Plain sailing for stockholders
The anything-but-oxymoronic "work ethic" behind passive income
The next time you’re hopelessly lost in the middle of nowhere, take solace from this observation on the Clipper Ventures website: Your reward is the knowledge that you’ve raced in the most remote ocean on the planet, where outside of the Clipper Race fleet your nearest companions are the astronauts on the International Space Station. (Their punctuation.)
If you’re tempted, on reading that, to wave upwards at the sky, refrain. God may understand it as a beckoning call. Because, compared to Clipper participants, the astronauts on the ISS are snug and safe. No one ever died on the ISS. But they have died here:
Image: a relatively balmy day on the Southern Ocean.
The article in The Guardian about Clipper Ventures (not adventures?) is a product of investigative journalism. Investigative journalism can be daring, life-threatening and outrageously shocking. But the most shocking of all is when you simply scratch a thinly varnished surface and discover skullduggery. Because it makes you realise: skullduggery is the rule. Honesty is what’s really worth reporting on.
An interesting article. Wasn’t it?
Really? What was so interesting about it? One more revelation that money trumps people? That counterintuition shows the way? That secrecy is key to daylight robbery (including the usual suspects: NDAs and burials at sea)? What’s so interesting about that? Happens all the time.
In the part of our world where you have astronauts as your nearest neighbour, what impels you is the fear of drowning. The choice between tossing fifty thousand quid overboard, or yourself. Clipper makes good sponsorship and it takes its financial security very seriously, by signing NDAs with all participants before burying them at sea.
Quoted, abridged, paraphrased, and commented.
- Clipper was designed for ordinary people: offering training and the opportunity to join a mixed-ability crew, it would enable customers to achieve the ambition of a lifetime.
Ordinary people? With £50,000 to throw around on a year’s sailing? I dream of being that ordinary. But, with only one professional aboard, who takes the decisions when he has his down-time? An ordinary person?
Is joining a mixed-ability crew sold as an opportunity? Sign up, sign up, sign up! And let clueless novices heaving up below decks work your fingers to the bone till your exhaustion sees you swept overboard. Some opportunity.
- To take part in the whole race costs around £50,000.
They must be hungry: for money to be able to afford it; for adventure to actually do it (and just a tad foolhardy); and for victuals: they lose two trouser sizes while pulling twice their weight on a rope. If you like, £50,000 is the value of your life; or the value to you of saving your life. The first rule of risk-taking is to evaluate the risk. And not to have it evaluated by the person selling you the risk.
- “Safety is a core principle and therefore the most important part of the training of its crew.”
Yes. Seventeen men overboard in three editions is, what, natural wastage?
- You don’t need any sailing experience to participate — 40% of participants are complete novices.
Safety is what, exactly, again? Cor!
- “I believe the company is compromised by their desire to make money out of these races.”
Get away! This desire doesn’t compromise Clipper Ventures; it compromises everyone who is asked to avert eyes from the BS total and avoid killing customers. (Balance sheet, if you were wondering.)
- After the deaths of Ashman and Young in 2015-16, applications increased. “This is really dangerous! This is something I’ve got to do!”
And gun deaths lead to increased gun sales. Of course: the people who take part are conditioned by the risk levels they themselves put workforces through, after all. No pain, no gain.
- The event has transformed into a major, and highly profitable, international event attracting the interest of the world’s media and business leaders.
How do the business leaders feel about sponsoring boats that people die on? Well, at least it’s highly profitable. That’s okay, then.
- He has little time for what he sees as unnecessary bureaucracy; he complained about the Maritime and Coastguard Agency’s ridiculous and “inappropriate” rules for small racing yachts.
No one has any time for unnecessary bureaucracy. Until 17 men overboard in three editions bring them to a realisation of how necessary the bureaucracy actually was. But, he’s right: professional round-the-world sailors don’t need such piffling regulation. The 40% of crews who are novices may actually find it handy, however.
- In 2010, Knox-Johnston lobbied the MCA to allow him to replace the second qualified person with a trained-up member of the fee-paying crew, otherwise using a second professional was not financially sustainable. The MCA refused. Details of a further meeting were not released. A year later, in October 2013, the MCA granted Knox-Johnston’s wish.
If at first you don’t succeed … I don’t get how come the details were not released? The rest, about cutting back on onboard expertise in the most remote ocean of the world, that’s okay, I get that. After all, people can wave down a passing astronaut, like buses on Clapham Common.
- The 2017-18 race started without a second paid professional on board any of the boats.
The cost was crippling them. Instead, they cripple customers. The business of good government?
- Mark Tucker left because of his concerns about safety. He felt that there was insufficient time before the start of the race for maintenance and repairs to the boat. He wasn’t able to speak candidly in public because he’d signed an NDA.
God bless the NDA! It’s likely an NDA that stopped Columbus from telling Spain that he fell off the edge of the world. Clause XX: banned is the use on board of words like death, overboard, cold, fed up, sea-sickness, safety and “Is there any fresh water?”
- One person, who did not want to give his name, packed [his] bags and … said, “I’m done, it’s not safe.”
And so save all of us. Good move to withhold their name, what with that NDA and all.
- The dropout rate … is 40%. Things must get very bad, because crew are liable for 100% of the fees if they drop out.
That bad? Oh, I wonder if that’s the 40% of novices.
- The captain was spending his entire time dealing with maintenance issues on a boat that was three weeks into a year-long circumnavigation.
If equipment is working on leaving Liverpool, then Clipper reasons it’ll work on the Southern Ocean. It just happens, however, that repairs are a tad more practical when the boat is in port than when it’s battling 120-foot waves on the Southern Ocean. And, more equipment does go phut when it’s in operation than when it’s lying idle not doing anything. Apart from that, it must have saved some money, somewhere, surely?
- Malfunctions down to normal wear and tear. “[People think] everything should be immaculate, ready to go. But that is not how boats work.”
No, it’s how people work. What do novices know about boats, anyway?
- “There is a fear culture, that prevents a lot of [problems getting reported]”
That is also part of how people work. And the way in which many people sail around the world with Clipper Ventures could also be called a fear culture.