I didn't write the book because I have the answers, or to suggest that one answer is better than another, but only to lob out a couple of plausible, tangible ways that we might agree to improve our lot; to test to see if the discussion and the tenor could be improved. But not just the sailing discussion -- the life discussion -- the one we are having right now, about whether we can agree to live together, and cooperate to defend what's good, and work to improve what's not so good.

One of the sharper criticisms that I am getting (mostly, it seems, from speculating non-readers) is that I can only see in the rear view mirror; that the world is modernizing and changing in a way that I can't understand. Indeed, we straddle a wide, and deep ravine. Living now means seeing and feeling both the analog and the organic, and the digital and the automated. We are blessed with the best of both at the same time that we are cursed with the worst. Saving Sailing simply suggests that we don't have to reject the old good in order to embrace the new... in fact, it shows how the new is often improved by the old.

The book commits many chapters to the process of mentoring, because mentors are the key to this kind of productive progress. Mentors use the past to inform the present, and then use collective experiences to embrace and shape the future, as they firmly hold the hands of others who are perhaps less prepared for it.

I didn't try to predict the future because nobody can. But I did isolate some of the visible flaws in the present and suggest that we don't have to accept them. We can do something to fix them.

-ndh (nickhayes@savingsailing.com

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