Bleachers' Brew #203 Exorcising Benchley

This appears in my April 5 column in the Business Mirror.

Exorcising Benchley

by rick olivares

Several months ago, I received an invitation to go sailing. We were to set sail from Manila Bay all the way to Subic Bay on board a sailboat. I wanted to desperately do it but it wasn’t quite as simple as deciding on where to eat for lunch (although that can be a conundrum when one is sick and tired of all the regular fare one can find outside your office).

When I was invited, I thought of the sea. And that segued into Herman Melville. Not about his book of some mutant leviathan but of a quote that doesn’t seem as inviting as “space, the final frontier”; William Shatner’s verbal introduction to every episode of Star Trek.

Wrote Melville, “There is one knows not what sweet mystery about this sea, whose gently awful stirrings seem to speak of some hidden soul beneath.”

Aye, mystery. And I am most fearful that I know not the fathoms below and the danger I cannot see. I used to go out to sea a lot in my younger days – on a boat, a raft, or even a yacht. After all, I survived my former instructor (the late Olympian Bana Sailani) tossing me into the deepest part of a swimming pool in order to learn how to swim. I swam in deep waters and enjoyed the fact that I could do so until “Jaws” author Peter Benchley permanently destroyed the idyllic that even Ernest Hemingway took so long to cultivate.

While scuba diving off the coast of Batangas years ago, my cousins and I got our first brush with a shark. It wasn’t of the great white variety nevertheless the fin and the fact that we were out of our element scared the living crap out of us. We all went topside and watched as the shark circled around for a few minutes before it disappeared. And Benchley was right -- I never looked at the sea in the same way again.

Maybe that is why I have so much respect and admiration for Abby Sunderland and Jodie Nelson.

Sunderland is a 16-year old girl who is currently on an Open 40 racing sailboat by her lonesome to circumnavigate the world. She is following the footsteps of her older brother Zac who accomplished the same feat except that he was a year older than Abby when he first set sail. The thought of attempting the feat by oneself without any escort is sheer madness. That’s 27,500 nautical miles! I saw the movie “Open Water.” I read Sebastian Junger’s “The Perfect Storm.” And I read and dissected Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” Maybe it’s nothing but I definitely have not seen too many movies! I did read the books and follow current events. What if the Somali pirates decide to go farther out? And besides, “Open Water” and “The Perfect Storm” are based on real life events that ended tragically. Need I mention the fate of the Titanic?

Ahem. Ah, maybe I have read too many books. Or maybe I’m being too neurotic. After all, the Sunderland family knows what Abby is doing.

Oh, incidentally, the trip is two-fold. First, it’s to claim the world record for herself, and second, it’s to avenge her older brother who had his record broken by Mike Perham, an English lad who was two months younger than Zac Sunderland when he accomplished the unassisted journey.

You don’t think I’m mad now, do you?

Jodie Nelson on the other hand, paddled for 39.8 miles on a surfboard from Santa Catalina Island to Dana Point, California in the Ohana Ocean Catalina Challenge. And she was escorted for two hours by a 30-foot minke whale.

I saw “Orca!” I read “Moby Dick!” Oh, I just read that minke whales are friendly and that this is a rare occurrence for them in interaction with humans. Holy National Geographic, Batman!

Nelson isn’t Captain Ahab and nor did she reprise the late Richard Harris in “Orca.” She wasn’t some publicity hound… or maybe she was – but for the right reasons. She paddled for nine hours to demonstrate to her best friend who is afflicted with breast cancer (on and off for several years now) that one cannot give up in the face of a very difficult, trying, and painful problem. After all, she only paddled right through shark-infested waters. She embarked on this feat (that she accomplished in 9 hours, 1 minute, and 21 seconds) to also call attention and raise some money for a pair of cancer charities. Now that’s something.

Said Nelson, “I wanted to go out there and do something big and overwhelming, something I had a good chance of failing at. . . . I see so many people who have battled and who are beating breast cancer, they are tackling something bigger than them. They keep fighting and don't give up. I want to motivate people to keep fighting."

It’s not quite the water version of the late Sir George Leigh Mallory’s famous reply “because it is there” when asked why one would risk his life to climb Mount Everest but that will suffice. And I hold in esteem Abby Sunderland and Jodie Nelson. I wish I had their guts.

And that leads me back to the invitation that is rather open (although the next stop could perhaps be farther than Subic). It isn’t a macho thing because sailing it’s such a common thing for many people. Am I looking for reasons not to do this?

Truthfully? I want to do it for the sheer fun of it and to reclaim my love for the sea that Peter Benchley’s “Jaws” stole away.

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Jodie Nelson's charities: http://paddlewithpurpose.wordpress.com/ , http://www.keep-a-breast.org/ and http://b4bc.org/

Abby Sunderland's website: http://www.abbysunderland.com/

Notes: My parents' still have that original copy of the Peter Benchley novel "Jaws." I still look at it every now and then with morbid fascination.