Waiting for the tide
For most of us boating is a pastime; an escape from the pressures of ‘real life’ – a chance to enjoy the present moment without thinking of the future or the past.
There are, of course, people for whom boating is real life: fishermen, shipping and ferry crew, surveying, offshore installation support etc. But there is one thing all those professional seamen have in common: they don’t need to know anything about sailing.
Professional sailors do exist, but vanishingly few outside the ‘sailing-as-pastime’ or sail racing economy. In the February issue I wrote about modern trading under sail, profiling several different projects attempting to make a living by transporting goods under sail. In this issue (page 28), journalist Andrew English describes the manual oyster dredging process in the River Fal, where only two types of vessel are permitted: the tow-punt and the sailing dredger. Both, however, haul their catch in by hand, reducing over-fishing and maintaining tradition at a stroke.
Many generations have come and gone since sailing, rowing and canal-boating all became economically redundant activities, yet all three cultures live on and thrive in their myriad forms. Could ‘slow’ food and traditional technology really be making a comeback? It seems unlikely, but as we all bob along in the moment, it could well be that we are honouring tradition and mapping out the future at the same time...