You Don’t Know What You Don’t Know (The Theme Behind my sailboat cruising prep Manual)
I’m always learning, that I don’t know what I don’t know.
You Don't Know What You Don't Know
It's interesting to me how many "sayings" have come about since I was a kid, and many of them in recent years. A couple of my favorites: "bling bling" (which is already out of date) and "for a minute," which used to mean how long someone would do something for, or how long they would stay… "for a minute." And when I bring them up saying "humph, that's a new saying," younger people like to tell me, "dude, people have been saying that a long time." Ha! Of course, the most obvious aspect of that retort is what "a long time" is, which is completely dependent on the relative time one has been alive. Also, most of the time to me, the new phrases aren't nearly as cool as the old ones like "That's cool!" "Right on!" (which had a resurgence in recent times), "I can dig that," or "That's shiny!" I still enjoy the novelty of new phrases though, mainly because they delineate the times.
But the "new" phrase "You don't know what you don't know"—this one really hits home with me. I know people have been saying it "for a minute," but it wasn't used as a phrase when I was growing up; it wasn't even a phrase at the beginning of this century. But now more than ever, I realize its pertinence as a reflection of the times—a time when we can just Google or YouTube a subject, watch a couple videos on it, and think we know it inside and out. I'm guilty of that. But to the heart of this sentiment, from the "old days," comes one of my favorite phrases, and one I think is a very important aspect of life to understand, practice, and live by, which is "There's no substitute for twenty years' experience." Which, of course, on one level means you can't be really good at something until you've been doing it for twenty years. But reading between the lines, the other meaning of that saying alludes to "You don't know what you don't know!" And that's what I'm trying to make wannabe sailors understand.
It's with this sentiment about that phrase, and how I see that it's a reflection of our times, that's the main impetus behind my manual: How To Prepare the Best Cruising Sailboat (A Blueprint to Bluewater Yachts).
Because here it is in a nutshell: We want to buy a sailboat and cruise the world… or escape… So, we Google "best sailboat" or "best bluewater sailboat." And because we're so hungry for that "thing" (a sailboat in this case), we do a little research, think we know way more than we do, buy a sailboat—almost any sailboat—because the internet has no idea what a "good bluewater sailboat" really is, and then, if we're smart and/or lucky enough, before we just toss the lines and go sailing, we start "fitting it out for ocean voyaging." The problem is, we haven't Googled "How to fit out a yacht for ocean voyaging" yet, because we don't know what we don't know… (and spoiler alert: there isn't a comprehensive manual out there that's solely dedicated to that topic—hence my book). So we figure, I'll fix the things that are broken (if we have any idea what they are) and put in a couple things we want, and call it good. Because we have no idea what to actually "do" to fit out a yacht for the intended purpose of cruising the world, and we might have no idea it's even a thing, and we certainly have no idea what it entails. I mean, there are plenty of books out there telling us how dangerous the ocean can be, and many examples of its power and its lack of regard for who's sailing on it, and even many examples of some of the things authors do to set up their boats sprinkled in between the tales of their adventures, but I haven't seen one book or manual or website solely dedicated to how to prepare a yacht for crossing oceans. Most times we don't even know any boat, sailing, or sea terminology, or even that there is such a thing, or that we should always use that terminology when referencing our yacht or sailing, and we definitely have no idea what the ocean can dish out. And the worst part... we don't even know that we don't know. It's so important to have the humility to admit you don't know, and the hardest part about getting people to open up to new things—to admitting there might be more there than they can just YouTube—is proving to them there's no substitute for twenty years' experience. That they "don't know what they don't know."
In this manual, I'm attempting to walk people through the most important aspects of preparing a yacht for ocean voyaging. I'm hoping that I can help people new to sailing find what it is they "don't know that they don't know," become familiar with those things, and put them into practice on their boats. I see so many people go to sea in ill-prepared yachts, which worries me to no end. And when I say ill-prepared yachts, I mean if it's not prepared for the worst storm the Southern Ocean can dish out (not that many of us have any idea what that is, and with climate change I think that bar gets raised all the time), then it's ill-prepared, even if you have no intentions of sailing the Southern Ocean. And it's not only new sailors—I see seasoned sailors guilty of that too, and they can be especially hard to break through to. Sometimes it's hard to teach old sailors new knots. Even the most learned Buddhist masters never stopped humbly taking teachings from their students; there's always something new to learn about everything, and that's never been more true than in these times. I always say, "You might sail for 50 years and never see that 'once in a lifetime' storm, but prepare your yacht as though you might!" And if you don't know what that is, I hope you're humble enough to know... you don't know.
As a postface to this blog, I would like to recognize the fact and make it clear to all that read this that I don't think I know everything about sailing at all! I know I don't, and wish very much that you the reader aren't getting the impression that I think I do. I am constantly learning all the time, and that's because I know I don't know what I don't know about sailing, and because I want to know more about what I don't know, as much as I can. I would never stop—hopefully humbly—learning and being open to any and all sailing wisdom, both from the masters who know so much more than I do and from those who maybe have a smaller sail inventory than I do. And it is these two things—the gift to be able to learn from masters and the responsibility to pass that knowledge on—that give me the courage to teach what I've learned. Because believe me, it takes courage for me to put myself out there like this, but who would I be if I didn't pass this information, skill, and experience I have on to others? Learning from others is one of the best ways to learn; we don't know what we don't know.
