Issue 20 : Sept/Oct 2001
Seventy percent of the earth’s surface is covered by water, and more than 99 percent of the earth’s human population is on the remaining land. That makes the water a very special place and explains part of its attraction for some sailors. There may be almost as many reasons for taking up sailing as there are sailors, but for us, getting away from it all — the traffic, the noise, the mess of a small planet with six billion people crowded onto 30 percent of its surface — that is the main attraction. It has always seemed to me that the land was crowded and regulated and used hard, the water always less so. On the water there is freedom.
It is a transient freedom, however. We are not fish, or birds, or even marine mammals. We are truly creatures of the land and, as some of the world’s navies have learned the hard way, we must have bases. Even a sailor needs the land. At best that is where he builds his boat. And in the modern interpretation, that is where he lives out most of his life paying for it. It is also where most recreational sailors serve the duties of faith, family, and citizenship. Very few sailors can completely avoid the land.
It is from the land that the pundits who would guide and regulate our lives operate. They think they know what is best for sailor and landsman alike, and they have given both a considerable volume of rules and regulations and laws — all offered with the best of intentions. Some of these are needed, but what concerns me is that the volume is growing.
There is, for example, a plan afoot that would license the designers of our recreational boats, make them take tests to prove they know what they are doing, make them have degrees so we know they are educated. Just one more license for one more practitioner among the professionals who serve us. It is for our safety and the protection of our investment that they mean to draw a circle, leaving some in and some out.
Most of the really good designers of sailboats that I know of freely admit that they do not have these qualifications, and many say they could not pass the tests. They would not take them. That has always been a problem with tests and credentials and certifications. They may make us safer, but they will always make us less free, and if they ask the wrong questions who can say what they prove? I understand the test is about designing big ships, not small boats.
When we sail, we know the real test is administered by the water and wind, and I’m just as glad no man was consulted in the matter. I’m not sure my boat was designed by a person with all the currently recommended credentials, and I’m not sure it was built with all the currently recommended practices. She is, however, a masterpiece of designing and manufacturing with which I can find very little fault. When we go to take the real test, we will take it with her.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
