Forget About Courage
A letter to anyone who thinks they're not brave enough
Strangers talk to me all the time about my courage.
They know I sailed a small fiberglass boat from North Carolina to Guatemala within 1 year — and that my husband & I left before we really knew how, teaching ourselves to sail day-by-day as we aimed our hull into the mighty & unforgiving ocean.
A multi-decade British sailor in our Guatemalan jungle marina asked Corey & I about our journey the other night, then told us, “Wow mates, you got about 10 years of sailing experience in that 1 year, I reckon!”
But he didn’t mention courage.
When people write to me & say something like “You’re so brave, I could never!” — I always push back. And it’s not because I’m bad at receiving compliments. You can tell me all day that I’m a fantastic writer & a great cook, & I’ll say “Awww thanks!!” & give you a big hug.
I push back on the courage thing because it just isn’t true. At least not the way they mean.
Courage is easy.
How do I know? Because, at many points, it would've taken just as much courage to quit sailing & go home with my head hanging down.
What got me to Guatemala was knowing what I needed & having a reasonable plan to get it.
A few months back in The Bahamas, I felt super screwed.
We were 100s of miles away from the U.S. mainland & right in the hurricane zone, so we needed to keep moving.
Anyone who has been to The Bahamas on a sailboat knows there isn’t much out there except blue water, white sand, a hot sun, & whatever you brought with you.
Great right?
But you need a part for your boat? You better have a spare, or a friend flying in from the U.S. to smuggle 1 in for you.
You need a red bell pepper? Pray the supply ship didn’t break down & turn back to Nassau that week. And then pay up $5 USD each!
People go there though because the simplicity is too good to pass up.
And honestly, it gets sticky — even for a city boy like me.
At some point, the courageous thing would’ve been to give the whole thing up.
In the “big city” (George Town), we’d been parked for way too long. We were 1 little boat among 300+ others in our crowded anchorage. And we were seething with nerves about what came next.
George Town was like Daytona Beach for retirees — the polar opposite of us, as 2 sober 40ish year-old guys who didn’t even like sunbathing.
By 10am on a Tuesday we’d be in line at the bar for a fruit smoothie while a guy from Florida named Dave would explain to everyone in earshot that his 3rd beer would be the 1 to cure his hangover.
I would crack a smile to be nice, but honestly I wasn’t amused.
I needed to get the hell out of there, but we couldn’t. Not yet.
By that point we'd met some of the coolest people in our whole sailing journey — sailors who'd transited George Town on their way to bigger oceans & more dynamic cultures. But George Town had its hooks in us.
This was the last place we'd have any hope of securing supplies before heading to more remote islands & beyond. We also had mild comforts (like a grocery store by the dinghy dock that had kale!). So even though we didn’t love it, we could’ve easily holed up there for the rest of the season with the other stationary sailors. Because it was “good enough.” And it was scary to keep going.
But we stuck with the plan.
We knew what we really needed. The open sea. The newness of whatever island chain came next & then whatever came next after that. A real test of our mettle as we inched our floating family the 1000+ miles to Guatemala — before the whole region turned into a highway for chaotic weather in the late Spring.
We needed to leave soon, too.
So we did what we came there to do & little else. Corey changed the fluids & fixed the chafing tubes on our diesel engine. We bought & tested the remaining pieces to assemble our whisker pole for the downwind sailing ahead. I stocked the boat to the brim with beans, rice, veggies, & fruit. We both fed tuna to our boat cat, Pineapple, to keep her happy through it all.
Then we left.
We could've stayed in George Town & kept life easy. Or, even easier, we could've put the boat on a mooring ball & flown back to the U.S.
That would’ve taken courage too.
But courage wasn’t driving our sailboat onward into far-off islands further south. How could it be, when every option on the table required some?
It was ALL about understanding our needs & having a reasonable plan to make it happen.
How do you do the crazy thing?
You first gotta know what you can’t live without.
Courage is more common than we think. We all have it, even when we don’t know it. And that’s a huge reason I bristle when people think I’m somehow special in this department.
If you’re reading this, you’ve done something that once felt impossible. And you would’ve never attempted it if you knew exactly how hard it’d be.
You also got sick, or depressed, or hurt, & couldn’t imagine finding your way back to hope. You lost a job & had no idea how you’d pay the bills, let alone earn income again. Someone handed you a screaming human in a hospital, said “Congratulations!,” & sent you home without a manual.
Courage wasn’t driving this ship, either.
You did it because you got clear about what you needed & took the next reasonable step.
You’re sick? You need to get better. So you take the medicine & surrender to the miracle of time.
Out of work? You freak out & don’t leave bed for a week, then you remember you need something better. You fix the resume, call everyone you’ve ever met, & trust that serendipity is coming.
New baby that won’t stop crying? You read the books, beg for advice from every parent you trust, & try everything until it works. And then you blink & you’re at the high school graduation.
That’s the whole formula.
Clarity about what you need & the next reasonable steps.
It takes a little courage, pointed in the right direction. But when you know what you gotta do, it mostly becomes hard not to do.
From George Town, I looked at the map of all the open water we needed to cross & I wanted to just say, “Na let’s just stay here.” But we couldn’t.
After weeks of sailing south through remote Bahamian islands, we had a minimum 8-day passage across the Caribbean Sea ahead of us — & we’d only ever done 5 days & nights at a time. On one of those 5-day runs in the northeast U.S., a storm had brewed up & we barely outrun it before we made it to our safe anchorage in Virginia. The math for getting to Guatemala was overwhelming to even contemplate.
But we left George Town & just kept sailing south, day-by-day, island-by-island, because ultimately we understood what we needed to do. And believe me, we surprised ourselves.
After we crawled through the Windward Passage between Cuba & Haiti, we made an unplanned pitstop in Jamaica, which at times made me feel even more screwed, given how equally far we still were from the U.S. & from those elusive jungles of Central America.
At that point, a reader asked me: “Can’t you just stow the boat & skip Guatemala?”
Already sorta knowing the answer, I floated the idea to Corey.
He pointed out what I already knew then we laughed. This was a total nonstarter, even if we wanted to. There wasn’t a crane on that side of the island to lift the boat out of the water. And marina storage ran $1,000 a month, minimum. Plus it was still in the hurricane zone.
But we could’ve conjured up some courage & just left the boat, right?!
No.
I wrote back to my dear reader: “Great idea, but we’re committed to this.”
Then, after waiting 3 weeks in Jamaica with oscillating levels of hope & despair, a weather window cracked open near the end of April.
Corey & I talked it through & we both said, “It’s now or never.”
Then we sailed west into the open ocean for an 8-day odyssey.
And it was one of the most beautiful stretches of sailing in the entire previous year. Easy downwind & seas <1 meter high. Weak winds some days, so we motored (thankfully we had that well-maintained engine). And when the winds filled in, we had that whisker pole we’d rigged back in George Town (& tested again in Jamaica).
So when people tell me they’d love to do something like this but just don’t have the courage, I tell them the truth:
I’m scared as hell before basically every passage.
(Most sailors are, even the salty ones.)
But fear isn’t the biggest obstacle. The biggest obstacle is not knowing what you need, & then not taking the next honest step toward it.
I’m here in the jungle for hurricane season, swarms of mosquitoes & all. Sailing in the Caribbean is off limits & I’m feeling stuck again. So now I get to fantasize about the next hard thing.
“What do I need now?”
Everything is completely different this time.
I chose sailing life largely because I needed to explore. And I needed to get comfortable even when the outcome was totally uncertain.
After 1 year sailing (or 10 years' worth of experience, if you ask the British sailor), I’m OK with all that.
But the hard part now is that the answer involves leaving the sailboat behind.
We thought we could thrive in the scorching jungles without A/C, but the 100˚F afternoons fry my brain for 4-6 hours everyday & I’m letting other plans rot on the vine. We can’t leave Pineapple more than 12 hours, because though it stays cool enough in the boat, someone has to open or close the hatches as the thunderstorms roll through. The nearest airport is a 7-hour drive — not exactly conducive to seeing my family & my 2 nieces in Southern California. And I would basically give up a finger at this point for some authentic Thai food.
What I need next is a bigger city in a more temperate climate. Somewhere we can leave the cat for days at a time, if necessary. Not in the U.S. but still closer to the people I love. Like Mexico City — at least for a bit.
Those are the needs. The reasonable plan is just the next right thing aimed toward them.
And right now, it reminds me of staring at that map back in George Town, when it felt impossible to get from where I was to where I needed to be. But feeling overwhelmed didn’t make me forget my needs. I just needed to know where to take my next step.
The exploration is the point. Aiming in the right direction (my direction) is the point. Floating is the point. I don’t need anyone’s permission to want something different.
Neither do you.
It would take courage to stay & it takes courage to go. But courage was never the thing that decided it. The right call comes after you understand your needs & make a reasonable plan — & by then, courage is almost the easy part.
If you want help getting clear on what you actually need, & a reasonable path forward from there, that’s the work I now do with other people.
If you ever want to talk about where you’re at today, what your heart is telling you, & whether working together makes sense — book a free 30-min call. No prep needed. Just bring yourself.
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Until next time,
—Cory
“The biggest obstacle is not knowing what you need, & then not taking the next honest step toward it.” Love this quote, Cory.
It’s always courageous to step out of the ordinary. But I get it. People have said that about me too or that I’m an adventurer. I never would have thought either of those words describe me.