"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.
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).
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.
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.
-- Geoff
www.GeoffSchultz.org