Earlier this month the press announced the launch of Jeff Bezos’ kazillion dollar sailing yacht, a three-masted, 417-foot schooner filled with a bunch of gleaming stuff that will keep its crew busy well into the second half of the century. Rubbing, scrubbing, painting, and sealing, they’ll try to prevent the sun, sea, and salt air from consuming the dream boat glitzy molecule by molecule.
I’d wager the first unscheduled haulout will occur less than a month from now. There’s just too much complexity, too much that can go wrong. The cause of the haulout will surely be plumbing related. The marine head is the great equalizer.
I’m not sure how we got into this game—chasing rainbows ad infinitum, each one promising a bigger pot of gold. That big sailboats have been swept up into this pursuit is no real surprise. Yachts as status symbols pre-date Cleopatra. And media people like me don’t help matters. As a member of the boating press, I’m an official vendor of The Dream to Sail Away. So when one of the world’s richest men decides he needs the world’s tallest yacht (for redemption, self-affirmation, for the hell of it?), don’t expect me to turn back the tide of admiration.
Nevertheless, I will try.
It is no mystery how a sailboat has come to represent the fulfillment of human aspiration. Among Westerners, Homer’s Odyssey is practically stamped on our collective consciousness. We believe that going to sea is transformative, and that no vehicle is better suited for this trick than one driven by the wind.
The thing that I struggle to understand is how a material object whose most essential, universal value is that it offers a satisfying ride to some greater end—personal growth, freedom, new discoveries, recreation, an escape, a way home—has become an end in itself.
If I were to believe the retirement brochures that wash up in my mailbox these days, nearly half of them graced with images of sailboats, I would think that simply buying a sloop would signify that I’ve finally achieved my life’s goal.
But I have not. And, from the looks of it, neither has Bezos. Until I can untie the dock lines, hoist the main and truly banish all thought of unfinished projects, of gear still missing, of ways to improve my boat, I’m not really sailing. I am the caretaker to an object that happens to float and move with the wind.
Until I liberate myself from the image of the perfect boat and the notion that every maintenance chore will one day be complete, I’m not really sailing. Until I can feel the ocean vibrate my being as if there were not a single atom between me and the sea, I’m not sailing.
Funny, how the best way to truly enjoy a sailboat is to feel it disappear, to sense each wave rising up in your belly, to feel each breath of wind on your cheek, and to realize that the horizon, as if by magic, is suddenly right here, close enough for you to touch.
I’m sure glad I’m not Jeff Bezos. I don’t think anyone can make a 417-foot schooner disappear just like that.
