Ships

→ Saying this, I think that the comfort of sailing in ships has changed enormously.
→ Now, it is a nice experience to be at sea. Seafaring, therefore, lost a bit of the mystique surrounding it, it’s not what it used to be in the past. It’s not much of a thing any more to sail on the ocean. There are cruise ships now, offering ocean crossing as an experience.

A.C.I mean it mainly in relation to practical things: when you’re on a small boat or a ship, for example, you start realizing that it moves continuously.Things that on land one could do easily are more difficult to do on water.

My professional relationship to the ocean is a relation of a researcher to a subject of scientific interest, so I’m treating it as such. Some people have a strong relationship to the system they are studying, others don’t. My work did not necessarily bring me close to the ocean. You get to know the ocean better when you are doing field work, e.g. on a research ship.

In Portugal you can fish mainly cod and sardines. My uncle used to go out for days and days with big industrial ships to fish. I remember going with my mother to the harbor to see him when he returned.

Fantasies about the ocean are timeless – let me recall just one from 500 years ago, and that’s from Francois Rabelais The Histories of Gargantua and Pantagruel. Throughout this book, there’s mention of many sea voyages to strange and far-flung islands. For instance, in the last part of the book during one such a sea voyage, the ships crew were, I quote: “Feasting and speechifying and telling nice little stories, Pantagruel suddenly jumped to his feet and took a look around him. ‘Can you hear something comrades?’ he asked. ‘I seem to hear people talking in the air. But I can’t see anything. Listen”.

At Half Moon Bay near where I lived in Melbourne as a kid, there’s a sunken battle ship (a relic from WW1). One can either swim or walk to the ship depending on the level of the tide. The ship is called the ‘Cerberus’ and is the name of the mythological dog that protects the doors of the underworld. This half sunken wreck protrudes from the sea and its presence connects in my memory to so many strange sea fantasies I’ve read in poetry and literature over the years, including the sea voyages described by Rabelais.

During my first year in art school, I spent three weeks on an ocean cruise with my mother and sisters. There was a major breakout of the flu throughout the ship and variations of the same flu circulated around the ship so that I was constantly ill with a different range of symptoms during the entire cruise. The ship literally became, for me anyway, like Dostoevsky’s The House of the Dead and which was by chance, a book I found in the ship's library. I read it locked up in my cabin only going out when we docked on a new island, and where I would stumble around with a horrible fever too weak to actually know what to do and where to go.

The experience of being on the ship, the sounds, smells, vibrations and all the amazing sensory elements that the ocean offered filtered through my state of illness and fever. This all delivered a series of very beautiful histrionic and poetic impressions. For instance, I remember sitting in a muddy paddock in British Samoa and watching through feverish eyes, and with the sound of the sea in the background, a local funeral party under some trees that included the slaughtering of a pig.

There are huge cruise ships arriving in the Bosporus, they have a special mooring area, a zone, which is closed off to people of the city. Those huge ships are like skyscrapers. I learned to love and hate Istanbul. Especially now → so many people are in jail... Things to love were especially people, but currently, it is a very dark place to be.

Some people from the generation of my mother and before came to France from the West Indies by boat. Like the European migrants arriving at Ellis Island. And I often wonder what it would feel like to sail for days and days on the ocean without seeing the shore + then, suddenly, seeing it. You’re starting a new life somewhere new but at the same time you’re in the middle of nowhere (during the crossing).

The reason we use beam trawlers is: we’ve used them for generations. People therefore have the know-how to use them very well. Especially on dirty -rocky- grounds. The Dutch don’t go there. Only the Belgians go there → and fishing a lot of different kinds of fish.

A beam trawler uses 3.000 liters of fuel in 24 hours. A skipper gets paid 10.000 euros/month. But you have to work a lot for that money. When you’re at sea you always work. Even if you don’t work, your muscles are working to keep you straight.

Just being on the ship is work. Humans are not made to live on the sea – we are made to live on the shore. We’re handicapped at sea.

Only when the boat is in the harbor, can you sleep for six hours. Or when the ship is reaching the fishing grounds.

P.v.C. Twinriggers are safer. The Dutch use electricity fishing. But it kills the sea fauna.