A Year Ago

Position: 18°4’28″N 63°5’19″W

A year ago, we set sail from St Martin to cross the Atlantic. I was shit scared. But I knew at some point you have to choose: go forward or live in infamy. I had three crew raring to go. The rigging inspection was a formality and we had secured our insurance rider. We’d spent two days cooking and freezing meals. We had moved Aleta’s life raft from her portside stern rail to the cabin top. The weather window opened. I had run out of excuses. It was time to pull up my big boy sailor’s shorts and fish. Cutting bait was no longer an option.

My buddy Mark asked me a couple of months ago what it was like sailing across the Atlantic. At the time I answered in travelogue platitudes. It was good, I said. We did this. We did that. I knew my answers were incomplete and unsatisfying. I knew he was asking a different, deeper question.

He wanted to know what demons I wrestled with that led to the decision of taking a 40’ floating RV, three crew, and a dog into an environment that is not only hostile, but completely isolated. After all, in the United States you’re never more than 12 miles from a road. Distance in the Atlantic is calculated in days, not miles. Rescue is never imminent. Crossing it is (a lot of) pure luck.

Even as a VP at HP there was never a decision that involved life or death. Never. Not even vicariously. We weren’t at war. So, just what kind of sociopath decides to take volunteers into circumstances that are completely beyond anyone’s control and expect them to thrive? Well, me. I guess.

A year ago if I’d said, “No, we’re not going”, we would probably still be floating around the Caribbean. As captain, however much my crew may have wanted the adventure, it was my decision. And it wasn’t an easy one. Anticipating the moment made me grumpy for weeks.

When Carol and I started this adventure our goal, well, certainly my goal as captain, was to take things slowly and learn. I had sailed for over 40 years before we bought Aleta, just never with my own boat. Or offshore. Away from the sight of land. My knowledge of boat systems was laughable. Let’s face it, a career in marketing is completely useless when it comes to clearing a blocked head a thousand miles from shore.

With Carol nearly as green as a Lucky Charm, our learning curve was steep. Our first year at sea was taking one calculated risk after another to see how far we could go. Could we judge weather windows? Could we find an anchorage before a storm came? Could we set a course across the Gulf Stream and end up in Bimini and not in Cuba? Turns out, we could.

Sprinkled between my career of making PowerPoints I managed to garner some process analysis and respect for planning. Uncle Hugh taught me many nautical things. Chief among them was listening to the weather forecast at least once a day and adjusting plans as necessary. Ultimately, I realized that I had two generations of experience, research and problem solving to draw on. It wasn’t that I was a complete numb nuts. I just had to organize my experience better. Something like the knowns, known unknowns, and the utter frickin’ surprises.

Still, in that first year it was just Carol and me. No dog. No children. No friends. Just the two of us learning together. Building trust through shared experience. When a third party joins the crew, the dynamics change. It’s no longer two against nature. We have souls on board that need caring for.

My own reconciliation of the selfish joys of adventuring and a captain’s responsibility for his crew’s welfare took many months. It finally resolved when we saw clouds over Faial after 15 days at sea and we cheered!

Last December our crewmate Karen told us a mountain climbing story. As a co-founder of Mountain Madness with uber-mountaineering guide Scott Fischer, Karen periodically took risks that by ordinary standards appear insane. One day, thousands of feet up a mountain, crossing a cornice, Scott, turned to the group, including Karen, and pointed to a crevice at risk of breaking away and said, “Don’t fuck up here.” Until I crossed the Atlantic, Scott’s was not a lesson in leadership I could appreciate.

Yet, before we left St Martin, somewhere in my gut I understood it’s not my job to make life decisions for my crew. That is theirs’ to own. My job as captain is to establish routines and protocols while at sea that give us the best chances for success. My job is to trust. To let other baggage go. To check the weather forecast twice a day and adjust as necessary. Most important, perhaps, is to not fuck up.