Webb Chiles

Those of you who paid attention in English class will recognize the title of an essay by Jonathan Swift. Several recently reported events have caused me to have my own modest proposal about people who choose to sail offshore, as well as some about when solo sailing isn't solo sailing, which I will get to in a moment. But before I do I want to suggest that you reread, or read for the first time, Swift's original. Just type 'a modest proposal' into Google and you will come up with several online choices. And that when you think of it is quite an achievement: to take a phrase and so make it your own that almost three hundred years later in technology not even dreamed of in your day it is still yours.

The essay is short, won't take long to read, and almost certainly will be superior to anything else you read today. Briefly the proposal, written in 1729, is for the children of the Irish poor to be sold as food at one year of age. Swift provides production cost analysis, as well as recipes, and concludes that those who think his proposal unreasonable ask the mothers of these children if they themselves would not have preferred to be sold as food than suffer the sustained miseries of a life of poverty. He concludes by declaring that there is no self-interest behind his proposal because his own children are grown and his wife past childbearing. It is a work of savage genius.

My own modest proposal is not so savage, but may also initially seem unreasonable. It is that when people sail offshore alone--and I'm not sure that shouldn't be extended to all people who go offshore in private vessels--but I'll leave it at alone--they must first sign an affidavit that they know no one is going to come and rescue them if they get in trouble. Further, they should be required to carry not more "safety" equipment, but less. Radio transmitters, EPIRB's, satellite telephones, any form of calling for help beyond the range of their own voice, should be illegal. As should insurance.

This will accomplish several desirable objectives: It will save public funds, although there is some phony book keeping here, because rescue services, like fire departments, have fixed costs whether they are utilized or not. It will shut up some politicians. Always desirable. And might even cause them to focus on real problems. It will cause some reporters to return to their true calling of following Britney Spears to the barber. It will lower insurance costs. It will make it easier to find room in distant anchorages. And it will separate the men from the boys, as well, of course, the women from the girls.

Less my proposal seem too absurd, I point out that it is exactly the way many experienced sailors from Joshua Slocum to the present day have gone to sea. Immodestly I would like to include myself among them; but, alas, I must confess that in recent years I have had aboard a handheld VHP with a five mile range to find out from officials where the Quarantine Dock is when I enter an unfamiliar port. If my proposal is enacted into law, I will turn it in.

On the subject of when solo sailing isn't, the answer is when you are accompanied by another boat. If I remember correctly Naomi James, who was the first women to sail alone around the world via Cape Horn, was met by her husband and Chay Blythe, who stood lookout for her from another boat so she could sleep in the English Channel. Indeed.

Not long ago a teen ager reportedly became the first adolescent to cross the Atlantic Ocean alone. I have read that his father sailed another boat within sight of him all the way across. If true, the boy wasn't a solo sailor, he was part of a convoy. Solo sailing, adventure, risk, have meaning only when they say something about the human spirit. Convoys don't. www.inthepresentsea.com

02/12/07