Helene Rescue Story Triggers Nasty Know-It-Alls of Sailing

Sense of Superiority, Put-Downs, Willing To Condemn Without the Facts

Peter Swanson Oct 1

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When I was in my 20s and spending way too much time in boatyards, I believed sailors were an elite group. They were smarter, tougher, braver, funnier, handier and sexier than the average civilian. I wanted to be like them.

Oh boy, how wrong I was. (Not about myself, of course. The rest of you.)

Sure, some of us have a surplus in one or two or three of those departments. Others thought they were smarter, etc. but had mistakenly equated family money for brains. Or they thought because they had succeeded in some unrelated endeavor that they must be good sailors too.

Others, regardless of financial status, were skilled mariners but somehow became judgemental, just plain mean and nasty, or both.

Blame It on Zuckerberg

How I learned all that: Facebook. Thanks a lot, Mark Zuckerberg creation. You ripped away my world-view like duct tape on a day-old scab.

Loose Cannon relies on Facebook for subscriber growth—I am trying to make a modest living here, folks. The downside of that engagement is having to endure all the negativity and ignorance that we have come to expect from social media, especially during an election season that seems to have given people permission to crap all over each other.

My most recent story was about an unfortunate guy named Earl Barcome, who came late in life to sailing, searching for redemption after a 30-plus-year break-up. Barcome and his dog Gunn became the subject matter of some of the most dramatic footage ever taken by the Coast Guard, as a rescue swimmer saved him and his dog Gunn from a disabled sailboat during Hurricane Helene.

Sailor in Viral Rescue Video Had a Good Plan…Until the Boat Broke Peter Swanson   ·   Sep 29 Read full story

Objectively, the guy did have good plan as you can see from the NOAA map at the top of the story. He was at Sanibel in Southwest Florida and tried to get as far away from the projected path of the hurricane and into a protected anchorage 24 hours before Helene arrived. The boat broke down, and the rest is history.

If Barcome had responded to my request for an interview, I would have asked him about his boat and what kind of shape it was in. I would have asked about his engine problem and how he had tried to make repairs. I would have asked him about why he took so long to call the Coast Guard. I did write that he should have radioed earlier, but that was hindsight.

Because I lacked information, I had no basis for speculation. That didn’t stop the Facebook crowd from piling on, assuming that his boat was a piece of shit and that Barcome was somehow unqualified from making even this modest, 100-mile passage to the Shark River. Even some people I respect in some generally reasonable Facebook groups joined the mob.

Type-A’s Typing

I’m going to pick on Scott Morris because I made the mistake of responding to him.

Over the years, I learned to refrain from answering every wrongheaded comment out there. I will sometimes reply when I think a well-meaning poster has misread something or was making a factual error, but I try to avoid public brawling.

Morris had no idea whether “novice” meant one week of experience or one year of experience, no idea whether Barcome did or didn’t have a mechanic check out his engine and, in fact, no idea whether in fact Barcome was diesel mechanic himself.¹ I artlessly tried to appeal to his sense of decency.

Morris: “Someone who is a novice to sailing would do much better by starting out slowly with a small boat to learn the basics. Why in heaven’s name did this guy think he would be able to handle a used boat and take it to sea just before a hurricane? If his plan was to steam south, he should have hired a competent engine mechanic to completely check out the engine before he left. It would have been money well spent. Lubbahs should stay ashore where they are safe.”

Swanson: “Compared to someone else you’re a lubber, as am I.”

Morris: “Speak for yourself pal, I have 50 years of sailing experience, sailed on three oceans AND the Gulf of Mexico, I hold a merchant mariners ticket and have raced sailboats offshore and ’round the buoys. I’ve owned more than a dozen boats and I’ve written six books about sailing. And you? Methinks you’re another dock expert.”

To which I did not reply: “Methinks you forgot to mention that time you sailed with Magellan.”

See, I really have learned my lesson. I successfully disengaged with Mr. Nasty Know-it-all.

Morris really has written some books. He happens to have grown up two towns away from me in Fairhaven, Massachusetts. He’s probably my age. I took the time to look him up, which is more than he bothered to do about me when issued his “dock expert” put-down. I’m all there in the About section of the Loose Cannon website.

(Before I forget, Barcome had his boat for about a year, according to some commenters who knew of him. Depending on how he used that time, it could be equivalent to three years—that is, seasons—of sailing in Buzzards Bay. Florida does have its advantages over New England, and it ain’t the opera or the education.)

In my opinion, there are two ways to lose an argument instantly on social media: One is to trot out your resume way early in the discussion, as if you possess secret knowledge unavailable to the rest of us, so just STFU. The other is name-calling at any time. The fact that he resorted to both is consistent with his fact-free condemnation of the unfortunate Mr. Barcome.

There are stories aplenty about smart and experienced sailors making mistakes or being just plain unluckly and ending up in a Coast Guard rescue basket. You can do everything right and still have a bad outcome. On the flip side, I myself have been very lucky at times, and I expect many of you reading this have too.

Quoth the Brits

Those who condemned Barcome actually may be correct in some or all of their points, but their comments were speculation based on emotion, prejudice, pre-conceived notions—anything but facts. That’s a form of intellectual laziness that would get a reporter fired.

Not everyone who condemned Barcome was nasty about it. My British friends have a word for the nasty ones, however. I’d repeat it here, but you might mistake it for an obscenity just because it’s spelled the same.

THE BEST LAID PLANS

They go awry.

Janice Anne Wheeler Sep 8

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Expressions from centuries past still hold merit, whether first uttered by sailor, farmer, politician or poet. This particular phrase, “The best laid schemes of mice and men oft’ go awry…and leave us nothing but grief and pain. For promised Joy.” (translated from old Scottish). I didn’t know the verbiage or its origins until a bit of laser-fast research with Google (remember Reference Rooms in the Library? Giant, heavy tomes of information which included much less than we now hold in our hand!) taught me the balance and the longevity. Deeper delving uncovered a bit more.

Poet Robert Burns penned “To A Mouse” in November 1785 after destroying its home while tilling his field. Knowing the mouse had much work to do (re-do) before winter, he was inspired to write the tribute, seen it in its entirety here compliments of The Poetry Foundation. 

It would be difficult to track or even estimate how many times I uttered “…THE BEST LAID PLANS…” without finishing (or starting, really) the sentence because I didn’t need to. Through time, society has shortened and slightly revised the original work. Now, somewhat perplexedly, most of the English-speaking world knows what those four words mean. I daresay many folks wouldn’t have cared as much as Burns when destroying the dwelling of a tiny, wild rodent. Perhaps I’m wrong (?); many of my readers chimed in last week (thank you!) to say that while some folks are malicious, the majority are still making a positive difference rather than creating chaos in this big ol’ world.

The entire point is that, more often than not, our plans and schemes do not turn out as anticipated. We even anticipate that they won’t turn out as anticipated! That’s how often things go awry. Sometimes it’s difficult to remember that it’s not always a bad thing. I truly believe that. Most plans not going forward certainly don’t cause such dire circumstances as pain and grief. That was the plan, we say, tossing it aside and moving on.

Many plans on this vessel begin like this:

And then these turn into something, or not.

Plans (long term or short term), are created, communicated and initiated only to hear, oft’ as not, “Good Lord willing and the Creek don’t rise.” While many have interpreted the SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE meaning of this phrase, as in, “if nothing goes wrong, I’ll be there,” there is an historic secondary origin that begs discussion. According to Wiktionary, the phrase is actually credited to Benjamin Hawkins, Continental Congress from North Carolina and Indian Affairs Superintendent in the early 1800s. The story goes that he was requested to travel to Washington and his response was “If God is willing and the Creek don’t rise.” At that time, there was tremendous controversy with the Creek Native American People as they were being forcibly detained onto smaller and smaller reservations.  

Google AI tells us that phrase is simply an American slang expression((!) I like the historical version myself) that implies or indicates ‘strong intentions that could be frustrated by uncommon but forseeable events.’

Please, tell me what you think. Weigh in. Do you use these phrases? And if so, in what form? Is there a favorite? How many generations do they go back? Do you think the expression created by a Creek rising or a creek rising? We may never know.

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For months, as an additional source of income, I submitted stories to magazines, trying to get my first byline. I’ve been published in two. Two. That’s it. That’s all. My little italicized bio at the end of a SAIL Magazine article (June/July 2024) says “Janice Anne Wheeler and Steve Uhthoff depart this fall on a five-year voyage to the Caribbean and South America aboard STEADFAST, a 56-foot 1934 William Hand Jr. ketch. You can explore her work at JaniceAnneWheeler.com.” The second part of the bio is still true, the other part was just a plan. When that story was published, STEADFAST looked like this:

Now, STEADFAST looks like this:

Stem, knee and planking are being replaced, a months-long process.

Quite an adjustment, for all three of us, to say the least. And, of course, such a plan is not a plan like going to the grocery store this afternoon, it’s a dream, too. It’s big.

When STEADFAST was first contrived in the early 1930’s by designer William Hand, Jr, she looked like this: What a plan. And it, of course, came completely to fruition in 1934. 90 years later, we need a wee bit of repair…

Ah, THE BEST LAID PLANS. They change. We adjust. We smile. We cry. We laugh. Sometimes we forget what the plan even was! We delve into whatever life tosses our way, if it needs to be tackled, we tackle. If it needs to be embraced, we open our hearts and arms. I believe that somewhere, there’s a little bit of God’s will (however I perceive that entity) involved as well as lots of learning, empathy, flexibility and grit.   

Man plans. God laughs. I credit this quote to the boatbuilder that saved this vessel once before, in the 1980’s, contributing years of work and resources. I imagine the origins of that expression, too, go back farther than any of us realize. It always makes me smile so I include it, hoping the same for you. Thanks for being here!

SPARRING WITH MOTHER NATURE, begun just six months ago, was originally envisioned to be stories of travel, sailing and the unending miracles and challenges that Mother Nature presents. Since she presented us with some rather insidious damage in the bow of our big piece of nautical history, we have hauled STEADFAST out in Cambridge, Maryland for the repairs necessary to keep her whole and us safe. It’s both involved and interesting; I’ll definitely be writing about the processes.

The best of human nature has been encountered here; we found a place to live, work & play that, while close to the water, is still a tremendous adjustment. (We do get long, hot showers, something that never happens living aboard). I chose to write on SUBSTACK for the very reason that I could choose all of my own topics and take my writing in any direction that I wished…although I did not foresee this particular creek rise.

*** I will always keep the articles I have written available for free to my readers. If you see value and possess the means, it’s great encouragement to have paid subscribers. If not, simply ‘liking,’ commenting, restacking and sharing these tales helps spread the word about me and what I have chosen to do. There should be someone on your email list that would be intrigued!

Most importantly, YOU ARE TREMENDOUSLY APPRECIATED!

And lastly: our weekly sunrise. These can be seen on Facebook YACHTING STEADFAST each and every morning until 2025. This one’s from the scaffold, where I spend an inordinate amount of time writing stories in my brain and pulling really old cotton out from between these long, lovely planks. Later, we’ll show you how to put all those components back!

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