I have a complaint. We sailors, especially those who own traditional wooden boats, have been accustomed to accepting second best when it comes to the stuff we use to accomplish our basic tasks.rnTake sleeping. Everyone must do it, but only poor dumb sailors are docile enough to accept the so-called "pipe berth" as a tool for accomplishing it. For what, dear friends, is a pipe berth? It's a frame, tinkered up by a plumber, to which a canvas cloth has been tightly laced. It is first cousin to a trampoline, only not as much fun. Would non-sailors accept such a medieval device for the mortification of the flesh? What hotel, no matter how sleazy, would offer the weary traveler a special rate on room 207, with newly installed pipe berths?rnNo, only the poor humble sailor accepts such shabby treatment because he has been persuaded that he doesn't deserve any better. After all, "That's yachting" he says. He may be a man of substance ashore, head of mergers and acquisitions at Veeble-fetzer and Googe, but when he steps aboard, he becomes as compliantly accepting of hardship as any 19th-century "Jack Tar" driven from the quarterdeck by a "bully mate" with a rope's end.
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