People who have seen ocean racing videos ask me “why?”
Fellow sailors who know about what I have set out to do, ask “why solo?”
I can come up with so many complicated answers. Answers that would satisfy just about every expectation. But I always end up giving them the truth–in a very matter of fact manner.
“Because I want to.”
Before the sponsors, before the social media posts, I couldn’t have cared less about what my circle of friends or the rest of the concerned world would think about my campaign for solo ocean racing.
Nobody needs to know, and I was doing it purely for personal reasons. I had, rather naively, thought of saving-up and funding myself. I had the means, and the drive. So, why not?
Because my priorities in life have changed.
My younger self never had plans of getting married. Yet here I am, happily married.
My younger, free spirited self had always wanted to be a vagabond of the world. My ADHD never allowing me to stay put. Never being satisfied by being in just one place. Yet here I am, a husband sharing a wonderful home with my significant other.
Everything–my best laid plans had been made prior to my turning thirty. I was not aware that things could change at an instant when you are faced with the perfect person at a perfect moment.
Needles to say, I found the one person who would motivate me to go forth and have my adventures, but also give me such compelling reason to return to one place–and actually want to stay there with her.
So now, I need to have work-life balance–not because I am forced to, but because–like my adventures, I want to.
She does the budget (math, math and more math) so perfectly well, and explained in a manner I would understand.
She said “Yes, you have the means to fund yourself. But you also need time on the water. The more time on the water you spend, the less money you make. The more money you make, the less time on the water you have.”
She also threw in: “You are blessed with uncanny creativity. Figure out how to get it done without compromising your married life.”
When your wife is the voice of reason in your life, you have to listen. There’s also the fact that every experienced sailor I have talked to advised me to have sponsors fund the whole thing, saying “a boat is merely a hole in the water you throw money into” blah-blah-blah.
Okay. I get it. I have taken your advice dear wife and sober-but-sometimes-inebriated-friends.
Let’s get this chugging along, and let’s get ourselves some sponsors crazy enough to believe in what we believe in, and to see the grand plan that we see.
