Boats are, by strict evolutionary logic, entirely unnecessary. The universe went to a great deal of trouble inventing land precisely so that things wouldn’t have to bob around on liquid trying to prevent themselves from either dissolving or sinking to the bottom.
Despite this, human beings remain seized by a relentless urge to purchase enormous quantities of fiberglass, paint them blue, and anchor them securely to long wooden planks driven into the seabed. Once anchored, the boats are then left completely alone for months on end to think about what they’ve done.
This photograph captures that exact state of suspended panic.
To the left, a mast reaches up toward sixty miles of utterly indifferent troposphere, serving no practical purpose other than to establish that whatever is underneath it is nominally capable of having a sail attached to it, should anyone ever feel like untying fifteen complicated knots in the drizzle.
To the right, several small motor cruisers float in gentle, mutual incomprehension. In the far distance, a vast pier sits on the horizon like an abandoned thought, while somewhere just out of frame, a man in a windcheater is almost certainly patting his pockets in the creeping realization that he has locked the car keys inside a coolbox.