Last Sunday night David and I visited Cinema 21, a local avant garde movie theater in NW Portland, to see the British documentary Deep Water. This is the disturbing story of an around-the-world single-handed yacht race back in 1967-1968. A single-handed yacht race means that one person pilots one yacht around the world. It takes a little less than a year to do this, and is quite a grueling adventure that only the most responsible, experienced yachtspeople should undertake.
Deep Water is the true story of an occasional weekend British sailor who takes up this cause because he is in desperate financial straits and thinks he can win for the money. As anyone knows who has been to sea in a yacht, there are always problems, either with your boat, the rigging, the food, or with your physical body and/or soul.
As I've always heard: there are two kinds of people in the world. People with the boat dream, and people without the boat dream. Don't head out to sea unless you have an insatiable boat dream. Otherwise, it ain't worth it.
I simply wouldn't do it unless I had absolutely no other choice. The romance of it all wears off pretty fast when the first big swell comes by and washes over you, rocking and rolling the boat underneath you mercilessly. Landlubbers like me need as firm a terra firma as we can get.
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