rOn Sun, 14 Oct 2012 12:34:09 -0400, "Wilbur Hubbard"
wrote:

"Bruce" wrote in message
.. .
On Sat, 13 Oct 2012 19:07:13 -0500, Richard Casady
wrote:

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 18:12:20 +0700, Bruce
wrote:

the famous guys like Joshua Slocam, Bernard Mansurie, Bruce Roberts,
George Beuller made/make their money from book sales so they have had
to stretch & modify the truth. :-)

Slocum had no engine. He ended up being lost at sea, not on the beach
drinking royalties.

Casady

Read up on his round the world voyage. He contacted newspapers in
every port he entered to publish a notice that Capt. Slocum and the
Spray were in port on a single handed round the world voyage and you
could actually go aboard the Spray upon payment of money. He had
contacted a publisher and made a deal to write a book before he sailed
and the book was an international best seller.

He apparently died on a voyage to the West Indies in 1909 although no
wreckage or other evidence was ever found. He was declared dead in
1924.

The fact that the Spray did not have an engine was hardly an unusual
situation in 1895.

True! Those were the REAL sailors and those where honest times. Too bad the
passage of a century and some odd years has turned all too many sailors into
engine-addicted non-sailors who write to their pals about a short leg of a
voyage and the FIRST thing they proudly proclaim as an accomplishment is how
much diesel fuel they've burned in their stink pot engines.

Slocum's book about his voyage alone around the world was/is a best-seller
because it's interesting. It's all about sailing and the sailing life. All
about harnessing the winds and currents and making ones way without fuss
around the world.

Do you think he could have sold as many books writing a book about his
auxiliary sailboat in which the first thing he talked about was how he burned
363 gallons in what amounts to a short hop from port to port? No harnessing
the elements and living in harmony with the sea but plenty of bull headed
burning of fuel and polluting the air and water? Most certainly not! People
would be bored halfway to death as there is nothing interesting about putting
an engine in gear, turning on the autopilot and going below to scratch one's
ass for days at a time. This is the life of motor heads. Drab, boring, stupid,
useless and wasteful. And, BTW, motor-sailers as a class of vessels are little
more than sail-assisted motor boats. Might as well get a trawler with a riding
sail and at least be honest about it.

Wilbur Hubbard

Ah yes. Another report from the Arm-Chair Sailor.

So tell us, Oh Great Arm-Chair, about the time you were sailing up the
Malacca Straits without an engine and with no wind and had to drift
with the tide and anchor every time the tide changed? Or about the
time you were becalmed in the middle of the Atlantic, running low on
water,or about sailing up the Red Sea and having to sail 100 miles
across and then 100 miles back to make 50 miles northing, or about the
time you were embayed and couldn't get out for a week.

I hate to disillusion you but sitting at anchor hardly qualifies you
as a sailor, nor does reading sailing magazines.
--
Cheers,
Bruce