After getting familiar with the project, many of you might ask the following question: What is the reason for aiming towards such journey, alone, without stopping?
Indeed, it is quite strange, this temptation and willingness to spend one year alone on the sea seeing for most of the time just the sky and water. Only in rare cases spot vague silhouettes of continents or isolated islands – navigate around the world. It is really hard to explain, especially to a wife or girlfriend. Well, everybody who is planning such a journey has his own reasons and goals.
I think, however, that all these sailors have one thing in common. Who is aiming for a lonely cruise wants to become himself in moments when he becomes a real part of the nature, when he decides on his own in the boundless waters of seas and oceans how to deal with winds, waves, his boat and lonely life on the boat. In this situations no excuses work, the tasks or responsibility for behaving and acting cannot be delegated to someone else. In fact, the results of actions or decisions are immediate and the conditions test thoroughly the physical and psychological state of the person.
Not like in the current world, where everything is bound with orders, interdictions and advices of “sages” at all levels of society about how should we live correctly the time we were given to spend on the Earth. It is often driven by desire of power setting of own business and belief in own absolute truth. Alone nonstop sailing is one of good and efficient ways how to escape from such life manipulators, from the present consumerism and how to discover the real self.
Still, though sailing alone, the skipper needs to have on the shore a kindred spirit to whom he can absolutely trust. A man, in his nature, cannot be in today’s world absolutely alone. Neither on such sailing, where the biggest struggle is how to overcome the long isolation. We live fortunately in times of mobile communication technologies and internet, yet, the bigger esteem we should have for those, who sailed in the past without these gadgets.
I hope the few above mentioned philosophical reflections convince you that this extremely hard project has sense not only for the skipper of s/y Endurance and our offshore yachting, but as well as inspiration for other people, who would like to be themselves, both on sea and on shore. I’m driven by my own experience as well as by examples of those who managed to reach this goal.
This is why I want to support this project to see finished, what I didn’t manage with my s/y Singa.
I wish Neptune’s favour to s/y Endurance and her skipper Vlastislav Ondráček.
Petr Ondráček
