Hi, I'm Christian Williams. The new book is called "Philosophy of Sailing: Offshore
Again in Search of the Universe." I went back because I left something out there
the last time, something without a name. Something I couldn't describe. Something
as elusive as a thought but obvious as a wave in the face-- the universe. I knew how
to prepare a yacht with 60 days of food, the lumber I like to have on board
in case of a catastrophic collision and the Jordan series drogue ready in case we
have to run before a gale. They were answers. All the rest, heading off 5000
miles alone again around the North Pacific, was questions -- and questions are
the realm of philosophy, a world beyond seamanship. I had felt something the last
voyage I couldn't name, something we don't often encounter at home answering
the cell phone stuck in traffic on a freeway. Something mysterious. Something
that made me turn my head, and when I did nothing was there. Whatever it was was
offshore, and I needed to go back again and find it. Philosophy is an activity,
not a theory, but theoreticians need it too. Einstein was a sailor. He often went off
alone with a notebook on board. Boats make ideas come, and they do come, as if
the sea was an open door, welcoming. I brought to it my land self, busy and
rational and up on the news. In a day I was different and in a week. changed.
The sky above was the kingdom of sun and when evening fell it fell not just on me
but on the ocean and the birds and the trade wind clouds of which I was
suddenly one, not a part but a part of the whole. It's beyond words out there,
though I have tried. It is both reality and dream. In the very working of the
boat, isolated but never alone, routines become magic. To see a Fulmar
hovering overhead, scanning the universe, is to be him and have for an instant the
same gigantic view. To eat and sleep and be suspended among stars is all there is,
and in the silence even common work like taking out the trash is transcendental
and defining. Writing it down changes it, I know that. Talking about it misses
it, I'm well aware. The universe here is a 360 degree horizon not around me but
around us all , and the view into it sees all. It always has.
It is the view observed by Socrates and Aristotle, St. Augustine and Ben Franklin,
who saw in it heaven or science or damnation or the power of a printing
press. I needed all their philosophy to help me understand the encounter, for the
questions we all ask have always been the same: who are we, why are we here, what
is it we can say we know for certain about anything.
It's those questions that make us different from dogs and horses and the
wolves we sometimes know we are. Our logic makes proofs and science improves
our lives. We catalog our world -- name it, judge it, and think we know it. But at sea
no logic or science obtains. There is something out there without a name. What
are its attributes? The poet Robert Graves knew. He saw it in sky and stars and
the goddess of the moon . He said it is the reason why the hairs stand on end,
the eyes water, the throat is constricted, the skin crawls and a shiver runs down
the spine. I am witness that what Graves says is true.
I have done my best to write it down.