The imperfect sailor

For who ever considered himself a perfect sailor

La possibilità di un'isola

Team Vesta Wind/Volvo Ocean Race

It took me a trip inland and a guided tour of a famous landmark to have an insight of how imperfection and errors are an important part of human beings’ nature. Not that I was unaware of that, but the power of insights lay in making a meaningful reality of what is known and obvious. Also, that same day, November 30, the impossible happened, as a yacht equipped with the latest navigation technologies and highly trained crew ran aground on a remote but charted reef in the Indian Ocean during the Volvo Ocean Race.

But let’s move back to what originated that insight. I spent Thanksgiving holidays with Kate and her family in their hometown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I have a particular affinity for this city, that goes over my love for Kate and her family. Once known as the land of coal mines and…

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Burnout at sea

La possibilità di un'isola

Last night a new guy came in the crew house I am staying in. A young, apparently healthy and fit guy with a nice smile like many in the superyacht industry. I guessed he was looking for place to stay and for a job on a yacht but after a little while I started noticing that he had some difficulty walking and standing. He was wandering around the house purposeless. It turned out that he was completely drunk so we helped him to find his way to the bed and have a deep rest. From the few information we collected, we understood that he was crewing a boat and then he suddenly left to go to a bar to get drunk and find a place to stay. This morning a colleague from the same yacht came to pick him up and bring him back. It was evident to me that…

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Sailing and stress

La possibilità di un'isola

“Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.”

Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

Stress is not a disease you can cure or eliminate, it is a condition we all experience. In sailing, the amount of stress you can experience can drastically build up to a distress situation and the risks and outcomes of such situation can be dramatic. Sailors are well trained and used to cope with potentially stressful situations and their panic threshold is higher than the average person. Sailors and crew, however, are not immune to the dangerous effects of high level of stress exposure.

The ocean is a wild environment that doesn’t forgive errors and forces sailors and crew into extreme conditions. Facing the ocean requires preparation, training and a strong dose of confidence in your ability to cope with the unexpected.  While we can control our training, the safety standards and the maintenance…

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Study Concludes Expats That Lose Accent May Suffer From Low Self Esteem. Or Be International Spies. Or Both.

The General Alarm

“Your accent is the knocker on the door to who you are,” explains Dr. Einurhed, lead researcher of a multi-year, multi-person, multi-conclusion, multi-multi study focussing on that subject (accents, not door-knockers). “It says ‘Hey I’m fancy’, or ‘Hey, I’m loud and obnoxious’, or ‘Hey, I’m just a plain old knob’. So when you change that significantly over a short period of time what you’re really saying is ‘I’m not very sure of myself so I’m happy to try out other people’s knockers’.”

Her in-depth study canvassed communities of global expats living as far afield as the International Space Station, and in as bizarre a circumstance as something called ‘yacht-crew’, in which people of mixed nationalities agree to live on other peoples’ boats and go wherever they are told, sometimes for years or even decades, all while doing something known as ‘living the dream’.

Over the course of days, weeks, months…

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