The first "...for Dummies" book was "Plumbing for Dummies" by Don Fredriksson, published in 1983. I could've used "Sailing for Dummies" back in 1974 when I worked for AIR NIUGINI in Port Moresby and saw a wooden yacht, "The Spirit of Barbary", advertised for sale at Popondetta on the north coast of New Guinea.
An old mate from my Bougainville days, Brian Herde, also seemed interested, and so we flew across to spend a couple of days sailing and living aboard it, after which our minds seemed made up. I had just enough saved up to pay for my half of the boat, but Brian was, as always, notoriously reluctant to spend his money and to sell even a tiny fraction of his huge portfolio of SANTOS shares, and so the deal was off.
Which may have been just as well since, as I wrote, the first "...for Dummies" book didn't come out until 1983, and even if "Sailing for Dummies" had been available, it may not have kept us out of trouble as the only sailing I had ever done was on a variety of small sailing dinghies in Port Moresby, in Lae, and in Honiara (much later I owned a small LASER on Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra, and more recenly I sailed my small motor-sailer, the "Lady Anne", up and down the Clyde River).
All this came back to me the moment I saw the above scene of Alex Rust reading "Sailing for Dummies" in the sailing documentary "Chasing Bubbles". If anyone ever needed that book more than me, it was this farm boy from Indiana in the United States who left his home, his family, his friends and a safe life to seek adventures on the high seas.
Somehow he had the idea to sail the Caribbean, buy a boat, teach himself to sail and cast off. He gathered people around him who helped him and from whom he learnt. The film shows his astonishing transformation from landlubber to keen sailor, and how BUBBLES, his next boat, entered his life, hence the name "Chasing Bubbles".
Although the end, in the best tradition of a Greek tragedy, comes as no surprise, this film leaves you with the simple message: Go and do what you want to do! Don’t waste your time on a life filled with routine. Don’t die regretting the things you didn't do; die doing the things you love! As the Dummies book suggests: "A Reference for the Rest of Us!"
P.S. For a "post mortem" read this page by his brother Joe - click here.
