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"It's easy to turn your back on the ocean" - this almost deserves its own category. Other/shipping traffic, waves, weather, lightning (especially risky on a sai
by switchbak 4y ago
"It's easy to turn your back on the ocean" - this almost deserves its own category. Other/shipping traffic, waves, weather, lightning (especially risky on a sailboat!), hypothermia ... there's just very little margin for error in some situations, and those concerns can so easily compound.
I've done some crazy things in my life, but it's always been the ocean that puts me truly close to death. If there's anything positive about those experiences, it's the lesson that sometimes the difference between life and death is keeping your head and not panicking.
- leaving 4y agoContrary to popular belief, lightning is not especially risky on a sailboat. It is very rare that a metal sailboat mast on a fiberglass boat will be struck by lightning. The most common occurrence is an EMP that fries all of the electronics as the result of a nearby water strike. In many, many years of sailing and through many thunderstorms that would melt your shorts just to see them approaching, with lightning all around and no perceptible delay between the flash and the thunder, none of the various sailboats I have been on was ever directly hit by lightning.