Ignorance is Bliss

[Clyde A. Phillips]

Eddie, and anyone wanting to read this:  Howdy!

When you spoke of some crazies sailing across the oceans with small cobbled together vessels (a vessel is any kind of container that hold anything—some resemble boats and contain idiots) I think of that Fourth of July picnic, which was an annual family thing we did at my sister and brother-in-law’s hundred ninety acres on the upper navigable Maurice River.  Our usual entertainment consisted of watching the local loonies in various and sundry weird watercraft.  The tide was at late ebb and we watched this man who obviously didn’t know much about sailing with his small family on his just purchased about 18 foot sailboat.  He did manage to stay off both banks and disappeared around the bend in the river to the south.  An hour later he was heading back up stream at a very low low water.  He didn’t know how to read the depth of the water by its appearance on the surface and ran hard fast aground.  I jumped into my canoe and paddled out to him and run my canoe up on the sandbar a couple of inches below the surface; this was “way out” in the middle of a wide section of the river, and walked over to help him off.  Discussing the rig and his plans I noted (very easily, it was swing all around) that one of his shrouds had worked its way loose of the chainplate.  That didn’t cause him a bit of trouble; such is the bliss of ignorance.  I asked him when he got his boat and what his plans were.  He told me he bought it yesterday, was taking a trial run to get familiar with it, and would be taking off next Monday with his wife and family on a trip to Florida.  Note this: his jib seems closely set to what would be right but his main was rigged to mast and boom only by the clew outhaul, the tack pendent, and the halyard; all the sail slides were taking the day off, apparently.  So I took a short piece of 1/8^th inch line and did a no-deadeye purchase to hook up his shroud, and since the tide had left him on a sand bar high and dry I told his he was safe as he was for a while, wait until the tide comes in and floats him off and that he should go home, find a boat handling course by the Coasty’s auxiliary or two, and practice his boat handling for a couple of years before he goes on any trips over eight hours long.

Then I went ashore, wading with my canoe in tow, and our entertainment continued for another two or three hours. 

[Eddie Offermann]

But Clyde! Ignorance gives us courage! (Great story!)

Ignorance and plain carelessness may be the only way I got the courage to do a lot of what I've done while sailing. That I took Thoreau (my 20' sloop) out to Santa Barbara Island (around 50 miles offshore) is regarded by nearly everyone in Marina Del Rey as completely insane, but I've done it several times and thought little of it. Had I not first done it as early into learning to sail as I did, I might never have gone.

[Clyde A. Phillips]

You're right about that.  When I was Rutgers' RV captain I had to go down to the Savannah, GA area and bring a "Florida Drifter" (57' head fisherman) as our new research vessel back up to Jersey waters.  It had a 12V72 Detroit in it for power. and, of course, it had an unknown performance.  We had a good amount of fuel so we decided to run off shore up the beach toward NJ to the VA capes (mouth of the Chesapeake Bay) and hopefully at that point we would have figured fuel usage and have a good idea of remaining endurance.  There we decided to go outside the rest of the way.  In the middle of the night we ran into a few rain storms and later into a real howler of a "pitching a fizz" storm.  We were, on a few occasions, completely airborne (well, not borne by the air, just thrown into it) and we hit the water hard.  To gave me a small bit of discouragement; early on the trip I went below and found that I could see the surface of the water (outside) through the fiberglass hull.  Of course we survived the storm (though some fishermen were lost on the Delaware Bay that night) and we tied up to out lab in the early afternoon. 

Well, that trip gave me all kinds of confidence in that boat.  We never saw anything like that again, but I never doubted we could do what we set out to do.  If we had the GA people bring the boat up for us I would have taken it easy about learning that lesson and would have bypassed many days while I learned her abilities.  We weren't ignorant so far as boat knowhow was concerned, but, along with every one else--even the weathermen, we didn't know the storm was making up.

I agree that at times certain ignorance is helpful, even encouraging; it's blind ignorance that can soon bring an end to things.  And going on a long ocean cruise on a just bought boat is worse than blind, it's mindless.  That young fellow I spoke of had never been on a sailboat before that day.  Back when I was flying a lot I was at the airport on one of NJ's famous hazy days.  A student pilot, with more dollars than sense, wiith no more than a solo endorsement on his student's ticket, talked with some of us who gathered around for some hanger flying (often thought of as hanger lying) asking about flying in those conditions.  One of us, an FAA radio tech with a lot of hours of flight time on his instrument rating, took him for a ride trying to teach him the dangers of flying in such conditions.  After they came down we said our goodbyes and disbursed for our solo lunches.  I came back after lunch and found all the guys talking about that student.  He had already bought his own airplane, a rather expensive, well equipped, high performance airplane, and he decided he could handle it on his own.  So, during our lunch he untied his plane and took off for Ocean City airport, on our Atlantic Coast.  The people on the beach heard an airplane coming from inland and over the beach, descending all the time, and with never a change in the sound of the engine heard it hit the water some short distance offshore.  The lesson he learned was expensive, it cost him his life.  It's best to learn from instructors, it's less expensive.  

But, I'm a smart fellow, so I can do "it" by myself, and I'm not far removed from my Scottish ancestors so I'm a wee bit frugal.  But I still do my homework and listen well to my instructors, the best being my Father, who taught me only one thing by telling me how to do it.  My lessons were in watching him do something without a word said, then he expected me to know it.  "That's all folks!"