How Sailor Phil Goes to Work

by Nancy Knudsen on 24 Sep 2006 Some cruisers have a daily lifestyle that is less than ordinary. Mad dogs and Englishmen, they say, go out in the midday sun. This is better….

He’s twenty-five or so. His name’s Phil, and, yes, he’s English. He’s a sailor adventurer, getting the best out of life. He looks fit as your average iron man, and so he should be. He works, but lives on his boat in Gibraltar having sailed there from the Caribbean. However, La Linea, the anchorage where he stays at the moment on his yacht,is rife with dinghy thieves who work with patrols, mobile telephones and bolt cutters; he cannot leave his dinghy ashore while he goes to work, neither can he leave his bicycle on shore for the same reason; so here’s his workday lifestyle:

First, he gets dressed for work, and lifts his bicycle and a beach towel from the yacht down into his dinghy. Then he drives the dinghy into the shore, unloads the bicycle and the beach towel, takes off his clothes and drapes them over the bicycle. He does this in a tiny beach hidden from the esplanade by a rock wall (to avoid being seen by the watching thieves). Now, sans clothes, he drives his dinghy back to the yacht, secures it on the foredeck safe from the thieves, dives in, swims to shore, dries off with the beach towel, gets dressed in work clothes again, then rides his bicycle to work. The water temperature at this time of year is 17 degrees.

After work, he reverses the process - bicycle from workplace back to the shore, clothes off, swim to the boat, dry off, retrieve dinghy, drive to shore, load dinghy with bicycle and clothes, drive back to boat.

To go out during the evening, when he doesn’t want a bicycle in tow, he uses a waterproof bag. He swims to shore pushing the waterproof bag containing back–pack of clothes and towel; dries off, gets dressed, swimmers and waterproof bag into backpack, walks to the taxi rank or whatever his mode of transport will be that evening.

And getting home? ‘O well,’ he says with a mischievous grin, ‘late at night I am usually happy enough that I don’t feel the water temperature, so it works out okay.’

Next time you are sliding fully clothed into your nice warm or air conditioned car to drive to work, or catching a train or even taking your dry dinghy ashore, spare a thought for Phil.