We knew it was too good to be true, right?

I’m referring to GPS, a phenomenon so utterly amazing that decades after its invention it still seems more fantasy than reality. After wandering the seas for millennia never quite sure of where in the watery world they were, sailors were given the gift of precise knowledge of their boat’s position on command.

When this gift first arrived, some of the skeptics among us really did say it was too good to be true. Don’t depend on it, they warned. The satellites could go haywire or fall out of the sky.

Well, the satellites are doing just fine and GPS remains reliable and accurate, not to mention cheap and available in all kinds of mundane electronic gizmos, but the prophecy that the gift could be taken away is starting to seem credible.

Thanks to an odd pairing of ruthless capitalism and weak-kneed government regulation, GPS navigation could be rendered untrustworthy and, as an auxiliary disaster, the millions of GPS receivers now in use could be made obsolete.

I wouldn’t blame readers who don’t know about this for thinking I’m writing science fiction. Why would anyone do anything to undermine one of the greatest inventions of the space age and why would the government approve it? Read on.

A company funded by a hedge-fund billionaire proposes to build a broadband cell-phone communications network it calls LightSquared. To do that, the firm needs a waiver from the Federal Communications Commission because its license is limited to low-power satellite communication and its plan calls for high-power land-based signals.

The FCC granted the waiver. That news was received with shock and horror by the makers and users of GPS devices and organizations that represent them, and for good reason. The LightSquared network has the potential to destroy GPS as we know it.

That could happen because the frequencies LightSquared would operate on are next to those used by GPS. Satellites in the GPS system send signals with minuscule amounts of power. LightSquared signals would be much stronger. To use a wind analogy, if GPS signals are a zephyr, LightSquared’s would be a Category 5 hurricane.

The LightSquared signals could in effect blow GPS signals out of the sky.

The FCC acknowledged that possibility in January 2011 when it issued the waiver with a condition—it would only take effect if the LightSquared network did not interfere with GPS.

In a tacit admission that its network would indeed be a threat to disable GPS, LightSquared announced the problem could be solved simply by installing filters on receivers and criticized GPS makers for not figuring this out. In October LightSquared introduced a filter made by a vendor that it said would protect receivers at a cost of $50 to $300 each.

GPS experts doubt the filters will work. And even if they did, how could the millions of GPS devices in use in the United States be retrofitted with the filters? And why should their owners have to pay to make the GPS service they depend on immune to mischief resulting from a company’s plan to profit from irresponsible use of the public’s airwaves?
Here’s a more perplexing question: How did a threat to GPS get this far?

By year’s end, voices opposing LightSquared had grown to a full-throated roar from a disparate army of GPS defenders.

Yet as this is written LightSquared remains undaunted. It confirmed that with a bold move in late December, sending the FCC a petition asking for a declaratory ruling endorsing its right as a radio spectrum licensee to put its system in place. It is making no claim it won’t interfere with GPS; in fact, it’s saying the GPS industry has no right to ask the FCC for protection from LightSquared.

I guess this shouldn’t be surprising. LightSquared is backed by Philip Falcone and his hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners. Falcone is a bold kind of guy.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Securities and Exchange Commission is trying to ban him from the securities industry because of misconduct involving subprime mortgages. (It also reported that the chairman of the FCC said the agency would consider such misconduct in deciding on the LightSquared license petition, an encouraging development.)

Naturally, I’m mad as hell about the threat to GPS. But also bewildered. I get it about LightSquared. There’s money to be made in 4G broadband communication. But what is the FCC thinking? How could this protector of the public’s airwaves even consider approving a system that interferes with GPS?

That question is so baffling some are suggesting the answer is political skulduggery. Some of Falcone’s political contributions have gone to Democratic Party causes, leading some Republicans in Congress to say this paved the way for kind treatment from the FCC under the Obama administration.

Falcone told Politico.com he’s a registered Republican and has given more to Republicans than Democrats and did not ask for or receive political favors.

You almost wish crony capitalism were at work here. At least that would make some sense out of the FCC’s eggshell-walking around LightSquared. Otherwise, how can the regulators not understand a conflict so simple it can be expressed in two short sentences:       

We don’t need another cell-phone network. We do need GPS.

I’ve seen sailboats ride up over docks like levitating sea creatures. I’ve seen boats enter slips by pivoting on the corner of a pier amid a fingernails-on-blackboard cacophony and a blizzard of flying shards of fiberglass.

Guess what was the most popular attraction at last fall’s United States Sailboat Show at Annapolis.

Hint: It had nothing to do with sailing a boat.

It was actually a powerboating demonstration. The show’s star attraction was the joystick docking system available on some of Beneteau’s cruising sailboats.

Mobs of showgoers gathered to watch very large sailboats maneuver in very small spaces by means of a wickedly clever invention that synchronizes a pivoting propeller with a bow thruster and is controlled by a little lever at the helm station.

I was as smitten as everyone else watching men in blazers wiggling the joystick to make boats move sideways and diagonally, spin on dimes and nestle up to the dock so gently that fenders were barely compressed. This showing off was done with such studied nonchalance that I have to admit I experienced a burst of schadenfreude when one demonstrator erred and his boat tapped the bow of another Beneteau.

This brought a few titters from the audience, but did nothing to lessen the general mood of awestruck fascination. This didn’t come just from admiration for gee-whiz technology (the system had in fact been introduced a year earlier and versions of it were in use on powerboats well before that). A lot of it stemmed from the prospect of relief from an affliction that is widespread among sailboats owners—Docking Anxiety Disorder (DAD).

Unfortunately, DAD is not a psychosomatic disorder that can be cured with counselling or behavior modifying drugs. It’s often based on genuine incompetence.

Fear of docking is probably one of the leading causes of people selling their boats and fleeing from sailing.

I know boat owners who are undaunted by the most awful wind and wave conditions offshore, but get all weak-kneed and white-knuckled when they have to face the challenge of returning the boat to the dock.

I’ve sailed on proud racing boats whose professional captains are steely exemplars of calm, competent leadership in the stressful throes of racing, but morph into insecure martinets when facing the docking test, berating crewmembers for blocking the docker’s view, or for hanging fenders two inches too high, or maybe for simply being witnesses to the captain’s docking anxiety.

I have witnessed, as no doubt have many of the readers of this column (and perhaps found it diverting cocktail hour entertainment), couples ending otherwise happy days of cruising with a public, high-decibel, sometimes expletive-laden row provoked by a docking failure.

I’ve seen sailboats ride up over docks like levitating sea creatures. I’ve seen boats enter slips by pivoting on the corner of a pier amid a fingernails-on-blackboard cacophony and a blizzard of flying shards of fiberglass.

I once had a slip neighbor who (I’m not making this up) destroyed two dockboxes in a single summer by spearing them with the plow anchor mounted on the stem of his Ericson 39 when he barged into his slip unconstrained by the concept of shifting into reverse in a timely fashion.

His docking malfunctions became legend and whenever he returned to the harbor after an outing the call “Here comes Charlie” would attract a crowd to his slip to hold off, shout advice and observe the spectacle.

A leading cause of docking anxiety is the perception that sailboats are by nature difficult to maneuver under engine power. This was true in the full-keel era when keels were long, whale-belly-shaped affairs with attached rudders with apertures for propellers. Today’s lighter boats with short keels and separated rudders hung way aft behave quite nicely under engine power.

The idea that sailboats don’t go backwards very well is also a myth. In capable hands, they back just fine, even with folding propellers.

Bad advice may also contribute to fear of docking. The oft printed and spoken dictum to take it slow when docking is valid in millpond conditions, but in a breeze or current, speed is the docker’s friend. You can’t turn a sailboat that isn’t moving. Of course, when you approach at speed you can’t be bashful about applying the RPMs when reversing to put on the brakes.

One of the great satisfactions of sailing is mastering its skills. That such skills are needed is what sets sailing apart from so many other ways we could be spending our recreational time. It seems to me taking a boat to and from a dock is an important enough skill to justify revising the timeless sailor’s seamanship imperative. So let it be: hand, reef, steer and dock.

This should include docking under sail when necessary. I’m not going to go into the how-tos of this always stimulating exercise, except to say it is a priority to shout a notice to dock-standers as loudly as possible that you are coming in without an engine. This will lead to a quick, sometimes panicked exit by docked boats, leaving plenty of space for your landing or semi-controlled crash.

I take a lot satisfaction from making a competent landing, even if its under engine power on a calm day. I do that quite well most of the time, but that’s not to say I haven’t paid my dues to the docking disaster society.

Some of these misadventures were clearly the result of operator error. As for the others, I like to blame them on an errant current, a surprise gust of wind or unwanted dockside help, as when some well-meaning but clueless fellow takes your bowline and gives it a robust tug and ruins what would have been a perfect landing.    

Regardless of the cause of docking failures, you can pretty much count on a variant of Murphy’s Law being in full effect: If something can go wrong in docking, it will happen in front of plenty of witnesses.         Oh, the shame!

Oh, for a joystick!

When bad things happen in sailing, odds are that human incompetence, negligence or hubris are involved. None of those failings was present in two disturbing sailing accidents last summer. Sailors did just about everything right in both situations, yet one ended in tragedy, the other in narrowly averted tragedy on a grand scale. There is much to be learned from these events, starting with the lesson that safety at sea is a lot more complicated than putting on your life vest.

By all accounts, the crew of the Kiwi 35 Wingnuts was ready for the storm cells speeding across Lake Michigan and bearing down on the boat during last July’s Race to Mackinac. The mainsail was down, the headsail was at least partially furled and all aboard were wearing inflatable PFDs and safety harnesses. That wasn’t enough to save the lives of two very experienced and capable sailors.

The boat capsized. Even with sails down and keel and ballast intact, the lightweight boat with winglike deck extensions flipped over. Skipper Mark Morley and Suzanne Bickel died of head injuries. Their bodies were found under the floating, overturned hull, entwined in lines and their safety tethers. This prompted speculation that they might not have survived even if they had not been injured.

I hope the panel appointed by US Sailing to investigate the deaths will look at tethers. It sounds like a good idea to tie yourself to the boat in bad weather. In practice, that’s not always a safe assumption. Being dragged through the water by a safety harness tether attached to a speeding sailboat is reported to have caused drownings. Being held under water by your tether in a shipwreck is a terrifying thought.

This is not a new worry. Offshore racing safety rules now require a quick-release device on the harness end of tethers. The Spinlock inflatable PFD-harness rigs favored by serious offshore sailors come with a pocket holding a hook-shaped blade expressly designed to cut tethers. Some sailors have taken to carrying straight, non-folding knives in sheaths on their harnesses for the same purpose.

My comment about sailors doing everything right in the wreck of Wingnuts applies especially to the rescue of the six surviving members of the crew. Bob Arzbaecher and the crew of his Beneteau 40.7 Sociable, alerted to the capsize by a faint tweet of an emergency whistle heard over a dying squall, accomplished a mission fraught with potential for disaster with a seamanlike competence that should make all sailors proud.

In foul conditions at night they employed a Lifesling to drag the survivors from the inverted boat to Sociable and heaved them aboard. Meanwhile a Sociable crewman stood watch on VHF radio, and with the calm authority one usually associates with professional mariners, organized other race boats in the area in a systematic search for the missing skipper and crew member, not knowing they were beneath the turtled boat.            

I get chills reading the accounts of the sailors who were below deck on Rambler 100 when it capsized in the Rolex Fastnet Race in August. Imagine lying in your bunk deep in the cavernous bowels of a 100-foot boat when the keel breaks off, the boat instantly capsizes and you have 30 seconds to escape—through a chaotic jumble of sail bags and gear below, out of the companionway and into an upside-down, underwater world filled with the snares and traps of rigging, sheets and lifelines, holding your breath during the long, frantic swim to get clear of the 20-foot-wide deck. This is truly the stuff of nightmares.

The sailors who faced that life-or-death test survived, as did the rest of the crew of 21 who were shipwrecked in the typically nasty Celtic Sea. This amazing fact leads to what I think is the ultimate lesson of these disasters: The most important safety feature on a boat is the character of the sailors.

Equipment matters. PFDs are essential. A personal epirb was instrumental in the rescue of the Rambler crew. But it was sailors and their superb seamanship that made for outcomes far less tragic than they could have been.

The crew of Rambler were elite sailors, hardened offshore competitors who had pretty much seen it all (except the sudden capsize of an enormous boat). In 15-foot seas, most of those who were on deck were able to clamber onto the overturned hull, help their struggling mates from the off-watch to safety, rig security lines and hang on for more than two hours until they were rescued.

Five who didn’t make it to the hull, including the 69-year-old owner and a slender woman who was to suffer near-fatal hypothermia, tied themselves together and managed to survive in 57-degree water for nearly three hours until they were saved by a chartered dive boat. There’s plenty of true grit in this story.

On Lake Michigan two months earlier, survivors of Wingnuts, though devastated by the loss of their skipper and a crewmate, took care of themselves on a stormy night until rescue arrived in that stellar display of seamanship by other racing sailors.

We tend to throw that word “seamanship” around loosely, but it is nothing less than the heart and soul of safety at sea—possessing the skills and mindset to do what you have to do to save yourself and others.

In both capsizes, the sailors performed splendidly. But their most important piece of equipment, their boats, did not. They were, in fact, betrayed by their boats. A yacht considered fit for an offshore race should not be able to be flipped over by a gust of wind. One of the biggest, most expensive racing sailboats in the world should not lose its keel.

Remember that expression from an earlier age of sail—iron men and wooden ships? Well, the iron men part is still true.

You can count on it. After the Chicago to Mackinac Island race you’ll run into someone on the island who will regale you with a tale of how his boat’s electronic instruments blew out right after the start, and how he and his mates soldiered on with nothing more than a Windex, a handheld GPS and their intuitive sailing ability, and how they were certain at one point that they were winning their division, and how they would have finished in the money if they hadn’t had the bad luck of sailing into a windless hole under the bridge, and how in spite of the disappointing finish the experience proved once again that if you’re a good seat-of-the-pants sailor you don’t need expensive electronics.
Right, and the tooth fairy makes house calls.

If seat-of-the-pants sailing means the tactician has a computer in his back pocket (easily done these days of iPhone-size data-processing devices), then it might work for racing. Otherwise offshore racing boats without electronic brains to tell the humans on board what wind angles, boat speeds and courses to sail in ever-changing conditions are destined to be also-rans.

Following the computer’s instructions gets the most out of a boat, but with its brow-furrowing, eye-straining concentration it’s harder than intuitive sailing. What’s more, it’s not nearly as much fun. I was reminded of that by a sailboat so simple it doesn’t even have that most basic sailing instrument, a yarn telltale.

Here’s how it happened:

My son-in-law Richard is a professional sailor who knows all about computer-assisted sailing on big racing boats, but he has a soft spot for simple small boats. He was beachcombing in search of a washed-ashore racing buoy when he ran into a fellow who not only had the buoy but something else that caught Richard’s eye—a vintage Sunfish.

The boat had been used by his kids, the owner explained, but they’d left home long ago and the Sunfish, named Marji, hadn’t gotten wet in decades. Still, he said, he was reluctant to part with it. Five hundred dollars overcame his reluctance and Marji ended up on the beach at what we call our family’s summer camp.

Marji then proceeded to show us the joys of plain sailing. She can be rigged and launched in a few minutes, and just like that you’re on the water—almost literally on the water with this boat that is basically a board with a shallow foot well. She gives the sensation of speed in almost any kind of breeze, rewards experts and tyros alike and will do just about anything you ask her to do without much effort by either boat or sailor.         The high point of the summer for Marji and our sailing clan was a day when Lake Michigan was in boisterous mood and the Sunfish took grandson Will, 13, on a memorable ride surfing on cresting waves with her lateen sail eased out like an open barn door catching tons of breeze. We could hear Will’s excited whooping on shore over the roar of the surf.

It was good day for Will’s 8-year-old brother Jack too. He now figures to get custody of the 10-foot Walker Bay sailing dinghy that his big brother had been sailing until he was spoiled by the flashier Sunfish.

Flashy? Now there’s a surprising word to describe an old girl like Marji. Her serial number revealed that her birthdate was in 1967. When Richard found her she had a shoestring for an outhaul and a worn three-strand nylon mainsheet. She may look her age, but she doesn’t act it. Imagine—a 44-year-old boat, built from a design that is at least 65 years old, producing all of that sailing fun.

For the legions of Sunfish sailors among SAILING’s readers, of course, I’m preaching to the choir. This may well be the most loved sailboat ever produced. More than half a million have been built. In fact, though I came to Sunfish sailing only recently, I’m a member of the choir. In February 1995, at the sailboat show in the old convention hall on the Atlantic City boardwalk, I announced (from the deck of an America’s Cup boat that was the centerpiece of the show) that the Sunfish had been selected as the first boat to be inducted into the American Sailboat Hall of Fame.

I recall the deliberations of the Hall of Fame selection committee (all sailing  journalists, a contentious lot). There was plenty of disagreement about the other boats that would be part of the inaugural induction (they turned out to be the Triton, Bermuda 40, J/24 and Catalina 22), but about the Sunfish there was instant consensus.

The first Sunfish were built of wood in the early 1950s by their inventors, iceboaters Alex Bryan and Cortlandt Heyniger. The first fiberglass model appeared in 1959. It would be replicated hundreds of thousands of times as the Sunfish became the world’s most popular sailboat, taking sailing, as the Hall of Fame citation recounted, “out of the yacht clubs to the beaches and public launch ramps.”
Complicated sailing has its own rewards, but when you are skimming across the water on a Sunfish, simplicity seems the product of greater genius than computerized instruments and exotic materials.

Alex and Cort (their company was named Alcort) made rigging the Sunfish simple by giving it a short unstayed mast to support a lateen sail permanently attached to its two booms. The lateen rig is an ancient idea that can outperform some modern ones. It offers a big expanse of sail area, but naturally depowers when the sheet is eased. The boardlike hull planes in a jiffy, but is surprisingly stable. If it flips, say while jibing that big sail in a big breeze, the boat is easy to right.

So simple. So rewarding.

Despite the skepticism earlier in this column, I’m really a big fan of seat-of-the-pants sailing—as long as I can put the seat of my pants on Marji.