Bob Fannin Jnr feels most at home on the high seas. For as the Bristol-based writer, broadcaster and university lecturer told the members of the Cruising Group at his former club of Howth on Tuesday night, when sailing the sea, life is simple. There are basically just three very important matters that have to be handled very well indeed on a daily basis, with the ship tidy and properly shipshape - and the food good - well up the list.
Yet in trying to live a decent shore life, a natural seaman is constantly assailed by what seems like wave after wave of relative trivia that needs constant attention. But he or she soon learns that you can survive and get by with “a barely acceptable level of response”, however unsatisfactory that may seem. That said, he gave an understanding nod to the old dictum “that when a man gets to like a sea life, then he is not fit to live on land.”
UNMATCHED SEA-GOING EXPERIENCE
His sea-going experience is off the scale, and in the years he has been away, this talented son of sailing cartoonist Bob Fannin Senr has somehow ended up looking like Bruce Springsteen’s sea-going brother. That’s as may be. But with skippers and shipmates like Arctic-pushing John Gore-Grimes and world-girdling Bill King on smaller yachts, combined with years of experience in the Caribbean and Mediterranean with classic big superyachts like Sumurun, Puritan and Tuiga, the depth of knowledge and tough experience he can draw on is mind-boggling.
But out of all that, he says that the simple most important thing is something that he learned from Bill King, something that is sublime in its simplicity. The secret to keeping the sailing show on the road in a lengthy sailing project, says Bob, is to be found in straightforward kindness and thoughtfulness towards your shipmates.
KINDNESS IS ALL
He frankly admitted that this was something he personally had to learn, remarking that until he sailed with Bill King, it wouldn’t have been his first reaction in difficult times, or indeed in most times. But Bill King with his unrivalled range of experience knew how to get the best out of his shipmates through empathy, courtesy and the right level of tolerance.
It was so central to his character that you got the feeling that this was the way he’d been born, but Bob says Bill King modestly claimed he’d had to learn it like most other truly successful skippers.
Since then, Bob has tried to carry this approach with him, even if it sometimes took quite a bit of personal adjustment. But it certainly has stood him to the good, as he was able to review a hugely-varied sailor’s life, a way of life that clearly has provided him with more experiences than the entire enthralled HYC Cruising Group combined.