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.