A few words on small boat sailors from EB white – written in 1963

Joel Bland, gawd blessim, sent me these words for EB white

The Sea and the Wind that Blows by E. B. White Ford Times, June 1963

WAKING OR SLEEPING, I dream of boats - usually of rather small boats under a slight press of sail. When I think how great a part of my life has been spent dreaming the hours away and how much of this total dream life has concerned small craft, I wonder about the state of my health, for I am told that it is not a good sign to be always voyaging into unreality, driven by imaginary breezes.

I have noticed that most men, when they enter a barber shop and must wait their turn, drop into a chair and pick up a magazine. I simply sit down and pick up the thread of my sea wandering, which began more than fifty years ago and is not quite ended. There is hardly a waiting room in the East that has not served as my cockpit, whether I was waiting to board a train or to see a dentist. And I am usually still trimming sheets when the train starts or the drill begins to whine. If a man must be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most. A small sailing craft is not only beautiful, it is seductive and full of strange promise and the hint of trouble. If it happens to be an auxiliary cruising boat, it is without question the most compact and ingenious arrangement for living ever devised by the restless mind of man - a home that is stable without being stationary, shaped less like a box than like a fish or a bird or a girl, and in which the homeowner can remove his daily affairs as far from shore as he has the nerve to take them, close-hauled or running free -parlor, bedroom, and bath, suspended and alive.

Men who ache allover for tidiness and compactness in their lives often find relief for their pain in the cabin of a thirty-foot sailboat at anchor in a sheltered cove. Here the sprawling panoply of The Home is compressed in orderly miniature and liquid delirium, suspended between the bottom of the sea and the top of the sky, ready to move on in the morning by the miracle of canvas and the witchcraft of rope. It is small wonder that men hold boats in the secret place of their mind, almost from the cradle to the grave.

Along with my dream of boats has gone the ownership of boats, a long succession of them upon the surface of the sea, many of them makeshift and crank. Since childhood I have managed to have some sort of sailing craft and to raise a sail in fear. Now, in my sixties, I still own a boat, still raise my sail in fear in answer to the summons of the unforgiving sea. Why does the sea attract me in the way it does: Whence comes this compulsion to hoist a sail, actually or in dream? My first encounter with the sea was a case of hate at first sight. I was taken, at the age of four, to a bathing beach in New Rochelle. Everything about the experience frightened and repelled me: the taste of salt in my mouth, the foul chill of the wooden bathhouse, the littered sand, the stench of the tide flats. I came away hating and fearing the sea. Later, I found that what I had feared and hated, I now feared and loved.

I returned to the sea of necessity, because it would support a boat; and although I knew little of boats, I could not get them out of my thoughts. I became a pelagic boy. The sea became my unspoken challenge: the wind, the tide, the fog, the ledge, the bell, the gull that cried help, the never-ending threat and bluff of weather. Once having

permitted the wind to enter the belly of my sail, I was not able to quit the helm; it was as though I had seized hold of a high-tension wire and could not let go.

I liked to sail alone. The sea was the same as a girl to me I did not want anyone else along. Lacking instruction, I invented ways of getting things done, and usually ended by doing them in a rather queer fashion, and so did not learn to sail properly, and still cannot sail well, although I have been at it all my life. I was twenty before I discovered that charts existed; all my navigating up to that time was done with the wariness and the ignorance of the early explorers. I was thirty before I learned to hang a coiled halyard on its cleat as it should be done. Until then I simply coiled it down on deck and dumped the coil. I was always in trouble and always returned, seeking more trouble. Sailing became a compulsion: there lay the boat, swinging to her mooring, there blew the wind; I had no choice hut to go. My earliest boats were so small that when the wind failed, or when I failed, I could switch to manual control-I could paddle or row home. But then I graduated to boats that only the wind was strong enough to move. When I first dropped off my mooring in such a boat, I was an hour getting up the nerve to cast off the pennant. Even now, with a thousand little voyages notched in my belt, I still I feel a memorial chill on casting off, as the gulls jeer and the empty mainsail claps.

Of late years, I have noticed that my sailing has increasingly become a compulsive activity rather than a source of pleasure. There lies the boat, there blows the morning breeze-it is a point of honor, now, to go. I am like an alcoholic who cannot put his bottle out of his life. With me, I cannot not sail. Yet I know well enough that I have lost touch with the wind and, in fact, do not like the wind any more. It jiggles me up, the wind does, and what I really love are windless days, when all is peace. There is a great question in my mind whether a man who is against wind should longer try to sail a boat. But this is an intellectual response-the old yearning is still in me, belonging to the past, to youth, and so I am torn between past and present, a common disease of later life.

When does a man quit the sea? How dizzy, how bumbling must he be? Does he quit while he's ahead, or wait till he makes some major mistake, like falling overboard or being flattened by an accidental jibe? This past winter I spent hours arguing the question with myself. Finally, deciding that I had come to the end of the road, I wrote a note to the boatyard, putting my boat up for sale. I said I was "coming off the water." But as I typed the sentence, I doubted that I meant a word of it.

If no buyer turns up, I know what will happen: I will instruct the yard to put her in again-"just till somebody comes along." And then there will be the old uneasiness, the old uncertainty, as the mild southeast breeze ruffles the cove, a gentle, steady, morning breeze, bringing the taint of the distant wet world, the smell that takes a man back to the very beginning of time, linking him to all that has gone before. There will lie the sloop, there will blow the wind, once more I will get under way. And as I reach across to the black can off the Point, dodging the trap buoys and toggles, the shags gathered on the ledge will note my passage. "There goes the old boy again," they will say. "One more rounding of his little Horn, one more conquest of his Roaring Forties." And with the tiller in my hand, I'll feel again the wind imparting life to a boat, will smell again the old menace, the one that imparts life to me: the cruel beauty of the salt world, the barnacle'stiny knives, the sharp spine of the urchin, the stinger of the sun jelly, the claw of the crab.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._B._White

This is about Dylan Winter's Blog.

24 Responses to “A few words on small boat sailors from EB white – written in 1963”

  1. 7 November, 2015 at 7:01 pmSteve L says:

    Sublime.

  2. 7 November, 2015 at 9:28 pmRiley Morgan says:

    Being relatively new to sailing it is interesting to read about that faint chill of fear or trepidation, each time, as one heads out into the unknown under sail. It seems it never leaves you. Do you feel the same Dylan, or are you over that.? I suppose it is a good thing really, keeps you cautious.

  3. 7 November, 2015 at 9:36 pmdylan winter says:

    the only time I feel a tingle is when I leave a river for the last time and head out into new territory

    and……

    moving around a marina when the wind is strong and the surrounding boats are valuable

    D

  4. 7 November, 2015 at 11:26 pmCurtis Fitzgerald says:

    Interesting that he updated “The Elements of Style”. I have a copy on my desk and was reading it the other day. Never knew anything about him. Thanks for posting the article and the link to Wikipedia.

  5. 8 November, 2015 at 1:03 amSteve says:

    I can relate to his comments! First I’ve heard of him-thanks for posting.

  6. 8 November, 2015 at 8:06 amTony Bannister says:

    I am in my seventies and have owned my current 30 footer for 26 years, and had smaller boats before. This article is very relevant to the way I feel about boats. Nice to know I am not the only loony. Thanks Dylan; Tony

  7. 8 November, 2015 at 9:26 amdylan winter says:

    I am assuming that there were Romans or Vikings who felt the same way as well

    goodinnit!

  8. 8 November, 2015 at 10:47 amTony says:

    Thank you for posting this, so much more real than “Sea Fever”.
    We all have our “Cape Horns” even if mine is only Hurst Narrows.

  9. 8 November, 2015 at 12:24 pmDave Barker says:

    Thanks Dylan, what an excellent piece. In 1963 I was 15 and went sailing for the first time. Now I sometimes find myself thinking “should I still be doing this?” etc.

  10. 8 November, 2015 at 3:30 pmKeith says:

    Very nice D thanks.

    “Once having permitted the wind to enter the belly of my sail, I was not able to quit the helm; it was as though I had seized hold of a high-tension wire and could not let go.”

  11. 8 November, 2015 at 5:35 pmdylan winter says:

    of course you should

    the oldest bloke still sailing solo I have met was a man at the Humber yawl club

    92

    goodonim!

  12. 8 November, 2015 at 5:46 pmdylan winter says:

    have you read the boy me and the cat?

    good read I reckon

    D

  13. 8 November, 2015 at 5:55 pmdylan winter says:

    Tony,

    have you seen your spinnaker starring in the films

    fortunately this new boat has a spinnaker as well – but no bloomin halyards

  14. 8 November, 2015 at 8:39 pmGlen Maxwell says:

    One of my hero’s is Harry Henkel who finished his third solo circumnavigation at age 92. His children ask him to please quit.

  15. 9 November, 2015 at 2:39 amGus says:

    That was wonderful, thanks.
    I have got to get a cruiser again. My 20 footer is sorely missed.

    “…a home that is stable without being stationary…”

    “…and in which the homeowner can remove his daily affairs as far from shore as he has the nerve to take them…”

  16. 9 November, 2015 at 8:23 amdylan winter says:

    quick, quick buy one before its too late

    put it on the drive and start fettling

    give it the best electrics on the planet

    D

  17. 9 November, 2015 at 6:18 pmDoug says:

    Lovely sentiments! Just read this also this very morning in the book Greatest sailing Stories Ever Told (edited by Chris Caswell

  18. 9 November, 2015 at 8:15 pmkeith lewis says:

    What a soulful sailor!

  19. 19 November, 2015 at 4:54 amAnnie Holmes says:

    Oh yes, oh yes! Now my heart aches, for I just sold my sloop, my best friend for 32 years! I wish I had her back…

  20. 19 November, 2015 at 8:33 amdylan winter says:

    that is one heck of a long relationship – I do hope you have bought a replacement

  21. 29 November, 2015 at 9:37 amKevin Brown says:

    May 2015 a few months after my 61st birthday, bought our very first boat – a 14′ YW Dayboat. 3 months later acquired a 19′ triple keeled Hunter Europa. Have yet to muster up the courage to let go of the painter on that one which is beginning to annoy me. Not sure if it’s fear or just being loathe to make a complete pratt of myself. Enjoyed the video on Berwick – our sailing ground.

  22. 29 November, 2015 at 9:42 amdylan winter says:

    goodonya KB

    few things more exciting for an old man to do than to buy a boat

    you have some lovely places to sail near you

    why not move it to the Forth for a summer or two – lots of sheltered places to sail, very comfortable marina

    D

  23. 29 November, 2015 at 10:23 amKevin Brown says:

    just trying to find the time to fit everything in. We’re working harder and longer than ever which was not the plan! The Europa is a bit “cosy”, what with my back and her claustrophobia. A Centaur seems to be beckoning. Pity yours is sold now.

  24. 29 November, 2015 at 10:37 amdylan winter says:

    other boats are available

    macwesters seem okay – sadlers are excellent

    but there are a lot of good (and bad) centaurs around and they are also easy to sell s my advice…..

    quick, buy one before it is too late

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