On Tue, 20 Sep 2005 08:05:25 -0400, DSK wrote:


Modern gear is better. It isn't necessary, of course, but much of it (if
intelligently chosen & properly installed) makes life while
sailing/cruising SAFER as well as more comfortable.

Absolutely. Slocum probably didn't have lifelines, but probably *did*
rig preventers, etc.

I have no argument against modern equipment: modern materials
(Spectra, carbon fibre, etc.) are clearly superior in almost all
respects excepting price G. But there are multiple cut-offs, in my
opinion, between modern and useful and modern and (potentially)
dangerous gear and ideas in the bluewater yacht world. One such
break-point, for me, are assistive devices like electric winches or
windlasses: if you are older and/or weaker and/or short-handed, and
the only way you can handle that big beautiful boat is via such
devices, you are pretty well stuck if they break. You want options in
sailing, and not bringing the entire contents of a modern condo with
you on a voyage is easier than having to get a bigger boat with bigger
gear to run it.

I am rather more distressed, if not surprised, at the lack of basic
seamanship in said bigger boats than I am worried at expensive and
possibly superfluous gear that breaks. We hear more and more of
GPS-piloted boats running onto reefs, of crew unable to stop the boat
to do a MOB, with subsequent loss of life, of bozos with zero
knowledge yakking to their fellow bozos on VHF, etc.

Watching the news last night, for instance, I saw several shots of
nice big yachts in (presumably) the Florida Keys, riding out Hurricane
Rita at anchor.

Fair enough. But under what part of basic seamanship do you leave a
foresail on a roller-furler or a mainsail on a boom (in one instance
unlashed and with the sail cover already shredding and straining the
rode)?

This month's Ocean Navigator has a "future of voyaging" section which
is in parts a bit pessimistic in this way: it's not terrorism or high
fuel prices that will cut back on voyaging, it's the unwillingness of
a lot of cruisers to learn the basics of navigation and boat-handling
because they are focused on the gleaming saloon or the wonderful
washer/dryer in the forepeak...G

R.