Cruisers Who Fail...

[GordMay]

Great thread, despite it’s negative title.
A profusion of perceptive insights !!!
Please, keep them coming.

[feelsgood]

Originally Posted by maxingout

I don't think cruising is much different than most areas of life.

The dream house becomes a money pit and nightmare for many people.

The dream vacation turns into another chorus of "Is that all there is?".

The dream car turns out to be an expensive maintenance nightmare.

People who are healthy with a good dose of commonsense, an affordable yacht, and good economic times probably will have a good cruise.

If you lose your health, or if the bottom falls out of the economy, then the dream fequently sinks as well.

When people change, their dreams change as well.

I enjoy stories of ordinary people who do extraordinary things. It inspires me to live my dreams. Stories of people who are beaten down by life and who surrender their dreams don't do much for me.

A good example is the story of Ardel Lien who did a solo circumnavigation in a Norsea 27 a couple of years after undergoing a double transplant - heart and kidneys - at the Mayo Clinic. I need as much encouragement as I can get, and so I don't read stories that pull me down and make it harder to get through the day.

Everyday that I go to work at the hospital, I see people struggling with endstage disease whose dreams have crashed and burned. Not very inspiring. On the other hand, when I tell those same people about my sailing trip around the world, I see their eyes light up as they ask questions about our voyage. I give them a spark of inspiration that gives them hope that they can take charge of their life and their challenges and start living some of their scaled down dreams.

20 years ago I droped dead in my wifes arms at the hospital from a heart attack. 4 years later I had a tripple bypas and loop. after the operation the surgen asked me what I was going to do now. I replied I was going to take life by the tail and give it a bloody good shaking. Since then we have sailed over 112000 miles and had a load of fun and meet great people and encouraged many more that have sufferes the same. WE say you have one live (or in my case 2) so LIVE it you are a long time dead.
Regars Pete and Sally FeelsGood

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by feelsgood

take life by the tail and give it a bloody good shaking. Since then we have sailed over 112000 miles

Great story

[Therapy]

CVH,
You got more answers than I. http://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/...-up-14778.html

Time of year?

Good read. I still realize I/we won't know until it is tried. Baby steps for now.
Got beat up on Thursday going north into 20k NE with this nasty Gulf of Mexico "chop". Only four footers as average but the 3 second period sucked the most! Really sucked.
Why.
We needed to get back as a family member was hospitalized and we are the "medical" people in a very close family. Had to get home. Against all the rules - well maybe just the first rule - I know.
Oh well.

Hey, if we are both nurses then does that drop the odds even more?

Maybe it will just be the fact that except since childhood I have not seen a 3rd world lifestyle and have not had the highs and lows as an adult that one poster mentioned. interesting.....

Hey Mark. I am sorry to hear you still have trouble coiling rope. If you are ever on the west coast of Florida...........................

[Stillraining]

Nah!!! you just didnt use the word "fail".....its the old negitive sells kind of a thing..

[rustypirate]

I will tell you of three cruising "failure" stories.

The first one I was told....

When we arrived at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club in 1979, we enquired about a derelict CT56 that was tied up to one of the jettys. The story went something like this:

A couple from the US retired with the dream of cruising the world on their own sailboat and commissioned the CT56. They took delivery of the boat in Taiwan and prepared for the shakedown cruise to Hong Kong to get their sea legs. As both the husband and wife were getting on in years, they brought their grown son along to help out during the shakedown just until they felt confident enough to carry on on their own. (The impression I got from the person telling the tale was that these people were not experienced sailors in their own right).
About 2 days travel from Taiwan, the boat's prop and rudder became fouled in one of the many floating fishing nets that litter the area, and as the only physically capable member of the crew, the son went overboard to clear things up.
He made one fatal mistake, thinking that with no sails raised the boat was stationary. It was not. The man failed to secure himself to the boat with a lifeline, and very quickly became seperated from the yacht. He simply could not swim fast enough to catch up with the drifting boat, and the husband and wife, (unable to engage the engine or even steer the boat around), were forced to watch their son dissappear over the horizon.
Eventually the boat was towed into Hong Kong, and the couple tied her up to the jetty, walked off with only the clothes on their backs, and never set foot on her again.

The second story is of a couple that were sailing around South Africa in 1983, and got caught in rough weather attempting to make the turn around Cape Agulhas.
this couple were experienced blue water cruisers, with a tried and tested blue water boat. When they began to have difficulty with the weather, they contacted the South African Coast Guard (REDDING), to inform them of their position and that they would be turning back to East London. the Coast Guard dispatched a boat to watch for them "just in case", and as the boat came closer they requested that the sailors send up a signal flare to identify their exact location.
As fate would have it, the hand-held flare that they lit off was faulty and exploded in the man's hand. The situation had changed instantly form one of orderly retreat from foul weather to a real medical emergency. The crew of the boat (man and wife) were evacuated to shore, and the boat left to the sea hove to.
Aparently some less than scrupulous savage operators heard the radio traffic and figured that they could make some easy money off of the boat, and set out to bring it in. In the process they dismasted and heavily damaged the boat, but got it into East London, where they immediately claimed it as salvage.
To their credit, the people of East London would not stand for such abuse of a fellow sailor, (theyare a very active sailing community). The town forced the salvage company to give the boat back, although damaged. A house was given over to the sailing couple to use while recovering form the injury and repairing the boat, and materials were generously donated to repair the hull, and rebuild the wodden mast.
Several months later the whole town came down to the docks to send off their adopted sailing family on the continuation of their journey.

The last story is one a little closer to home....
As you can already tell by some of this post, I was fortunate enough to share in the dream of my family (parents and brother) to sail the world and enjoy the cruisong lifestyle while I was still a boy. From the age of 12 to 17 we lived and traveled on our boat throughout the South China Sea, Indian Ocean, and across the Atlantic.
This journey ignited in my brother and I a yearning for the same freedom and adventure that we had then. Over the years my brother and I would talk of our plans to buy this boat, or to build that boat, and take off... I even got so close I could taste the open ocean with my own boat under me, but allways something else would come up.
A few years ago I seperated from my wife, and eventually divorced, leaving her inLondon with her family while I returned to Florida. When we were married I had let perish my dream of cruising the world again, but now that I was single, I have yet again bought a boat, and started preparing her for the open ocean.
A couple of months ago I was talking with my brother again about my boat and my plans, and he told me that he felt that I would never go. He said that all I wanted to do was prepare, but that I lacked the conviction to actually set out on the journey.
I was shocked. How could he SAY that?

then I realized....
How sad... how sad is the man that lets his own dreams die to the extent that he cannot recognize the fire burning in his own brother's very beeing to overcome all the adversity life throws at a person and yet still cling to that same dream.

I will endure.
I will set sail for that far horizon, and I will hazard the journey.
If I am beaten, and broken, I will still continue on until I am no more.
and no matter what the outcome, I will never have failed, because I will have ridden on the back of my dream to the end.

The only true story of failure that I have written here is the last one. The story of a man's failure to cling to his dreams, for without our dreams, we are truly very sad indeed.

[Alaska JD]

Without dreams we are simply waiting to die. I would challange the idea that your final story is of true failure. For a time you may have lost your grip on your dreams, but in the end you have reclaimed them with a passion that will not be concured. In the end the journey is your own and you are the only one who gets to give it meaning.

Sail on my friend

[James S]

I think the failure is the brothers.

[Stillraining]

I believe in you RustyPirate...you will succeed.

[feelsgood]

Originally Posted by Stillraining

I believe in you RustyPirate...you will succeed.

The worst words to hear form a diying persons lips are "I wish I had done that"

[Tom Hildebrandt]

The possibility of a dream lost is the reason my wife and I split up, I realized she could never be happy sailing, and she realized that I could never be happy if I was not living my dream of sailing.

In the course of discussions, she told me that the deciding factor for her was this idea that I would be denied my dream if we tried to stay married regardless of the love we still share after 30 plus years. She related to me a story I did not know about my father, she apparently had a long chat with him several weeks before he died about his participation in China during WWII. Dad was an attorney who was asked after the war ended to go to participate in the Nuremburg trials, and was thrilled at the idea. He really felt like it was an exceptional opportunity, but my mother asked him not to go; she wanted him to return to the states to have a normal married life. Dad gave up the dream and I was the result of the decision. Dad never mentioned the sacrifice he made to me, but my wife said that she felt that the one thing "he wished he had done" was to participate as one of the trial lawyers at Nuremburg. She related this story to me as she expained why she felt it was necessary for us to be divorced. She said she did not want to be the cause, either directly or indirectly, of denying me my dream since I was 16.

So I am now sailing solo, and while I do enjoy the life, what I do regret is not having someone special to share the highs (and the lows.) To paraphrase a line from a song I once heard, " After all, the world seen though one pair of eyes is only half explored!"

Regards

Tom

[Christian Van H]

Originally Posted by rustypirate

The only true story of failure that I have written here is the last one. The story of a man's failure to cling to his dreams, for without our dreams, we are truly very sad indeed.

I think it's OK that your brother's dream has changed. Goals and dreams often change in life. It's the reason I'm not a fireman or an astronaut. What's not cool is his negativity about something so dear to you. Wish I could say I never experienced this myself, but MOST of my family, and several of my friends are negative about our plans. My sister barely speaks of it, my mother pretends we're not leaving, Marisa's mom lays down guilt about separating from the family...you get the picture. THEY DON'T WANT US TO LEAVE. There's a whole World out there, and your brother can read the blog. RustyPirate, if you want support, you found it right here.

Hello. My name is Christian, and I'm a Cruise-a-holic.

[sneuman]

Originally Posted by Christian Van H

I think it's OK that your brother's dream has changed. Goals and dreams often change in life. It's the reason I'm not a fireman or an astronaut. What's not cool is his negativity about something so dear to you. Wish I could say I never experienced this myself, but MOST of my family, and several of my friends are negative about our plans. My sister barely speaks of it, my mother pretends we're not leaving, Marisa's mom lays down guilt about separating from the family...you get the picture. THEY DON'T WANT US TO LEAVE. There's a whole World out there, and your brother can read the blog. RustyPirate, if you want support, you found it right here.

Hello. My name is Christian, and I'm a Cruise-a-holic.

I got very much the same reaction both times I moved the family overseas. I don't mean this to be disrespectful, but for many (most?) people, their world really doesn't extend much beyond their hometown. Those people don't understand why anyone else would see the possibilities in life any differently.

[lancelot9898]

Originally Posted by Tom Hildebrandt

So I am now sailing solo, and while I do enjoy the life, what I do regret is not having someone special to share the highs (and the lows.) To paraphrase a line from a song I once heard, " After all, the world seen though one pair of eyes is only half explored!"

Mark Twain had a similar quote going something like...to receive a full value of a joy it must be divided

While I am goal orientated to me it's not so much the destination, but rather the journey that's important. In one of the solo round the world races back in the 60's, the frenchman, Barnard Mointerure(sp) decided to forego winning the race and continued his circumnavigation a second time around.

I've lived aboard my boat for over 20 years and while I've never crossed the pond much less sailed around the capes, there is no regret. I've traveled from Florida to Block Island and cruised LI sound and the Cheaspeake and sailed with others in the Pacific NW. However what I enjoyed the most was meeting and getting to know world cruisers during those years and hearing their stories. Most if not all stayed put at the dock during the months I had the opportunity to know them while I was going sailing almost every day. While I had auto pilots(both wind and power) very seldom did I use them and just wanted to hand steer and feel at one with nature. One fellow from NZ said that after he left port that he seldom touch the wheel until arrival at the next port of call. I took him out sailing one day and he commented that he was glad that his wife did not come along since she hated when the boat heeled.

My goals now are to continue to sail as much as possible..maybe hike the entire 2000 mile Appalacian Trail from start to finish....and to be able to keep up with my daughter in the Lynchburg, Va 10 miler run every fall.

[rebel heart]

I think your odds go up a lot higher if you can enjoy every day of your life more than the day before, regardless of what gets thrown at you.

The moment of your greatest victory is followed instantly by the moment you lose it. You can't have this idea in your head that there's some better place right around the next corner.

If life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, then drink to life's good health with a smile. Constant will power, a positive mind, and a dash of humility.