In life, it’s easy to say “I’m not ready yet. I just need to learn more, train harder, gain more skills.”  But there comes a time when enough is enough; we have to take that leap forward and commit ourselves fully to our goal.  Because preparing can be procrastinating.  Not being prepared can be equally deadly or even more so, but for the most part each one of us knows when we’ve hit the starting line and should go.

A great way to hold us to our goal is to make It public.  Tell friends who will hold you accountable, join a group, enter a race, or create some sort of deadline.  For many of our expeditions, deadlines were woven into the expedition.  When we were rowing across the Atlantic we had to leave before the stormy season enveloped Europe in headwinds and nasty weather.  When the time came we were ready enough.  Could we have used another week or so to finish up a few more details? Sure.  But you need to decide what’s good enough to get the job done, because postponing something just to that you can get the details perfect may destroy your chances of succeeding.

The reason I’m thinking of this today, is because this morning Colin rowed and sailed his RowCruiser boat from Victoria to Port Townsend in order to compete in the R2AK race to Ketchikan Alaska.  He custom designed and built this boat, tweaking it in an infinite number of ways so that he could race it solo 750 miles to Alaska.  The week leading up to his departure has been a frenzy of last minute activities and I’m sure he like many of the racers could benefit from a few extra days.  But the good thing about a race is that the start deadline is forced upon you.  If you don’t show up on time, you don’t have a chance of winning.