Essays

May, 2004

TRANQUILITY

By John Guy

My tranquil feeling anchored over the glorious blue was interrupted by the following unsolicited e-mail message:

All-User Update, April 15, 2004.
WARNING TO MARINERS regarding dangers represented currently on the rhumb line between the Panama Canal and the Galapagos Islands.

On April 5, 2004 at approximately 15:00 local time, the SV Yume Maru was rammed on the port side by a fishing-type vessel. The two person-on-board [SIC] the SV report that there were 7 or 8 men on the fishing boat. Five (5) of these men boarded the SV and were armed with knives and handguns. The 2 people on the SV were tied-up by the suspects.

Suspect vessel is described as being a fishing-style boat, approximately 20m long. It was painted with a black top, red bottom and a white cabin. The victims also reported that the
part of the fishing boat that struck their boat had blue paint under the red. No other description of the fishing boat or the suspects.

In three years, this is the first warning we received. At sun downer later that day, with rum punch in hand, an impressive sunset, good conversations, anchored at Conception Island in The Republic of The Bahamas, more than 1500 miles away from the reported incident, with little on our minds except plans for departure, disquiet invaded my mind, a feeling of having been personally violated, of an unnecessary intrusion into my tranquility, prompting me to worry about my safety, with a small measure of fear, for, in theory, what happened there can happen here. My wife and I could have been rammed, tied up, molested, and robbed. Perhaps the action of the golden brown liquid served me well, for my anxiety did not last, and my fatalistic philosophy returned to replace the ache of fear.

As time moved, my thoughts grew. I analyzed the circumstance from different points of view, fully aware that few other persons would dwell so long on this simple occurrence, and that most persons, if queried, would applaud and express appreciation to whomever sent the alert.  After several days of sporadic reflection, I realized that the sources of my disquiet are that the message is anonymous, was unsolicited, and has no practical value.

The message could have originated from many sources, including a professional news service, a volunteer-operated safety and security net on SSB or VHF, or an amateur radio service or net.  The information could have been provided by the victims, friends of the victims, or by a crime protection authority.  At first, I thought that the email service was putting itself in the position of directly providing safety and security information in the same manner as an SSB or VHF net.  In other words, the email service had decided to become a gatherer and distributor of news, to accept and re send, en masse, email reports from victims. This possibility frustrated me because I do not believe that a land or radio email service is capable of originating and editing news, particularly news given informally and randomly by victims. An email service is like a telephone company that provides a medium but not content. In sharing my frustration with an administrator of the email service, I now believe that the source of the alert was The United States Coast Guard, and that the email service had no other choice but to send the message to all its clients.  The email service was acting on an official request from an agency of government.  The language and style of the alert is consistent with government-produced documents.  Still, I cannot comprehend why the source is not mentioned in the message.  A thoughtful reader cannot evaluate the message without knowing who sent it, and a person wishing to respond to the message by providing information does not know whom to contact or by what means.  Anonymity makes the message useless.

Next I asked, "why me?”  Our boat, and thousands like ours, was in no position to utilize the information for any productive purpose. We were not in the area and had no plans to sail there. We were not in a position to assist the victims or to help in the search and apprehension of the perpetrators. We further judged that the message has little or no practical use even in the affected area because the probability of having practical value is small. If value is defined as arrest of the perpetrators, the following would take place. First, a boat or group of boats within a geographic space defined as the circle having a radius equal to the maximum range of the fishing boat must be members of the e-mail organization and have received the message. The number of boats falling within this category must be severely limited, perhaps only one or two. Second, a boat having been alerted must see the perpetrator, recall the incident, and report to recognized police authority. Then, acting on the statement of a boater, a police authority must act. In this respect, my skepticism approached massive doubt. Even in the well-organized North American police system, involving the coast guard, FBI, and various state and local police forces, a victim or witness obtains attention and subsequent action only be making a formal report and agreeing to prosecute. In the Central American and South American police systems potentially having responsibility for this case I cannot imagine a favorable response and subsequent organized action. Unless the victims or a friendly boat identifying the perpetrator are fluent in Spanish, obtaining a friendly ear, over an SSB radio link, hundreds of miles away, is highly unlikely. And, who among us will agree to spend a few weeks in Ecuador to prosecute, when, in so doing, our lives could be further threatened by friends of the detained no-goods? Will we buy the plane tickets, pay for the hotel rooms, interrupt our passage to paradise, to testify in an Ecuadorian court? Of course, I can imagine that The U.S. Coast Guard would respond, assuming that it is the source of the message, but this potential eventuality only muddled my mind:  would the coast guard sail into Quito to make an arrest?  Would it ask Panamanian authorities to do the job?  Does the incident involve a larger issue of national security?  Is drug enforcement involved?  I cannot know the answers to these questions.

Possible reaction to this hypothesis of impracticality is that knowledge of criminal incidents, distributed by unsolicited e-mail, will cause boaters everywhere "to be on guard." What does it mean to be on guard? How does one prepare? How does one plan, or respond? One response is to cancel a trip over the stated rhumb line. The assumption would be that a boater near Panama, having planned his circumnavigation for five years, fully provisioned and fully invested in guides and charts, cancels everything. Really?  Would a couple having two four-hundred-dollar tickets to The Met stay home because New York radio just reported a burglary on 79th Street? On a smaller scale, every boater planning a trip to Trinidad, Venezuela, Yemen, and a host of other countries, experiences significant anxiety when a political or criminal incident is reported near the planned arrival point. Some do change plans, then feel intrusive regret for not having pursued the full monty. Am I naive in my belief that many persons would have delightful trips never having been provided negative news? Can we believe that most boaters are inherently cautious, that they follow recommendations in cruising guides, that they lock their dinghies and don't go into the bad parts of town? Does news of an incident change their natural habits of locking and leaving, or does the news merely introduce anxiety on top of otherwise well laid plans?

News of an incident along a proposed route reinforces an idea in boaters that their lives are safer if they carry firearms. Few issues divide boaters more than this subject. Persons schooled in self defense, or in the military, or in using arms for sport, or hunters, or retired police officers, are likely to feel friendly to the concept that self defense is the American way. A firearm in their hands is as comfortable as holding a fork at dinner. Another group, often in vocal opposition, is composed of persons uncomfortable with firearms, or of persons friendly to a standard of civility that always has discouraged "taking the law into one's own hands." The temperamental comfort zones of persons in each group are totally different, and are unlikely to be changed by a single unsolicited e-mail, or even daily tragedies announced on somebody's safety and security net. Still, in analyzing the utility of widely distributed incident reports, my hypothesis comes forth. This hypothesis is that my life is likely to be spared if I do not confront, contest or fight a criminal who wants to take my property. A corollary is that most pirates and other thieves want only to improve their lives by acquiring and selling marketable goods. Most do not want to expose themselves to murder or assault charges that make the conduct of their business more complicated and risky. Many criminals, however, are not experienced professionals, but persons trying to get out of a financial mess. They are amateurs, scared and nervous. They are persons who can cause injury without intention. Nothing scares more than a gun in the hands of a nervous amateur. Hence, the rule on Pachamama is "give them what they want. Do not fight back, or even talk back. Cooperate, and live." Additional beliefs on Pachamama are that no amount of available small arms will defend against a well armed, steel hull power boat, intent on taking us, and that arms carried aboard must be declared at customs, cause suspicion among port authority personnel, and are subject to quarantine or confiscation, difficulties we do not need.

Despite these personal beliefs, we know that boaters, in general, want more information about safety and security. Assuming a demand for the information, the question becomes who and how. Who provides reports and information? Who edits the information and decides what to distribute and what to withhold? Who certifies accuracy? What medium is used, and who controls that medium? If our experiences are representative, if our knowledge is sufficiently broad, we are tempted to conclude that almost all safety and security information is provided to boaters by amateurs using informal reports of victims and acquaintances of victims, then broadcasting those reports on local VHF nets, SSB safety and security nets, and e-mail. Perhaps this is the best we can do. Perhaps consistent and reliable sources do not exist, or, if they do exist, perhaps the information is in an unfamiliar language. If true, we acknowledge the proposition that "the current system is faulty, but no one does it better." I believe that the current system is weak, (and intrusive), but I have not found a better one. Therefore, the best I can do is to understand the system, and to evaluate its product.

Most safety and security information systems begin with a report, usually a direct oral report to a net, including to amateur radio nets.  Rarely is a  report provided by a competent police authority such as a coast guard, and reports provided by victims seldom are confirmed by police authorities. The report is delivered by a victim, by an acquaintance of the victim, and even by third parties having indirect information. In many circumstances boaters listen to a report as it is being delivered for the first time. Some nets then post summaries of the reports to an Internet site. A report on one net, such as SSB, is likely to be repeated on another such as a local VHF morning net. Some reports are distributed by one net to other cooperating nets that are loosely associated into a larger group such as Boat Watch. Someone in the larger group then decides whether to issue an incident report in the form of a mass distributed e-mail.

Reports have two inaccuracies. The first is caused by the unavoidable circumstances of the victim, the emotions, desire for retribution and the universal human need to place blame on others without acknowledging personal errors of judgment or technique that contributed to the incident. (Statements describing "what I did wrong," or, "how I got into this mess," would be immensely valuable to other boaters. However, victims seldom report this side of the incident.) With knowledge of these biases, thorough police reports as well as professional news reporters usually develop the story by talking to several witnesses. Not being schooled in information techniques, victims seldom present every important piece of data. They provide generalities such as "we were boarded in Mochimo Park," without stating precisely where in the park. Reports offered by friends of victims and third parties naturally deteriorate as the distance between the incident and the reporter increases. (In his book, "Passages South," Bruce Van Zant documents a reported incident, widely believed, that never took place, because the persons observing the incident did not understand that they were looking at a normal customs inspection on a boater who, unfortunately, was very drunk and vociferous.) The reporting system would improve if nets require reports in standard format and the net controller asks for clarifications.

A single report might be 90 % accurate, but contextually inaccurate. For boaters, contextual accuracy is more important than incident accuracy, because the risks we assume are in the context of broader sailing plans. In the boarding on the rhumb line to Galapagos, a contextual report would have stated whether the incident was one in ten, one in a hundred, or one in a thousand. The report would give us some idea about the frequency of difficulties, in effect, the crime rate. Hence, another improvement in the system would be for providers to seek and to publish general crime statistics drawn from reputable police and coast guard sources. This would help to overcome the fear factor, or at least to place the fear in a meaningful frame of reference. Another problem is comprehension of data. For example, when an audience is asked whether auto accidents kill more persons than heart disease, most persons vote for auto accidents, or for heart disease at two to one. The truth is that heart disease kills ten times as many persons as auto accidents, but cases of heart disease are not reported on the nightly news. Our opinion is derived from cognitive bias. One case of food poisoning can destroy a restaurant otherwise having a perfect long-term record. One dramatic boarding can permanently damage the good reputation of a cruising ground. Considering the potential effects of these reports, providers have an obligation to check for accuracy and to place the report in context. The context might be positive or negative. The Galapagos case appears to be rare, an isolated event in a positive context. On the other hand, we were at one harbor in which local newspapers reported all kinds of problems, but none made it to the nets. This would be a negative context. My belief is that boaters commonly are misled to feel that a safe area is unsafe, and that an unsafe area is safe because incidents there are not reported. Language introduces another bias. Few reports come from French and Spanish speaking areas, because persons involved cannot easily report in English.

When safety and security information is reported on a live, 15-minute-per-day net, people listen and take note. When information is reported to an e-mail distribution service, the circumstance changes, because then the e-mail administrator must decide whether to distribute the report. The administrator becomes a news editor. The Galapagos report was unexpected and out of context, and was not part of a program or service familiar to users. The e-mail just showed up one day. The notice was "pushed" (forced) on us because we had to receive it as part of our daily e-mail review. Since this system has no history of providing incident information,  the administrator should not have sent it without including information that he was acting in response to an official request.  Even with an official request, the message should not have been sent without identifying the requesting authority and stating how to contact that authority.

To the extent that both land and radio email services wish to provide safety and security information, the information should be placed in a catalog, such as "recent security reports." Users then can "pull" (request) the information if they want to see it, leaving the rest of us content with our ignorance. I do not envision that amateurs provide information to the catalog. Crime news is not our profession. We do not know how to handle it accurately, with minimum damage to victims, to boaters generally, and to cruising grounds. For weather, we do not rely on other cruisers. Instead, we rely on government-supplied data, and on interpretations by the few experienced broadcasters, such as George, Eric, Herb and Chris, each clearly knowledgeable and able to interpret. (According to Bruce Van Zant, weather provided in harbors by self appointed cruisers is notoriously misleading. Bruce prefers that we each listen to standard broadcasts, then do our best.) Therefore, information in a safety and security catalog should be provided by outside sources known for accuracy and completeness.

I am ambivalent about one category of unsolicited marine radio e-mail: alerts regarding tropical depressions. This information is crucial to the lives of thousands of boaters. Unlike a crime incident report, a weather alert is immensely practical, perhaps indispensable. The other side of this coin, however, is that boaters recognize the importance of weather information, and routinely obtain the information by means other than unsolicited e-mails Boaters can listen to oral reports on the SSB, pull information from an Internet site or from an e-mail provider's catalog, or they can intentionally subscribe to a daily e-mail weather forecast. Over all, I propose that boaters do not need the unsolicited information, and that the act of providing unsolicited information changes the character of a communications net. Instead of attempting to obtain, organize, edit and distribute news, e-mail systems should limit themselves to maintaining and improving the communications technology, and to providing links or catalogs to outside sources of news.  Existing  catalogs are excellent, informative, and drawn from experienced, reputable sources. Boaters “pull down” catalog information when needed.  Catalogs are not “unsolicited” because users must access or request the information. 

FDR told us that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself . . . ," a rather profound concept. In all forms, negative news creates anxiety, or fear. If three neighbors have heart attacks, I begin to fear for myself. If a tragedy takes place on a boat thousands of miles away, I sympathize, then think about the risks to me. Thinking about risk neither changes the character of the risk nor increases its magnitude. Awareness, per se, changes nothing. As a responsible, prudent and knowledgeable adult, I prefer to live life based on information that I have actively sought from reliable sources, and I prefer not to know all the negative news in the world. The contentment so derived adds a few seconds to my life expectancy.