I was chatting with an experienced offshore sailor the other day and mentioned John Vigor’s black box…and got a blank look.
I was amazed. I thought anyone who sailed offshore would know about the black box. But then I realized that in these days of YouTube, that’s no longer the case.
John, and his family, bought a boat and sailed away from South Africa to leave apartheid, a system he campaigned against as a journalist for most of his working life. He wrote a book about the voyage, Small Boat to Freedom. Well worth a read.
John also wrote many articles for the yachting press over the years, all worth reading.
But even if you are too busy to dig into any of that, everyone, but everyone, who sails offshore, or hopes to, should read about John’s black box.
A 10-minute read that will contribute far more to keeping you and yours safe than a thousand hours of YouTube.
Years ago, quite by accident, I stumbled across John Vigor’s blog. Eight years of gems and jewels and cheeky pondering. Although the main navigation links are broken, the posts are currently still up (the final post was logged in 2016). A really good way to pass some time in contemplation of sailing and life in general.
Happy New Year.
http://johnvigor.blogspot.com/
~Ed
Hi Ed,
Good to year from you and good recommendation. I did not link to John’s blog because it’s not SSL compliant, but given it’s hosted at blogspot (Google) and there will be no financial trans that’s probably not a big deal as long as we watch for being redirected when we visit.
Blogspot supports https using TLS 1.3, it just doesn’t automatically redirect to that if you start from the unencrypted version.
https://johnvigor.blogspot.com/ is valid.
And yes, there are plenty of gems in John Vigor’s archive. It’s worth taking a few hours to read through.
Hi Matt,
That’s good to hear, I will be happier about linking in that case and will add the “s”. Thanks
To paraphrase Branch Rickey: Luck is the residue of hard work.
the black box is a nice way to say that if you diligently manage risk, there are much fewer cases when you have to rely on luck. The box comes out to the same, but perhaps easier to do.