November 19, 2025 • 18 mins
Ever wondered what it takes to turn a wild dream into a 10,000-mile reality? Listen in as Robert Tisch recounts the gripping, storm-battered voyage from Florida to New Zealand—where every mile is a lesson in courage, partnership, and the fragile beauty of our world. Discover the stories behind Crossing the Wild Pacific, from mechanical mayhem to moments of awe, and find inspiration to chase your own New Zealand—whatever it may be.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hey is Benji col Son of Alcohol from CBS Radio
and host of the syndicated.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Talk show People of Distinction. The talk gives you an
in depth.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
View of some of the most dynamic, intelligent, and successful
people on the planet. Run to our website Alcohol Enterprises
dot com for more info.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Email me through Benji.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
At Alcohol Enterprises dot com if you'd like to get
involved with what we have going, and as always, please
continue to like and follow our broadcasts. People of Distinction
is internationally syndicated solely due to the love and support
that you all continue to give. We're available across all
major distributors, and as long as you keep following, we're
going to continue to put out the content. Now sit
(00:47):
back and strap in because on the line with us
today we have the impressive Robert R.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Tish.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Now we're gonna be discussing his incredible book, Crossing the
Wild Pacific Captain's Log of the Yacht Ourgo. It's Amazon,
it's Barnes and Noble, it's Books Academy dot Org. Man,
I'm telling you it's a lot of places, and listen, people,
sit back and get ready. Man, this is about to
be a phenomenal discussion. What does it take to not
(01:18):
just have a dream, but to actually cast off the
lines and pursue it. Now, I ask that question because
it's so universal. We have all been at a moment
in our lives where we've sat down and we thought, right,
we aspired to reach something that was off the beaten path. Listen,
(01:39):
Robert and his wife they had a similar desire. Okay,
they did exactly that, turning a vision into a ten
thousand mile voyage from Florida to New Zealand and all
around in their yacht Argo. You see their books Crossing
the Wild Pacific. Man, it's more than just a captain
(02:00):
log of storms and exotic ports, now that it is.
But additionally, it's a masterclass in the gritty reality of
making a dream happen. And I love the fact that, listen,
we're gonna get into some of the nuances here today,
because on the surface, you're gonna see a beautiful journey, right,
(02:21):
a dream come to fruition that they essentially worked their
entire lives for, maybe indirectly, but it's something that.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Was a challenge, right.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
It was not an overnight feet and as Robert will
tell you, man, this thing was just shy of a
year to go through, and I'm sure just the planning
and preparation for it probably took.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Even longer than that.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
This is one that is going to be wildly entertaining,
but hopefully it's gonna inspire some of us listening in
and hopefully a lot of the readers picking up the
book to maybe embark upon their journey to chase and
complete their dreams. Sit back, here we go, r Ver.
Welcome to the network. Man, thank you for being a guest.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
How you doing today, Sarah, Thank you, Benji, glad to
be here, Lisson met, We're glad to have you.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Robert. What you've done is remarkably impressive, not only by
culminating the book that we are eternally grateful for, but
being able to do something that a lot of people
aspire to, whether it's again the voyage that you and
your wife took, or just that notion of pursuing a
dream that they've always had. I think there's this underlying
(03:28):
inspiration there that I think is really so powerful. So
we're looking forward to the discussion. First and foremost, before
you and your wife embarked upon the journey, Ben start
off at the foundation and tell us a little bit
more about yourself.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I have owned an investment management company here in Michigan,
so for many years I was creating stocks and bonds
and sub quits for my clients. I solved the business
to a public company and that provided some of the
resources that we needed to fund this project. My wife
was a surge and she also had a very good practice,
(04:02):
and we closed the practice and the two of us
set out on this adventure. Was something we wanted to do.
We had had boats on the Great Lakes, which are
for many of you that aren't from this part of
the country, these lakes are as challenging as the ocean.
We spent five years sailing the Great Lakes, and by sailing,
I use the term loosely. Cruising is a better word
(04:24):
for it, because these aren't sailboats that we used. These
are motor yachts. And you might ask why did we
choose a motor yacht, why not go with the sailboat.
One of the reasons is my wife won't go on sailboats.
She doesn't want to live at forty five degree angle.
And I'm six five and I'm too big for sailboats.
They're just too small for me. Bue and large, so
(04:46):
we have always looked for boats that were big enough
to take care of me. They had to have enough headroom,
and my wife likes air conditioning and sub zero refrigerators
and all that sort of things. So we settled on
the two or three boat that we owned. But our
ambition was really inspired by crew by sailing on a
great lakes, and once we had done that, our ambition
(05:08):
became really the world.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Listen, Robert, first and foremost, thank you for articulating all
of that.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
And I would say, as someone that has been on
both as well, like I'm definitely not a sailor.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I don't have the love for the sea as you
and your wife had.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I will say, man, it's just the amount of work
that goes into a sail boat. Like going sailing, you
don't get to just sit back and relax.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Man, there is constant things that you're doing.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Aside from, yes, being at that forty five degree angle.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
It's fun. Definitely not a leisure activity. I would say, well, I.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Think these things are callings. You really have to have
an inspiration within yourself to do these things. Absolutely, for me,
I always wanted to be on the ocean. I was
in the Navy for four years. I crossed the Pacific
several times, four times with the Navy, So I like
being at sea, and my life were lucky. Me is
a good sport, and wanting to put up work, the
(06:06):
inconveniences in the work it required. You have to have
a supportive spouse or you can't do these.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Of course, and listen, a great thank you for mentioning that,
because that's a great segue to where I want to
go next as a married man myself. Listen, man, just
combining two individuals' lives, right, personalities, experiences, all of those
things that go into leading a successful partnership. In marriage,
it takes a lot, right, There's a give and take.
(06:31):
There's sacrifice. It's as much as you'd like to be
a fifty to fifty split sometimes for anybody else that's
up there that's married, you get it.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Man.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Sometimes it's seventy thirty, sometimes it's sixty forty. There's a
give and take in that partnership, that's right. I'm curious
to know, Robert, not many people have to balance that
partnership in such a confined space for so long. How
did that work then? And I'm sure there was tests
that it put on your relationship.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Talk to us about that.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Liked being with each other, And to your point, I
don't think you should buy a boat with your souse
if you don't want to be with her, it's not
the place to be. But we enjoy each other's company.
We like what we're doing. My wife was extremely supportive
and helpful and get took care of a lot of
the things that I wasn't very good at, and I,
of course my skills are different. But one of the
(07:21):
things that's interesting is that she's a small woman compared
to me, and there were many places on that boat
that we had to perform maintenance or do inspections on it.
I frankly couldn't get into, but I would send her there.
And in the navy we had a phrase for people
who were mechanics and that's everything, were calling diesel monkeys.
So I mentioned that to her once and I've never
(07:43):
quite gotten over it. Then I should say, she's not
quite gotten over, but I'll hear about it from time
to time. But she In the book, you'll see a
picture of her crawling down beneath the shaft on our
boat to make sure that the drip rate was correct.
So anyway we use each other's silence love that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Let's change gears here and I want to talk about
the title, but the title in reference to what you experienced,
and really the operative term in the title being wild,
because of course we think of the Pacific as wild
because of its storms and its vastness.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
But aside from.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
The ocean itself, you and your wife also encountered remote cultures.
Right you stopped at all these different places along your journey,
did you discover a different, even more profound wild, perhaps
one of profound peace or traditions. Talk to us a
little bit more about the different interpretations of the wild
and how it may have related to different experiences outside
(08:38):
of the water as well.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
So your question really goes to the heart of the
objective that we have and us to find that wild
world that exists on our imagination. What I found in
reality is that the world is pretty homogeneous, even small
islands best to shows they have evidence of a Western
man and all of the junk that we live with,
(09:02):
whether it's a holiday inn or a Wendy's or whatever,
they're everywhere, and everything that you can buy at the
local costco you can find in papy Aka it's all
the same. So what did I find. I found that
from a human civilization point of view, it's all the same.
It's all homogeneous. As far as the two takeaways, I
(09:24):
guess that I came that I could summarize here in
a few words, is that this is a dog on
small world. It's really small. You have no idea. You're
living in Los Angeles and you're working with a quarter
acre of land or something, or your house is own
or an acre, and so as human beings were wrapped
up in our daily living. But the month bigger picture
(09:45):
is that this is a very small planet that is fragile.
And it's fragile because wherever we go out the mind
of the ocean, we find evidence of the pollution, essentially
in this case, coming from Asia because it floats across
the Pacific, whether it's somebody a toothbrush or a boot
or something like that everywhere. And the declination of fish
(10:05):
and while wise, they're being ravaged to the point of extinction,
as we all know, but we could see it. So
the size of the planet and the ravaging of the
environment are two of the biggest things that I took
away from this. I understood the environmental impact before it left.
But in places that we have sailed, not just the Pacific,
(10:28):
but for example, in Newfoundland. One of our journeys was
from Alaska to Newfoundland and in that and it's what
I'm going to say is true in all these locations
that after World War Two the diesel engine became ubiquitous,
fishermen stopped using manual ways of catching fish and they
(10:48):
started using nets, big nets the day. The nets are
twenty thirty miles long, and they scoop up everything in
their past. For five hundred years, we had codfish that
fed Europe. They're cod fisher for all practical purposes, are
not extinct, but they're diminished the point that there isn't
a practical season on fishing them. And that all happened
in thirty years. So our audience has heard this. But
(11:12):
when I go to different places in the world and see,
for example, a Japanese fish broker on the radio telling
all the boats in the area that if they have
caught a fish of a certain type, they want to
buy it right now. And it's just amazing. So the
size of the Earth, that's only nine thousand miles from
Tokyo to Dublin, and that's not very far when you
(11:35):
think about it. That's within the human experience to be
able to walk across that entire continent or two continents
for us at a mirror six or eight miles an hour,
which is about how fast our boat will go. We
could get across half the earth basically in nine months,
and that's stopping for a good times, like twenty one
(11:56):
days in negopaties. So those it might take a way
is really it's a small world, and it's fragile.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
It's it's just a quick thing that came up in
passing when you were mentioning, you know, the fishing expedition
and hearing over the radio that I believe you said
the country was Japan. You know how they would buy
it instantly if they had one of the particular fish.
It just reminds it doesn't matter where you go. Capitalism
at its finest meant it is it's everywhere, and.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
It's also brute or oh absolutely mouths to feed.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, absolutely, listen Robert, as we start to close out, man,
because people understand that.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
We're not going to give it all away. You know
where you gotta go. You got to purchase your copies today,
But I do.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Want to take I wanted to compare and contrast things
with my final two questions here. As you were going
on this journey, this is something that I'm sure there
were moments that were taken directly out of a Hollywood film, right,
And something that again, as I mentioned at the top
of the show, is someone that would never It's true,
it's just not for me, right, Like, I don't get sick.
(13:00):
I liked the ocean, but I don't love it in
the same way. But I'm curious, man, Like, as you
were traveling, was there ever a moment of fear, ever
a moment of tear, either through a storm or something
a mechanical failure, any individual moments like that, you can
shed some light on where it was like, oh my god,
I think we might want to turn back.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
But a couple of times. One it was a very
nice day. We had left the Glopados. We were within
sight of the last island and steaming to the west,
and all of a sudden, my phesometer showed me that
we had less than six feet of water. We were
out in the ocean. I had less than six feet
of water. Wow, under our keel and I thought, holy cats,
I'm going to drive this thing on the rocks. Where
(13:45):
are the rocks? And I scurried around looking at all
the charts, and they're in the rocks. And then I
realized what was under me was about twenty feet of
plankton that in the late evening, when the sun goes down,
the plankton comes up, and it was so thick that
my phasometers thought it was land. So that was an
interesting moment.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And another time, which is toward the end of the book,
we got caught in a typhoon off the coast of
New Zealand and we spent thirteen hours battling the storm.
And it's quite a story. It's in the book. We've
faced thirty foot waves sixty five miles on our winds,
the fourth ten gale. So that was a pretty interesting time.
(14:26):
Let's see you. I'm trying to think a couple more.
How about just seventeen days between the Glapagos and the
Marques Islands. Seventeen days on the ocean. There's nothing out there. Zero.
You can't fly a plane out there, there's no place
to land. If you get sick or heard or something,
you're going to be sick and hurt by yourself because
nobody's out. There's no ships or anything, but the waves
are huge, which is why we call it the high Seas.
(14:48):
It's just it's just beautiful and fascinating. Regarding that last
thing I was telling you about the food and so forth,
we had about my wife's sister. She's listening to me
here and reminding me that we had all kinds of
boat problems, hydraulic problems on the boat where stabilizers would
go out and we didn't have those for a while,
and there's all these mechanical things that go wrong. So
(15:11):
the book has all these kind of stories about mechanical
difficulties and how we got the parts and things like that,
so they're just as Actually I wrote the book while
we were sailing. It was a website that I created
and posted, and I had about slightly less than four
hundred thousand people following me at that time on this journey.
And of course I couldn't have begun this journey without
(15:31):
the help of all kinds of people. Of course, yeah,
some of them anonymous that just write books that I
have that told me how to go about doing it.
Others were people that bought me or showed me the way.
I've already mentioned my wife, but there are many other people.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
So first and for thank you for that man. And listen.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I had another question that I wanted to go into,
but I don't even think it's worth it in this instance.
And I'm going to tell you why because what you stated,
I think it perfectly encapsulates so much of the journey. Yeah,
on the surface, this book is about this, as I
mentioned to you, about this monumental voyage that you and
your wife had taken. But there are so many messages
(16:10):
to be received. First and foremost, just with the obstacles
that you and your wife faced, there is a great
message there to be pulled right reading in between the lines.
People they're talking about what they experienced on this yacht,
going on this journey, but really copy and paste your
own adversity. There's so much to be gained with regards
(16:32):
to facing those challenges and staying level headed and working
through it. I think that's a great message, right. And
one of the other things that I'm taking from this
is listen, for you and your wife on that particular trip,
maybe the expedition or the goal rather was new Zealand.
But listen again, it's another copy and paste moment for
(16:54):
everybody listening in right now, like your new Zealand is
out there. And here's the thing. It might not be
a country. It might be a career change. It might
be a creative project or a personal goal that feels
just as it's intimidating. But allow this book. Allow Robert
and Rebecca's meticulous preparation, their unwavering spirit, allowed this book
(17:18):
Crossing the Wild Pacific, to be your guide because I
promise you, reading in between the lines, there's so much
to be gained, but reading I'm the lines, there's a
lot of entertainment to be witnessed as well. Again, it's Amazon,
it's Barnes and Noble. You got to purchase your copies
today and get lost in it and allow it, as
I mentioned before, to be the inspiration for you to
(17:41):
cross your own wild Pacific and see what's.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
On the horizon for you next.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Robert, this has been a true pleasure man, and absolute honor.
I really do mean that. Thank you once again for
being a guest of People of Distinction.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Thank you very much, Benji appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I want to find the bot
Hey is Benji col Son of Alcohol from CBS Radio
and host of the syndicated.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Talk show People of Distinction. The talk gives you an
in depth.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
View of some of the most dynamic, intelligent, and successful
people on the planet. Run to our website Alcohol Enterprises
dot com for more info.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
Email me through Benji.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
At Alcohol Enterprises dot com if you'd like to get
involved with what we have going, and as always, please
continue to like and follow our broadcasts. People of Distinction
is internationally syndicated solely due to the love and support
that you all continue to give. We're available across all
major distributors, and as long as you keep following, we're
going to continue to put out the content. Now sit
(00:47):
back and strap in because on the line with us
today we have the impressive Robert R.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Tish.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
Now we're gonna be discussing his incredible book, Crossing the
Wild Pacific Captain's Log of the Yacht Ourgo. It's Amazon,
it's Barnes and Noble, it's Books Academy dot Org. Man,
I'm telling you it's a lot of places, and listen, people,
sit back and get ready. Man, this is about to
be a phenomenal discussion. What does it take to not
(01:18):
just have a dream, but to actually cast off the
lines and pursue it. Now, I ask that question because
it's so universal. We have all been at a moment
in our lives where we've sat down and we thought, right,
we aspired to reach something that was off the beaten path. Listen,
(01:39):
Robert and his wife they had a similar desire. Okay,
they did exactly that, turning a vision into a ten
thousand mile voyage from Florida to New Zealand and all
around in their yacht Argo. You see their books Crossing
the Wild Pacific. Man, it's more than just a captain
(02:00):
log of storms and exotic ports, now that it is.
But additionally, it's a masterclass in the gritty reality of
making a dream happen. And I love the fact that, listen,
we're gonna get into some of the nuances here today,
because on the surface, you're gonna see a beautiful journey, right,
(02:21):
a dream come to fruition that they essentially worked their
entire lives for, maybe indirectly, but it's something that.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Was a challenge, right.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
It was not an overnight feet and as Robert will
tell you, man, this thing was just shy of a
year to go through, and I'm sure just the planning
and preparation for it probably took.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Even longer than that.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
This is one that is going to be wildly entertaining,
but hopefully it's gonna inspire some of us listening in
and hopefully a lot of the readers picking up the
book to maybe embark upon their journey to chase and
complete their dreams. Sit back, here we go, r Ver.
Welcome to the network. Man, thank you for being a guest.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
How you doing today, Sarah, Thank you, Benji, glad to
be here, Lisson met, We're glad to have you.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Robert. What you've done is remarkably impressive, not only by
culminating the book that we are eternally grateful for, but
being able to do something that a lot of people
aspire to, whether it's again the voyage that you and
your wife took, or just that notion of pursuing a
dream that they've always had. I think there's this underlying
(03:28):
inspiration there that I think is really so powerful. So
we're looking forward to the discussion. First and foremost, before
you and your wife embarked upon the journey, Ben start
off at the foundation and tell us a little bit
more about yourself.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
I have owned an investment management company here in Michigan,
so for many years I was creating stocks and bonds
and sub quits for my clients. I solved the business
to a public company and that provided some of the
resources that we needed to fund this project. My wife
was a surge and she also had a very good practice,
(04:02):
and we closed the practice and the two of us
set out on this adventure. Was something we wanted to do.
We had had boats on the Great Lakes, which are
for many of you that aren't from this part of
the country, these lakes are as challenging as the ocean.
We spent five years sailing the Great Lakes, and by sailing,
I use the term loosely. Cruising is a better word
(04:24):
for it, because these aren't sailboats that we used. These
are motor yachts. And you might ask why did we
choose a motor yacht, why not go with the sailboat.
One of the reasons is my wife won't go on sailboats.
She doesn't want to live at forty five degree angle.
And I'm six five and I'm too big for sailboats.
They're just too small for me. Bue and large, so
(04:46):
we have always looked for boats that were big enough
to take care of me. They had to have enough headroom,
and my wife likes air conditioning and sub zero refrigerators
and all that sort of things. So we settled on
the two or three boat that we owned. But our
ambition was really inspired by crew by sailing on a
great lakes, and once we had done that, our ambition
(05:08):
became really the world.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Listen, Robert, first and foremost, thank you for articulating all
of that.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
And I would say, as someone that has been on
both as well, like I'm definitely not a sailor.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
I don't have the love for the sea as you
and your wife had.
Speaker 1 (05:22):
I will say, man, it's just the amount of work
that goes into a sail boat. Like going sailing, you
don't get to just sit back and relax.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Man, there is constant things that you're doing.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Aside from, yes, being at that forty five degree angle.
Speaker 2 (05:39):
It's fun. Definitely not a leisure activity. I would say, well, I.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Think these things are callings. You really have to have
an inspiration within yourself to do these things. Absolutely, for me,
I always wanted to be on the ocean. I was
in the Navy for four years. I crossed the Pacific
several times, four times with the Navy, So I like
being at sea, and my life were lucky. Me is
a good sport, and wanting to put up work, the
(06:06):
inconveniences in the work it required. You have to have
a supportive spouse or you can't do these.
Speaker 1 (06:11):
Of course, and listen, a great thank you for mentioning that,
because that's a great segue to where I want to
go next as a married man myself. Listen, man, just
combining two individuals' lives, right, personalities, experiences, all of those
things that go into leading a successful partnership. In marriage,
it takes a lot, right, There's a give and take.
(06:31):
There's sacrifice. It's as much as you'd like to be
a fifty to fifty split sometimes for anybody else that's
up there that's married, you get it.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Man.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Sometimes it's seventy thirty, sometimes it's sixty forty. There's a
give and take in that partnership, that's right. I'm curious
to know, Robert, not many people have to balance that
partnership in such a confined space for so long. How
did that work then? And I'm sure there was tests
that it put on your relationship.
Speaker 2 (06:58):
Talk to us about that.
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Liked being with each other, And to your point, I
don't think you should buy a boat with your souse
if you don't want to be with her, it's not
the place to be. But we enjoy each other's company.
We like what we're doing. My wife was extremely supportive
and helpful and get took care of a lot of
the things that I wasn't very good at, and I,
of course my skills are different. But one of the
(07:21):
things that's interesting is that she's a small woman compared
to me, and there were many places on that boat
that we had to perform maintenance or do inspections on it.
I frankly couldn't get into, but I would send her there.
And in the navy we had a phrase for people
who were mechanics and that's everything, were calling diesel monkeys.
So I mentioned that to her once and I've never
(07:43):
quite gotten over it. Then I should say, she's not
quite gotten over, but I'll hear about it from time
to time. But she In the book, you'll see a
picture of her crawling down beneath the shaft on our
boat to make sure that the drip rate was correct.
So anyway we use each other's silence love that.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
Let's change gears here and I want to talk about
the title, but the title in reference to what you experienced,
and really the operative term in the title being wild,
because of course we think of the Pacific as wild
because of its storms and its vastness.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
But aside from.
Speaker 1 (08:16):
The ocean itself, you and your wife also encountered remote cultures.
Right you stopped at all these different places along your journey,
did you discover a different, even more profound wild, perhaps
one of profound peace or traditions. Talk to us a
little bit more about the different interpretations of the wild
and how it may have related to different experiences outside
(08:38):
of the water as well.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
So your question really goes to the heart of the
objective that we have and us to find that wild
world that exists on our imagination. What I found in
reality is that the world is pretty homogeneous, even small
islands best to shows they have evidence of a Western
man and all of the junk that we live with,
(09:02):
whether it's a holiday inn or a Wendy's or whatever,
they're everywhere, and everything that you can buy at the
local costco you can find in papy Aka it's all
the same. So what did I find. I found that
from a human civilization point of view, it's all the same.
It's all homogeneous. As far as the two takeaways, I
(09:24):
guess that I came that I could summarize here in
a few words, is that this is a dog on
small world. It's really small. You have no idea. You're
living in Los Angeles and you're working with a quarter
acre of land or something, or your house is own
or an acre, and so as human beings were wrapped
up in our daily living. But the month bigger picture
(09:45):
is that this is a very small planet that is fragile.
And it's fragile because wherever we go out the mind
of the ocean, we find evidence of the pollution, essentially
in this case, coming from Asia because it floats across
the Pacific, whether it's somebody a toothbrush or a boot
or something like that everywhere. And the declination of fish
(10:05):
and while wise, they're being ravaged to the point of extinction,
as we all know, but we could see it. So
the size of the planet and the ravaging of the
environment are two of the biggest things that I took
away from this. I understood the environmental impact before it left.
But in places that we have sailed, not just the Pacific,
(10:28):
but for example, in Newfoundland. One of our journeys was
from Alaska to Newfoundland and in that and it's what
I'm going to say is true in all these locations
that after World War Two the diesel engine became ubiquitous,
fishermen stopped using manual ways of catching fish and they
(10:48):
started using nets, big nets the day. The nets are
twenty thirty miles long, and they scoop up everything in
their past. For five hundred years, we had codfish that
fed Europe. They're cod fisher for all practical purposes, are
not extinct, but they're diminished the point that there isn't
a practical season on fishing them. And that all happened
in thirty years. So our audience has heard this. But
(11:12):
when I go to different places in the world and see,
for example, a Japanese fish broker on the radio telling
all the boats in the area that if they have
caught a fish of a certain type, they want to
buy it right now. And it's just amazing. So the
size of the Earth, that's only nine thousand miles from
Tokyo to Dublin, and that's not very far when you
(11:35):
think about it. That's within the human experience to be
able to walk across that entire continent or two continents
for us at a mirror six or eight miles an hour,
which is about how fast our boat will go. We
could get across half the earth basically in nine months,
and that's stopping for a good times, like twenty one
(11:56):
days in negopaties. So those it might take a way
is really it's a small world, and it's fragile.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
It's it's just a quick thing that came up in
passing when you were mentioning, you know, the fishing expedition
and hearing over the radio that I believe you said
the country was Japan. You know how they would buy
it instantly if they had one of the particular fish.
It just reminds it doesn't matter where you go. Capitalism
at its finest meant it is it's everywhere, and.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
It's also brute or oh absolutely mouths to feed.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
Yeah, absolutely, listen Robert, as we start to close out, man,
because people understand that.
Speaker 2 (12:34):
We're not going to give it all away. You know
where you gotta go. You got to purchase your copies today,
But I do.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Want to take I wanted to compare and contrast things
with my final two questions here. As you were going
on this journey, this is something that I'm sure there
were moments that were taken directly out of a Hollywood film, right,
And something that again, as I mentioned at the top
of the show, is someone that would never It's true,
it's just not for me, right, Like, I don't get sick.
(13:00):
I liked the ocean, but I don't love it in
the same way. But I'm curious, man, Like, as you
were traveling, was there ever a moment of fear, ever
a moment of tear, either through a storm or something
a mechanical failure, any individual moments like that, you can
shed some light on where it was like, oh my god,
I think we might want to turn back.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
But a couple of times. One it was a very
nice day. We had left the Glopados. We were within
sight of the last island and steaming to the west,
and all of a sudden, my phesometer showed me that
we had less than six feet of water. We were
out in the ocean. I had less than six feet
of water. Wow, under our keel and I thought, holy cats,
I'm going to drive this thing on the rocks. Where
(13:45):
are the rocks? And I scurried around looking at all
the charts, and they're in the rocks. And then I
realized what was under me was about twenty feet of
plankton that in the late evening, when the sun goes down,
the plankton comes up, and it was so thick that
my phasometers thought it was land. So that was an
interesting moment.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And another time, which is toward the end of the book,
we got caught in a typhoon off the coast of
New Zealand and we spent thirteen hours battling the storm.
And it's quite a story. It's in the book. We've
faced thirty foot waves sixty five miles on our winds,
the fourth ten gale. So that was a pretty interesting time.
(14:26):
Let's see you. I'm trying to think a couple more.
How about just seventeen days between the Glapagos and the
Marques Islands. Seventeen days on the ocean. There's nothing out there. Zero.
You can't fly a plane out there, there's no place
to land. If you get sick or heard or something,
you're going to be sick and hurt by yourself because
nobody's out. There's no ships or anything, but the waves
are huge, which is why we call it the high Seas.
(14:48):
It's just it's just beautiful and fascinating. Regarding that last
thing I was telling you about the food and so forth,
we had about my wife's sister. She's listening to me
here and reminding me that we had all kinds of
boat problems, hydraulic problems on the boat where stabilizers would
go out and we didn't have those for a while,
and there's all these mechanical things that go wrong. So
(15:11):
the book has all these kind of stories about mechanical
difficulties and how we got the parts and things like that,
so they're just as Actually I wrote the book while
we were sailing. It was a website that I created
and posted, and I had about slightly less than four
hundred thousand people following me at that time on this journey.
And of course I couldn't have begun this journey without
(15:31):
the help of all kinds of people. Of course, yeah,
some of them anonymous that just write books that I
have that told me how to go about doing it.
Others were people that bought me or showed me the way.
I've already mentioned my wife, but there are many other people.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
So first and for thank you for that man. And listen.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
I had another question that I wanted to go into,
but I don't even think it's worth it in this instance.
And I'm going to tell you why because what you stated,
I think it perfectly encapsulates so much of the journey. Yeah,
on the surface, this book is about this, as I
mentioned to you, about this monumental voyage that you and
your wife had taken. But there are so many messages
(16:10):
to be received. First and foremost, just with the obstacles
that you and your wife faced, there is a great
message there to be pulled right reading in between the lines.
People they're talking about what they experienced on this yacht,
going on this journey, but really copy and paste your
own adversity. There's so much to be gained with regards
(16:32):
to facing those challenges and staying level headed and working
through it. I think that's a great message, right. And
one of the other things that I'm taking from this
is listen, for you and your wife on that particular trip,
maybe the expedition or the goal rather was new Zealand.
But listen again, it's another copy and paste moment for
(16:54):
everybody listening in right now, like your new Zealand is
out there. And here's the thing. It might not be
a country. It might be a career change. It might
be a creative project or a personal goal that feels
just as it's intimidating. But allow this book. Allow Robert
and Rebecca's meticulous preparation, their unwavering spirit, allowed this book
(17:18):
Crossing the Wild Pacific, to be your guide because I
promise you, reading in between the lines, there's so much
to be gained, but reading I'm the lines, there's a
lot of entertainment to be witnessed as well. Again, it's Amazon,
it's Barnes and Noble. You got to purchase your copies
today and get lost in it and allow it, as
I mentioned before, to be the inspiration for you to
(17:41):
cross your own wild Pacific and see what's.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
On the horizon for you next.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
Robert, this has been a true pleasure man, and absolute honor.
I really do mean that. Thank you once again for
being a guest of People of Distinction.
Speaker 3 (17:55):
Thank you very much, Benji appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I want to find the bot
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