The year before my birth a book was published with the following passage:
For much the same reasons that some people decide to retreat to a peaceful and beautiful part of this horrible world by becoming monks or devoting themselves to art, I decided to become a yacht designer. It probably would not have happened without this book and I probably would not be here now.
I have never seen the home waters of Billy Atkin before so it was a sentimental day when I sailed in yesterday and explored the waters that shaped his boats and his life. It’s the kind of thing that makes you look back over your own life, what might have been and what you have given up for an obsession like sailing and cruising.
Trying to measure what you’ve gained and lost due to the major choice of a lifetime is hard. The losses, especially when they are recent, stand out so starkly. The gains? Who knows if they were gains or just the alternative to better lost opportunities? All I know is that I am here now, at peace and content, and looking forward to what lies ahead. I guess that is all we can reasonably ask for.
That is one of the more restrained bits of prose in William Atkin’s Of Yachts and Men, a book utterly charming despite having been evidently written with a trowel instead of a typewriter and in which Stockholm Tar seems to drip from every page. It had a strong effect on an impressionable young man who had grown up learning to duck and cover and come to semi-maturity during the horror and disillusionment of Vietnam.
For much the same reasons that some people decide to retreat to a peaceful and beautiful part of this horrible world by becoming monks or devoting themselves to art, I decided to become a yacht designer. It probably would not have happened without this book and I probably would not be here now.
I have never seen the home waters of Billy Atkin before so it was a sentimental day when I sailed in yesterday and explored the waters that shaped his boats and his life. It’s the kind of thing that makes you look back over your own life, what might have been and what you have given up for an obsession like sailing and cruising.
Trying to measure what you’ve gained and lost due to the major choice of a lifetime is hard. The losses, especially when they are recent, stand out so starkly. The gains? Who knows if they were gains or just the alternative to better lost opportunities? All I know is that I am here now, at peace and content, and looking forward to what lies ahead. I guess that is all we can reasonably ask for.
