All is Well with the World

Bob Bitchin

Talking Story

As any sailor knows, some of the best times we have are when we gather with other cruisers and it’s time to, as they say in Hawaii, “talk story.” It usually starts very innocently, with a, “Ya know, I was off the coast of Malibu when....” and the first story rolls out. Most sailors will listen attentively, but in their mind they are thinking back to something similar that may have happened to them. As soon as there’s a break in the story, they will pipe up with, “Yeah, I know what you mean. I was sailing off...” and the next story rolls out.

The longer you are out there, the more stories that stack up in your repertoire. Those of us who have been sailing for many years, well, we usually end up sitting there well into the wee hours of the morning. Each new story reminds us of another, and they go on through the night.

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Starboard Attitude

It was on such a night that I made one of my most profound discoveries. After listening to story after story, I began to realize that each story was about a particularly harrowing experience. There were no stories about how smooth a passage was, or how easy the seas. No no! Never. The stories were always about either near disaster, or disaster itself. Oh, occasionally you’d get a story that was just about a headwind that someone had encountered for a week or so, or spectacularly large seas, but on the whole they would be about near disaster.

The best thing about these stories has always been the learning experience we go through listening to a harrowing story. I don’t think there is a sailor alive who doesn’t say to himself, hopefully under his breath if he want’s to avoid fisticuffs, that this could never happen to ME! I know better! I’m smarter than that!

Trading these stories over the years has shown me that there really is very little difference between those who are just starting out, and those who have hundreds of thousands of miles at the wheel. I have been very lucky in my sailing life! I sat in Reno one night after a seminar I was giving with Lin & Larry Pardey, and exchanged stories with people who had helped shape my cruising dreams. I sat at the Hawaii Yacht Club 10 years ago with Earl Hinz, every morning talking story about cruising. He was one of the strongest influences on me, making me want to get out there in the

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Bob Bitchin first place. One weekend, after my Advanced Cruising Seminar, I remember sitting on the dock at a impromptu dock party Editor Sue and husband Mike hosted, talking story with Tania Aebi and John Kretchsmer. Even though we are all good friends, when talking about sailing I just sit back and listen to the pearls of wisdom that fall from their lips.

But it’s not just folks who have been lucky enough to reach some sort of notoriety in the sailing world. Sitting around the Harbor Reef Bar on any sunny weekend over in Two Harbors, the same thing happens. One story comes out, and is followed by ten more. The longer it goes on, the more people that pull up a chair to listen in, and the more people listening in, the more tales that come forth. It doesn’t matter if it’s a novice on his first sail to the island or a world cruiser, there is a common bond between them that says, “Hey, I did the same stupid thing!”

Another thing I noticed about these gabfests; they are all about adventures. No matter how trying the ordeal they are telling the story about, in the telling it becomes a sea-adventure. A lost mast, a broken rudder in a storm; these are all true ordeals when they happen, and there aren’t many sailors who would disagree with that.

But in the telling, somehow they turn into an adventure. And how many adventures are there out there for us to live? Sitting and partaking in one of these gabfests will help get a man (or woman!) through more than you might believe.

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Starboard Attitude Having sat and listened to a story 10 years earlier about a man who’d lost his rudder in a gale, got me through it a lot easier when I broke my rudder off Palmyra Island. I remembered how he’d told the story, and all of a sudden I got a picture in my feeble head; a picture of me telling this story to other cruisers someday, sitting at a bar in Rangoon, or Bora Bora, or, who knows, on my home dock in King Harbor.

This actually helped me see what some might consider a disaster in a new light. All of a sudden I could see the tale as it would be told in years to come. And who knows? Someone sitting there listening might just have the same thing happen 20 years later, after I am with Davey Jones, and it will enter his mind that he heard the tale and will help him get through it.

I still believe that it is a good attitude that can be the difference between an ordeal and an adventure, but I have found there are other ways to turn an ordeal into a true life adventure, and that is time. Time can be the difference between an ordeal and an adventure!

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