By Fabio Potenti
Like many others I have met in these past months, I am about to face off with the immense power of the Pacific to sail from Panama to French Polynesia, the longest stretch of ocean on this planet. Here is when doubts begin, a bugging disquiet fueled by fears of storms churning in our souls, by the solicitude of drowning in the ocean of our own incompetence, by sleepless nights dreading the miserable waters of the sea of our own ineptitude.
Here you can palpate cruisers’ uneasiness, the uncomfortable thought that the imposter will show up during the real test of life at sea, the lonely hours of night passages spent at the wheel tiptoeing between fun and disaster.
I started the adventure looking for strong emotions, the ones living at the boundary of fear and excitement, to get a gut punch, to make me puke all the garbage served by society, stuff I have ingested over the years. I wanted to get a stronghold, a grip on the time I have left on this planet which is otherwise slithering away greased by monotony and routine.
It’s a risky place to be; a place where I will find challenges undermining my most basic certainties, showing the flimsy evidence of my abilities, my overly generous perception of self and the incoherence of my assumptions.
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