If I am afraid of the water there is no way I am letting them out in it!
Part of Patrick’s initial strategy to convince me to sail around the world with him was to ply me with sailing videos. His reasoning was that the more I saw the more the whole thing would be normalized for me. And in that he was absolutely correct. I would watch Jess of Teleport and her green face and realize that even when it looks crazy and scary it seemed to be survivable. Having done the overland motorcycle travel thing I knew that long-term travel was not all glamour. It might have been fun, but it came with it’s own set of challenges. So the fact she was sick was a minor drawback, the fact she lived was a major plus.
It didn’t mean I wanted to actually go sailing. But people living through the scary bits helped me to at least seriously start to consider it.
And then I saw a video that I really wished I had bookmarked. It was a family sailing around the world and the father said something that changed how I approached the entire venture. He said that (and I need to bold and italicize this, so bear with me! And I am paraphrasing as well.)
“There is a big difference between being afraid and being in danger.”
That alone made me move forward with the plan.
Fast forward a couple of years and you have us actually casting off. We have our 4 and 2 year olds in tow and our dog Mango. (Who is in fact not keen on the sailing thing. He is even less keen on not being around Patrick. So he is also a reluctant sailor).
And a lot of our video from the first couple of weeks has a lot of this:
And this
Or basically me way out of my comfort zone and yet still dealing with it. There were times when I thought I was going to jump out of my skin I was so afraid. And yet we survived. And dare I say it, we even have fun.
The next post I will share how to be a good captain and ensure your reluctant sailors stay at least sailors, and may even be converted to enthusiastic ones. (I even jump off the boat to tie Falkor up now. This is huge!).
Until then jump on the list to get the collection of blog posts on how we went from “never no way” to cast off.