..that the plan to sail to Hawaii after SF has been changed. Now the boat will be sold in the Bay Area and the crew will return home. It was not an easy decision to make but continuing on to Hawaii would not be prudent given the collective capabilities of the crew. The boat was sound enough although only at the last minute. Our plan had been to do some intensive on the water training in the Salish Sea specifically in the eastern section of the Strait of Juan De Luca after the crew had taken some lessons and gotten some practice prior to our meeting. Unfortunately all the work on the boat leading up to our meeting and once we were together got in the way of this. Originally my proposal to meet beforehand and do a shakedown of the boat and crew was with time between departure to allow for any deficiencies to be addressed. This was vetoed in favor of a back to back shakedown and cast off. Had we allowed time between shakedown and departure we could have dealt with these.
When I was contacted about the passage and potential job I went through my original protocol and asked for sailing resumes and the most recent survey.
The survey showed an older vessel with the original engine and high hours and the sailing resumes showed a boat owner with no night sailing experience and a crew with very little sailing experience and motion sickness susceptibility. In addition, none of the crew had formal sailing experience. I spoke to the owner about the high hours and was told he wasn’t concerned about it as the engine was well maintained. I went on to say in our early correspondence that having so little experience and time to prepare put a lot of pressure on crew and things going smoothly and that a good way of hedging these bets would be to enlist an experienced professional for a first mate. Unfortunately this advice was also dismissed.
It would be fair to ask why I agreed to this after this correspondence but the prospect of a downwind Hawaii passage was so tempting I agreed with the condition that we do the aforementioned intensive training and testing prior to entering the ocean and that rather than sailing straight to Hawaii that we sail down the coast to SF and then make a collective decision whether to sail to Hawaii. This would give anyone aboard the option to get off the boat if they were not up to the passage due to sea sickness or something else and the contract required both owner and captain to agree to continue.
We moderns are so sheltered from the power of Mother Nature it is easy to ether be so scared of the outdoors you never venture far from the path or you leap into the deep end without preparation.
In this case rather than preparation and time; money was spend on equipment and a professional was hired. It could be said that time was spent yes but not enough. How much time does someone need to take something like this on is subjective. How much bandwidth do we have? How much bandwidth is left over everyday after work and family to get a vessel and oneself prepared? I don’t believe that you can’t teach and old dog new tricks but my experience teaching all ages for the past 27 years is that I can teach every knot I know to a class of 10 year olds and the next day they will remember most and a class of people over the age of 50 take significantly longer to learn..
Everywhere companies are advertising the idea that we can buy our way out of trouble and into opportunity but where it applies to things where experience is required this is absolutely wrong. Time can be traded for money but not the other way around. Some things require time to be spent on experience and with experience amazing rare opportunities can be had like sailing a little boat (and all boats are little in the sea) across an unpredictable ocean from the safety of one shore to another.
As the greek philosopher Heraclitus said you can’t cross the same river twice, it is not the same river and you are not the same person. The real value and meaning of that kind of experience is not telling people you did it but the transformation and maturity it can produce. This journey starts long before you get to untie the lines.
There is a place that is over 1000 nautical miles from any land where if you break the boat or someone gets seriously hurt it will take over a week to get to help. I consider myself a representative of this place.
When we arrived in SF I asked the crew if they had any reservations about sailing on to Hawaii after our performance down the coast. They all said they had none. I told them that I didnt feel they were ready and that there was not another sailor aboard strong enough to back me up to make me feel good about taking on the risk as captain. They than asked if I knew someone who could join us who I could rely on. I told them what I told them in January; that finding someone worth their salt with nothing on their schedule for two and a half weeks in July with no notice was very unlikly but that I would try. I spent the day reaching out to folks and proposed that if we didn’t find someone we could sail to Mexico and that it would be a much better suited journey to their collective skill level. This way they could spend more time learning and visiting with each other because they could hop down the coast and have time to recap and process the lessons learned.
I couldn’t find someone with that little notice and they were not interested in anything but sailing to Hawaii. I proposed that we do it next year and “Im not getting any younger” was the response.
All or nothing requires ALL. You can do anything you put your mind to but you cant put your mind to anything.