“I Hate Boats!”

Bob Bitchin

Times Change. We Don’t.

I never really realized just how uninformed I was when I first considered the cruising lifestyle. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’d read all the great books by people who had cruised the world, and read all the magazines that told of what I would need once I got out there. I prepared myself as best I could with the materials at hand. It wasn’t until years later, after I had cruised for years, that I realized the real truth of the matter. No one can tell another person what cruising will be like for them. The reason being, it is different for everyone based on their life prior to cutting the dock lines and heading out.

The other thing that one has to consider is that the world is changing all the time. The things that once were of the most importance to

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Starboard Attitude a person setting sail on a world voyage are now, literally, taken for granted. I can vividly remember my biggest worry about going cruising when I first started. It was navigation; the thought of taking this strange looking instrument (that’d be a sextant) and looking into it, and it would somehow allow me to figure out where on this big blue ball I was. In today’s world all one does is flick a switch on a pocket-sized GPS and he knows within inches of where he stands. Not only that, but when he opens his computer he can get his position plotted on a chart, zoom in, zoom out, and set a course. When I first started to even consider offshore sailing, I remember walking into Southwest Instruments in San Pedro, California. I remember the feeling of entering an almost reverent atmosphere of sea captains and a world that was totally outside the cognition of normal man.

The old wooden planked floors creaked, and as you walked into the musty smelling store you stepped back in time. Even then, in the late ‘70s, change was in the air, but they hadn’t noticed. Their walls were lined with bookshelves holding sailing guides to every port and island on earth. The counters that lined the walls of the store were filled with magical instruments. They had sextants of all kinds, in bronze, in brass, in steel and in aluminum. Each one was held in a wooden case carved to

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Bob Bitchin hold it and keep it safe from damage. Walking down the creaking stairs to the chart room below took you even further back. I really don’t know how long Southwest Instruments had been there, just a couple blocks from the harbor, but it had a feeling of timelessness. At the bottom of the stairs you looked across a sea of bins built to hold sea charts. One elderly lady ran the charts section there, and she knew every chart and every guide, and could converse with the sagest of sea captains. They asked her advice about charts, because she knew. In those days there were no electronic charts. There were computers, but they had names like Univac, and they filled large rooms. Not something for a boater or a boat’s environment. There was just the charts. These were the start of every voyage. This was how you started. I was not a kid when I started sailing, about 30 years of age, but I remember feeling like a child in a real man’s world as I stepped off the bottom step into that chart room for the first time. The lady was helping a ship’s navigation officer with some charts of the South China Seas, and just listening to their conversation gave me chills. They rattled off names of places that were merely dreams to me. Pago Pago, Mindinao, Taipei and Guam were mentioned as I walked amongst the chart caddies.

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Starboard Attitude When she had gotten the order for the charts, she walked over and asked if she could help me find something. I felt as if I were a five-year-old child standing before my first grade teacher. I told her I was planning a trip to Hawaii, and for the next half hour her fingers flew over chart lists and soon I had a stack of charts that would get me to Hawaii, and into any port in the island chain. She even piled on planning guides and Pilot Charts, telling me how to use them. I miss that feeling I used to have when I’d enter Southwest Instruments; the feeling of being a part of the fraternity of seamen who notched their courses on paper charts and took their sightings by day or night. Oh, I did finally learn how to take a sighting, and how to calculate my position. I even got to where I could actually hit within five miles of where we really were. Quite an accomplishment for me. That’s what cruising was like for me when I started, and that is why I can’t tell you what it will be like for you. It’s a different time, and you are coming from a different place. Times change, and people change, but there is a continuous thread that binds all of us sailors together into a tight knit clan, and that is the thrill we all get once we set sail.

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