August 10, 1998.
It is very embarrassing when one goes to pay a bill, and ones credit card gets rejected. That happened to me last week. As our programs advance, part of the price we pay is a credit card used to its maximum limit. I paid a deposit when ordering new sails, then had to pay for the merchandize that I ordered from Passport International. I still had some credit left, but the boat needed more things. Now I am battling with my bank to get a higher limit to keep going. These are just some of the challenges a solo sailor/entrepreneur has to face. The show has to go on.
On September 4, I will be doing a live television program on the SCETV satellite available to all the schools in South Carolina. We spent a week at sea sailing with children filming them handling my boat and playing the role of being a solo sailor. These were children from our No Barriers Schools who had never sailed before. They adapted to their roles with ease, though apprehensive at first. In the live broadcast, I will be joined by 4 other students and we will use the inserts we filmed as lead in items to segments on nutrition, navigation and power generation. This program is to demonstrate how different subjects taught at school are applied while sailing. For me, it has posed new challenges. I had to write the script for the things that I wanted filmed, then sit with an editor in the studio to get the segments put together, apply the voice over where needed and structure how the 30-minute broadcast will flow. This has been a crash course in television production and has become another hat to wear.
If my calendar was not full enough between repainting the deck and spinnaker poles, re-wiring the boat, installing satellite communications systems, I did a team building program for Prudential Insurance Company. Five executives from Prudential spent an entire day at sea with me, going through a rigorous program. Only one had sailed before. They were given an orientation dockside, and goals with personal expectations were set before we departed. Starting out with easy sailing tasks, they performed their tasks clumsily. Once proficiency was attained, jobs were swapped, but before someone start the task, the person doing it had to teach it.
After five hours on the water in a variety of weather conditions and experiences, we sat down over dinner to evaluate the lessons learnt, what was discovered about each other, how it applies to each executive in the Prudential Family and the individuals lives. The program was so successful, that I will be doing four more programs for the company. On August 21, I will be addressing 60 Prudential agents in Charleston at a motivation presentation to be held in one of the hotels. The company is flying a film crew in from New Jersey to film my presentation as a training video in-house.
