later your phone will make you lazy and inept just like
the poor fella further up this thread who couldn't even figure out how
to get up the mast without making telephone calls and asking people how
to do it safely. That's pretty disgusting in my humble opinion. People
like him, when they get their friends advice about going up the mast,
and then they manage to fall off will likely crawl to their cell phone,
dial up their lawyer and enquire as to how to sue their friends for
giving bad advice. That's how the world works in most cases these days
and telephones are the cause of all the idiocy in many cases. Simply
stated your cell phone allows you to discharge your responsibilities in
rude, obnoxious, and selfish ways. Instead of planning and being
prepared you end up acting on a whim, reacting and being totally
unprepared. "I'm not worried about taking personal responsibility for my
ship. If something goes wrong, I'll just telephone my way out of." So
stupid. I heard a 911 recording of a woman being stabbed to death. It
was horrible but it demonstrates my point. WTF's the woman doing calling
911 when she's being stabbed to death? Maybe she should have not relied
on her phone to pull her fat out of the fire. Maybe she should have
installed bolts on her door, maybe she should have bought a gun and
learned how to use it. Maybe she should have learned karate. Noooo,
instead she relied an the phone and lost her life because of it. What
you're doing is the same thing just to a lesser degree.

And think about this, when you call your dear old dad under the
conditions you describe it's probably the middle of the night in his
part of the world. Pretty rude getting him out of bed because you called
because you had nothing better to do, isn't it? I'll say it again. Cell
phones are the instrument of the selfish, the arrogant, the
world-revolves-around-me type. That's how I see it at least. Lose the
friggin' telephone when you're cruising. Do cruising right. Do it
traditionally. You're cruising to get away from it all. Why take it all
with you? Probably because you're afraid to admit to yourself the world
ACTUALLY CAN get along without you quite easily...

Wilbur Hubbard