Twentieth century sailing books

As a complete, and welcome contrast to the contemporary sailing books I've been reading, I found that Kobo e-books have some classics lurking in their 'store'.  There was a time when I owned both of Edward Allcard's books - more than once - but they have been left behind on various boats, I hope still loved and cherished.

However, I found Single-handed Passage was on offer and immediately bought it.  What a joy to read after my recent books.  Here is a man who is perfectly content to be sailing at 3 knots on his 34 foot yawl; he contemplates and 80-day passage with equanimity; he takes his mainsail down or heaves to at night so that he can sleep in peace; after two days of calm, culminating in a magnificent sunset, he writes "It was a fitting end to a delightful interlude."  What a sense of peace emanates from these few words.

Edward Allcard is at sea just because he wants to be.  He is not trying to prove anything or to compete with anyone - even himself.  He just wishes to take his ship from England to New York by 'the Southern Route'.  He looks at a couple of atlases, maybe a routing chart or two and sets off.  He has no schedule, no-one he has arranged to meet, no flights to catch, no job or business to 'get back to'. Occasionally he can pick up the BBC on his little portable radio and listens, bemusedly to dance music, with pleasure to the female announcer's voice.  He reads books, he contemplates the ocean; in calms he lies on the side deck and gazes into the incredible blue depths below him.  He takes plunge baths off the bowsprit and watches with resignation as the gooseneck barnacles grow.  He is a happy man with a deep understanding of why he is out on the ocean.

As I said, I have read his books before, but I don't recall reading this one with so much pleasure.  Maybe it's the contrast with my recent reads, maybe it's the contrast with the madness of today's world.  Whatever, it makes me want to go and do likewise.

I wouldn't want to be sailing his heavy gaffer; I would hate to be without a self-steering gear, where he seemed quite content to spend 12 hours at the helm; I don't want to cope with cotton sails and manila ropes, but maybe I, too, have lost much in my demand for easier sailing.  (And that's before we even talk about junk rig, although Mr Allcard does say he hated going on the foredeck.)  I suppose we all choose our level of challenge, but I think it's attitude that I'm talking about.  The attitude that accepts complete solitude; no communications and no sense of "I must go faster".  I think he and I are in harmony here.

There is no publishers name in this book (apart from W W Norton on the title page), so I can only conclude that this is a Kobo initiative.  If so, I hope they do more.

Kobo also have Ralph Stock's The Cruise of the Dreamship. It's very cheap, so may just be an e-book facsimile and a bit rough around the edges, but it is one of the most wonderful sailing books every written.

Edit:

Two things I meant to mention.  The first was simply amplifying what I was saying earlier about Mr Allcard's wonderfully low expectations: he was very happy with a week's run of 522 miles, in fact so much so that he took Sunday off, something that he'd been intending to do at the outset, but because he had left late in the season, had felt the need to press on.  So hard was he pressing on that he was quite content with a run of 472 miles the following week.  472 miles!  Less than 3 knots!  Quelle horreur!  It just shows what an amazing difference self-steering gears have made to passage-making - and expectations.  The vast majority of boats crossing oceans these days, would have been motoring every time the speed dropped below 4 knots, let alone 3.

The other thing is much, much sadder.  Earlier in the book he passes a brown bottle bobbing along.  Not only does he comment on it (not something one would be likely to log these days) and speculate on whence it came, but he remarks on how few foreign objects he sees at sea.  And this from a low and often slow boat.  Later, as he admires his surroundings, he writes: "It was pleasant to think that all the beuaty of the sea had been unspoiled by the scar of civilization, and that I was lucky enough to enjoy exactly the same sights as" Columbus.  Not these days, alas.  Especially in calm conditions, you can't look over the side without seeing something plastic floating in the water.  You don't even come across those beautiful glass floats any more.

But I am one of the lucky ones: the first time I crossed an ocean was in 1975 and there was very little sign of plastic about then. While my memory lasts, I can enjoy that recollection.

Back again!

Hah!  I guess you thought - hoped even - that I'd gone away for good.  No such luck. Life had dragged me by the scruff of the neck into a busyness that seemed to provide no time for musings of any sort, certainly subversive ones.  I was living a life full of Things To Do, hectic schedules - even airline flights, which I hate with a passion.  Unless in a small, propeller driven aircraft, where I can have a window seat and admire the beautiful land unfolding beneath me. But long distance 'plane flights are terrible things, made worse, for me, but the continuing knowledge of the damage I'm doing to this wonderful earth, by such greedy consumption.

But finally I am back on my boat and in peace.  I cannot begin to describe the pleasure I have in my little ship, in her grace and simplicity and the near-luxury of my little home.  Sometimes I can hardly wait to go to bed because my berth in the forepeak is so comfortable, and in the winter, with the down quilt wrapped around me, it is inconceivably snug.  And oh! the luxury of sleeping alone - of having a bed entirely to myself, with no-one else to think about if I want to stretch out, or to turn over, or to cough, or giggle at some silly thought that crosses what I laughingly call my mind.

On a cold, clear night, I lie there with the hatch partly open, gazing at the stars.  That hatch is both a necessity and a gross extravagance.  Its predecessor, the original fibreglass one, was, of course, completely opaque, which was bad enough: it also leaked and was impossible properly to dog, which was intolerable.  A great friend went and sold his soul to the manufacturer on my behalf, and obtained, at cost price, an enormous hatch, large enough for a super-yacht.  It was still heart-stoppingly expensive, but the original had a complicated moulding that would have been very difficult to incorporate in the same-sized alloy hatch.  With this mega hatch, however, I could build a frame outside the old one and simply drop the new hatch on top.  It is such bliss.  Several people have been puzzled that I should want a hatch that lets in the first light of day, but to me it is a necessity to be able to follow the phases of the moon, as I lie awake at night.  A lifelong insomniac - such things are important.

And we move aft a little to my superb galley.  Has any 26ft boat ever been blessed with such a fine place in which to cook?  I love to cook.  I love, particularly, to cook for myself: carefully-planned and light meals, for enjoyment rather than repletion.  Sometimes I will make the starter, eat it slowly with a glass of wine, and then prepare the main course from scratch, sipping away as I cook.  It may be an hour from one course to the next, and I enjoy every second of it.  I sit down at my varnished, mahogany table, laid with attractive cutlery, hand-made pottery and Waterford Crystal glasses, bought second-hand for a pittance.  As I savour my food, I can gaze out of the window at the passing scene.

The table is something I made myself, to replace the rather ratty plywood one that wobbled around on an ugly pedestal.  Originally it had - I suppose - had the facility to rise up and down like a Pantomime Demon, in order to accommodate a loving couple in connubial bliss.  A small, loving couple, I would have to say, as my whole boat is designed around hobbits.  Fine for me at 5ft 1in and weighing about a hundredweight, but a little constrained for more normal-sized people.  Yes, this bunk is 6ft long - once the cushions are removed fore and aft and assuming your tape measure hook is not particularly thick.  I have dozed on the outboard half at sea and not found it any too long.  I never did try the original table top, because the bed thus formed would have been too narrow for comfort.  At least in my V-berth (and only a couple ardently in lust would call it a double) I can't fall out of bed!  A friend thought that my replacement table (constructed in traditional manner, of one-inch wood, with fold-down leaves) should be made in the same manner as the old one 'in case', but I reckon two people on my boat is getting perilously close to a crowd and cannot imagine sharing with a couple.  Who want to sleep together.  So I did it my way.  Which is why I bought my own boat in the first place.

The other change from the original is that my new table has no fiddles.  I love to write - as you may have guessed - and the fiddles made this awkward.  Occasionally I like to write by hand, with a fountain pen, and the fiddles made this almost impossible.  I could understand fitting them for and aft, but athwartships?  So my new table has no fiddle.  Anyway, this is the 21st century, the era of sticky mats.  There is no need for such a thing 90% of the time.  In the galley, yes.  On the bookshelves equally so, but the saloon table?  But if ever I get the guts to go offshore, I shall fit removable ones fore and aft.

So here I sit in my comfortable little boat, looking up occasionally to admire the scenery, able in one short stop to reach the coffee pot and brew up.  One day I shall sing the praises of my cockpit, but at present it is too cool to enjoy it.

Why, oh why, would anyone want more?