I never knew that saving my own life would be so complicated. Believe me, it is much easier to drown.
If you have read Old Man Sailing – or even Faster, Louder, Riskier, Sexier – you will be familiar with my attitude to drowning. I have devoted several pages to the alternative, which is to grow so old and decrepit that I end up in some care home with a jolly girl in a plastic apron saying: “Never mind, let’s get you cleaned up…”
Believe me, I could not bear it. Far better, I reasoned, to fall over the side and watch my boat sailing away on her course into the sunset. How long would I be able to tread water? Until night falls? And then I would float on my back and look at the stars and contemplate my life and whether or not I had lived it as best I could – and all the other things people think about when they know it will be coming to an end soon.
That was why, when I fitted out Samsara in 2017, I did not install an EPIRB. I told Tamsin and the children that, if I should be long overdue arriving at my destination, they were not to instigate a search and rescue operation. Either I would turn up or I wouldn’t.
Now I am 75. I heard the other day that my old friend Kim Sengupta, foreign correspondent (war correspondent, mostly) of The Independent had died – in his sleep, in his own bed in London, from a heart attack at 68.
Clearly, I’m supposed to be dead by now – EPIRBs are for younger people.
I did begin to wonder whether I should have one in the middle of the Atlantic in 2020 when I was escaping from the first COVID Lockdown. World trade was non-existent. Pleasure boating was banned. I realised just how alone I was out there, and that if I should need to be rescued, there would be nobody passing by for me to call for help.
But there was nothing I could do about it, so I stopped worrying.
Yet now I have bought an EPIRB. I went into St George’s on the bus (one of those wonderful 18-seater Grenadian buses that come along every three minutes and take you wherever you want to go… and sometimes kick you off because the driver has spotted 18 people waiting on the other side of the road wanting to the other way…)
I had been thinking about an EPIRB ever since the crossing from the Cape Verdes. It was late in the season because I had been delayed by the knockdown repairs in the Canaries and then there were the phone calls from Mindelo about the house sale (which went through in the end, you’ll be glad to hear).
So, there I was halfway through the 2,131-mile Atlantic crossing when it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a ship for three days – hadn’t even picked one up within 30 miles on the AIS, come to that. I certainly hadn’t talked to any other yachts (they were all anchored in Prickly Bay, their crews heading for Happy Hour in the One Love Bar).
I began to think logically about what would happen if I did hit The Container.
The Container is something that tends to preoccupy the singlehanded sailor if he lets his guard down. The Container is out there – and with the speed Samsara was chasing down her Westing even with the rudder held together with string (see The Voyage #2 book), hitting The Container would put an end to the narrative with a bang. Literally.
I had it all worked out: I would take to the liferaft. I had two hand-held VHF radios. I would wait until a ship came past and then I would call up (all tentative and apologetic) and ask “Could you give me a lift?
Except there were no ships – no yachts. In fact, not even any sealife or birdlife.
Just me.
I began to feel just a tiny bit anxious.
I was not anxious about falling over the side and seeing the boat sail away – that would be my own fault and all part of the plan.
But to run into The Container out of sheer bad luck when I was actually doing everything right – well, that just wouldn’t be fair. I could imagine the sort of language that would emanate from the little liferaft in the middle of nowhere.
I could imagine how much I would regret not having an EPIRB.
And now I’ve got Mr Musk’s Starlink, I bet I would use that to call for help – and then someone would have all the inconvenience of finding me from my last known position. I felt a certain obligation to make it as easy as possible for them.
Hence the EPIRB – and it’s my own fault for leaving it so long.
Buying it in Grenada means it is registered in the USA. This makes a difference because Samsara is a British vessel and I will have to get it reprogrammed to summon help from Falmouth rather than the US Coast Guard Maritime Search & Rescue Center in Virginia – where the inference is that my plight would be less of a priority than if I’d paid my taxes to Uncle Sam.
The nearest place to get it reprogrammed is Curaçao, 400 miles away.
Also, I discover that in order to screw it onto the bulkhead, I have to take it to pieces, and I cannot for the life of me work out how to put it back together again. On top of everything else, there is a hidden spring that throws the device out of its casing without warning and hits me smack in the face.
It would be just my luck to run into The Container and go to the bottom while still reading the instructions.
John I’m 79 yrs young, and my son bought me a copy of your book Old man Sailing. I loved it. My wife and I starteddailing in dinghy in 1975. We have not been serious off shore like you, we achieved an ambition in 2017 and sailed anti clock round GB east cowes to east cowes. I’ve/we have still got a few adventures left in the tank. So you had better let me know about your health suppliment? If you see us out there give us a shout. All our yachts are called Bloto since the first one. We are currently Bloto-4 if you cant remember the name we have a unique lemon coloured 31 ft hull.
Regards fair winds
Perry and Simonne Mason
Bloto
East Cowes
This is a story by “Sailor James” from his site “Sailing Tritiea”. Part way across the Pacific to Hawaii, he hits a container with his rudder. Don’t ask me how but that’s the only conclusion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AZXXKj0p0s Enjoy.
I thought that containers now have to have water-soluable seals so that they will sink at some point regardless of their contents?
How you keep going amazes me. But keep going.
How I keep going? Have you seen
I suspect I’d be rather more troubled by the idea of hitting a sleeping whale. The internet tells me there are a lot more of them about now than just a few decades ago, and I’ve had the initially-startling experience of a family of the huge Sei type surface close alongside an Antigua cat I was delivering. They were likely just curious. I was musing on the fragility of fibreglass.
Like
https://www.worldshipping.org/news/world-shipping-council-releases-containers-lost-at-sea-report-2023-update.
I suggest that you stop worrying about that modern-mythical container. I’m 71, my day job is in the management of container ships and in my entire career ships that I have been responsible for have lost no containers at all.
To stay afloat once overboard a container would have to have positive buoyancy because containers are made of steel and are not watertight. Positive buoyancy is possible if it’s ab empty reefer container or if it’s full of consumer goods in expanded polystyrene packaging.
So if we take the ten year average of 1553 containers lost and guess not unreasonably that 10% of them might be in those two classes then that’s 150 boxes lying in wait for you – and then you will have to hit a corner casting.
Like I said below. “All Is Lost” didn’t do us any favors….
A question John. I think you are using the phrase “The Container” to reference a container vessel. Having seen the Robert Redford movie “All Is Lost”, what are a cruisers defenses against hitting an errant container? Or is this a case of “Jaws” syndrome where the odds are ridiculously low of encountering a great white but the movie scared us all?
I’m referring to the shipping containers that are lost overboard from cargo vessels every year. According to the World Shipping Council, the figure for 2022 was 661 (out of the 250 million transported) which is the lowest figure in percentage terms since the survey began in 2008.
This is, of course, a minute percentage, and given the size of the containers and the size of the world’s oceans, the chances of hitting one are absolutely miniscule.
Also, some of them are filled with heavy machinery and will sink straight to the bottom. Others, however, containing lightweight consumer goods packed in polystyrene can float about just below the surface for years.
So, yes, I would have to be incredibly unlucky to hit one – but that doesn’t mean they don’t scare the willies out of me…