"At this moment in my life, I would actually be very happy to just stop. I've had enough. I've been riding storms and being silly. And I have terrified myself for years. I don't know why I did it, but I couldn't not do it. I've never lived on fucking land in my life, and I'm not sure that I want to try. I wanted to be free. I wanted to be let loose. I wanted out, I wanted freedom and I didn't want to be around people particularly anymore. I just didn't want to belong to anybody else except myself."
"I've spent a lot of my life on remote islands where there are no people, but just animals. I was maybe 10 years old, and I had my own dinghy, and I used to go up the river beyond where everybody was. After a while, all the strange animals that lived there they'd get used to you. And then they just aren't scared anymore. And they come to hang out with you."
"The boat I was born on was called 'Escape'. My mother died on the boat and so did my father. My sister and I were twins. I realy don't remember my sister very well. She was very young when she died. My parents were honestly really upset. When I arrived and tied up alongside their boat from Shetland, it took a while, before they said, 'Are you just on holiday?' And I said, 'No, I've quit.' And he said, 'Paul, you have one of the best jobs in the world. You're running a military base. Why did you quit?' 'Because', I said, 'I wanna go sailing.' And he couldn't understand."
"I mostly stay as ripped as possible. I used to smoke a lot of weed. You're supposed to have fun. Life is supposed to be a kind of joke. I made a decision back in the sicties. I live just below the poverty level and I'm happy there."
"I have actually made a lot of money in my life. One time I had half a million dollars. I becamse a boat builder because it seemed to be that I didn't have to do anything except sell plans. And they were famous because I'd invented a new system of boat-building."
"If someone wants to build one of my boats, they have to pay me a thousand US dollars. But now with the internet, the people can get my plans off the fucking internet and they don't have to pay me anything. I've got a few thousand dollars in the bank at the moment. I didn't think I was gonna live this bloody long."
"I'm getting to the age truly where I can't really get up at two o'clock in the morning and start the engine and get the fucking anchor up and make a move. I need my motor. I never used to use it. I always sailed everywhere. It normally is suspended. I run it once a week. I turn it on and it goes, boom. And I really don't know what's wrong with it. I thought it was okay."
"I spent seven years living on a tiny boat thinking, trying to understand what the fuck was happening in this world because I realised the place was a crazy house. I eventually sailed across the Atlantic. I really didn't know that I had the courage to do it. So I never told anybody and I slipped away in the night. It was pretty scary. And then suddenly I rounded the bottom end of Martinique and the smell, the smell of the jungle was - it nearly killed me, it was so beautiful. After 40 days alone in the middle of the fucking ocean."
"I was so glad to get out of Europe, and all of the communists and the fucking fascists and all of the lunatics, and to get, you know, phew. A breath of fresh air. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful."
"I can't see why I should honestly stop drinking, but I don't drink more than usually half a bottle of rum a day or something. I mean, it's not excessive, 'cause if I'm doing nothing, I find it's very relaxing to have a few drinks, and let the world go by."
"In the sixties, we lived on a crazy island in the West Indies where everyone was really outta control. There were very wealthy girls, married to extraordinary wealthy Americans. They wanted to have crazy children. So they'd come and make babies with you. Adn what am I gonna say? I have probably quite a lot of children in America. I know this sounds terrible. I was only young then, but at the time it didn't really seem terrible."
"I wake up some mornings and I just cry for an hour because I really miss my children. Everything is a mess. It's just that I'm really not used to living alone. I'm used to having a woman in my life."
"It's so nice to spend months on the ocean with a beautiful woman. I have loved all of the women that I've lived with. I have loved them desperately. I don't blame them making a run for it. Most of them, it's been about 10 years. And instead of roaring around oceans in terrible storms, they want to go and be sensible and I don't blame them. And I wish I could go with them, but this is where I live."
"Whenever I felt like it, I would just sail out of here under full sail, just to scare the fuck out of everybody. And I'd go out and go fishing. And I was coming in on a Sunday evening just before dark and I was rounding up to come into the harbour here, and I was sitting in the hatch, no problems. And I'm pulling like fuck to get the main sail in so I can round up. And the block broke. That thing hit me so hard, it knocked me totally unconscious. And I woke up the next day, I didn't know where I was. And then I realised that I had hit a reef, went over the top, ripped the bottom out of the boat. I pumped for 24 hours without stopping to keep the water down. And then it was too much. So I managed up the beach. That was the last time I sailed alone."
"In the sixties, I had lived on a remote island that no one ever went to. I lived on St Barth. Now it's the most famous multimillionaire everybody. At that time, nobody ever went there. It was abandoned. So I lived there and built boats. Nobody was doing what I was doing. So I was kind of famous. A lot of people say that I pioneered the small-boat sailing in the world, but I don't think I did, but I certainly was one of the first people to actually live on a tiny boat."
"And when I did these huge, long voyages in a tiny dinghy, that changed everything. The first time I crossed the Atlantic, there were five boats that crossed the ocean that year. The last time there were 5,000 boats on the rally set up by some damn fool English person. I have been in huge storms in this tiny boat. That's why I created these boats, because they ride storms."
"They've been very good at it. I have driven these boats 200 miles a day, storms I've had the sails frozen up. Now I can take this boat of mine down to North Africa in five days. There's not another boat ever this size that could do what these boats do."
"It would really upset me if I thought I'd been selfish. I can't imagine any reason to be selfish. Maybe I have been, you don't really know. Maybe I have been a dreadful person."
"Her name was Diana. I lived with her for nine months, following around in my mother's tummy, and so she's part of me. I still dream about her. Twins are sort of, they're glued together. She was totally tiny when she died. I grew up through a war. The Germans bombed the school, and then she disappeared before I even really got to know her. If my sister hadn't died, I wouldn't be who I am. Of course I wouldn't."
The Sailor" is a documentary about an 80-year-old, Paul Erling Johnson, who valued his freedom. This English sailor sacrificed everything so that he could live only at sea. He was a charmer, raconteur, boatbuilder, artist and one of life’s finest scoundrels.
He was born on the Hamble on a boat. After a short stint in the English Navy during the Falklands War, he bought a boat and sailed solo across the Atlantic Ocean. He has never stopped and never truly lived on land.
This acclaimed film tells the extraordinary story of a man who loved, drank lots of vodka, and lived foolishly, terrifying himself on many occasions. He sailed his entire life and has now washed ashore on the island of Carriacou in the Caribbean. As he approaches his 80th birthday, he and his boat are no longer fit to sail.
What was the price of his freedom? Was he lonely? How does such extraordinary journey end? As he contemplates his life and his death, he plans for the final journey to eternity.
"I didn't think I was gonna live this bloody long", he ruminates in this documentary which was made shortly before he died on June 28, 2021, aged 83. Someone ought to publish his beautifully illustrated diary, kept as he clung to his past because the present held nothing more for him.
Take the time to watch this documentary which is probably the most poignant, beautiful film I've ever seen about a man who lived life on his own terms (I've been trying - unsuccessfully - to buy it on DVD to get away from those pesky commercial breaks).
Watch it, then buy a boat and go sailing ... if only on weekends.
P.S. If you're into sailing and sailing movies, click here.
