A trailing anchor rode like history helps us keep a true course.
The deluge of modern events seem to overwhelm us in these last days of “annus horribilus” the year of Covid. We seem hell bent on ignoring the past, but at our very great peril. The philosophers tell us we learn from our past mistakes and even if we have no better ideas, that past knowledge will at least prevent us from repeating the grievous errors of our predessors.
Somehow that thought reminded me of kinder simpler days. Years ago when sailing alone in our 20 foot sloop “Swallow” in Great Peconic Bay, I would habitually trail a fifty foot length of anchor rode. If somehow, all alone out there, I fell overboard, I would still have a chance of grabbing that fifty foot line to pull myself back aboard.
It served other purposes too. Looking back, over the stern I could always see, how I was proceeding. Was I on a straight course? Did the self stirring Benji cord i rigged for the the tiller need an adjustment? Looking back on the trailing fifty foot life line gave me an assurance of where I had been and where I was going. And it provided assurance too, that I was going someplace—I wasn’t sailing in a circle.
We seem to have lost that view in modern life. Everyone’s eyes today are directed only over the bow spirit. No one is looking at the compass, or at our life line trailing in our wake.
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