The Fourth of July has come and gone, and still there is no baseball in our country. There are plans afoot for a truncated sixty-game season, but even that will be an odd spectacle, without fans in the stands. I’m not generally one for sports — but baseball isn’t a sport, it’s a pastime. There’s no clock, it takes as long as it takes. Very often, nothing much happens, sometimes something does. My favorite baseball commentators are masters of the discursion; in the late innings of an unwinnable game, in the waning days of a losing season, they wax at length on the history of the typewriter, the hagiography of Jamie Farr, on cabbages and kings.
Sea time is like baseball time, a little unstuck from the clock and the calendar. Under sail, getting somewhere takes as long as it takes, and on a fairly regular basis you find yourself somewhere you had no intention of going. Very often, nothing much happens, sometimes something does. The passing of days and nights, clouds and sun, heat and cold and wet overlay the perpetual march of the ship’s watches, and the days become blended and indistinct. Progress through the world is marked by breakfasts, lunches and dinners, and tidy little pencil marks on the chart. In the gloaming hours of the evening watch (1600 to 2000 in the early Autumn is the best of all watches) the sages and wits of the quarterdeck convene to debate the weighty issues of the day: the architecture of the perfect sandwich, whether a hot dog is a sandwich, and if there will be sandwiches for dinner.
It still remains to be seen what our answer to the sixty day season will be — when and if and how we’ll sail this year. Fingers crossed.
Joseph T Lengieza
Director of Sail Training