Thinking about it now, living on a sailboat is an exceedingly good metaphor for our experience of living in this modern world. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space […] There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gently rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. Just as a 16th-century seafarer needed a visceral knowledge of their environment and an intimate proficiency with their tools in order to survive and prosper, so we need a scientific intuition of the world and a boxful of mental tools to handle.