Overcoming Your Fear of Sailing After it All Goes Wrong
By Cidnie Carroll
Author John Casey famously said, “sailing is 90% boredom punctuated by 10% sheer terror.” If that is the case, what is it that enables sailors to successfully navigate truly challenging situations and be willing and able to go back to sea after an event? What enables them is resiliency — mental resiliency. Sailor Marg Crandell defines resilience as “the drive to endure and press on in the face of adversity.” While some are born naturally resilient, there are many who are not. The good news is resiliency can be built by proactively placing it as a priority and incorporating various strategies and techniques to strengthen it.
Experienced sailor and therapist Melissa White states, “I think it is critical to know how your own history impacts your brain’s response to trauma,” Melissa continues, “and to create tools to handle that when the shit hits the fan. Trauma is a physiological response to an out-of-the-ordinary situation. I believe that people are more resilient when they prepare themselves psychologically for things that could go wrong.”
In a high stress situation, worry can ramp up to anxiety. When that happens, the amygdala begins a firestorm of activity. All of the brain’s resources are directed to the amygdala which can then spin up stories of implausible scenarios and dire outcomes. When this is occurring, the pre-frontal cortex of the brain (the region of the brain that controls logical and critical thinking) becomes essentially “off line” — just when it is needed most. It is also important to note that anxiety is a physiological response. It is the fight or flight instinct on overdrive. When coming up with coping strategies and techniques, the physiological response can not be ignored if it is to be effective.
This topic is particularly relevant to women sailors. Women are twice as likely to suffer from anxiety than men. Melissa states, “we don’t need to debate. The research is clear that anxiety disproportionately affects women.” If any stigma with anxiety is removed, we can move towards finding techniques and strategies to overcome anxiety. In light of the predominance of women sailors affected, we spoke with 3 women blue water sailors at length about techniques and strategies that help to build resiliency.”
Marg Crandell has sailed the Pacific and back with her husband and 2 daughters on SV Malachi, their Tayana 48 cc. When asked about one of her most challenging sails, she recounted their passage from NZ to French Polynesia. A surprise building low produced storm after storm for a week. In her words, to build resilience a sailor must “prepare yourself physically and mentally, what ever that looks like for you,” acknowledging that there is not a one size fits all method of building resilience.
Hilde Larsen remembers her first big passage as the captain of her boat, in charge of paid crew onboard her Aera 43 SV Amiga, as very challenging. Not only was she in the role of leader for the first time, but three days of 30–40 knot winds on the nose during passage from NZ to Tonga with water floating her floorboards and a loss of all communication devices save limited VHF and EPIRB tested her resolve. A self described positive and proactive person by nature, she handled it all with great aplomb and is a blueprint for other sailors in the power of a positive attitude.
As mentioned earlier, Melissa White not only brings personal experience with some intense sailing conditions to the discussion but also her professional expertise in the realm of mental health. Melissa is candid about sailing with anxiety, but she has strategies to successfully overcome it. She has been tested by a near knock down in the Sea of Cortez and the loss of the backstay on SV Galapagos, an Olympic Adventure 47, during a passage from Hawaii to Washington. Situations that were frightening, but by having a proactive plan in place, she was able to persevere and conclude each event successfully.
All three very capable sailors, all three with different levels of innate resilience, and yet all three were largely in agreement on what techniques and tools work to build resilience. In conversation exploring different techniques to help build resilience, variations on these themes were consistently in each sailor’s resiliency toolbox.
1. Know Yourself — Before you sail anywhere, take time to reflect on your personal strengths and weaknesses. If you have anxiety, just being aware and making accommodations can mitigate many ill effects. “If you have anxiety, it is important to remember it belongs to you — not the captain or crew,” says Melissa White. By taking ownership of our own anxiousness, we are able to keep it in perspective and prevent it from affecting others or getting in the way of what must be done.
2. Self Talk — Be cognizant of the way in which you speak to yourself. Do not be shy about celebrating your past successes. When things are difficult, memories of past successful days help immensely. Reminding yourself that you are in control of yourself is very important. For Hilde Larsen, it was a light bulb moment as she was training on a smaller tiller steered boat. “I have the power to steer through these waves. I have the power in me,” Hilde thought when she felt that the boat might be overpowered. Turns out she was right. For Melissa, a mantra of “You are ok. The boat is ok. We did well,” would help to calm her mind in intense situations and allow her to focus on what needed to be done. Often times, what we hear most we become. Practice remembering your successes and rely on those positive outcomes to help keep your self talk positive.
3. Comfort the Body — As anxiety is a physical response, it is key to have ways to soothe and comfort the body on board. Your off-watch bunk should be a place of comfort. Pillows, cozy blankets, whatever makes your body feel snug will help calm your mind too. Weighted blankets can be a great help. Earplugs or headphones when appropriate to muffle what can be a very noisy environment on a boat can help to comfort the body, which calms the mind. By ensuring you give your body an opportunity to reset to a calm state, you will be in a better starting place if conditions become intense.
4. Rest — The importance of good, quality sleep can not be understated. As Melissa said, “Getting enough sleep is a priority on Galapagos. A lack of REM sleep is a safety issue.” Instead of forming a watch schedule based on a watch, follow your body’s needs as much as possible.
5. Communication — All three sailors were adamant that communication between Captain and crew was paramount to building resiliency. Communicating not only about sailing and boat topics, but openly discussing our personal needs and mental state only serve to help strengthen resilience.
6. Medication on board — Speak to your doctor about medication options. While medication might not work for all due to substance abuse issues or other medical contraindications, they are extremely helpful and fast acting. There should be no shame in treating the very physical response of acute anxiety. “Anti-anxiety medications stop the firestorm in the amygdala and allow resources to be accessed by the pre-frontal cortex. If I feel myself starting to spin up, I take a Xanax,” Melissa states. Marg kept a prescription separate from her medical kit. “I kept it with my spices,” she said. While she never had cause to use it, she did think that perhaps just the knowledge that it was onboard and available was helpful. As with any medication, speak to your doctor and ensure that there are no adverse effects before setting out to sea.
7. EFT Tapping — Of particular interest to those who are unable to take medication, there is interesting research about the effectiveness of EFT tapping techniques in relieving anxiety. Tapping requires practice and patience, but as there are no ill effects, it can be a good additional tool for sailors to have in their resilience toolbox.
8. Train the brain to be positive — During the worst of her challenging passage to Tonga, with floorboards floating, no communication, and no functioning bilge pumps, Hilde kept telling herself, “200 liters of water won’t sink my boat,” and, “everything on deck can be reattached once it’s calmer.” Keeping a positive outlook when in a scary situation can be challenging, but if you’ve practiced seeing the possible positive outcomes, you are much more likely to be able to remain calm and focused. “I have a generally positive outlook on life when I have experienced and gone through real and severe lows in my life, which includes getting diagnosed with cancer in 2009. I can accept situations I cannot change and make the best of them,” says Hilde. Training your brain to be positive takes effort, but with practice it becomes second nature.
Despite the best of planning, if you sail any great distance you will at some point find yourself dealing with intense and scary scenarios. By having utilized the tools and techniques above, you will be able to come through the event with flying colors.
Once the trauma has passed, it is very easy for an event to morph into a Post Traumatic Stress Disorder trigger. Melissa stresses that after an event, it is crucially important that when recounting the event and talking it out, you end on a high note. Never allow yourself to end the story with, “and then the backstay broke,” or whatever the traumatic occurrence was. “And then we lost the backstay but we managed it,” or, “And we did well.” Closing the loop on the recounting of the story and not allowing your brain to focus on the trauma, but rather your successfully overcoming it is key to ensuring that the memory of the event does not become a PTSD response. You were in a scary situation, but you prepared yourself for this and you handled it.
Being resilient enough to get through a scary time and go on to happily sail again is possible, no matter what level of natural resilience you do or do not have at the start. By being proactive and making your own resilience a priority you can have a long, healthy, and happy sailing career. So as you put together your sailing toolkit, make sure you save time and space to implement these tools so that when you need them, they are readily accessible. In the words of Marg, “just keep swimming.”
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Cidnie Carroll has been sailing with her husband Mark aboard their Tatoosh 42 since 2009. A founding member of Women Who Sail, she has served as an admin from the group's inception. Recently retired from her career as a professional cooking coach, Cidnie and Mark have recently cut the dock lines to pursuit sailing full time.
FROM WOMEN WHO SAIL NEWSLETTER | ISSUE 6. | SEPTEMBER 2022.