Glenn Robbins | S/V Fearless

Dream to Reality – Getting Started

by Glenn Robbins | Jul 12, 2021 | Transition

On June 14, 2021, we sold Fearless to another family who, like us, decided to turn their sailing dreams into reality. We were excited for them, and happy we had found someone who would enjoy and care for our boat as much as we did. But, it wasn’t easy walking away. Fearless was our home for two years. She had shepherded us through good times and bad, rocked us to sleep at night in many a strange harbor, and been our personal island sanctuary when we needed to retreat from the world. Perhaps one day we will look back on our decision to sell her and conclude we were crazy to walk away from something we had worked so hard to achieve. However, we knew we didn’t want to do this for years on end, so it seemed like a logical point to stop.

Despite the hard decision to stop sailing, there is a positive side to this that will influence us for the rest of our lives. The seal around the willingness to do something amazing has been forever broken. We actually did what we said we were going to do, and consequently unlocked the secrets of how to turn a dream into reality.

Team Fearless in Newport, RI in August 2019. We had no idea how much the world would change when we started our adventure.

Quick spoiler – it had very little to do with money.

Now that we are back on land, it’s worth sharing some thoughts about how we did it. I have already posted about the background story and why we made the decision to go sailing. In this one I talked about the intial fears and limiting beliefs we had about cruising, and in this one I gave a one-year reflective look on whether or not any of our fears came to pass.

To be sure, there were many benefits to what we did. There were also challenges, and it would be misleading to pretend they didn’t exist. With this in mind, my goal is to be as transparent as possible as I walk you through the hows, whys, and so whats. It wasn’t amazing every day, and I don’t want to give the impression that we lived a perfect life afloat. There were some tough moments out there, but it was in those moments we grew the most. The key takeaway is that the overall experience was life-changing in ways that I never imagined. We are not the same people we were two years ago. Our children have seen and experienced things that no classroom could ever hope to replicate. We became more confident, self-reliant, and worldly, and that says a lot for a military family that had been stationed overseas on multiple occasions.

Like many people, we had been following some inspiring YouTube channels featuring people who had quit their lives and gone sailing. Despite our excitement about the possibility of following in their footsteps, we were also overwhelmed by the amount of courage it must have taken them to actually do it. So, we sat timidly on our couch and lived vicariously through their experiences. At some point (I don’t remember when) we started asking ourselves some hard questions. Why not us? What is holding us back? What is the worst thing that could happen to us? What fears are standing in our way? What will it take to turn our dream into a reality?

Once we figured out we were the ones holding ourselves back, we made the decision to stop dreaming and start doing. That’s it. It’s as simple as that. We are not special. We are not wealthy. We are not blessed with superhuman qualities.

We just did it. So can you. Here is how.

2. Hold Yourself Accountable. The simplest, most effective way to start is to put dates on your calendar and honor them. Use those dates to put together a solid plan, then work hard to meet the milestones you establish in it. This is obvious to many people, yet it is the difference between talking and doing. Trust me, if you are dreaming about a mid-life sabbatical or a break between careers, you will have a lot to do. However…and this is blindingly obvious…what at first seems impossible will quickly become manageable when you can start figuring out the order and magnitude of the tasks in front of you. We needed to sell a couple cars, pare down our belongings, find a boat, survey and buy the boat, put our remaining belongings in storage, then move aboard. I had the benefit of a known ending date to my military career so I didn’t have to orchestrate my departure from work, but even that can be manageable if you make it part of your milestones. Regardless, it was still a giant transition for us, so we needed to lay out specific tasks in a well-organized timeline.

The point here isn’t to tell you how to plan your life, and I don’t want to imply that we were organizational geniuses. I merely want to emphasize there is a huge difference between a dream and a plan, and it’s very easy to put your dream on a shelf when it feels like you can’t gain traction. Once we started to check things off our list of tasks, a curious thing happened. We suddenly started meeting people who could help us. These were people with whom we had never crossed paths before, yet they were either friends of friends or people who literally lived a few houses down the street. We found ourselves asking them, “where have you have been our whole lives?” The answer is they were always there somewhere, but how were they supposed to know we needed them? The incredible part is those people enthusiastically helped us even though they were new acquaintances, and they connected us with even more people who could help us. Without much effort our cruising-focused network quickly began to fill with the right people, and suddenly we gained traction…a lot of traction. The bottom line is that until you commit to a specific start date and supporting timeline, people will politely smile and tell you how amazing your dream sounds, and that’s as far as it will go.

In addition to putting dates on a calendar and holding yourself accountable, there is even another, more powerful step you can take to maximize the effectiveness and results of your planning and execution.

3. Hire a Coach. Most people have heard of at least a couple famous athletes. Do you think they got to the top of their game by going it alone? Of course not. Pro athletes benefit from a lifetime of dedicated coaches at every level. A coach can make you a whole lot better, too, and there is a coach out there for just about every activity. Take cruising as an example. Some people spend years preparing for an adventure like we just concluded. We didn’t have that luxury (or foresight) to do that, so we hired coaches to short circuit the process. Coaches not only helped us become better, they also held us accountable to milestones and objectives. Most important, coaches saved us a lot of time and money. Money was certainly important, but time was even more so. For most of us, a mid-career/life adventure might be only six months or several years, but either way, it has a beginning and an end. As a result, you will want to maximize whatever time you have set aside, and nothing can help you more than hiring a coach to guide you through the preparation for, and execution of, your plan. Remember, time and money are always at war with each other. Time is precious and finite. Money is just money.

A coach might seem like an unnecessary expenditure. but ours saved us a TON of money. They used their extensive knowledge and experience to help us research boats that were seaworthy, well-equipped, and still within our budget. They also introduced us to an entire network of other families who were either preparing for cruising, or already out there doing it.

There were a number of boats we thought were great candidates that our coaches rejected because they looked good from a distance, but to the experienced eye they were trouble. Our coaches steered us away from unnecessary purchases, helped us with every aspect of life at sea, and remained committed to our success all the way through to the sale of Fearless.

A coach can be a formal or informal part of your plan, and he or she doesn’t necessarily have to be well-known or expensive. They just have to be willing to help you reach your stated goals and push you to be better. We went for well-known experts. We hired Jamie and Behan Gifford (www.sailingtogem.com), a couple who twice circumnavigated the globe on a sailboat with their kids. They helped us (virtually) shop for a boat, prepare for life afloat, and avoid many of the mistakes that upend newbie cruisers. We leaned on them heavily, and among all of their clients we still hold the record for shortest “flash-to-bang” timeline for making the decision to cruise and actually getting under weigh. The record isn’t important, and I don’t recommend trying to beat it because life was pretty hectic during the four months we took to divest ourselves of land life and buy a boat.

The point is that they helped us maximize the amount of time we spent actually cruising vice shopping, preparing, training, and so on. The coaching didn’t end with the purchase of the boat, either. We continued as their clients throughout our entire two-year sailing experience, and they continued to act as both mentors and cheerleaders for everything from hurricane avoidance to homeschooling. I was so impressed with what they did for us I hired another coach to help me with my job hunt (Jessica Sweet – www.wishingwellcoach.com). I am all about the coaching now, and I can’t believe it took me this long to figure out how coaching can benefit me and my family!!

If you have made it as far as hiring a coach, there is something else you might want to consider.

4. Have an exit strategy. This may seem like an obvious point, but it’s easy to overlook in the quest to get going. Unless you aren’t planning to return to some semblance of pre-sabbatical life, you need to have an exit point in mind. In our case, I knew that we would have to sell the boat and reverse the transition back to land; we just didn’t know when. Our initial commitment was one year. We didn’t know how well the kids would adopt to life on the boat but we knew it would take at least a year for everyone to get in the rhythm of cruising. Regardless of the lack of an end date, I always kept our exit strategy in mind, perhaps even to a fault. What does that mean? I spent a lot of time on boat maintenance and upkeep… probably too much. I did this for two reasons, though. The first was seaworthiness. I wanted to be ready to get the boat under weigh in a moment’s notice in case we had to run from weather or other hazards. The second, however, was the ever-present thought that I would need to sell Fearless when we decided to stop sailing. I wanted the transition off the boat to be as painless as possible, which meant a short list of projects, repairs, and inspections. As a result of all that boat work, I was really proud of the way Fearless looked when we turned her over to the new owners. But, I think the kids would have been a lot happier with me if I had played with them more and not worried about it so much.

Gavin holding up Fearless in Shelter Bay, Panama in January 2021. We short-hauled to check the props and rudders as an extra precaution before transiting the Panama Canal southbound into the Pacific.

In the final analysis, our exit strategy was far from bulletproof. Returning to the shores of America and reintegrating into society turned out be a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. To be fair, it was hard to plan exactly when and where we would stop after we first got going, so it was hard to say that we should have maintained a residence and sacrificed the size and quality of the boat. The ocean can be a scary place in a low-quality boat and I wanted something that was sturdy, fast, comfortable, and well-equipped. Believe me when I tell you that very few people wish they have a smaller boat when they are caught in a storm out at sea. So, we made some decisions with the best information we had at the time, and because we didn’t have unlimited financial resources I opted to put more money in the boat rather than sacrifice size and comfort in favor of hanging on to land-based trappings. Of course, everybody will have different opinions and priorities, and I can’t give you a perfect solution. I can only tell you what we did and what came to pass as a result.

It’s also worth mentioning that everything we thought we had figured out changed because of COVID-19. Even though we were on a boat and seemingly far from the wreckage on land, the pandemic had a huge impact on our cruising. It affected the local economies where we were anchored or moored, the price of goods and services, and the freedom to cruise in the traditional sense of island hopping and ocean crossing. Suddenly, we couldn’t go wherever we wanted, whenever we wanted, and things got a whole lot more expensive. Who saw that coming? But, as I said in an earlier post, all you can do is make decisions then adjust to whatever circumstances unfold. It’s true for your entry strategy, and it’s true for your exit strategy.

When it came time to sell, we faced three different market forces – the boat market, the job market, and the housing market. None resembled the pre-COVID world we left behind in 2019. I wasn’t counting on significant abnormalities in any of them when we purchased Fearless, but c’ést la vís. It really didn’t matter what was happening, because the only thing I could control was the condition of our boat at the time of the sale, and the timing of its market entry. Ultimately, we sold the boat in a good market, returned to a strong job market, but got clobbered by the housing market. If we had been able to delay the sale of the boat by three months, we would have done that just to get us through the summer to avoid the competition with everyone else renting vacation homes and Air B&B units. However, we commited to the sale in February before we had an inkling the housing market would go as berserk as it did. I guess the lesson here is that you can’t control everything, and going all in on your sabbatical comes with risk. So, as you are getting started, think about the backside transition and have a good idea about the level of risk you are willing to take.

Team Fearless in the Mira Flores Locks, Panama Canal, February 2021. This was a huge achievement for us, and I never imagined going through the canal would be possible when we first started cruising.

I could write a book about the how-tos of what we did, and perhaps it is something I need to do. Plenty of people have suggested it, but I often wonder how much value I can add to the trove of information that already exists in all the YouTube channels and books in circulation. I think what makes our experience unique is that we executed our dream on a remarkably tight timeline, and despite making numerous mistakes, we set ourselves up for success through careful planning and responsible decision making. One of my conclusions about cruising full time is that there are plenty of people who talk about it yet never do it. Our hope is that we can inspire some of them to get off the couch and get going, whether it’s on a sailboat or some other form of adventure. This is why I am taking the time to offer up some tips and tidbits. We want to help. A lot of credit belongs to the people who helped us make this a reality, continued to encourage us as we stumbled through those first few months, and cheered us on as we pushed the boundaries of our sailing experience. Of course, all the cheerleading in the world didn’t relieve us of the responsibility to act – we still had to plan, budget, prepare, and eventually execute on our own.

These keys to success I shared in this post are some of the most important I could think of, even if they seem like the most obvious. The bottom line is that you have to start somewhere, and hopefully these tips help you get going. Life is short, and I guarantee you will have significant regrets about the things you never did. You are not going fail. You might stumble, and you will certainly have to deal with challenges and frustrations, but those are the moments that teach you the most and make you stronger.

Ask yourself what is the worst possible outcome of taking a calculated risk on something you have always wanted to do. Then tell yourself it is OK to let go of limiting beliefs, step through fear, and take a chance on amazing.

You’ve got this.

Panama City – Big Tidal Ranges

by Glenn Robbins | Feb 19, 2021 | Uncategorized

The tidal range on the south side, or Pacific side, of the Panama Canal is extreme compared to the Colon side. Although wind-driven waves and gusty trade winds are the norm in the western Caribbean, tides were never much of a factor. The surge in the marinas (La Playita or Flamenco) at the end of the Amador Causeway is particularly bad, especially in the month of February. Another cruiser spoke with a local about this, and he learned that certain conditions conspire to make the surge more noticeable, and more destructive. Prepare to get jerked around and tossed about. If not for needing new passports and some maintenance on our air conditioning systems, we would have gladly skipped the entire marina experience.

Tidal Surge in the Marina

I had read about the bigger tides, but seeing is believing. The kids and I put a piece of tape on the piling at La Playita at the high tide point. This wasn’t even the lowest tide we exprienced, so take the tidal ranges seriously.

Tide Range at the Fishing Pier downtown

Andi took this footage of the fishing pier. All of these boats have outboard motors and are designed to be left high and dry.

Back in the Caribbean, we rarely paid attention to tides given the small ranges. Not so anymore. Tide going to be a big factor in all of our planning going forward.

Don't Anchor Near the Beach at High Tide

We can only assume that these guys did not anchor in close to the beach at the foot of the Amador Causeway with the the idea that they could clean the hulls at low tide. The way their rudders are buried in the muck would be too much of a risk to take, so this had to be an “oops” moment. At least they have direct drive props, but even so, the chance of breaking or clogging something is pretty good. This was a stern warning to us as we look at future anchorages.

Destination Coiba

by Glenn Robbins | Feb 19, 2021 | Uncategorized

Coiba

As part of homeschool on the boat, Gavin wrote a short expository essay on our next destination, the island of Coiba.

Coiba is a tropical island fifty miles off the Pacific west coast of Panama. It is the largest island in Central America. From 1919 to 2004, Coiba was home to a prison that served as a secure, remote detention facility for the most dangerous Panamanian criminals and political dissidents. Because it was a penal colony, only prisoners and guards were allowed on the island, so nature was able to grow untouched. As a result, Coiba became one of the most pristene places on the planet, and its natural habitats flourished without destructive human influence. In 2005, after all the prisoners were transferred to different locations, the island was declared a “UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

The island prison, also known as Panama’s Devil’s Island, was one of the most feared prisons in all of Central America. The prison housed criminals that committed the highest crimes as well as politicians and dissedents who spoke out against any of the ruling dictators. Due to its remote island location and surrounding tides and currents, it was very secure. The prisoners were housed in 30 camps around the island. Any prisoners who tried to escape were at the mercy of the strong currents surrounding the island and numerous predators like sharks and crocodiles that lurked offhsore. Prisoners who died in captivity, or those who were executed, were thrown into the ocean, which accustomed these predators to the taste of human flesh. This made escape a terrifying course of action. Towards the end of its use, political prisoners were released when the last dictator in Panama, Manuel Noriega, was removed from office in 1989. In 2004, the prison on Coiba Island was permanently closed.

In 2004, the island was turned into a nature preserve and certified as a UNESCO world heritage site. Coiba is now a popular tourist destination because of its beauty and numerous examples of flora and fauna found nowhere else in Panama. The Mantled Howler Monkey is one mammal unique to the park and is highly endangered. The first time I heard a howler monkey, it reminded me of the mutts from “The Hunger Games.” It was very intimidating. Coiba is a tropical rainforest which allows mammals such as the Mantled Howler Monkey to survive. The park is very strict about motor boats passing over the reefs because they create a sound barrier which disturbs the reefs. One of the most famous migratory species that passes by Coiba is the whale shark. The whale shark migrates through Coiba from January to April. Another migratory species that passes through Coiba is the mobula ray, also known as the devil ray. It is a huge ray with an enormous wingspan of 12 feet which propels them up to 6 feet out of the water.

I have a unique opportunity to go to Coiba on my own sailboat. I am really excited because I have always wanted to see a whale shark. Now, I may get the opportunity to scuba dive with not only a whale shark but also a mobula ray. I am also looking forward to exploring the island and seeing the remains of the prison. Coiba has a very interesting history and an amazing ecosystem and I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to explore its natural treasures both underwater and on land.

Life Lesson from a Fish

by Glenn Robbins | Aug 7, 2020 | Fishing

On August 5, 2020 we sailed from Union Island in the southern Grenadines to Saint George’s, Grenada. The day before we left we studied the bottom contours, consulted with my fishing guru and friend Kevin Ferrie, and decided to take a bit of an indirect route so we could fish the eastern ledge of the Windward Islands where the depth plunges from 125′ down to nearly 1000′. It was a beautiful day with perfect sailing conditions, and as we would find out once we made enough eastward progress, perfect fishing conditions. We were eager to put some lines in the water and boat some fish, because we had been in a fishing drought for past few months. Focused solely on the hunt, I didn’t anticipate that a mahi would give me a valuable lesson on what it means to live.

The detour paid off. Once we were abeam Carriacou heading southwest we boated our first fish, a cow mahi. She hit a big squid lure on a hand line, and I was bringing her in I asked out loud, “where’s the bull?” As if on cue, the starboard reel started screaming. There he was! He hit a six inch painted cedar plug, and by the way the line was leaving the spool I knew this was going to be a battle. I also knew I was going to have to play him carefully. I had lost a bull mahi a few weeks earlier on a cedar plug because the fish was able to leverage the rigid lure out of his mouth during one of his acrobatic jumps. Determined that wouldn’t happen again, I made a mental note to be patient. I even talked out loud to myself – “Patience, Glenn. Easy with the drag. Let him tire. Keep the rod tip up.” I did NOT want to lose this fish.

I fought him for 30 minutes carefully working the drag setting hoping I could get him to the point when he would finally quit.

Except for a small blackfin tuna, I hadn’t caught a fish in a while. I was out of fishing shape, and the strength of the mahi amazed me. He was getting tired, and I was getting tired. Despite the kids’ excitement I kept telling them it isn’t over until the fish is in the cooler. Less than ten feet from the boat as I was pulling in the leader, he gave a final, desperate, convulsive shake and threw the hook. Here’s the video of the moment.

The bull was exhausted. He was on his side getting dragged towards the boat because I had, at least to this point, done everything right. However, I misjudged my adversary. In an oft-repeated life theme when a David and Goliath meet, I let my guard down when I thought he was out of the fight. I held all the advantages, and he had nothing but exhaustion and a frying pan in his future. Or did he?

If you look closely you can see the cedar plug come out of his mouth and fly towards the boat. You can also tell by our reactions we were all disappointed. I was so frustrated I almost jumped in to grab the fish as he lingered for a few seconds on the surface before he disappeared. But as angry as I was at the way I lost the battle, I found myself admiring that mahi. He fought hard and never quit.

One could argue that the mistakes I made were the reason I lost. I shouldn’t have handed the rod to Andi and reached or the leader. I should have just kept reeling hard and dragged the fish up the sugar scoop where Andi and the kids could have wrestled it into the cooler. Gav was standing by with the gaff, but I wasn’t confident he was strong enough to hook and drag the fish into the boat. Plus, he wasn’t wearing a harness. But even if I had done those things, we are still assuming the fish doesn’t get any credit for his efforts.

I won’t belabor the metaphor, but it got me thinking. It’s so easy to quit when it seems like all hope is gone. Hope, however, lives in our minds. We create it, and we control it. COVID, the economy, politics, media, and the deep, troubling issues with our country are all eroding our hope in the future. I remember a local fishing expert in Virginia Beach telling me how stupid Mahi are. “They’ll hit anything. They’re so dumb,” he said. Maybe that’s true. But this unintelligent creature gave me a lesson in optimism. It reminded me of a quote I used to have on my wall when I was in high school.

“In the final analysis, mind triumphs over matter, and the will to win is more important than the skill to win.”

That fish had a will to live.

As I replayed the Mahi spitting the lure back at me, I thought about some of the amazing stories we have read about people defying fatal diagnoses of cancer, or walking again after being told they were paralyzed for life, or winning a seemingly impossible contest (my favorite is the Miracle on Ice – February 22, 1980), or overcoming unsurmountable odds.

It isn’t over until we say it is over. As long as we cling to the idea that we can win, then hope is not lost. On Fearless, we are working to eliminate the word “can’t.” As soon as you tell yourself you can’t do something, then you are correct. That’s not what we want to teach our children. We just celebrated our one-year anniversary of boat ownership and full-time cruising. There were several moments along the way when we wanted to quit and sell the boat. The boat itself was never the problem, but some of the tragedies and hardships we witnessed and endured tested our resolve. When we compounded those events with the underlying challenges of living on a boat, life became really hard at times. It would have been easy to lie on our sides and let life reel us in for the kill.

In the end, I was happy for that Mahi. He won. But I guess in hindsight, we both won. It’s hard not respect that kind of determination.

Tropical Storm Gonzalo

by Glenn Robbins | Jul 30, 2020 | Storm Preparedness

On July 25, 2020 Tropical Storm Gonzalo passed over Tobago just to the south of Grenada. Two days prior we were anchored in Salt Whistle Bay, Mayreau in the southern Grenadines tracking its inexorable westward progress with laser beam focus. Every twelve hours we were receiving forecast updates from Predict Wind, plus we were getting interim tropical storm updates from Chris Parker’s Marine Weather Center. On top of that, we were consulting with the highly experienced Jamie Gifford, our cruising coach and friend who was also watching the storm’s progress from the Sea of Cortez. Our stress levels began rising significantly when models started showing the storm tracking anywhere from Barbados and Saint Vincent to the north or the northern tip of Grenada to the south. If you averaged out the models, we were sitting in the bullseye but the problem was the storm was small in diameter, moving quickly, and acting unpredictably. Nobody knew where it was going to hit.

Our first plan was to duck into the Glossy Bay mega yacht marina 3.7nm to the north on the island of Canouan. It was a short run from our anchorage in Salt Whistle, but we had never been there. It was colocated with an airport, so there wasn’t much protection from the wind. The piers were all new, but they were also concrete, so weren’t convinced the boat would emerge unscratched if the storm passed overhead as a Category 1 hurricane (as some models were forecasting.)

Our preferred course of action was to run south to the southern coast of Grenada 42nm away, but COVID restrictions hampered our ability to move between the two island nations as quickly as we would have preferred. Emails flew back and forth between us and Grenada Lima, the yachting support non-profit organization that acts as a point of contact and informational conduit for boaters arriving in the country. They are amazing, and at some point in the wee hours of the morning on Friday we received a note from them that said to come, not to worry about formalities, and find a safe harbor.

Little did we know that the storm would track much farther south in the coming 24 hours, but we were grateful for what Grenada Lima did. The video below picks up the story as we were sailing south. 48 hours later we were heading in the opposite direction back to the Grenadines so we could regroup, formally check out with customs, and then plan our return to Grenada under less stressful circumstances.