Hi Ho, Hi Ho, its off to sea we go!

As these last hours wind down in Singapore this morning, I am struck by how fantastic, but disorienting life in the jet age can be. Tomorrow morning I will board an airplane for Hawaii. When I emerge from the airport in Honolulu the day after tomorrow, my days will be as different as days could be. In 12 short hours of flight time, my reality will be transformed. It will be as if they were the lives of two different people. My uniform of work will shift from the long sleeve shirt, tie, dark pants, socks and polished shoes of a ‘professional’ to the shorts, t-shirt, broad brimmed hat, sun glasses, and bare feet of a yacht Captain. My life will pass from the demands of working ashore to the challanges of being at sea 24 hours a day on a small boat. I will go from being a working coach and trainer helping people in Singapore during the day and sleeping at night, to being captain of my own sailing yacht, responsible round the clock for ‘how she goes’ and for my crew. From being surrounded by high concrete towers, awash in the roar of city sounds, I will be high on the bald prairie of the sea, with nothing above or around in every direction except the bare and quiet horizon and sky. How cool is that!? Very. But it is also a bit frightening.
In sailing home to Singapore, it will take us close to 12 weeks to sail the same distance the jet carved out in 12 hours. We will be a sea for weeks at a time, be thousands of miles from the nearest land, and be entirely on own. What we do, and how we care for our boat and for ourselves, is what decides if we reach the far shore at all. It’s up to us. We will need to read the weather, change sails up and down, and plot our course across the trackless sea. At a mere 6 to 8 knots we will sail less than 200 miles a day. It will take us over 3 weeks at sea to sail the first leg from Hawaii to Fiji.
But are the two realities really so different after all? Do we not all need to set sail every day and make our way across the wilderness of what it is to live a human life? Do we not all need to be Captain’s of our own lives, responsible for our own ship and for the crew who sail with us? Do we not need to plot our Course in life to take us to our destinations? Do we not all need Courage every day to meet the challenges of the storms that come upon us? How about Capacity? Do we not need to build our seaworthiness to endure the stresses and strains of daily life? And on our crew in life, our Companions, do we not depend upon them for our safe passage? What carries us, sustains us every day to reach beyond the blank horizon where we know our dreams lie – is it not Curiosity? Finally, in all this striving, in this struggle for life and living, do we need not to hold Compassion for ourselves, and through self love, Compassion for others? Perhaps Compassion is the end point, the final landfall.
These are the 7Cs of passage making – Captaincy, Course, Courage, Capacity, Companions, Curiosity, Compassion. As I see it from living in both worlds, I think living on the sea has a lot to teach us about living life on shore. On shore, in these tough modern times, I think we are forgetting how to be Captains of our own lives. We seem to be forgetting how to plot our own Course to our individual destiny, and failing to culture the Courage it take to embrace life with abandon. Ashore, I see we build our mental Capacity through school and work, but we seem to be forgetting how to round out emotional capacity, our physical capacity and our spiritual capacity. We live our lives from a place of “expertise” full of our own knowing-ness, but are losing touch with how to stand and meet life with Curiosity. We seem confused how to fully embrace our Companions in relationship as partners on our individual journeys. And we seem woefully, tragically, unable to declare love for ourselves, to hold ourselves with Compassion.
Lack of work-life balance is the result of forgetting the 7Cs on land. If our lives seem out of balance, it is not because we “work too hard and don’t play enough”, it is because we are forgetting how to bring ourselves into the equation. We are forgetting how to make who we are and what we are here to offer a part of our lives and importantly, a part of our ‘work’. What I see in the conversation about the 7Cs, is a way to remember how to make our lives an expression of our gifts and our calling.
I must go pack if I am going to get on that airplane! But before I finish, I want to invite you to participate in a conversation with me in this blog over the next three months about what the 7Cs mean for life ashore. I will endeavour to make frequent posts to this blog while at sea on the long trip home and join you by email. Help me find a way to bring the 7Cs ashore, so that we might all live richer, better balanced lives that hold meaning, purpose and happiness!
See you at sea.
Captain Cresswell
BTW we expect to cast off from Hawaii Sept 18 or so, bound for Fiji 3200 miles away!