Sell Up And Sail - is there online Ulysses Quotient calculator?

[t21]

The Coopers' bible for bluewater sailaways includes a chapter on the Ulysses Quotient. Does anyone know if this is online somewhere? Or even better - maybe someone has brilliantly written a program which automatically calculates it based on Bill's rules?

 

[BobnLesley]

No idea, but you could try the perhaps revolutionary idea of getting a pencil and paper (if you're not familiar with such items, Goodle can probably explain) reading the questions from the book, then by applying one to the other noting down your answers. If totalling the results proves a problem, there's another item called a 'calculator'- Google again if yuo're unfamiliar - which will assist.

 

[t21]

No idea, but you could try the perhaps revolutionary idea of getting a pencil and paper (if you're not familiar with such items, Goodle can probably explain) reading the questions from the book, then by applying one to the other noting down your answers. If totalling the results proves a problem, there's another item called a 'calculator'- Google again if yuo're unfamiliar - which will assist.

Very good. But in precisely the same way that you referred me to Goodle (presumably a variant of Google..) from afar ... I'd like to refer other physically distant potential crew to discover their own UQ. It's more efficient, quicker, easier to refer people to a website, rather than suggest that they go buy the book, get the pencil+ paper, calculate their UQ and let me know. I suppose that's the whole point of the internet thing innit?

 

[AndrewB]

The Coopers' bible for bluewater sailaways includes a chapter on the Ulysses Quotient. Does anyone know if this is online somewhere? Or even better - maybe someone has brilliantly written a program which automatically calculates it based on Bill's rules?

Copyright restrictions will apply. The test is amusing, but really rather dated now IMHO. Bill Cooper was a long-time contributer here (latterly as 'Binch') but died two years ago.

 

[t21]

Copyright restrictions will apply. The test is amusing, but really rather dated now IMHO. Bill Cooper was a long-time contributer here (latterly as 'Binch') but died two years ago.

Dang, but ok fair enough. I don't have a copy at the moment as it blew away in a hurricane.

Out of interest ... In what way do you find the test "dated", I wonder? Bill's tests helped a reader identify themselves (or others) as the type that could happily sail away from bricks+mortar, gardening, on-hand relatives and their existing land-based social life... or not. Have mobile phones, easy/cheap internet communication and cheaper jet travel over the last 20 years much reduced the validity of the tests? To me, these developments allow some to fake their sailaway suitability, and more easily unravel a long-term adventure? Or perhaps unwittingly some mistake a fondness of citybreak etc holidays or visiting an overseas boat/apartment several times a year for "being adventurous"? Testing of a UQ score therefore seems perhaps more relevant, not less?

Edit... have I simultaneously made and destroyed the point I was making above? Bill's tests don't ask how long one might one be okay being without wifi. Nor does he much mention or test against how lots of so-called long-term cruisers tend to hang out *primarily* within dinghy+taxi range of international airports offering non-stop flights back to their *own* particular home country. Hum.

Edit 2. ... since I don't have the book ... I can't remember how much importance BC places upon not so much your individual UQ score ... as how compatible it might be with that of crew/partner? This is a separate issue, nothing to do with it being out of date or otherwise ...

Edit 3: I don't much reckon there WOULD be much copyright kerfuffle (sp?) if someone did actually put up an online UQ calculator as it would be kinda free, and it would drive book sales too. Same as this thread really. So it's just bound to be fine really if someone discusses how the UQ is calculated with acknowledgement to BC, and then we (or AB) updates or revises it, provided that nobody makes any money and/or otherwise deprives BC legacy copyright holders re book sales - and in fact does the opposite.

 

[AndrewB]

Dang, but ok fair enough. I don't have a copy at the moment as it blew away in a hurricane.

Out of interest ... In what way do you find the test "dated", I wonder? Bill's tests helped a reader identify themselves (or others) as the type that could happily sail away from bricks+mortar, gardening, on-hand relatives and their existing land-based social life... or not. Have mobile phones, easy/cheap internet communication and cheaper jet travel over the last 20 years much reduced the validity of the tests? To me, these developments allow some to fake their sailaway suitability, and more easily unravel a long-term adventure? Or perhaps unwittingly some mistake a fondness of citybreak etc holidays or visiting an overseas boat/apartment several times a year for "being adventurous"? Testing of a UQ score therefore seems perhaps more relevant, not less?

You have effectively answered your own question, particularly regarding changes in communication and accessibility.

Bill and Laurel’s experience was really of a different sort from most modern-day blue water cruising, altogether more pioneering. They were adept at managing boats which were more like barges than a modern yacht. They didn’t travel huge distances by present standards (there are several people here who will have covered more sea-miles) but they liked breaking new ground, as in their cruise down the Danube. Really a far cry from the usual blue-water cruise of today, in an AWB fully equipped to modern standards, through well-travelled seas between destinations ready to cater for their needs.

Nevertheless there is still a lot to be gleaned from ‘Sell Up And Sail’, as with the still earlier ‘Voyaging Under Sail’ by Eric Hiscock. It seems odd that no new ‘bible’ of blue-water cruising has emerged in the last 20 or so years, definitive in the way these two books were.

P.S. Apologies I don't have the book to hand right now as I'm off cruising, or would have emailed a copy of the test. Maybe some one else can?

 

[lukedh]

Copyright most likely rest with Adlard Coles Nautical, you could ask them.

 

[t21]

What a lot of tosh , surely - there aren't any copyright issues - only Bill's (adlard coles/whatevr) text is copyright, not the idea of selling up and sailing or Ulysses or Quotients or multiplying various factors by other factors. You can't copyright an idea - only either the work itself (as in music, a book) and it has to be exact or very close. The idea is working out how a more rootless lifestyle might suit you. Call it the Walkabout index whatever.