I bottled out! Not making the trip. 😟
I’m surprised at myself, feeling analytical. I’d like to understand my own thought process on this, see what I can learn.
First, crew issues!
The skipper is a decent guy and seems to know what he’s doing. We do have different thinking about clutter, and like different foods though, although the former is not a deal-breaker. The latter could be a problem, but it’s the kind of thing you can put up with and work around for a couple of weeks if you’re really committed.
There was another crew member, a very intense lady who struggled to manage her own stresses. Clutter was an even bigger deal for her, she was even more particular about food but her tastes were even more divergent from mine than the skippers. After a few days of prepping for the trip she threw a wobbly and stormed off, roundly cursing me and anyone else in earshot.
So then we were two, and that made it all a bit harder. The issue is capacity and redundancy. With three people on board you can easily manage the boat if one is incapacitated, and have more hands and problem-solvers if something goes wrong. With just two you’re generally fine, but have nothing in reserve. I’m not an especially experienced sailor and this was a long trip far from land, I’d rather be part of a bigger crew.
And let’s talk about the boat.
I’ve sailed, and owned, old boats before. It didn’t really bother me that this one was 50+ years old. And it seemed to be in pretty good shape over all, until I learned that the solar panels had all been rescued from rubbish bins at different times. Someone had thrown them away and my guy had decided to fit them on his boat, to cross oceans with.
Hmm. Ooooookay! 😮
So the panels worked, but then the skipper mentioned that he would need to turn the fridge off at night because there wasn’t enough juice in the batteries to keep it running. This alarmed me, and not just because I want to keep food fresh for as long as possible. If the fridge is well-insulated it will stay cold overnight, which means it doesn’t need a lot of power to stay at its proper temperature. But if it warms up overnight because it’s not well insulated then it needs a lot of power to get the temperature down again the next day. Either way, you don’t actually use less electricity overall by turning the fridge off at night. Something was wrong here.
If your batteries don’t hold enough juice to run a fridge overnight, how long will they last if the sun doesn’t shine? You turn the fridge off, and then what? How long until your navigation equipment stops working? You’ll be 500 miles from land, sailing by dead reckoning, and I didn’t see any paper charts on board.
Again, the issue is redundancy, spare capacity. Everything will probably be fine but if it all goes titsup then you have nothing to fall back on.
But really, the issue here is that I just wasn’t committed. These concerns made it easy to justify bailing on the trip, they’re not the whole reason.
Normally when I go sailing I’m unbearably cheerful about it. I’m ebullient, boisterous, excited to get out on the water. There was none of that this time around. From the start I was distracted, checking my messages, not in the moment.
I simply had too much going on to let me relax and be in the moment. I had been busy trying to figure out my next moves for the remainder of the year and through the winter, and nothing was resolved. If this opportunity had come along a month later, and I had completed the season as intended rather than getting fired, I would have been stress-free and had no cares in the world.
Instead my head was elsewhere and I was worrying about missing emails, missing opportunities, while I was at sea. I wasn’t in the moment, wasn’t able to be in the moment, so I was very susceptible to discouragement.
It was a fucking expensive lesson. Ryanair don’t fly to Terceira, and it cost me a fortune to get back to the UK. I hope I don’t forget it!
PS The other crew lady came back and took my place, and I watched their position updates online. They made slow progress northish for a few days, meandered around a bit, then returned to Terceira as slowly as they had left. They got back about a week after starting out, and I haven’t been in touch to find out what happened, but I feel a bit vindicated.