My friend, the Old Man Sailing, has slipped quietly into the Southern Hemisphere on his quest to retrace the voyage that the much lauded Sir Francis Chichester did in 1967 when he almost became the first person to sail single-handed, non-stop around the world.
Chichester stopped in Sydney for an extended period while he regained his strength and had his boat, Gypsy Moth IV, modified by Australian naval architect Warwick Hood. Chichester did not become “Sir Francis” until he made it back to the UK. He was an arsehole.
I call him my friend even though I have never met him, but I feel like I know him in the same kind of way we know Tom Cruise because we have watched him go from a drink slinger in Cocktail, to the top man in Top Gun. Most of us have never met him but we feel like he’s part of the family (in some families an unwanted part). Here again, I keep digressing.
John Passmore, aka Old Man Sailing, has lifted my spirits in the last month as he posts a daily vlog (is that really a word?) a video blog of his voyage. Each and every blog (I’m going to call it that) is positive, funny and captures that seemingly lost spirit of ocean sailing which is to have fun and rekindle a healthy zest for life. Where drama and chaos seem to get the most clicks and shares these days, sometimes it’s the simple things that mean the most, like his solution for dealing with his little sacks of onions dropping onto his bunk in the middle of the night. Let me explain.
John has the bags of onions hung from both handrails that stretch the length of the boat either side. In port, before he left, it seemed like a good place to stow them. Onions need air circulating around them to stay fresh, but the constant swinging from the motion of the boat chafed through the lines that secured each bag. What to do? After one bag broke loose and landed on him while he was asleep, John knew that he needed a solution for the wayward onions. He came up with one. He took some seizing wire from his toolkit and made little loops. He then attached the bags of onions to the loops and let the seizing wire deal with the motion of the boat. It’s hard to chafe seizing wire. Problem solved.
(Ancient Persian traditions associated the onion directly with Satan and the devil. – ed)
It’s these little vignettes of life at sea that make his posts so appealing. He is always upbeat, positive and frankly at the tender age of 77, he is enjoying life more than ever. We can all learn from his spirit.
While I am here and have your attention, let’s turn our attention to the myth that as soon as we cross the equator that the water in the sink and toilet starts to spin the other way. This is due to the coriolis effect (no need for a science lesson here – let’s just say that it’s real). It’s the reason why hurricanes spin clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere and counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere.
It stands to reason then that water in your sink and/or toilet (I have known some sailors who have used both for the same purpose) will do the same, but it doesn’t really. In 99% of cases the water just goes in the direction that the toilet designer wants it to go in order to dispose of the goods in the most efficient possible way. The little water jets that help things along determine which way the water flows.
In an unfettered experiment where there are no outside influences, the coriolis effect does take place. Some cruise ships show their passengers this as they cross that magical line, but let’s take a step back. The coriolis effect lends its scientific weight to massive weather systems. It can hardly be bothered with a small bucket of water, but in fact, squirting toilets aside, it does happen. All you need is a bucket of water and boat and a passage across the equator to convince you; simple.
Back to John. He’s now in the southeast tradewinds looking to skirt the South Atlantic high on its western edge. Let’s see how he fares when the weather starts to bite, the cold and dreary days on the deep south kick in, and the waves try to slam him sideways on a regular basis. Let’s see if he’s still cheerful then. Until he gets there, let’s just enjoy his positive spirit and take it one day at a time. – Brian Hancock.
