We have a plan (and loads of pertinent quotations – the internet is a delight!), well, a variety of plans that keep changing in the detail – “It’s a bad plan that admits of no modification”, Publius Syrus (~100 BC). ‘The Plan’ has been to retire as soon as we could just about afford and go sailing … somewhere warm … and interesting.
We seek new experiences, new knowledge, and new cultures. This will be a great adventure for us, but hopefully not as Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) said “Adventure is just bad planning”.
‘The Plan’ has been with us for some considerable time – buy suitable boat, quit work, and head south then west. But that is really only a goal and is not enough: “A goal without a plan is just a wish”, Antoine de Saint-Exupery (1900-1944).
We started putting ‘The Plan’ into action when we sold our Sigma 33 and decided to buy our OVNI 395 sufficiently far in advance of sailing off to get to know her, add things we would need and prepare both her and us: “Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work”, Peter Drucker (1909-2005).
So, our target year was 2009 and our initial plan was to join the ARC for the Atlantic crossing to the Caribbean. We would do the Biscay crossing in June, to reduce the risks of bad weather later in the season, and we would leave from Kinsale to give us the advantage of a western route to northern Spain, minimising the Biscay effect on the seas. We would spend the rest of the summer cruising Spain and Portugal before heading to the Canaries for the start of the ARC in late November.
Then, in the June 2008 issue of ‘Yachting Monthly’ we saw an article that changed things and we were excited by the places and the prospects of the Rallye Iles du Soleil.
This iFrench-organised rally starts in Madeira in the middle of October and is routed to Western Sahara, Senegal, Cape Verde Islands, Brazil (with a 600nm round-trip up the Amazon) and finishes in April 2010 in French Guyana.
The chart below shows the route from previous editions but provides a guide to the main routes.
This is ‘The Plan … Part 1’. After the rally we aim to spend time in the Caribbean and the East Coast USA, and after that we will …. need a new plan: “To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe”, Anatole France (1844 -1924).
Here are a few more cool quotes on plans and planning.
Why we need to plan:
Why we need to plan:
“He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgment to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision”, John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), On Liberty, 1859.
and,
“If you don’t have a plan for yourself, you’ll be a part of someone else's” American Proverb (1832).
Then there’s the need to plan but also to act:
“A good plan violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week”, George S Patton (1885-1945)
Finally, this sounds deep and meaningful but is it just pretentious verbiage?
“A plan is just a tangent vector on the manifold of reality”, “Scratch" Garrison.
‘The Plan’ will be updated and developed as soon as we know what it is.
