22. The Person Who Didn't Go

White Rocks Marina, Pasadena

Why am I doing this?

I am planning to sail across the South Atlantic. About 4,500 nautical miles. That’s half as much again as the distance I sailed across the North Atlantic. It crosses the Equator with all that this implies.

It’s not so much the dangers of storms, ships, accidental mishaps, breakages and the many things that can kill a man at sea. But more, am I squandering my few remaining years? 

When I set off at the end of the year, I will be 66 years old. Each year matters now, the last few metres on the runway. There’s an endpoint.

I don’t want to fritter away my last few years on childish things.

There are considerable resources going into this. The boat herself. The refitting her, equipping, maintaining, just the the monthly cost of docking her - a sailboat is the slowest and most expensive way of getting anywhere. 

Am I pouring my children's inheritance into the sea? 

I love my wife. I love spending time with her. She loves me. She doesn’t love sailing. Am I putting this before her?

At considerable cost to my family, am I self-indulgently chasing Fool’s Gold? For what? A last hurrah? An ego thing to prove that I can still do it?

Instead of planning the crossing, instead of making a route plan, just forget the Atlantic, forget Cape Horn. I could decide to not go. It’s a simpler plan. Not a bad one. I just stay in harbour, maybe a few day trips, maybe a retirement small hop cruise to the Mediterranean. Pleasant harbours, pleasant holidays. It would be nice. People would be envious. “That Dan Andersson knows how to live,” they would say.

Instead of turning SV Beyond into a passage maker, I could make it a comfortable Gin Palace. And my life would become a diminishing palette of safe colours, safe choices, safe ideas. Without much to write home about: “Woke up, drank Gin and Tonic, went to bed. I love boat life.”

A different kind of risk.

And I have often wondered, because I am an old man, if what I am creating here is just for olds. Am I just writing for Baby Boomers? Maybe. But I also think this is a universal, equally relevant to a young person. When I was 20 the challenge was the same. It’s always easier to drift. 

If you don’t put yourself to the test you become… untested. I faced this test before.

I was 21 and travelled South across Europe. 45 years ago. I hitchhiked, journeyed by train and ferries, and it was cold. January and winter so I kept going South. Got to Athens. Eventually ended up on the South Coast of Crete (but that’s another story). While in Athens I knew I had to see the Acropolis. Sunrise, chilly morning, a bit of mist (though I might be making that up in my recollection) and there it was. Looming high above me making me feel small. 

I had set off from Sweden and it struck me that the epic ruins of stone on stone predated my country’s entire Viking ancestral culture. By a thousand years and more. 

And having stood the test of time that well, it was interesting to see that the base of it, the cliff base, was almost obscured by scaffolding. They were doing something to maintain it, repair it, I never knew what, but the net result was that there was a scaffolding that reached from the ground all the way up to the foundation of the Parthenon.

And it was early. Very few people about. So I decided, heart beating in my chest, to climb up to the top and have a moment with the Acropolis on my own, just me and her.

45 years later I still remember the rung by rung climb up the scaffolding ladders, crossing the eerily empty open flat area around the buildings, walking up the steps to touch the Doric pillars of the Parthenon, standing there and just having a quiet moment looking out at the morning sky over Athens. Just me. Not one else. No crush of tourists. For a moment. Then all hell broke loose, when staff and guards chased me out of the venerated Greek site. 

But I will always have that climb and that moment with the Parthenon. My imagination and courage challenged my conformity - and my conformity and playing it safe lost.

I don’t know if it became a generative principle in my life, a “If I did Acropolis, what else can I do?” Maybe.

Or maybe there is a reality in which I decided to not climb that scaffolding. Maybe in that reality I would mock the foolish impulse that I obviously did not act on, because “realism”, or “maturity” or “being sensible”. And maybe that became another generative principle - because of that I also didn’t do a thousand other things.

Everything good in my life has come from moments of taking a courageous leap. Going for a new job. Starting a business. Picking up the phone and calling the girl who became my wife and life partner. 

Every time a blind decision, every time a roll of the dice, every time an outcome impossible to predict. 

Every time a risk.

Maybe the point is not the glorious win. Maybe the point is the person you become by making the decisions you make. Maybe my family pays the price for the person I become. I pray it’s a good trade.

But of course it’s an ego thing - it’s about the person I want to be. 

I refuse to become the person who didn’t go.