Category: Rest

Retooling Yourself Part 1

12/2/2017

La Paz, Mexico

On our Facebook page @svnewadventures we posed the question: “If you had the opportunity to retool yourself what would you do?” We asked because we really wanted to know, we only had a few responses, which was was disappointing.

This week Tim came across an article by Dharam Barrett called “How To Get Your Life Back On Track When You Feel Broken.” Barrett lists 26 things to do to help you get back on track after events like Tim and I have experienced. This list is quite robust and we are happy to see that we had touched on nearly every one of them. Somehow instinctively we already did about 23 out of 26 and we’re committed to the last 3 after reading the article. Over the next weeks, we'll be posting details of each step we've taken along this road of retooling ourselves.

Number 24 on the list is: “Try something that genuinely scares you.” Yep, that is a work in progress for me! In June last year right after my job ended, Tim and I spent six days in an American Sailing Association Intensive to be certified to bareboat charter anywhere on the globe that accepts these credentials. There are three courses which each had textbooks that had to be read and study guides to be completed prior to our intensive. Each of the three courses have a written test and a practical test. These six days were the greatest skill challenge I’ve had in my life! Beyond the challenge of Air Force boot camp! I was so scared I wasn’t going to make it successfully, there was just so much new information and I wasn’t sleeping at night because of the mistakes I made during the day. I had a huge emotional melt down on the fifth day before going to class.

Try something that genuinely scares you

Here’s how the week was laid out: we lived on boats for the week. We were sleeping on a 37 foot Beneteau for the first four nights. Days 1 & 2 were spent certifying on another boat, the Capri 22 for ASA 101 Basic Keelboat. Days 3 & 4 were spent sailing the Beneteau 37 for the 103 Coastal Cruising. Days 5 & 6 were spent on a 40 foot Beneteau Oceanis for the 104 Bareboat Chartering. Click the links to ASA requirements we had to master, super easy right?

Here’s some background for you: When Tim and I owned our Cal 20 Sailboat 17 years ago I was good at tacking the jib, keeping the kids happy and handling the tiller for short periods of time. I had a good working vocabulary of all the “thingy’s” on the our Cal 20 and an idea of the function of the item. I was just learning to drive this little boat under power in and out of our marina slip 14 years ago, right before we sold it to make room in our budget for a larger boat that has only now materialized. For comparison, Tim could SAIL the Cal 20 out of the slip and then back in again when we were done. Tim has spent years around many different sailboats driving, sailing and racing them. What we embarked on was nearly 100% new everything for me! For Tim this was heaven with only a little new. His challenge was dealing with my emotions. I must note that this intensive was MY idea!

During this intensive when I was crewing and doing what Tim called out, things were great! However, to be certified I had to be the skipper and call out and be fully in command. It was so hard because of our roles we have always had. To tell Tim what to do when I knew he could do it better was scary and tough. I was so afraid to mess up! I suppose my instructor did not make it a safe place for me to fail gracefully. So let me admit where I had a strength, I was better at driving the boat out of the slip than Tim and he was better at parking it in the slip. I even pulled off some better docking than Tim did. I had to prove I could do all these practical things.

One of my biggest fears was driving the boat. The first boat I ever truly drove was a 37 ft sailboat! Never mind starting small? The wheel was so big! (See the pictures) I wasn’t supposed to reach through the wheel to adjust the transmission, but I couldn’t reach it any other way! On our second day of drilling with this 37 foot boat, I was on the helm (the giant wheel), driving into an anchorage to practice anchoring. Also there in the small anchorage were a bunch of kids doing some club racing and I had to avoid them, the wind was blowing the bow of the boat closer to them and I decided to just reverse a bit and make room. After following procedure to shift into reverse and backing up, the shifter would not come out of reverse! Our instructor jerked it out and then the transmission was no longer working and we had to call it a day and sail the boat into the slip. Our instructor was not kind and said I should not have jammed into reverse, but I did not jam it, I wasn’t panicking. I was frustrated because Tim was telling me one thing, the instructor’s body language another and I was supposed to be in charge! The day before, Tim was the helmsman and I did the anchor and we reversed it so we could get the practice. Well, we should not have. We found out that the cable servicing the transmission shifter was completely corroded and just needed to be replaced, I had nothing to do with it getting stuck and breaking.

That was just our intensive. Once we purchased our own boat, I’m still doing things to overcome my fears. Fears such as: sailing at night, check! Sailing alone on watch at night, done! Spending several days on rough seas to see if I got sick, check- no sea sickness! Am I still facing fears, yes! I haven’t encountered squalls or storms, very tall seas over 10 feet, or winds over 25 knots. The marina has been a nice reprieve. There is no doubt in my mind that I am retooling into a skilled sailor and getting free from the land life.

Step out! What will you do to retool yourself?

Lynette

For those of you that are following us here, we also have a Facebook page called S/V New Adventures @svnewadventures. We have done several videos there that have not arrived here on the blog yet! If you do social media check it out! Perhaps the video of us eating cloves of garlic!

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Lynette Jenne a wife of 30+ years, mother of four successful adult children, passionate high school science teacher with a masters in education. Now on a New Adventure sailing, learning and growing evermore as person.

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Dreaming the Big Dream

29/1/2017

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January 28, 2017 La Paz, Mexico - Lynette Jenne

Dreaming, what is that? Of course it is what I do while I am asleep, those pictures that run through my sleeping visual screen in my mind. My dreams in the night are sometimes profound, but most often they are just my brain defragmenting like a computer hard drive. When we ask someone what are your dreams? What we really mean is what do you want to do that’s bigger and better than you might be able to do on your own at the moment, or something that takes resources? We talk of the dream vacation; dream house; dream job; and on we can go with this list of dreams. Most of these are connected to resources, or simply cold hard cash.

As a child I played with paper dolls and Raggedy Ann Colorforms. The picture that I have in my mind at this point in my life is that I have again had my plastic Colorforms outfit stripped off of my cardboard Raggedy Ann Colorforms character. I’m waiting to see what will come next. The plastic outfit represents what I was living in, the dream I was pursuing. When I talk about my pursuit, it involves years and a lot of resources that were moved towards that dream. Just as I pulled off the outfit from my Colorforms Raggedy Ann as a child, my outfits for the most part, have been removed by the actions of someone else, not by my choice. I’m waiting to find my new outfit so I can start the dream process over AGAIN.

A cliche that keeps circling in my Facebook feeds, conversations and emails is: “Just dream big! Now is your chance! Just dream!” Right now this cliche is not serving a fruitful purpose in my life, full disclosure here, I am done with this cliche! Are you shocked? Maybe not.

I’m coining a new term: Dream Fatigue: verb: to be exhausted in or by the pursuit of dreams. I have a colorful wardrobe full of dreams that are outdated, dead, or laid aside. The cure for dream fatigue is to rest from dreaming and the pursuit of a dream. Finding peace in being myself and living in each moment are key to my recovery. How long will it take me to recover? I don’t know. It may be time to take inventory of this Colorforms wardrobe to see what messages I have come to believe, good or bad, in the last 20 years of actively pursuing dreams. This process will help ensure I am not sabotaging my dreams, or settling for less than I am, this is a practice where growth and healing can happen.

My last blog post ended with my biggest challenge: Letting go of my thoughts so I can discover new thoughts. Dreams come from thoughts that have been nourished, visited, and shared. As we share our thoughts with others, and we revisit them through sharing them again and again, our thoughts grow. Soon the stage of: “what if…” arrives, followed by the process of asking questions, doing research and finding others who can help or answer our questions. At last it forms, a full color dream to live or achieve. If we are serious, we take action and the pursuit is on. Some dreams can grow very fast in a few months and others take years to develop. Dreams also can start small and blossom into ever increasing thoughts which cause the dream to become larger and larger over time.

This is my 50th year, I want to celebrate the rest of my life with my next dream. I want to pursue it, enter it and live it until the day I die or no longer can. The next dream will form when the time is right and it will encompass the majority of whom I have become from my past pursuits. Until then, I will be pursuing the colorful moment I have right now and savor it to its fullest while residing in deep peace. I am choosing to enjoy my days until the dream fatigue has lifted.

Tell us about your dreams. Have you experienced dream fatigue?

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