by Ray Jason
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| Ray in the NW Passage |
Now that I am deep into my “middle years,” I feel that the lessons that I share with my unknown readers are genuinely time-tested. Here are two that I believe are universal and eternal:
Fear enslaves us. Courage liberates us.
These are not just abstract sentiments for me. I have lived them. As recently as three years ago, I successfully crewed on a sailboat expedition across the dangerous Northwest Passage. This was achieved on a small, fiberglass boat. It involved months in the frigid waters above the Arctic Circle, where one misstep could lead to death.
A couple of decades before that, I competed in the Single-handed Transpac Race from San Francisco to Hawaii. AVENTURA and I spent 20 days in the race and another 30 days on the solo return voyage. This was before GPS, and my radio could only reach out about 10 miles. For 50 days, I had to completely rely on myself.
Rewinding my life log another couple of decades, and this time I was in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam. And my tour of duty was not aboard just any naval vessel, she was an ammunition ship.