Stewart Brand

And if not, not.

Yeah, so as I said at the beginning of that story, there were nine competitors in the Golden Globe race in 1968, all sailing from England.

And the three who became basically immortal was the one who won, the one who didn't bother to win, and the one who cheated.

and uh and wound up committing suicide because he had cheated uh that was donald crowhurst

And Bernard Metessier is one who didn't bother to win.

And he had really designed basically a wonderfully low maintenance vessel, which I've seen, the Joshua.

And Robin Knox Johnson was just an irrepressible fixer of anything under any circumstances in a rather small wooden boat that he wound up being the only one who finished the race.

So they had completely different attitudes toward maintenance.

um donald rogers the one who cheated and suicided uh hated doing maintenance he called it sailor rising and uh if it was kind of unpleasant he would reward himself with a drink after uh after completing an unpleasant piece of maintenance and uh pretty soon he ran out of uh rum and wine and then went crazy instead

Yeah, exactly.

And I knew the Joshua and I knew Bernard Metessier a little bit.

I said, boy, you're both pretty fit.

And he said, yeah, the idea for me is it has to be a new boat every day.

It has to have everything in perfect working condition.

And he could do that because he also insisted that nothing be complicated.

And so his self-healing device

Instead of being complex, like most people where there's a bunch of ploys and hinges and whatnot that would operate the tiller, he developed a very simple device which was right on the axis of the rudder itself.

And so the angle of the wind kept the angle of the rudder at a certain steady point.

And if something broke it, which did, he couldn't fix it.

Whereas Robin Knox Johnston, he lost, when he was south of Australia, lost a part of his self-steering device that he couldn't replace.