Moitessier Syndrome

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by David Ess

OK, Ill change my original comment to.............some of us 'semen units' still like playing with 'birthing units'. Even the most woke should accept that.

So... in your world if a fella voluntarily spends more than a coupla days and nights alone on a boat he must be 'Alternate' in his tastes..

[MicHughV]

Interesting topic.....I havta agree.....a few days back at sea, a person like me, becomes one with the ocean, it's very calming, very profound, very peaceful, etc, etc..no traffic....no crazy people...no advertising...no houses...nothing but you and the horizon..the motion of the boat is very comforting, regardless of sea condition. There is no sound but the hiss of the sea, or the flap of a sail...interrupted only by the sound of a bottle cap coming off an ice-cold beverage..

Especially at night..in town, you can't see zilch, but at sea, the heavens explode with stars...

I've come ashore, and taken a cab to buy groceries, and find that travelling in traffic at more than 10 mph makes me very nervous...

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by MicHughV

Interesting topic.....I havta agree.....a few days back at sea, a person like me, becomes one with the ocean, it's very calming, very profound, very peaceful, etc, etc..no traffic....no crazy people...no advertising...no houses...nothing but you and the horizon..the motion of the boat is very comforting, regardless of sea condition. There is no sound but the hiss of the sea, or the flap of a sail...interrupted only by the sound of a bottle cap coming off an ice-cold beverage..

Especially at night..in town, you can't see zilch, but at sea, the heavens explode with stars...

I've come ashore, and taken a cab to buy groceries, and find that travelling in traffic at more than 10 mph makes me very nervous...

And.. at the right time of year you can come across giant Dolphin swarms of hundreds, Orca that keep you company for a few days, huge patches of pulsating underwater lights as huge jellyfish go phosphorescent.. Sperm whales as you close the Azores, and maybe one rises near your cockpit and 'Gives you the eye..' That was a buzz..
All the above are my special things, nice to share yes.. but oh so rewarding to the soul when alone.

[goboatingnow]

One can only appreciate the marvel of our planet when way out to sea far from land. Sadly human detritus appears far too often.

[ahun]

From Webb Chiles: The open boat. I find this description about Moitessier very interesting and not surprising at all. Read the bold text.

'There were four of us who have accomplished something as singlehanders
in Papeete in March of 1979: Bernard Moitessier, Kenichi
Horie, Tom Blackwell, and myself. A Frenchman, a Japanese, an Englishman,
and an American. All except Tom were listed in Guinness,
and he is one of only four men to have made two solo circumnavigations;
Moitessier, the longest nonstop passage, nearly 38,000 miles;
Horie, the fastest westabout circumnavigation, 275 days, and I, the
fastest monohull, 202 days. As an ad in the Wall Street Journal once
said, "Eagles don't flock," so we did not all sit down together and have
a chat, though it might have been interesting. This is not to support
the myth that single-handers are antisocial. Moitessier was with his
wife, Helene, and son, Stephan; Horie, with his wife; and, after a while,
I, with Suzanne. Only Tom lives alone always.
I had known Tom—as much as I was ever to know him—in 1974,
when on my first entry to Papeete I anchored my thirty-seven-foot
Night Watch 149
cutter, Egregious, next to his fifty-eight-foot ketch, Islander. Now I
anchored the eighteen-foot Chidiock Tichborne next to Islander again
in almost exactly the same spot in the same harbor. In the intervening
years both of us had circumnavigated; he through Suez and Panama;
I around the Horn.
Islander, though built of wood, is meticulously maintained and has
withstood time better than has Tom, who admits that at his age—he
is about seventy—she is too big for him to sail efficiently. Even in the
best weather, he sets only reduced sail and makes slow passages. In port
he keeps very much to himself and to a strict routine: ashore at sunup
to shop; back to the boat by 9:00 A.M.; in the cabin until sundown,
when punctually and punctiliously he furls the Union Jack and scrubs
Islander's teak decks with a long broom. Below again, presumably to
prepare and eat dinner while the deck dries. Then back to pace Islander
from stem to stern for about half an hour. I did not ever count, but
I assume there is a prescribed number of laps. Tom is not unfriendly.
He is more than willing to help others. He took Chidiock's stern lines
ashore and adjusted someone else's sextant, and repaired yet another
boat's engine. He is just more of a loner than most.
Horie was with his wife and a cameraman from Japanese television
on Mermaid IV, a fine flush-decked aluminum thirty-five-footer. I did
not get a chance to speak to him, because Mermaid was in port only
briefly before attempting a counterclockwise circumnavigation around
South and North America, Cape Horn to the Northwest Passage, and
back to Japan.
I saw Moitessier more frequently, both in Papeete and on Moorea,
where I had dinner with him and his family in their shack at the head
of Cook's Bay. I admire Moitessier for dropping out of the nonstoparound-
the-world race and making the long voyage. But meeting him
was a sad experience. He caused me to recall Housman's poem "To an
Athlete Dying Young," which suggests that it is more fortunate to die
immediately after a grand achievement than to live long years with only
remembered glory.
In early 1979 Bernard Moitessier was a very unhappy man. Of
moderate height, lean, apparently fit, he had not done much real sailing
for a decade, not since the long voyage ended in Papeete in 1969. His
ulcer was bothering him again. On the shelf above his mattress stood
a carton of Gelusil. And I do not believe it is a betrayal of any confidence
to state that he is married to a woman who hates boats and who
prefers to live in squalor ashore, rather than aboard the thirty-nine-foot

steel ketch Joshua at her mooring in the bay.
Bernard was unhappy in that resigned way of a man who knows he
has lived beyond his time and can see no way out of his unhappiness,
not because there is no way, but because he has no will to take it. That
was his judgment of himself. "I have no will anymore," he said to me
several times. And once, almost enviously, "But you, you are still young
and strong." I was thirty-seven.
Neither he nor Helene liked French Polynesia: not Moorea, which
some consider to be the most beautiful of islands; certainly not Tahiti.
And they loathed Papeete, which they visited only for medical treatment.
They did not even speak well of the Tuamotus, where they had
lived for years on the island of Ahe.
As a group of us sat on mats at Moitessier's, eating spaghetti he had
cooked, one young Frenchman told me, "God must certainly look after
you in that little boat at sea." To which I replied, "God does not bail."
And then I turned to Bernard. "Did you expect God to take care of
you during a voyage?" He thought for a moment before replying, "No.
But sometimes a little god entered in and made everything go well for
a while."
He also said that initially he had given to the pope the royalties to
the book about the long voyage. He subscribes to the "Money is the
root of all evil" oversimplification and did not want to taint the voyage.
Although he is not a practicing Catholic, a decade ago the pope seemed
to him to be the symbol of the last vestiges of the spiritual in the world.
If I understood him correctly, he now keeps the royalties himself.
Every morning before the wind came up, the hills around Cook's Bay
echoed the sound of Bernard chipping rust from Joshua. But his work
was desultory, just something to fill time. There was the boat, still
sound. There was the pass to the open sea. And there was the unhappy,
burnt-out man.
On the morning I was to sail back to Papeete, Bernard rowed past
Chidiock on his way to Joshua. We wished one another well. I looked
at him and wondered whether if I were still alive at age fifty-four, I
would be like him. Better that the flame has burned once than not at
all. But better still, as Housman said, that one dies before it flickers out.'

[Boatguy30]

I remember reading that. Webb has certainly kept the flame burning!

[ixnax]

Originally Posted by boatman61

So... in your world if a fella voluntarily spends more than a coupla days and nights alone on a boat he must be 'Alternate' in his tastes..

So you were happy to be celibate for 47 days at sea and would have been even happier for a long extension on that? That ain't a couple of days for some of us but if you're happy with that level of play then good on you, pops.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by ahun

From Webb Chiles: ......But better still, as Housman said, that one dies before it flickers out.[/B]'

Interesting insights by Webb. Kind of helps to slide away some of the romantic notions. Leaves Moitessier Syndrome as more of a last ditch avoidance of society than a noble attempt to be one with the sea.

[goboatingnow]

Moitessier was never a happy man that comes through on his books. In reality he really never deserved the fame he got.

[bobnlesley]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Moitessier was never a happy man that comes through on his books. In reality he really never deserved the fame he got.

I would argue that his Golden Globe performance warranted attention, so on that basis he 'deserved' his fame, but I suspect that he perhaps never expected or wanted it and was uncomfortable with it when it was thrust upon him?

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by ixnax

So you were happy to be celibate for 47 days at sea and would have been even happier for a long extension on that? That ain't a couple of days for some of us but if you're happy with that level of play then good on you, pops.

Another Dick Swinger..

[Breaking Waves]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

In truth, I do like to be at sea, but I enjoy the landfalls, too.

Yea, me too.

My wife enjoyed passages more than I did. In fact, I much prefer challenging coastal sailing to passage making.

For landfalls after a long passage - I always look forward to the first fresh orange juice and the first endless hot shower and the first deep quiet sleep I'm not much into cocktails or fleshpots.

We tried to avoid 'passages' in the 3-5 day range - too short to get settle in, but too long to be able to just 'gut it out'. We quite often passed by islands 5 day days into a passage because we were just starting to feel good and settled into the passage.

[bobnlesley]

Experience must in part be a contributing factor to the 'Moitessier Syndrome'?

We once changed course/destination after no more than a ten minute change of watch discussion, to make life 'a bit easier'; that conversation concluding with: "Is it a lot further?" and "No, not much, I'd guess a couple of days at most." Having tweaked the wind-vane and re-trimmed our sails I reflected during the following watch how it hadn't been so many years earlier that we'd once sat in a harbour for almost three weeks waiting for the just right combination of weather conditions and tide/daylight timings to align before making a 65M passage across the English Channel.
That's also a moment which I try keeping in mind whenever I've subsequently fallen into conversation with someone looking for advice and reassurance ahead of the 'long' passage that they're about to undertake from Florida to the Bahamas, across the English Channel, or perhaps Cape May to New York; they might be 'just a short hop' to me now, but there was a time when they weren't.

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by boatman61

So... in your world if a fella voluntarily spends more than a coupla days and nights alone on a boat he must be 'Alternate' in his tastes..

No, I referred to those who regret having to put into port, or are like hermits at sea. Its only alternate, in that most people are social animals who don like too much isolation. People like hermits, incels, etc are outliers.

[David Ess]

Originally Posted by ixnax

So you were happy to be celibate for 47 days at sea and would have been even happier for a long extension on that? That ain't a couple of days for some of us but if you're happy with that level of play then good on you, pops.

Hahaha, exactly. Still though, there is a difference between a guy who wants to do a one time solo circumnavigation, and an incel type. The solo circumnavigator will likely make up for lost time when the trip is done. In reality though, most of them likely visit the fleshpots when in port, JUST LIKE most sailors have always done.