Mark Tietig 1983 aboard La Calma

On Facebook, my spiritual brother Jeffery Stone asked a great question: “I’ve been pondering life and my journey, thinking about how I am defined by my life experiences and those moments that molded my character. I thought about how so many things could have worked out quite differently had things not changed on a dime or been different by a mere  two degrees … good, bad or indifferent …   So I’d like to ask that you think about and share what you feel has been a significant defining moment in your own lives … I know that we all have so many ...”  GREAT QUESTION! After pondering, I shared, “In 1983, I went on a 3 month sailing trip from Miami, FL to Anapolis, MD with a friend who’d been blinded in a sailing accident four years earlier. Afraid of the ocean and being near large submerged objects, it was a daily test for me of faith and trust. It culminated in me doing something I would never have considered doing months earlier: My blind friend set out on a solo sail with his guide dog using his 33′ Cheoy Lee sailboat’s voice feature for the satellite navigation system. We’d be filming from a boat behind him. I was on the crew that sailed him out of Government Cut in Miami, the channel out to open sea. Once in open waters, we transferred on to the other boat. That means standing on the very bow of the boat, about 3 feet away from the other boat, and waiting for the waves to sync up before jumping onto the second boat, without falling into the deep ocean in between.

I had to trust when someone told me to jump.  A moment’s hesitation could break my leg or neck. That was when I learned that when I’m in a crisis situation, if I can connect to any one thing that lies outside the crisis, if I can feel connected to something or someone who I trust to guide me, it doesn’t matter what the crisis is appearing as, something will rise within me and make me brave enough to trust and WANT to make the leap that must be made.”

That trip really challenged my fear of the ocean and being near large submerged objects. When Mark Tietig and I sailed up the coast from Miami, FL to Anapolis, MD in May 1983, half the time was spent in the shipping lane offshore in the middle of the night.  We’d be so close to the freighters (“the freakers” I called them) and they would move slowly and silently by, like some surreal city out of a John Waters or Federico Fellini film.  I’d feel like an ant standing next to a skyscraper, or a dot in an immense galaxy. It was surreal and very reflective.  I won’t say I lost my fear of the ocean, but I learned I could keep myself distracted by having something to be in charge of, like keeping an eye on Heath, Mark’s guide dog, and by cooking –> I wrote of one adventure here The Magical Frittata and the Coast Guard Boarding.  It took a blind man to make me lose my fear of what I could not see, to make me learn to listen and trust when the time came upon me.  My friends are always my greatest gurus.