Beyond the Horizon: Bert Terhart's Resilient Exploration

Bert Terhart's incredible solo circumnavigation of the globe during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic reveals the power of adventure against all odds. His journey showcases resilience, the beauty of solitude, and the deep connections that emerge from embracing the unknown. 

• Introduction to Bert Terhart and his remarkable journey 
• Bert's eclectic background and passion for sailing 
• The emotional complexities of adventure and relationships 
• Overview of the circumnavigation route and challenges faced 
• Insights on handling the unpredictability of the open sea 
• The dichotomy of solitude vs. loneliness 
• Key strategies for mental preparedness and safety 
• Highlights of misadventures and learning experiences at sea 
• Insights into Bert's future plans for adventure 
• Reflection on the true meaning of adventure and personal growth

Want to be a guest on Journey with Jake? Send me a message on PodMatch, here: https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/journeywithjake 

Visit LandPirate.com to get your gear that has you, the adventurer, in mind.  Use the code "Journey with Jake" to get an additional 15% off at check out.

Visit geneticinsights.co and use the code "DISCOVER25" to enjoy a sweet 25% off your first purchase.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My guest today has been called the safest person on
the planet.
Why?
Because Bert Terhart spent over250 days alone at sea
circumnavigating the globe,starting in the fall of 2019 and
completing his journey in July2020.
He achieved this incrediblefeat during the height of the
COVID-19 pandemic, but, asyou'll discover in today's

(00:21):
episode, what Bert accomplishedwas far from safe.
It was daring, challenging anddeeply inspiring.
So get ready to set sail andexperience the world through the
eyes of Bert Terhart.
Welcome to Journey with Jake.
This is a podcast aboutadventure and how, through our
adventures, we can overcome thechallenges of life that come our
way.
While I expect you will learnsome things about different

(00:45):
adventures, this show willentertain you.
Each episode will featuredifferent guests or guests as
they share experiences andstories from the different
adventures they have been on.
Not only will you beentertained, but you will also
hear the failures and trialseach guest faces, and what they
have done or are doing toovercome the hardships that come
their way.
My goal is to take each of uson a journey through the

(01:07):
experiences of my guests, withthe hope that you'll be
entertained and inspired toovercome your day-to-day
challenges.
After all, it's not all aboutthe destination, as it is about
the journey.

(01:32):
Welcome to another episode ofJourney with Jake.
I'm Jake Bushman, your host,and I'm so glad you're here.
Before we dive into this wildepisode with Bert Terhart, I
have a few quick housekeepingitems.
First, subscribe to the podcastepisode with a Bert Terhart.
I have a few quick housekeepingitems.
First, subscribe to the podcast.
Make sure to follow Journeywith Jake wherever you listen to
podcasts.
And don't forget about YouTube.
You can find the show there bysearching Journey with Jake

(01:53):
podcast.
Second, follow me on Instagram.
Stay connected and get updateson the show by following me at
Journey with Jake podcast.
It's the best way to see what'scoming up and learn a little
about me personally.
Third, journey with Jake isproud to be part of the Podmatch
Podcast Network, home to a widevariety of incredible podcasts.

(02:13):
Check them out at podmatchcomforward slash network.
Finally, I'm thrilled to sharethat I'm a participating author
in Sacred Spaces, volume 3,releasing on February 18th.
My story is featured in Chapter8.
For more information, I'llinclude a link in the show notes
where you can get some moreinformation about the release of

(02:34):
Sacred Spaces Volume 3, which Iam super excited about.
Now let's talk about today'sepisode, if you enjoyed this
conversation with Bert Terhart,be sure to check out episode 46,
featuring Lauren Landers andher incredible sailing journey.
It's one of the most popularepisodes of the show.
All right, let's set sail andget to my conversation with Bert

(02:55):
Terhart, all right?
Well, I'm excited I've got BertTerhart on the show with me
today.
Bert, welcome to Journey withJake.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Well, Jake, I can't tell you how pleased I am to be
here.
This is going to be quite theride, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Oh, absolutely, and we can tell from your background
right now.
This is kind of what we'regoing to be talking about.
It looks like, if you'reswaying a little bit, it looks
like you're actually on a boatgoing over a wave right now.
That's just the background,obviously, but yeah, we're going
to talk a lot about your lovefor the ocean and sailing and
circumnavigating the world andthings like that.
Before we do that, though, Ialways like to know a little bit

(03:30):
about your background, kind ofwhere you're from, where you
grew up, a little bit about whoBert is, if you don't mind.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
I have a very eclectic background.
Shockingly, what's driven it isthat I'm almost completely
colorblind.
So on a scale of you know oneto 10, nine being you only, or
10 being you only see black andwhite, I'm a nine, so almost
every decision I've ever made istrying to get to see and it's
always been thwarted by you knowyou're colorblind.
So I started out.

(03:57):
I grew up in the prairies,about nine miles north of North
Dakota, so you know, withinspinning distance basically of
Minot, which is a great big sackbase.
I'm sure some of your listenerswill know that.
You know where that is.
So that isn't exactly, you know, ocean sailing country.
But I'm Dutch and my fatherused to row and sail to school.
So ever since I was a littlekid all I ever did was get in a

(04:19):
boat or an inner tube or log andput a sail on it or paddle and
try to get somewhere.
So sailing is kind of in myblood.
I mean you know I can honestlysay that.
But I ended up thinking I wasgoing to go in the Navy to
follow my father's footsteps.
I went to military college theCanadian equivalent of West
Point.
I found out I was colorblind.
So they said okay, bert, yougot two choices.
Well, they don't call anybodyby their first name in the Army.

(04:40):
They go hey, terrahart, you'vegot two choices.
You can join the army or youcan join the army.
What would you like to do?
So I wasn't about to quit, so Iended up in, couldn't go to the
Navy, end up in the army.
I figure, if I'm going to be inthe army I should do something
hard, because it turns out Iguess I just like doing hard

(05:01):
things.
So I joined the CanadianSpecial Service Force wasn't my
first love.
So when I thought I get out ofthe army almost as quick as I
can, I, you know, finish as aplatoon commander, which is a
great job actually it was just.
It was just like one giantcamping trip.
I really loved it, but it Icouldn't, I I wasn't.
I wanted to go to sea.
So then I thought well, youknow, I'll go back, cause I

(05:22):
figured I could get on a boatand do some real oceanography.
So as soon as I graduated, youknow, with all my fancy degrees,
I became a scientist and thefirst thing the Canadian
government did was shut down any, any and all you know research
going to sea.
So there I was stuck in frontof a computer.
This, this isn't turning out so.
So I had a friend who was a uh,who's still?
He still worked for this guy.
He's a, he's a medical doctor.

(05:42):
And he said hey, bert, you canprogram.
I said, sure, I can do that.
And he said, well, can youprogram some?
I have this big idea for aclinic, but it needs to be
automated.
Can you do all the software?
So I did it and that launchedme into a, basically an adult.
A lifetime of I had my fingerfirmly stuck in the adventure
slash, explorer, pie, and that'sjust the things I've done or

(06:10):
attempted, have just gottenbigger and bigger and bigger.
So, in a nutshell, I would saysoldier, scientist, explorer,
adventure serial entrepreneur,because I started more than a
couple of companies, bigsoftware development companies
that have been really successful.
I'm still doing that becauseI'm just too stupid to stop.
I guess I just can't stop.
I just love it, Like, if youlike your work, I mean that's

(06:30):
which is everyone says it'strite, it's easy to say, but if
you really love what you'redoing, it's pretty hard to stop.
And I'm, you know I'm veryfortunate to work with people I
really love.
So that's allowed me to go outand do crazy things, like you
see here in the background.
So I've been all over the mapand all I've ever wanted to do
is get on a boat.
So there you go, and it doesn'tmatter how big by the way, it's
not anything.
So there's, in a nutshell, alittle bit about me.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
I love it.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:56):
Soldier adventure explorer scientist Thank you
scientist.
I was like yeah, you got somedegrees too.
Scientist Thank you scientist.
I was like yeah, you got somedegrees too, you're a scientist.

Speaker 2 (07:06):
Serial entrepreneur.
You're just, I'm all over themap is what that is.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
What is it about getting on a boat?
Why is that the thing for you?

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Well, I guess there's two things.
As an adult, it's the only timeon a sailboat, it's the only
time that I could actually turnmy mind off.
I could get on a sailboat andyou can only go at basically a
quick walk.
You're not.
You know, you can't getanywhere, like your hair's on
fire.
You're going to get thereslowly.
So, firstly, you have to beprepared to get there slowly.
There's something about themotive power of nothing, because

(07:37):
you can't see it, see the air,you can feel it, but it's enough
to drive you across an ocean or, for that matter, around the
world.
Of course, people have beensailing for a very, very, very
long time, and I'm a historybuff, so if you clearly I'm a
history buff, every single namethat you can mention, anyone and
if they were an explorer or anadventurer, they have to go from

(07:58):
A to B.
At one time they got on asailboat from Alexander the
Great to Benjamin Franklin, toEinstein, trying to get across
the Great, to Benjamin Franklin,to, you know, to Einstein
trying to get across the ocean.
They have to get on a boatsomewhere to do it, and Canada
in particular.
Canada was literally put on themap by people traveling by boat
, by canoe in particular.
A lot of American history wasdriven by people trying to get

(08:21):
from one coast to the other,whether sailing around the Horn
or trying to paddle across thecountry.
I mean, I'm on the West Coast,so the Columbia River, explored
by canoe, put on the map byDavid Thompson, the city of
Astoria, named after John JacobAstor, who was one of the first
millionaires in the UnitedStates.
He was a fur trading guy.
He decided that he was going tosail around the horn and start

(08:42):
a fur trading company to rivalthe Northwest Company in Canada.
It's going to take beaver peltsto ship them to China of all
places, because there was a bigdemand for funny hats in China
at the time, if you can believethat.
So there's Astoria, there's theColumbia River, I mean the town
of Astoria named after JohnJacob Astor, whose grandson, by
the way, died on the Titanic.
So there's this amazing webassociated with traveling on the

(09:05):
ocean by sail, the craziest,slowest way you can do it.
Like I said, I can turn my mindoff, which is a good thing if
you're a tech guy and a bit of ascientist, and there's
something magical about it, notjust in terms of getting you
from A to B.
But there's something magicalabout tying you to everything
that's come before.
So here on the PacificNorthwest again, I can sail to

(09:26):
those places that Captain Cookor Vancouver or Bly or Bodega da
Quadra or La Prue all theseguys I can actually go and walk
the same trails, look at thesame trees, stand on the same
rocks, because it hasn't changedthat these guys were, and so
you're bound inexorably to ifyou go there with an open mind
to all those things that havetranspired before.

(09:48):
So there's something magicalabout all that.
So that's why I love getting ona boat.

Speaker 1 (09:54):
I love it.
That was a great explanation.
You are definitely a historybuff.
You are spitting out history,which I love.
I've always enjoyed history, soI enjoy hearing that from
others and I learned some thingsfrom it, so that's fantastic.
How about your, okay, your yourfamily situation, married,
anything like that?
What's kind of your familysituation?

Speaker 2 (10:12):
I have four kids.
None of them are sailors, butthey certainly are adventurers
in their own mind.
I've, you know, my middle sonis.
He's a bush pilot.
My oldest daughter, she's anentrepreneur.
My youngest daughter's inschool and my middle son is.
He has the biggest heart ofjust about anybody I know.
So he has the heart of anadventure, because you have to.

(10:33):
If you step, if you're willingto step out your front door with
an open heart, by definition inmy mind, then you're unexplored
because you're prepared forwhatever transformation is going
to come your way, as opposed to, you know, stepping outside
like this, you know, lookingdown at the sidewalk Doing what
I've done.
It's very, I have to say, it'salmost impossible, you know, for
your spouse.
So it's, I'm not married, I'mdivorced, as you can most.
You might well imagine, it'spretty hard.

(10:54):
I mean, it's impossiblydifficult, for it's impossibly
difficult for anyone whoactually cares about you to say
if I were to say to you,assuming you care about me, is
to say that, hey, I'm going todisappear over the horizon for
the next nine months.
I may not come back.
The chances of me coming backare probably are less than 50-50
.
You won't be able to talk to me.
You'll never you won't see me,but I love you.

(11:16):
Bye, that's, that's impossible.
The stomach, yeah, it's reallytough, I know.
To be perfectly honest, there'sa certain element that's very
selfish about it.
So it's very hard onrelationships.
So I'm still very good friendswith my wife.
My kids are fantastic, so I'vebeen really, really lucky that
way.
But it's pretty hard on yourfamily.

(11:40):
As an example, the day before Iwent on the circumnavigation, I
told my dad you know I'm leavingtomorrow.
I didn't tell him.
I didn't tell anybody, actually, except for the shore team,
which happens to be my sister.
I didn't tell anybody.
I told my dad, who'd beenaround, who sailed around the

(12:01):
world on ships big ships, notsmall boats through the normal
commercial route, so notanywhere near where I was going
and he looked at me and the onlything he said was I thought you
were smarter than that, whichis probably the best advice I
got, because he knew exactlywhat I was getting into.
But I didn't tell him until hehad no choice because I was
leaving in less than 12 hours.

(12:23):
My brother found out when I wasa thousand miles offshore, west
of you know, west of the bottomof Baja California and the
reason I did that was becausethe chance of you actually
leaving are very slim.
The boat might not be ready,you might not be ready, you
might not be healthy, like Imean, three weeks before I left
I fell off the mast.
So I fell 60 feet to the, youknow, to the deck broke, four
ribs cracked, my sternumcollapsed, my right lung

(12:45):
partially concussed.
But I went anyway.
So three weeks later.
But the point is it's verytough to go because the boat has
to be perfect, you have to beperfect, have to have a weather
window, all those things.
So I felt, okay, it's not fairfor me to say to my dad I'm
leaving in six months.
He'll, of course, worry for sixmonths, like everybody else
would be crazy worried, and thensay, okay, well, I'm not going,

(13:06):
but I'll try again next year.
So another 12 months of worry.

Speaker 1 (13:09):
More anxiety, more worry, yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
That's the rationale.
I'm not saying it was thesmartest, the greatest thing to
do, but that was the reason.
So, the things I've done afterthat, I've told the people that
really care about me.
I've told them up front I'mleaving and it's been and I
can't say, well, they stillworry.
But you know, at least I've,I've absolved myself from, from
the guilt, I suppose, of nottelling people.
So it's, I don't.
That's a long way of sayingit's.

(13:33):
This is really hard.
It's really hard on on the onthe people, because it's so
incredibly dangerous, like it'sbeyond imagining how tough it is
to sail nonstop, solo, aroundthe world.
So, as an example, to give yousome numbers, 6,000 people have
been to the top of Everest.
600 people have been in space.
300 people have sailed solo,nonstop, around the world Nine

(13:57):
people.
I'm the ninth person to havedone it with just a sextant pen,
paper watch.
I'm the first North or SouthAmerican to do it.
And when I came back in 2022,since then there's been a couple
other people have done it aspart of a big race.
But the hardest thing, it'sjust about the hardest thing in
the world to do, like I said,6,000 people to Everest, nine
people like me, so it's reallytough.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Wow, I feel pretty lucky I got you here on this
podcast, then this is prettycool really tough.

Speaker 2 (14:25):
Wow, I feel pretty lucky.
I got you here on this podcast.
Then this is pretty cool.
No, it's like I said my dad, Ishould be smarter.
It's like my dad said.
So that's just a way of mesaying okay, this is hard.
My dad understood what it wasgoing to be.
It was going to be hard, and soI didn't want him to worry and
then to paddle across Canada,solo across Canada, using only
maps that I made in a compass,no electronic navigation

(14:49):
whatsoever.
I'm the second person to havedone it.
The first person traveled withhis dog.
His name is Mike Ranta.
He's just a character and awonderful guy and just a beast
in a canoe.
I said hey, Mike, while you'recheated, you went with your dog.
He's your best friend, so I hadto go alone.
So at least you took a friend.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
You had a friend?
Yeah, I went by myself.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, anyway.
So it's, it's hard and likeagain, it's a long way of saying
this is getting me really toughon on your family.

Speaker 1 (15:14):
All right.
So yeah, two big thingscanoeing across Canada, that is
big Circum, circumnavigating theglobe without GPS.
Or you're not doing it withelectronics at all, you're just
kind of doing it with a compass.
Old school With a sextant.

Speaker 2 (15:30):
So one of the things I wanted to do was I wanted to
come as close as possible to theexperiences, to the people that
have done it before.
And it sounds easy, but it'salmost impossible in this day
and age, because the boats aredifferent, the sails are
different, of course, theclothing is different, the food
is different, everything isdifferent.
The only thing that is the sameis getting lost.
So we're hardwired Like it'sone of the reasons from a tech

(15:54):
guy.
It's one of the reasons whyGoogle Maps is so unbelievably,
unbelievably successful.
They make more money in mapsthan they make on anything else.
And we're hardwired.
They make more money in mapsthan they make on anything else.
And we're hardwired Like it'spart of our DNA Actually, well,
not our DNA, it's part of oursocial hardwiring to map our
locations, because, I mean toput it bluntly, maybe 5,000

(16:16):
years ago, if you couldn'tremember where the berry patch
was from year to year youweren't making it, you were
toast.
You can very quickly drum up thefeelings of someone living, say
, 5,000 years ago by throwingaway your phone, throwing away
the GPS, throwing everythingaway and taking like 10 steps
into the thick bush in theNorthwest rainforest and you are
lost man and that feeling thatstarts rising up in you, that

(16:40):
panic that starts rising in yourgorge and the cold sweat on
your forehead is exactly thesame that everyone else felt
before you.
Now, going to sea, most peoplearen't afraid of going to sea in
the waves and everything.
They're afraid of losing sightof land.
Because they are lost man,because there is nothing out
there.
There's no signposts, it's notpainted.

(17:02):
The nearest person to me was 200miles that way on the
International Space Station.
So I was like 2000 miles fromthe nearest land.
So using only a sextant it'svery easy to get, but they only
had a sextant, that's all theyhad was their you know, their
mathematical, their ability tofigure out where they were based
on stars, planets, moons andwhat time it is.

(17:22):
So if you can't do that, thenyou're lost at sea, like
literally lost at sea, and thereis nothing.
Like I said, there's nothingmore terrifying.
You can't create a moreterrifying experience, other
than being eaten by a wildanimal, I suppose.
But then, getting lost, rightGetting lost.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:39):
So I was able to capture some of that.
Like you know, traveling thelongest I went without any any
really good navigationalinformation, like you know, any
I could.
The longest I went withoutbeing able to determine where I
was exactly was like two and ahalf weeks, because the weather
was so bad.
There was no sun, there was nomoon, there were some stars.
So I'm just guessing.
I'm guessing how fast, I'mguessing at where I am, I'm

(18:01):
guessing what the drift is, I'mguessing at you know how the
wind, current and waves havebounced me around.
I'm guessing at what my coursewas, you know, diligently
writing everything down.
It's interesting, let's justput it that way.
It's the same.
It's the same.
Actually, you know, I hadpeople tell me it's crazy.
I was in Lake of the Woods, forexample, and Lake of the Woods
and Rainy Lake and borders onthe United States.

(18:22):
Lake of the Woods and RainyLake and borders on the United
States.
Rainy Lake is just north of theUS border.
It's very, very important interms of Canadian history, in
terms of where the United Statesand Canada decided to put their
map.
It's very important in terms ofhow the Northwest, not just of
Canada but also the UnitedStates was mapped, but there's

(18:43):
14,000 islands in Lake of theWoods and there's 100,000 miles
of coastline.
So everywhere you look is apoint is a bay, is an island.
So there's nothing, it'sindistinguishable.
So as I was paddling my waythrough there, guys would stop
what are you doing?
Give them a brief explanation.
So are you lost?
I said no, not at all.
You have to be lost becauseit's impossible to know where

(19:05):
you are around here because theythen they actually they have
you know, the gps and a chartplotter their track there back
and it's impossible.
They just can't imagine doingit without all the all the new
stuff, which is crazy becausethe only way it got there was
people did it without you know,quote unquote all the new stuff
right, we're just so hard.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Like you said, we're hardwired now to just have that.
I mean, I used to be able tolook at a map and be able to
look at a map.
I don't think my kids can dothat, you know.
I think they rely on theelectronics and stuff, whereas
you know I could actually pullup a map and figure things out.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
Well, I said to my nephew the Pirate King If you,
you know, in the blog and stuffI refer to this little guy as
the pirate King and I I wasdriving him to school.
When helping my sister out, shewas in the hospital and I
nothing serious, thank God, andyou know I said hey, hey, janer
is named after my dad.
If you had to walk to school,could you get there?
He goes, yeah.
So could you walk to a nearestgrocery store?

(20:06):
He goes.
Yeah, I could get there.
Sure, could you walk to wherethe parliament buildings are?
He goes.
Yeah, could you walk to theferry terminal?
He goes.
If you could walk that far, hegoes.
Yeah.
Could you walk to my place,which is 100 kilometers north,
just straight north, just walknorth?
He goes.
I think I could.
And he wasn't just saying yesfor the sake of yes, but if you
just stop and think about, okay,if I had to get to the grocery
store, could I do it?
And the answer is yes, I meanwe don't actually do it anymore.

(20:30):
People pull out their GPS andask Siri how to get to the
McDonald's when it's like butit's there, you just got to peel
a few layers.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's interesting when you look at it that way.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah, I mean ask yourself those questions.
You know, think could I yeahcould I walk there?
could I walk there?
And it's interesting aboutnavigation, you know say, okay,
well, calgary, from where I am,the city's it, let's pick a pick
.
Let's say I want to walk toseattle, all I have to do is
walk south.
It's not hard.
The sun comes up in the eastevery morning.
I just got to go the sun'scoming and just start walking 90
degrees, you know, to the eastand I'll get to Seattle.

(21:03):
And I have to.
I don't have to worry about itfor as long as I'm headed south.
Seattle is about.
From where I am is about 90miles away, maybe a hundred.
So I don't actually have toworry about Seattle until I get
to, until I get to mile 80 or 90, right, then I have to start
paying more attention.
So for the, for the greatestchunk of that distance, I just
have to have the dumbestnavigation in the world, which

(21:24):
is to walk south.
Right, that's it.
To figure out how far north andsouth you are is actually very
easy and it was figured out bythe Egyptians a very long time
ago.
You can do it with a couple ofsticks and the sun and get
really good at it, and you'd beable to tell that you're within,
say, 10 or 20 miles of Seattle,and then you can start paying

(21:44):
attention.
The simple, and you'd be ableto tell that you're within, say,
10 or 20 miles of Seattle andthen you can start paying
attention.
This simple navigation has beenwith us for a long, long time.
It's been around a long timebecause getting lost is no fun,
right?
So, yeah, no, absolutely.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:56):
So this whole circumnavigation that you did
and I want to hear maybe a fewmisadventures stories from it.
But what I'd like to know giveus kind of the overview.
When did this happen?
I think you said 2022.
Maybe I'm wrong, but yeah, kindof give us just the when this
all happened and kind of thatsort of thing.
So I kind of paint the picturefor it.

Speaker 2 (22:16):
Yeah, so that actually that was my mistake.
I came back from the paddle in2022.
So I left in 2019.
I left before COVID.
I was at sea for 265 days alone, traveled 28,800 and some miles
.
So I left in October and I cameback in July.
I left October 26th and cameback July 18th.

(22:39):
I left before COVID and cameback at the height of COVID.
At one time I was labeled thesafest man on the planet by
Yahoo News, which was likeridiculous because at the time I
was in the Southern IndianOcean.
So when you go around the world,well, I left Victoria, victoria
, british Columbia, so justnorth of Seattle and basically

(22:59):
you head southeast sort ofhalfway between Hawaii and the
mainland and then go south untilyou can start angling, sort of,
you know, southeast towardsCape Horn.
So Victoria, bottom of SouthAmerica is Cape Horn across the
South Atlantic to the Cape ofGoulas Cape of Goulas, which is
people think it's Cape of GoodHope, but the southernmost tip

(23:22):
of Africa is Cape Agulhas Acrossthe southern Indian Ocean into
the South Tasman Sea.
So now I'm south of Cape Lewin,which is the western extremity
of Australia, then I go beneathTasmania, which is southeast
Cape, and then I go beneath NewZealand, which is south Cape,
and then I go as far west as Ipossibly can, headed back to

(23:44):
north to South America, and thenI turn straight north, so you
get basically straight south ofHawaii and then go straight
north as hard as you can, passthrough Hawaii and then get over
top of the North Pacific Highand then back to Victoria.
It's the most extreme marineenvironment in the world and
perhaps the most extremeenvironment in the world period,
for a number of scientificreasons, oceanographic reasons,

(24:06):
which I can tell you aboutbecause that's what I did.
But that's the trip.
So Victoria to Victoria 265days alone at sea, 28,800 and
some nautical miles.
I came back in 2019 and 2020.
And then I went casting aroundlooking up something else to do
and I figured I should paddleacross the continent.
So I did, and then this pastsummer I thought I should go

(24:29):
back to the Aleutian Islands I'mnot sure if anybody's ever
watched that the reality seriesthe Deadliest Catch, where all
these?
Yeah.
So I decided, you know, maybe10 years ago.

Speaker 1 (24:42):
The Bering Sea right.

Speaker 2 (24:43):
Yes, I decided I wanted to go to all those places
.
So I sailed into, I went to allthose places that you saw in
the reality show.
I went to, you know, was in theBering Sea, did all the cool
things you know, and there's acouple places I didn't go.
So I decided to go back thissummer and you know I came back
this summer.
So it seems like every coupleyears I'm off on some because it
takes it takes a year at leastto plan these things out and get
them prepared and get fitenough to do it and get prepared

(25:06):
the boat or whatever has to be.
Yeah, those are kind of thetimelines for those things and
there's all sorts of crazystories about any one of those
things.
They're full of misadventure.
You and I talked earlier aboutthe flip side of every adventure
coin is misadventure.
They're both full of adventures.
Side of every adventure coin ismisadventure and they're both
full of adventures.

(25:27):
And if you're not prepared forthe misadventure, you should
probably, you know, hang up yourcleats and not not go outside,
because it's part and parcel ofthe, you know, of the whole
thing and it's actually whatmakes it all worthwhile.
Um, if it were the first personto sail around the world.
His name was robin knox johnson, now sir robin knox johnson.
He was a brit.
It took him 312 days.
He finished in, you know, aprilof 1969, just before man walked

(25:48):
on the moon.
To give you some idea of howhard it is, man had been to the
moon and back before.
Someone sailed solo, nonstop,around the world 20,000 years.
And so, anyway, some you knowrather coy British journalist or
reporter asked him.

(26:08):
So, robin, you know was it hard?
And he said, if it were easy,it'd be raining whiskey.
So, which is which I figure isgood advice, because you know
which is which is a, you know,very interesting way of saying
that there will be misadventures.
So I had, I had plenty and andthey, they, they ran the whole
gamutut.
It's like on the boat, I ranout of food.

(26:29):
I was down to less than 800calories a day, because it's for
a bunch of reasons.
So we can talk about that.
This picture you see behind me,the boat is basically straight
up and down.
I turned the boat more or lessupside down three times.
I spent more than 50 daysbecalmed, not all at once, but
over the course of the wholetrip.
So you know, being with no wind, which translates it was about

(26:51):
55 days actually whichtranslates to 50, easily 5,500
miles, which is basically thestretch from, let's say, fiji
back to Vancouver.
So almost two months.
You sit there, running out offood, running out of water and,
of course, just because there'sno wind, it doesn't mean that
the waves are, you know, go away, so you can't do anything.

(27:15):
I spent all that time strappeddown in the boat, just getting
beat to within an inch, justhammered, because the boat is
just going.
You know, it's just, it's justbanging.
There's no when, the, when thewind are in the sails.
Of course you can imagine, youknow the, the wind is the boat's
like this.
It might be going up and down,excuse my hand but when there's
no wind, all the boat does isthis, just, it's everywhere.
It's horrible.
And you sit there cursing yourexistence and and the.
You know all, all the gods thatmay have had a hand in your, in

(27:37):
your particular, you know, inyour particular stretch of or
your particular slice ofparadise, let's say.
You're cursing every single oneof them and railing at.
You know every small creaturethat you can see.
But you know, the experiencesrun the gamut, like the nights
are to die for, because they arejust unbelievably beautiful.
The stars are something thatyou cannot imagine.
The ocean itself is not much ofa romantic, but it has its

(28:02):
moods.
So you can, it's literally youcan.
You know.
I remember being in the IndianOcean once and looking out at
the waves, you know, wondering.
There wasn't much wind.
I thought, you know, man, ohman, I got to get some breezes.
I got to get going because Iwas late you know, you're always
late and there was a stormcoming up behind me, so I needed
some wind to be able to moveout of the way.

(28:22):
All these things are weighingdown on you and looking out at
the ocean, and suddenly it's asif someone had taken their hand
and just brushed it across thesurface and every wave was gone.
All that was left were littletiny cat paws and it was like
the whole universe had just, youknow, exhaled this huge sigh of
relief.
And the moment passes withinyou know, 30 seconds, and if you

(28:44):
weren't there looking, if youweren't there, you know, just
outside, you would have missedit.
It's pretty amazing to be awitness to that when you, when
you yourself, need it the most.
Right Because you're, like Isaid you were very anxious,
you're very worried, nothing hasgone right.
You know, blah, blah, blah, andsuddenly the universe just just

(29:05):
exhales and you go.
Okay, that that the you know,the mood just changed.
So, and it wasn't me like I'm,it's definitely external.
So, and you can, so that theocean itself has these, these
moments of of incredible beauty,and I, I mean, I could change
the background.
There's some other backgroundsthat I have to show you.
The skies are like.
It's unbelievably beautiful.
It's, firstly, it'sunbelievably wild.
It's chaotic in ways that youcan't possibly imagine the good

(29:28):
way to imagine it.
The waves in this picture hereare probably in the order of 18
feet high.
Imagine standing on theopposite side of a four-story
apartment building and lookingup at the top.
That's the size of an averagewave that you see in the back
here.

(29:48):
Now imagine you're in that sameplace, but you look up at an
eight-story apartment building.
That's the size of the wavesthat are coming at you when it's
stormy, and it's not just oneapartment building, there's
legions of them marching down onyou.
And, of course, it's beautifuland it's, you know, it's like
looking at a mountain.
A mountain itself is this.
There's this unbelievablebeauty about it.

(30:09):
But you can't just go.
You know, I'm just going to goup in the mountain and, you know
, lie naked on the rocks andcommune with nature, because
tomorrow morning you'll, you'll.
You know, you may as well bepart of the of nature, because
you won't be taking a neck, youwon't be having your next breath
.
And we had talked earlier abouthow I feel about the Southern
United States.
It also is incredibly beautiful.
But you also cannot go outthere, lay naked on a rock and

(30:29):
expect to see tomorrow morning,right?
So there's this, and it's notmalevolent.
There's malevolent.
There's nothing malicious aboutit, it's just what is.
So there's this amazing beauty.
That's just what is, but it'syou have to.
You have to at least be humbleabout being there.
If you're not humble, thenyou're in the wrong place.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
For the moments where it's quiet, there's no wind,
you're getting bumped around.
You're also by yourself.
You're alone.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
Alone yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
What do you do to keep yourself motivated, I guess
I mean, what do you do to kindof keep yourself motivated?

Speaker 2 (31:04):
I guess I mean, what do you do to kind of keep
yourself going?
Well, even though you're stillworried, you're not sailing the
boat.
You still have to manage theboat because everything is
breaking all the time.
You're constantly trying to fixthings, constantly trying to
jury rig things, constantlytrying to.
You know what can I do topreserve water, to preserve food
?
So the CPU cycles that you haverunning upstairs are constantly

(31:25):
going.
Like I slept, I never slept morethan two hours.
I never slept more than two anda half hours for the whole time
I was away during any 24 hourperiod.
I never slept more than 90minutes at a time.
So I would sleep 90 minutesUsually.
I tried to sleep.
I usually tried to be asleepbetween three and five 30 in the
morning, because three o'clockin the morning is when you do

(31:47):
this.
You know that typically that'swhen humans do the craziest
things.
That's when you'll, that's whenyou'll fall off the boat,
that's when you'll make a baddecision, that's when you know,
that's when you'll fall asleepdrive in your car.
That's when you'll, you know,run into an, you know drive off
the road, and I know that.
So I wanted to be asleep duringthat period and I would pick
some other time during the daywhen it wasn't too busy, and
then you know I, I would justcatnap, I would sleep.

(32:09):
You know, set my alarm for 20minutes and just you know, sleep
that way.
It takes some practice, it'sdifferent for everybody, but I
mean that's the way it was.
Because you have to sail the.
That's the only, even thoughit's very, very difficult to
move around and sometimes you'vegot to be strapped down.
That's the only time that youcan really fix something.
If there's something brokenwith the wind vane or something

(32:29):
broken if there's some sailsyou've got to fix, or whatever
the case might be, the only timeyou can do that is when the
boat's not moving, ie they don'tneed the wind vane or any of
the steering gear or the sailsor whatever.
Machinery is not being used.
So machinery, so we have tocharge batteries and things like
that.
So you're always busy.
So that helps.
It helps keep you occupied.
The other thing is I never leftwith the idea that I was going

(32:53):
to quit, like, oh, if it getshard I'll stop.
Let me relate.
I'm a soldier, I was a soldier.
So can you imagine if you hadan army where you said to all
the pointy end of the stick, theinfantry guys or the tankers.
You know guys, if it gets hard,just call it quits, we'll head
back to the hotel.
No, like they don't get thatoption.
Right, it's hard, too bad,right, you're just going to keep

(33:14):
, you're just going to have tostick it out.
You know none of those peopleever.
So none of those like a soldieror anybody else in those kind
of circumstances they don't getthe option of quitting.
So I never gave myself theoption of quitting.
I said if I leave, somethingcatastrophic has to happen.
The boat has to break, or Ihave to get really sick, or

(33:34):
something like that.
I think that's more than halfthe battle.
Just decide beforehand whatcircumstances would have to
conspire against you for you toactually consider quitting To me
.
I had a very well-defined ideaof what that looked like.
And the other thing is youmentioned being alone.
So there's a massive differencebetween being alone and being

(33:58):
lonely.
They are not the same thing.
The loneliest I've ever been inmy life is at a Vancouver
Canucks hockey game with 22,000screaming fans, none of whom
cared that I was there, andeverybody happy to spill their
beer and me.
You know, anytime anybodyscored.
So you're.
You are a complete and utternon-entity, which isn't to say

(34:18):
that it's not an enjoyableexperience, but it can be
incredibly lonely, right Causeso being away, I had a
tremendous number of peoplefollowing me on social media.
I had kids from all over theworld.
There was close to 3,000 kidsfollowing this trip.
It's from faraways, kenya toNew Zealand, all over North
America, britain.
The rule was if you email me, Iemail you back, because that's

(34:39):
the only way of communicating.
I had was.
I had a very low bandwidthsatellite connection that
allowed me to email, but I, youknow, you couldn't.
No one could send me a picture.
I couldn't browse any of thosethings.
All I could do was write a textand then send it off, and then
I would.
I had very I had.
I was able to send low, lowresolution pictures.
So that's what I did.
I sent them to the shore teamand then, you know, they it

(35:01):
because I couldn't, I didn't.
I had no idea what was going onactually in social media or
anything like that.
I just knew that I would writesomething and I wrote something
every day.
I was never lonely.
I was, because there's all thesepeople that you don't know who
felt if they fell out of the skyand hit you or landed on the
deck, you wouldn't know who theywere.
And they were.
They were completely investedin my success.
They wanted to see the tripcome to a successful conclusion.

(35:23):
They were just and, which ispretty, which is really normal
If you read the accounts of youknow any any other sailor.
You know people who areclimbing mountains, people who
are crossing continents, peoplewho are, you know, doing crazy
things like trying to drive acar or a motorcycle or a
mountain bike around the world,or whatever the case might be.
Joseph Campbell would havesomething about that.
It was have to say somethingabout the mythos that surrounds

(35:46):
people who take on things thatare perceived to be heroic.
Not that I'm casting what I'vedone as heroic.
Please don't get me wrong,because I'm persistent.
I'm not very smart, but I'mpersistent.
I wouldn't say I'm heroic, butmy point is that there's
something in well.
Let me rephrase it If you lookin every major religious

(36:08):
tradition, you know peoplealways stumble off into the
wilderness for 40 days orsomething like 40 days.
So you know Jesus disappearsinto the wilderness for 40 days.
Muhammad goes off into a cavefor 40 days.
You know, buddha ends up, youknow, meditating by himself,
sort of thing.
And so there's something,there's something hardwired in
all of us, something that thatthat we can relate to, cause

(36:29):
these are.
If you look at these as juststories I'm not just saying, I'm
not just categorizing thestories but if you look at them
from just an allegorical context, then you can see that they
they seem to resonate literallywith billions of people.
So there's got to be some truthto it, right?
Otherwise it wouldn't besomething that we can all you
know, from all walks of life wecan relate to.
So there's something aboutpeople stepping out into the

(36:51):
wilderness, however you chooseto describe it Like.
The ocean is a vast wasteland,it's a wilderness.
The surface of the moonwilderness, like.
Oh, there's another goodexample Think how many people
were totally invested in NeilArmstrong and the whole world,
right, the whole world wantedthem to succeed wildly.

(37:13):
So there's something that justpeople latch onto that seems to
resonate with them.
And what's been interesting tome is that in all the things
I've done, when I try todescribe them as best I can to
someone who doesn't know me fromanybody, there's something
about what I've done thatresonates with that person that

(37:34):
I never would have thought andnever in my wildest imagination
is what I thought, that thisparticular element of my
particular story would resonatewith that person.
And it does.
And as a result, I get aperspective not just on them but
on myself and what I've done,in a completely different light.
So it is unbelievably rewardingto be constantly given these

(37:55):
new perspectives on yourself andwhat you've done.
That in itself is, you know, ismotivating, because you go oh,
you know, I had no idea that,you know this would resonate in
this particular way.
So again, that's kind of a longway of saying you know you're
alone, but never lonely, becausethere's all these, all the
people, of course, that arewishing you success, but then

(38:16):
again there's all these thingsthat are running in the back of
your head.
Like I got as an example, I wasable to succeed.
I've been successful not just inbusiness but in, you know, in
everything I've done, becauseI'm very conservative.
You might not think I'mconservative.
You know doing crazy things,but I'm very conservative.
It's very easy to sail the boatto bits.
Anybody can do that.
Anybody can get on a boat, putup all the sails and just

(38:37):
disappear over the horizon,never to be seen again, because
the boat will just come apart.
It's very easy to say I'm goingto go climb the mountain and
just start running up the hillwithout any gear.
You're not coming back.
If you're conservative, thenthe chances of you succeeding
are far greater.
So I'm very conservative,although the things I've taken
on admittedly have a high degreeof risk.

(38:58):
But it's like I said you haveto be very, very sure that what
you're doing is going to fallwithin the realm of well I won't
even say the following withinthe realm of your own expertise,
because you have to be verysure of what you can do and what
you can't do.

(39:19):
I knew that, as an example, Iknew that I could stay up for 90
minutes.
I knew that I could get by in along time with very little
sleep and what I would need tostill function.
I knew how I could get by withnot eating very much food, but I
knew that I couldn't get bywith being cold.
So I spent more money onclothes than I did on sales
because I had very, veryexpensive you know gear to keep

(39:42):
me dry, cause once you're wetyou never dry.
Same same one.
I spent more on clothestraveling across the country.
You know canoeing and walkingthan I did on anything else, so
I knew that's a limitation,right?
So as long as you have someidea of what your limitations
are and some ideas of what yourcapabilities are, then you stay
well within those, then thechances of you succeeding are
very, very good.
One of the tricks I learned inthe army and I used, you know,

(40:03):
have used ever since was to playa game that we used to call the
, the when if game, or what I'vecalled the when if game.
So humans are very, veryoptimistic.
You will look at something thathas a very low probability of
happening and your mind willjust blow it off.
You can drive down the freewaywith no divider, going as fast

(40:31):
the other side of the road andyou won't give it a second
thought.
Right, because the probability,the probability of that of an,
of a car careening into yourlane, the probability of that
happening, is extremely low,right.
So you just, you just blow itoff.
But if you're, if you're goingto play a game with an unlimited
downside risk, like saying,sailing around the world, you
have to consider the everypossibility that has a very low

(40:52):
event of an event happening,happening.
So, instead of saying toyourself, what if the mass comes
down?
Because in your mind, humans,optimistic that we are, will go,
oh, that'll never happen, andthen you'll blow it off, well,
what happens if the halyardbreaks?
What happens if the ruddercomes off?
Or what happens if the windvane breaks?
Or what happens if you run outof food?
You could just blow all thoseoffice, as you know.

(41:18):
Low event happens to say youknow whatever.
However, if you do that, youend up lying sweating in your
bunk and your bed because you'lljust be, you'll just be
paralyzed with anxiety becauseyou don't have a plan for
anything except hope.
I, very early on, I sat down andspent like two days writing
down what do you think of allthe crazy things that could
happen, and then writing themdown.
So I had a plan A, b, c and Dand even a plan nine from outer

(41:38):
space for everything.
So if the mask comes down, whatam I going to do?
Not, not, I never said what if,because as soon as you say what
if?
Your mind blows it off.
But if I say when the maskcomes down, then right away your
mind starts thinking about asolution.
Right, it goes.
Okay, I need an answer for that, as opposed to oh well, it'll
never happen.
So I had these one-if.
You know I played one-if andyou know soldiers do this all

(42:03):
the time, or they should do it,and you know people that.
You know commanders who havelost major battles have never
considered that the enemy'sgoing to.
You know, climb up over thecliff, the famous, you know
battles, planes of Abraham andCanada battles in the second
world war.
They just say, oh, you know, noone's going to, no one's going
to scale the cliffs, no one'sgoing to sail up the St Lawrence
because it's too hard.
But then someone does it andthey're taken by surprise and,
you know, catastrophe.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
They were.
They had the what if and theyblew it off.

Speaker 2 (42:29):
What if?
And blew it off Anyway.
So it's a very interestingthing to do.
So, again, there's lots ofthings to think about and lots
of things to do to keep you welland truly occupied, even when
there's nothing going on.

Speaker 1 (42:44):
What was an example of one of the when.
If that happened to you, thatwas pretty scary, pretty nerve
wracking, besides running out offood.

Speaker 2 (42:54):
So I mentioned earlier that I stuck the.
You know, the boat wasbasically upside down.
So before I left, I, I, the thechances of the boat turning
upside down were were.
Well, if it turns upside down,it's catastrophe.
Right, that's because the boatcould potentially fill with
water and everything could comeloose.
I could get, you know, I couldget struck by it.
The stove that comes loose.
It comes flying across thecabin.

(43:16):
I played the one F game beforeI left.
So when the boat goes upsidedown, what's going to hit me?
That's the stove, that's thefloorboards, that's the
batteries, that's every book,that's everything.
So when the boat turns upsidedown, where's the water going to
come from?
All the hatches, the portholes,the lights, everything.
So I made sure before I leftthat when the boat turns upside
down, that A, it's not going tofill with water.

(43:36):
Because that's your first jobas captain.
The water stays on one side ofthe hull and you're on the other
, and the other one is you don'tget hurt because, again, you're
trying to sail conservativelyso you can't get hurt.
I made sure that I hadeverything nailed down and if
you go to the blog, for example,you look inside the boat, it
looks tied up to the dockexactly the way that it would be
at sea, because the only thingthat can come loose is a cushion

(43:59):
right, that's it.
And hit you Like, oh my God, mypillow hit me.
You know there's a one-if gameand I turned.
So, sailing in a violent stormnear the end, I'm out in the
cockpit because I'm trying toprepare for when the wind shifts
.
So when the wind shifts, that'swhen the waves get chaotic
because the wind is blowing oneway, the waves are going one way

(44:20):
.
In the Southern Ocean the windshift is very violent, so it
might be blowing, say, 45 to 55knots one direction and then 10
minutes later it's blowing 65 to75 knots, which is close to 175
.
Knots is like 90 miles an hourin a direction that's 90 degrees
to that.
So you can imagine the wavesthat are going one way are now

(44:41):
suddenly being forced 90 degreesby an incredibly strong wind
the other.
So the waves get chaotic andyou can't be asleep during that.
You can't be asleep at theswitch.
So you have to whenever thewind shifts and you have to stay
ahead of the boat.
You can't, you can't wait forthis to happen, because then
you're caught with your pantsdown, which is, you know, at sea
or otherwise it's always a badidea.

(45:03):
So I was awake, waiting for thewind shift and this one, a gust,
came through right at the wrongtime.
So the giant wave picked theboat up.
I go smoking down the face ofthis wave hit the bottom.
Giant wave pick the boat up, Igo smoking down the face of this
wave hit the bottom, the boatbroaches and the gust comes in
and just knocks the boat over.
So between the wind knockingthe boat over and the wave
breaking behind me, it justbasically flips the boat.

(45:23):
It happens in three seconds.
It took me longer to describe itthan it happens, because the
waves come at you at about 40miles an hour, like literally 40
miles an hour a cubic meter ofseawater.
So you hold out your arm, youknow, three feet by three feet
by three feet, it's a prettysmall box that weighs one metric
ton or 2,200 pounds.

(45:44):
So you have hundreds ofthousands of tons of water that
just smash into the boat and ofcourse it's just like a cork it
just gets rolled, snapped over.
So I find myself swimming, Ifind myself in the ocean
swimming up to, you know, up tothe cockpit, where, so I know
the boat's upside down, or atleast past 90, because

(46:06):
everything that used to be flatis now vertical and underwater.
And I thought, firstly, is theboat going to come up with a
mast, which it did, because Iwas.
Before I left, I replaced everypiece of rigging on the outside
of the boat, thinking that youknow that if, if the boat gets
turned over, I want the mast tocome back, and if it doesn't
come back, then I want bigpieces of the mast to come back.

(46:28):
So, so, and then I thought theboat you know the inside of the
boat better not be filled withwater, because that's another,
it's a disaster.
Well, you know it's anotherissue, but it was fine and that
happened three times.
So there's there's an exampleof when of you know when
something Right.
So you know, I you know, as weused to say, prior preparation
prevents piss, poor performance.
That was the army thing.

(46:50):
So you know, being it goes along way, it really goes a long
way.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
So there's an example of it.
Wow yeah, this is.
This is amazing.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
I had said.
You know another one we talkedearlier about, about motivation,
and you know people wanting towish you well, and I was talking
about sailing conservativelyand every everything you do, you
have to be, you have to behanging on to the boat always.
It would take me sometimes 10or 15 minutes to put a boot on,
because it takes that long toget across the boat safely and
then it gets that long to wedgeyourself into a place where you

(47:23):
can actually use two hands,which means you're not hanging
on to something.
You've got two hands on a boot.
So how do you get three pointsof contact?
Because you have one foot, onehip and one shoulder wedged in a
doorway because the motion onthe boat is so violent.
But I was in the Indian Oceanagain, sailing north to get out
of the way of a cyclone ortyphoon there and I was hanging

(47:44):
on with two hands like this ontothe cockpit in front of me.
You know the Dodgers got thisrailing on it.
I was hanging on to that and Ilooked behind me to see what was
going on with the wind vane andI couldn't quite get my head
cranked around.
So I took my hands off thishandhold and in the time it took
to take those hands off, I gotflung off the boat and bent over
backwards, double over top ofthe compass, which had a

(48:06):
protecting stainless steel thing, and I hurt my back.
I hurt my back and then I fellinto the cockpit and hurt my
ankle.
I thought, okay, well, thatsucks, because if you get hurt
then you're done right, becauseyou're.
I thought, oh geez.
So I crawled into and I wasluckily going north and the
weather was actually pretty goodbecause I was avoiding this

(48:27):
massive storm that was comingdown from Madagascar.
Basically I was east of Africaand in the Goulas Current, which
is a really nasty place, anyway.
So I'm going north, right,getting away to this big storm.
As the storm was coming south,I hurt myself.
So I crawl back into the cabinand I strap myself down to the
bunk, thinking, okay, theweather's decent, the boat's

(48:49):
fine.
If I can just recover a littlebit so they can actually move
around, then I'll be okay.
So, after laying down for 24hours, I had written something,
and one of this a school teacherfrom Winnipeg who had an entire
elementary school following me.
They emailed me, or she emailedme and say, hey, the class is
loving blah, blah, blah stuffand one of her little kids when

(49:15):
I had read one of the things I'dwritten and he had
spontaneously jumped up and said.
He jumped up and said somethinglike you know, don't quit, mr
Terhart.
So in when I was in militarycollege, you're always called by
, you're always called MrTerhart.
There might be a flurry ofprofanity before and after, but
it's always Mr Terhard.
And I thought to myself at thattime if I disappoint this

(49:39):
little kid because I'm hurtquote, I'm not bleeding, I'm
fine, I'm just a littleuncomfortable If I disappoint
that kid by quitting, then I'mdoing the wrong thing.
That little kid had as much todo with me finishing as just
about anything else that Iconjured up myself.
In that one moment I wasn'tconservative, I got hurt, and in
that one moment that I neededhelp the most.

(50:01):
When I was at you know, aslonely as you could possibly get
, because there's no help coming, there's nobody near you for
thousands of miles away.
This one little tiny voice froma little kid who's never met
you, will never meet you andonly knows you from a couple of
snippets.
That is enough to get you upand get going.
So there's maybe some I won'tnecessarily say the highs and

(50:22):
lows, but it gives you maybesome idea of the range of
emotions that pour through you,because one of the things about
being there is that there's nofilters, right.
The only filter you have is thefilter that you apply yourself.
The choices are to behave verybadly or to behave very well,
and when I say well, you knowyou end up doing things that are
constructive as opposed to, youknow, deconstructive.

(50:43):
So yelling at the wind althoughI yelled and swore at the wind
and complained isn't helpful.
It doesn't do anything and thenafter a while you go.
Well, that was ridiculous, yeahthat was really stupid.
That didn't help at all, youknow, further ahead.
So why don't you do somethingconstructive?
You have to self-regulate, Isuppose in a way that's pretty

(51:04):
hard to relate to, because mostpeople aren't in those
situations where there's nobodyaround for thousands of miles
and there's plenty of stories ofpeople going, you know, crazy,
like just stark, raving mad as aresult of not being able to,
not being able to to regulate.
So the most famous one is, um,the guy who was part of the race
that, that Sir Robin KnoxJohnson, you know, won.
He uh, there's a, there's amovie that was made about him

(51:27):
and uh, it's.
It's really kind of a sad story,but but he, you know, he went
crazy.
He couldn't face the fact thathe was going to fail and that he
felt that the only way that hecould succeed was to win, which,
of course, is just crazy wrong.
So he ended up it's kind of along story but it's worth
researching.
He ended up killing himself,jumping off the boat, leaving

(51:49):
his log behind, anyway.
But this idea ofself-regulation is, you know,
it's really important.

Speaker 1 (51:55):
Well, this has been just fascinating.
I'm so impressed with whatyou've done.
Wow, I mean, you've just it'samazing what you've done.
Now tell, where can we findthis blog if we want to look at
what you've done, and where dowe find the blog?

Speaker 2 (52:09):
Well, you can go to Facebook.

Speaker 1 (52:10):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (52:11):
You can go to facebookcom.
The Five Capes, the.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Five Capes, the Five.

Speaker 2 (52:15):
Capes, yeah, the Five Capes.
Everything is on Instagram, sothe best way, I think, is to
just go to BertTerhartcom andthen all the links are there,
and if you just Google my nameor Google the, name of the boat.
There's more than a lot there.
We've covered even just a tiny,tiny, tiny part of the story.

Speaker 1 (52:35):
There's more than a lot there.
So you know, we, we haven't,you know we've covered even just
a tiny, tiny, tiny.
No, absolutely, and that's justit.
I mean you still, you mean youwent, you took a canoe across,
across canada, yeah, you, thelucian islands, you know?
Yeah, all of that okay.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
So, uh, we haven't talked about the canoe, but one.
One of my favorite storiesabout the canoe trip was that,
was that, uh.
So here's, here, here's, andthis is the one where I actually
a bear came in the tent.
Right, it's 4.30 in the morningand I'm waiting out this just
huge rainstorm.
And because it's 4.30, it'srelatively light, because it's
up north in Canada, it's awilderness.
There's no one around forhundreds and hundreds of miles,

(53:08):
you're just there's nobody there, because you know every sound
in the bush, right, I know?
Suddenly I'm sitting up in mylittle tent and I know
something's not quite right andI look over to my left and
there's a bear that's justclawed his way into the tent and
he's trying to make off with mypack.
That has everything in it,right, and I played WinF.

(53:30):
So if he takes my pack anyway,so it's not good and I had a
plan for that.
When I wrote about the story onthe blog, people said well, did
you punch the bear in the noseand did you have a knife, and
did you use your bear spray andyour bear panger?
So here's what I basically saidIf you think you're going to
win a knife fight with a bear ina telephone booth, then you're

(53:51):
probably mistaken.
And if you think you're goingto light off a can of pepper
spray at a bear in a tiny tent,the only thing that's going to
happen is that you're going towant the bear to eat you because
you yourself are going to becovered in pepper spray, so you
want to be put out of yourmisery as soon as humanly
possible.
If you launch a bear banger ata bear in a nylon enclosure,
pretty soon you're going to beengulfed in flames that have now

(54:15):
melted onto your skin becauseyou've melted every piece of
nylon around you and you'llagain want the bear to eat you
to put you out of your misery.
And if you think that you'regoing to punch a bear in the
nose, then maybe you probablyshouldn't go in.
The bush.
My when if plan, when the bearcomes in the tent, was to yell,
because that's the only thingthat you could possibly do.
So the only thing you don'tactually know is that if you

(54:38):
open your mouth, maybe nothingcomes out, which which I've seen
happen to people in reallyexceptional circumstances.
So I opened my mouth andCaptain Terhart came out, like
your parade voice, you know,came out and the bear took off.
So luckily the bear took off,but there there's another.
So I had a.
I had a when if plan for whenthe bear comes in the tent, and
that was to yell.
Even though I had knives andaxes and pepper spray and all

(54:59):
that kind of stuff, you justcouldn't use it in a tent.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
The bear in the tent, because everyone you know
little kids always ask did yousee a bear, you know, were you
scared and all these kinds ofthings.
So the the bear story alwaysgets a little bit of traction.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
What does the future hold for you?
What do you think you want todo, moving forward?

Speaker 2 (55:14):
This summer I'm paddling to the Arctic Ocean and
then down the eastern shore ofthe Arctic Ocean, traveling in
the footsteps of FranklinMcKenzie, peter Pond, an
American actually, the guy whoactually, he, was the one man
more responsible for the lure ofthe Northwest Passages than
anybody else in the world.

(55:34):
So he drove the BritishAdmiralty, his maps, which were
a complete figment of hisimagination he just made them up
, those maps single-handedlydrove the British, which was the
most powerful empire in theworld at the time, they drove
them for two centuries to lookfor the Northwest Passage.
It's following the footsteps ofPeter Pond and Alexander
McKenzie, of course you knowMcKenzie river, and then down

(55:55):
the shore of the Eastern, of theSouthern Eastern part of the
Arctic ocean, the Southern coast, following the footsteps of
Franklin, who of course diedmiserably, and then John Ray,
the Canadian surveyor, who, whoyou know, found him, sort of
thing.
So I'm, I'm doing that, I'mdoing that trip leading, leaving
the BC-Alberta border.
It's about 40, 45, 4,600kilometers, again by canoe, solo

(56:18):
, again with just maps, and sothat's coming this summer.
And then I'm planning anothercircumnavigation the year
following, when I come back.
So to try to set I didn't set arecord because Suburban is very
slow, so I'm going to try to dothat again.
So I always have plans.
I always have plans, of course,and there's all these other
things going on.

Speaker 1 (56:41):
Well, this was amazing.
I do want to ask you the finalquestion.
It's a question I like to askmost of my guests, not all the
time, but most of the time Foryou, bert.
What does adventure mean to you?

Speaker 2 (56:47):
That's a really, really good question, because
adventure, in my mind, iscompletely scale invariant,
which is to say that it doesn'thave to be big.
Like we completely and utterlyconfuse we as humans, people
confuse extraordinary with thegrandiose and the large, like
the word itself just meansliterally it's extra, which is

(57:09):
any tiny bit is extra out of theordinary.
So anything that'sextraordinary, which is a little
tiny bit out of ordinary is, bydefinition, extraordinary.
So if you're willing to stepout your front door, if you're
willing to step out your frontdoor with an open heart and an
open mind, then you are on anadventure because you are doing
something extraordinary.
Literally, you've gotten up offthe couch, turned off Netflix,

(57:30):
put your phone down, made thefirst step outside and then, if
you're willing to look around, Iguarantee you, if you stop and
look at a blade of grass andjust wonder how the hell did
that get there?
Everything that you see aroundyou is a miracle.
Like I mentioned how beautifulwhere you live is.
It's beautiful in a differentway than, say, alaska, or the

(57:50):
Bering Sea is beautiful or theocean is.
I grew up in the prairies,which I think an extraordinary,
you know beautiful place.
So adventure to me is anythingthat happens that's outside your
front door, not that inside.
You know, with kids, can't bean adventure on its own.
But you know, literally, youknow figuratively, to step
outside whatever that comfortzone for you is, and it does not

(58:13):
have to be large.
In fact, if you think that ithas to be large, I think you're
sort of headed down the wrongpath.
It's the process.
If I imagine I was going tosail 28,000 miles, as an example
, or paddles and walk 7,800kilometers, it's an impossible
undertaking, but I can alwaystake one more step.

(58:33):
I can always sail the next sixminutes, which is one mile.
You know, basically it's sixknots, or you know 10 minutes
it's.
I can always do that, right,which is a very small chunk.
So that very small chunk initself is the adventure and you
just have to keep, you know,stacking them one on top of the
other, and it doesn't matterwhere the, it doesn't matter
where the stack ends or wherethe stack goes, which is part of
the misadventure, part of it,right, you plan to go here and

(58:56):
you end up there.
I want to do this and you end updoing that, and the journey
itself is going to betransformational in ways that
you cannot possibly imagine.
It will change you.
It will change the people thatyou meet.
There's a symbioticrelationship, of course.
This wonderful relationship youhave with the people that you
meet and the people that youdon't meet, like the small child
or kid I talked about.

(59:16):
It'll take you to places thatyou can't imagine.
It's just.
But you will not do that unlessyou take that one tiny step, so
that one tiny step encapsulatesevery single thing that there
is to encapsulate aboutadventure.
So that would be my shortanswer to that.

Speaker 1 (59:33):
I love it.
It, Bert.
Thank you so much for coming onJourney with Jake.

Speaker 2 (59:38):
Yeah, it's been.
It's been a real pleasure.
And, like I warned you, if you,if you talk to some guy who,
who travels around a lot bythemselves, they just won't,
they just won't shut up.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
So I apologize for that.
I appreciate it.
I enjoyed hearing your story,so thank you so much.
Thank you so much to my guest,bert Terhart, for sharing his
incredible adventures andinsights with us.
If you'd like to follow alongwith Bert and see what he is up
to, the best way is through hiswebsite at bertterhartcom.
I learn so much from Bert, justas I do from all my amazing

(01:00:09):
guests on Journey with Jake.
Thank you again, bert, forinspiring us with your thoughts
and journey and, of course, abig thank you to all of you, my
listeners, for tuning in eachweek.
If you're not already followingme on Instagram, be sure to do
so.
At Journey with Jake podcast,I'll be sharing some exciting
announcements about new contentcoming in February.

(01:00:29):
Let's just say, even thoughFebruary is the shortest month,
it is packed with plenty ofcontent, so stay tuned on
Instagram for updates.
Looking ahead, my next episodefeatures Gary Arndt, a world
traveler, multi-time Americantravel photographer of the year
and host of the EverythingEverywhere daily podcast.

(01:00:50):
It's going to be anotherfantastic episode, so don't miss
it.
Just remember it's not alwaysabout the destination as it is
about the journey.
Take care, everybody.