Oh man! Nick is jumping ship.
Really?
He has only been with us for a week but for me it has been fantastic to
have a third person on board. The issues are HS’s sailing and HS’s attitude. HS
doesn’t like to sail. Who woulda guessed? He spends his WHOLE shift downstairs
in the ‘nav room’ not even, I am horrified to say, looking at the sails, not
even, I am even more horrified to say, looking for boats. Also, he pretty much
thinks he is god and talks down to everyone. I put up with this just because I
am a wuss but Nick won’t. Wow. I had been being driven nuts but HS before but
had decided, during this leg, that I would do the whole thing, basically
because Nick is such a wonderful person, but, now, if he leaves, do I want to
be here, on my own with HS again, and doing shift 12 hours a day instead of 8, and
putting up with every little thing, and not even seeing the stars? Not an easy
question to answer, not at all. And, I have to decide like, right now, because
there is not another spot after this to get off easily!
Nick is an awesome sailor. He has a
boat, which he sails on weekends, and he races, with a friend, for fun, and he
just happens to be very very good at it. When he is racing with his friend his
job is to adjust the sails. He doesn’t know, or care, what the course is. He
doesn’t know or care what tactics are being considered or used. He doesn’t look
down at the water, or around at the other boats, he looks up at the sails, and
‘tweaks’ them so that they are working efficiently. The team he is on wins
regularly, and, without doubt, it is due to his input, because, on days he
happens to be busy elsewhere, the boat doesn’t win, doesn’t even come close. In
Ottawa there are several long distance races each year called the Horrible
Hundred or something similar in which boats race 100 miles. Most boats do this
with a team on board, since, usually, given the wind conditions on the Ottawa
and the fact that a lot of tacking is involved, the races take anywhere from 25
to 50 hours to complete. Nick, just because he wants to, always does these
races single-handed. And, despite a field of several dozen boats, he often as
not comes in first. Because he is such a good sailor.
HS in contrast is not a good
sailor. He doesn’t like sailing. He told me this several times before we set
out but I didn’t believe him. How could you choose to sail round the world, and
then go sailing again, if you don’t like sailing? It didn’t compute. However,
it is true. HS’s modus operandi at sea is to throw the sails up and hope that
they are good enough, not to look at them, or think about them. His boat goes
slowly, all the time, because, he says, it is heavy and has a full keel. Both
these are true. But not sufficient. HS, if he is going 4 knots per hour or more
is happy. 4 knots per hour is the equivalent of 100 knots per day. If he is
going less than 4 knots per hour he puts on the engine and motors.
This type of attitude drove Nick
bananas. On Nick’s shifts we were always going at least 6 knots, often 7. Then
HS would come on shift and in no time at all we would be going 5 and then 4
knots. One day the speed fell to 3 knots. ‘We’ll have to motor,’ HS said. ‘No,’
Nick replied, ‘you just have to adjust the sails. Let me show you.’ Nick, I
must point out at this time, was, from my point of view, being very careful to
be very respectful. He tweaked the sails, explained what he was doing, and
presto, the boat was going 6 knots again. ‘Ah, the wind came up,’ HS said
dismissively. (Which was not true.) ‘I don’t like to race,’ he went on, ‘I am
happy if we are going 4 knots.’ At which point Nick could not help but point
out, and again, I must stress, very respectfully, that he wasn’t trying to
race, he was just trying to sail efficiently, that by encouraging the boat to
go 6 knot all the time instead of just 4 you could do a passage in 4 days
instead of 6, get to where you were going sooner, and even save diesel, which
everyone agrees is expensive, by sailing instead of motoring when it wasn’t
actually necessary to motor.
No consensus was reached.
For the next couple of days Nick
spent his shifts sailing the boat well, going 6 knots or more, and HS spent his
shifts down in the nav room, hardly even glancing at the sails, with the boat
slugging along significantly slower. The same discussion was repeated more than
once.
Nothing changed.
Several things drove Nick bananas.
First and foremost among them was that HS ‘talked down to him’ all the time
about everything (which HS also does to me, but, seeing as I know practically
nothing, and am meek to boot, doesn’t get me as upset) but a close second was
the way that he, HS, not only refused to acknowledge, at all, that Nick might
actually have a point wrt efficient sailing techniques but actively ridiculed
his suggestions.
I, of course, am stuck in the
middle of the whole situation. I can see that Nick is right. I can empathize
with how he feels. I also know that it is HS’s boat and that, as captain, he
gets to decide how we sail. But it seems to me he is being a boor and am not
sure exactly why. I deal with this, of course, by being silent on the issue, which
is, for once, probably the right thing to do.
The end result, unfortunately, is
that Nick is jumping ship. He will not say a word about HS’s attitude, or about
sailing, but will instead tell HS that he misses his wife. Which is also true.
I will miss him.
I have decided I will
stay. I have different reasons than Nick for being here. There are lots of
people who have come to the Canaries to look for crewing positions. Yesterday
alone three different people approached HS and asked if they could crew for
him. I don’t know if HS, when he learns that Nick is leaving, will choose to
take on new crew or not. Either way, I will stay. Either way I will miss Nick.
I regret not learning more from him while he was here. I didn’t realize that I
would have so little time to do so. We will have another three days here in the
Canary Islands to explore and then we will be off again. Despite everything I
am already looking forward to leg 2 and the challenges it will bring.
