The Power of "NO"

Ever think about the times when death was literally on your doorstep?
I can think of two times.
The first was many years ago, when I was driving home one beautiful evening, top down, in my treasured little MGB, and was struck at the driver’s door by a car running a red light. I didn’t see the car coming because the car sitting at my left was a big station wagon. We had both started pulling away together on the green, when the wagon suddenly nose-dived. I automatically hit the brakes as well and stopped, with the front of the MGB about six feet ahead of the wagon. The offending car, estimated by witnesses as doing about 50 mph, ripped the whole front of my MGB clean off… taking with it the bumper, the grill, the rad, etc. I was fine. But, a little quick math the next day told me that I had come to within about one second of buying the farm. Whew!
The second time that little word “NO” literally saved our lives.
November 16, 1999. We had set sail at around 5:30 in the afternoon for our passage from Chaguaramas Bay in Trinidad to The British Virgin Islands… four days or so… non-stop. We had recently purchased a new dinghy and outboard and it was up in the davits. We weren’t even out of the harbour, when Ida noticed that the dinghy was hanging a little loose. When she mentioned that fact to me, I looked at it, rolled my eyes, and, being my normal not-so-fussy self, said “Ah, it’s okay, don’t worry about it”. Then I got the ‘word’… “NO”. Now don’t get me wrong… I don’t do ‘everything’ I’m told (just most things!). The important part of this is that we had established a rule before we went cruising together back in ‘95. If we were about to do a passage, and one of us was not feeling good about it, that was it… we DID NOT GO, period. No explanation needed… we just didn’t go. So we pulled into Scotland Bay, a beautiful fiord at Trinidad’s north end, and dropped the hook while we made the necessary adjustments. Well, by the time this was done, we were feeling a little hungry, so we had a bite to eat. And then, feeling a little tired, we thought, what the heck… it’s beautiful here, and there’s really no hurry, so let’s spend the night.
Next morning we’re awake at around 5:30. The howler monkeys are making more noise than the crowd did when Henderson took the winning goal in the Canada/Russia series back in ‘72. I get on the weathernet, as we always did before any passage, and was shocked to hear that a weather system that had passed through several days before, had actually turned around 180 degrees (this almost never happens), had upgraded to hurricane ‘Lenny’, and was now in the process of demolishing the southern end of the windward islands… right where we would have been, had we left the night before! A book was written about this, “At the Mercy of The Sea’ by John Kretschmer. It tells of three sailboats that went down, along with their crews, two of whom we had met previously. Very, very sad.
And again, “Whew!”
The point of this little anecdote? Well, if you are cruisers, make the “NO” rule part of your life… because there is absolutely nothing to be gained if you’re not both exactly on the same page. ©