Last month’s letter (Analog Practice in a Digital World) connected well, judging from your emails and the fact it was reprinted in three sailing publications—Sailing Scuttlebutt, SouthernWoodenBoatSailing.com, and the Shields Fleet 9 Newsletter. 

In case you missed it, my main point was that the best antidote to the digital onslaught in our lives is an increased commitment to analog activities (like sailing) that engage us in the real world, especially if that includes communicating in real time with other people. Thematically, the topic is something I have written about before in this letter, but I’m not sure I’ve done a good job naming it before. 

I’d like to share some of your responses (slightly edited), which fall broadly into one or more of these categories:

1) fractured attention spans;

2) the magic of antidotes such as sailing;

3) human connections (on boats and elsewhere) as key to our humanity.

Doug Logan described the first problem vividly: “The rewiring and the attention-span deficit are serious issues, and I wonder if they cause extra disruption in people our age, who knew life without them. I’ve had the same pile of great books sitting beside my reading chair for months, rarely opened. When I do manage to sit down and read a few pages, I think, ‘Wow, this is really good. I’ve gotta get back to this in a serious way!’ And a few minutes later I find a way to return to my fractured monitoring of fractured information.”

Angie Robinson cut to the heart of the matter, speaking to what is at stake: “I am so concerned with what is happening in this digital world. I thrive on visits from friends and neighbors. There is nothing more valuable to me than receiving a hug from someone. There is so much more to communication than words…facial expression, body movement…I am concerned that we are becoming less human. I am so glad I was born in 1932!”

Offering an alternative non-sailing antidote, Tom Price described what happens when he’s painting: “When I go onto my porch to oil paint (a truly analog process), I can be shocked to find that hours have disappeared in a ‘weightless’ period of time. A manual creative process is a wonderfully analog pursuit.”

The next three responses came from readers via Sailing Scuttlebutt:

Gene Rankin discussed sailing without electronics: “I teach sailing at the college club where I learned to sail… Instead of discussing VMG instruments and digital compasses, I tell them they are embarking in a sport with all sorts of secret lingo, odd terms, and nifty electronics, but they have to remember that it is a kinesthetic sport.  Their “instruments” are their eyes, their face, their hands, and their butt, and they tell them where they are and where the boat is. The trick of being a good sailor is to pay attention to those instruments and learn to integrate them and to what’s out there in front of them. I remind them of what Buddy Melges told his America’s Cup crew—to get their eyes out of the boat and to let nature reveal itself.”

Chuck Bolduc addressed the same human instruments as Gene: “Thanks to John Burnham for reminding sailors what, with, and where we began!  I grew up on the coast of Maine with dinky leaky boats, clocked 23 years in the Navy as a ship driving SWO, and got my Shields quals in 1978 in the Newport Navy basin with skippers named Crowninshield, Downing, and Whelan. They counseled me early on to “feel the boat with your hand, feel the wind with your face, and the compass might help sometimes.” We have to rely on the basic minimums to know what we’re doing out there. When the power goes out, it’s only us! I’m comforted to have a pocket full of analog skills.”

Rod Davis broadened my point beyond the Shields class and then succinctly explained why we need to sail and live in the physical world with those important to us: “He captured the magic of sailing, not only for the Shields class but OK Dinghys, Finns, scows, PHRF, etc. Some things you learn as you get older, but can’t talk about for fear of looking out of touch in the cutting-edge digital world, is how personal interaction is what life is really about.”

My thanks to so many others who wrote encouraging notes. I’ll finish this letter with a note from Chris Wicks, who looked back to an earlier time when he finished a super-intense college exam week, then sailed a distance race on Long Island Sound: “Two days later I realized that I hadn’t thought about school or the exams at all, being entirely wrapped up in the race, the boat and the crew. What a great experience.”

That immediately took me back to sailing in a distance race on the same body of water on a 33-footer named Seaduced Too; I was about the same age as Chris. On the second day of the race, we had spent many hours fully engaged in gaining an edge on our competitors through fluky winds and a series of sail changes. Finally, as the sun set, the wind filled in; it was a warm, steady breeze coming off Long Island’s north shore. I was steering the boat on a fast beam reach near midnight, and the moon had come up as we headed the final miles toward the finish. That’s when I suddenly remembered that this day had been my 21st birthday. 

Best. Birthday. Ever.