I have just finished reading the famous book by the Canadian navigator Joshua Slocum, Sailing Alone Around the World. This master mariner who had spent his life at sea was the first to circumnavigate the world single-handed in a 37-foot sloop, a converted fishing boat, in the 1890’s.

The style is full of anecdotes, which endear the reader to this rough and hardy man who had known little but hardship in his life. He was not a yachtsman, but a merchant seaman who had commanded big sailing ships – so he knew the sea as many yachtsmen didn’t. He was down-to-earth. I am glad to have learned something about sailing and its terminology, for I know what it is to beat against a current – when the current and wind are coming from the same direction, you have to sail close to the wind and fight both to make headway. I know what it’s like actually to be going backwards because the current is faster than your headway in relation to the water. You can fall off a little, go into a close reach and gain speed, but you lose headway and still might not beat the current. That is bad enough in a dinghy on a rough day off the Normandy coast, but that problem can be solved by hugging the coast (or choosing a day when the tidal coefficient is lower). Now just imagine being in a boat only three and a half times the size of my dinghy and beating westwards through the Magellan Strait! Many of the great names of seafaring history like William Blighe in the 1790’s have been beaten by the Horn. Even his fearlessness and determination would not beat the mighty waves. I am proud to relate that my own great grandfather did it – east to west – three times, and once as captain of the ship.

Even nowadays, though ships going from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans can use the Panama Canal to avoid the Cape Horn, the Cape of Good Hope can be the only way to avoid pirates along the east coast of Africa and the Red Sea down from the Suez Canal. The seas are as dangerous now as when Captain Cook or Slocum sailed their epic voyages.

That man had guts! Actually, it might surprise us to learn that you can be safer in a severe storm in a small (30 to 40 foot) boat than in a sailing ship as they were until the age of steam from about the beginning of the twentieth century. Slocum had no electronic navigation aids. In fact, the technology he did have other than his one-dollar tin clock (not having the $15 needed to have his chronometer repaired) was little more advanced than that of Columbus! He lashed the helm on long tacks, and amazingly, the sloop remained on course for hundreds of miles. All that was needed was the occasional position and course check. He did not spend the entire time at sea or alone. He frequently landed, and the book is full of his anecdotes of pirates, begging natives and dignitaries in so many parts of the world.

This video is worth watching:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iciZer5cbJ8