A SINGLE-HANDED SAILOR’S APOLOGY - Thank you by the translation Barbara Fournier

Matt Rutheford

A SINGLE-HANDED SAILOR’S APOLOGY

Do you want to know why I definitely admire single-handed sailors?

From Slocum to our brand new hero Matt Rutherford.

Without forgetting Moitessier, Chichester and Dumas, of course!

And including Michel Desjoyeaux, Mike Horn and the teenager Laura Dekker.

No, no, I do not exagerate when I write HERO in capital letters!

Every single-handed sailor is a hero.

And he is not a little hero, but a

big one!

Therefore, such a HERO has to be only written in capital letters.

Why?

Because to confront Poseidon and Aeolus ALONE, it is not ordinary business!

I even go further.

I assert single-handed sailors are cleverer, wiser, braver and smarter than team sailors.

I explain it to you in detail:

Single-handed sailors are cleverer than the others, because they are able to invent by themselves new and effective solutions to new problems on a sailboat shaking at sea.

Single-handed sailors are wiser than the others, because they intimately know each part of their sailboats, master each skill requested by the art of navigation and by seasciences.

Single-handed sailors are braver than the others, because as I have already told you, they fight alone against the dreadful gods Poseidon and Aeolus and sometimes against some coward pirates or drunken fishermen.

Single-handed sailors are smarter than the others because, if we (human beings) pretend to have been navigating on sea for 6000 years, it is true we have been practicing single-handed navigation for only 120 years.

The first single-handed sailor was Joshua Slocum from 1895 and the newest is right now our Matt Rutherford.

So, if we can prove it is more difficult to circumnavigate both the America’s in 2012, than to circumnavigate the whole world in 1895, Matt Rutherford will be even greater than Slocum and all the others sailors !

- Do you understand now, why I friendly call him “Big Matt” ?

Good winds Matt !

Good eternal winds Joshua !

Fernando Costa, from Cabo Frio, Brazil