Thursday, March 27, 2014

Why offshore sailing is like space travel

I'm currently reading Chris Hadfield's book An Astronaut's Guide to Life (spoiler alert: its great) and he wrote this:

The rough-and-ready, improvisational quality to life on board is reminiscent of a long trip in a sailboat: privacy and fresh produce are in short supply, hygiene is basic, and a fair amount of the crew's time is spent just on a maintaining and repairing the craft.

There're more similarities in the preparation involved in getting into space and:

The first explorers who crossed the ocean in sailing ships didn't blithely set off without considering the practicalities and logistics. Before they even left land, they tried to figure out which kind of timber would hold up the best and what kinds of food would keep on a long voyage.

Must say I had a similar idea - I thought that the Inspiration flyby of Mars trip with two people on-board sounded just the thing for a long-distance double handed sailing team.

BTW: I like double handed sailing.

4 comments:

Tillerman said...

Funny. On my long run today my mind was wandering and I was contemplating writing a post about why sailing major Laser regattas is like space travel. Really! And I could even weave in the big bang theory.

Watch this space.

No. That space.

O Docker said...

At 501 days duration, at least the Marmite ration would be easy to calculate for a crew of two.

One small jar should do.

JP said...

O'Docker: Alas one small jar would barely get you to the Moon. At least another jar: a big one. Maybe two or three - after all it is a long way to Mars.

Tillerman: is that the big bang theory (inflation etc) or the big theory (Sheldon etc)? Either way I'd like to hear more.

... now I have a mental picture of Sheldon on a Laser... is this an early April Fool?

Tillerman said...

Wait and see. Not Sheldon.