I Am Happy at Sea
Father Overboard, 2005.
In 1969, Bernard Moitessier was on the verge of history. After seven months alone at sea, he was less than 2 weeks from becoming the first person to sail solo, non-stop, around the world. The presumed winner, the finish line beckoned. Yet, as the shore drew closer, Moitessier pointed his boat away from victory, heading back into the open ocean.
When a press boat intercepted him near Cape Town, he sling-shotted a simple note onto their deck and into the world:
“I am continuing nonstop towards the Pacific Islands because I am happy at sea, and perhaps also to save my soul.”
Moitessier is not remembered by many–I only know about him because I stumbled into a conversation with the man who broke his record for most days alone at sea.
To that community, Moitessier’s choice is celebrated for its defiance of convention. He abandoned triumph, not out of weakness, but as a rejection of the finish line he was gliding towards. Still, I wonder: would his story resonate as deeply had he been in last place? To turn away while leading feels transcendent; to abandon a losing race seems expected.
This question looms large as I prepare to shut down The Hub, the company I founded nearly a decade ago. Like Moitessier, I am exiting the biggest race of my life. I am choosing to let go. But unlike him, I am not walking away from certain victory. My boat has already lost its course. Still, I hope to find meaning—not in the race’s end, but in reclaiming my heading.
Bernard Moitessier repairing a sail. 1969.
The Humming Boat
As a child, my father taught me to sail. On the water, I discovered the art of selecting my heading and trimming the sail until the boat produced a low, warm tone—a sign of perfect alignment between wind, water, and vessel. “You’re humming,” my dad would say, and it felt as though the boat itself was alive.
But this harmony was fragile. To achieve it, the boat had to keel sharply, its tilt keeping much of the hull from cutting through the water. For an experienced sailor, it was exhilarating; for a passenger, unnerving. When fear overtook my companions, I’d nudge the tiller towards the starboard side and ease the sail, “spilling wind” to stabilize the boat. The hum would stop, but calm returned.
Starting The Hub felt like learning to make a boat hum. For years, it gave me focus and purpose, a spot on the horizon line towards which to navigate. As my journey evolved the swells became larger and the gusts stronger; the choppiness of the ocean pulling more and more from the captain dancing atop it. My company did hum – though it will not succeed in any conventional sense – we accomplished things I thought were impossible when I left port. More, learning the intricacies of vessel and ocean made me hum. I was happy at sea.
The Rogue Wave
Then came the rogue wave. Our largest client, Campbell’s, breached a $500,000 contract, leaving the company reeling. It wasn’t fatal, but my inability to respond was. Each morning, I sat at my desk before dawn, staring at the screen, my chest constricting with anxiety. Shallow breaths, tingling arms, and sweat pooling on my shoulders and lower back sent me to the floor. I would take off my shirt and lay on the cold wood, counting my breath until I got my sea legs back. For months this was how I operated – committed to refinding my heading or going down with my ship.
I could no longer harness the howling wind and hike out of the keeling boat. Perhaps the ocean was too rough, or perhaps I just wasn’t up to sailing. In desperation, I began abusing Adderall, trying to stabilize my mood and my vessel. If the ship went over, it would be at the oceans hand, not mine, I reasoned. Still, slinking down to the bathroom at 10am for a booster extra dose each morning felt worse than whatever chemical lift I gained; a futile attempt to summon strength I no longer possessed. I gripped the tiller tighter and tighter, but the hum was gone.
Releasing the Tiller
When I was fifteen, my father suggested I “skipper” on a particularly choppy day. I weathered the whitecaps confidently until a sudden gust lurched the boat, throwing my father into the froth. In panic, I did what he had taught me, though it felt wrong: I let go. My left hand ripped the mainsail from its clip letting the wind yank the sail out until it clapped while my right released its death grip on the tiller. The boat, released from my heading, turned into the wind, and slowed to a stop. My father swam over to the boat and I helped pulled him in, ashamed and embarrassed.
Releasing the tiller is counterintuitive. When chaos mounts, instinct tells you to grip harder, to wrestle control from the storm. But letting go is often the best way to prevent a bad situation from getting worse. For Moitessier, letting go of the glory that awaited him in England was not a retreat but a valiant act of individuation. He trusted in himself and that the sea, the wind, and the unmarked horizon would take him where he ought to go.
For me, The Hub was long a windward helm—a controlled chaos that pulled a more committed, skilled and passionate person out of me. It made me better and made me happy. But towards the end, the joy was sucked away, replaced by unshakable exhaustion and fear. I held on long after the humming stopped, believing I could still steer the damaged vessel to safety. Or, rather, that it was my duty to do so; or to go down with the ship.
It occurs to me, even writing this now, that I am more so afraid to let go of the belief that I would never abandon my vessel than failure in any conventional sense. I am, therefore, attempting to reframe exiting one race as an indelible act of (re)alignment.
The Illusion of Validation
For years, The Hub’s growth pulled me forward and even came to define central parts of my identity. Like the hum of a perfect heading, The Hub’s evolution reassured me that I was moving ever closer towards being enough. But the metrics of validation—from revenue to recognition—lost their meaning when my heading decoupled from the heading of my ship.
The spectators in 1969 gathered at the port in England, preoccupied with which boat arrived first. They concerned themselves with the finish line because they couldn’t see past the horizon line. When the day comes, they will cheer and whistle but they will never hear a boat hum.
Perhaps that’s why Moitessier about-faced. He turned eastward not because he knew he could win, but because he knew he was in the wrong race. Success, he discovered, is not the fame that awaited him on shore but the freedom of the sea.
Failure as Fertilizer
I started The Hub with passion, but also with hurt—an unshakable desire to prove myself, to beat the odds, to feel enough. Startups thrive on this dynamic: compound growth necessarily means that what you achieved last month will not be enough this month. So, my company fed my insecurity, and my insecurity fed my company.
Shutting down The Hub is more than me ending the life of a business. It is an attempt to end this way of being. I hope my failures in this matter will become fertilizer, helping newer parts of me grow—only those parts that believe I am enough. This way, whatever I crate hence forth, will more closely align with who I am becoming, less who I once wished I could be.
The Soul Founder’s Course
Moitessier’s decision was not about rejecting success but about redefining it. He turned away from the race because he realized it no longer served him. And I’d like to think his decision was not predicated on a near certain victory, but rather certainty that he was simply in the wrong race.
As I prepare to release the tiller of The Hub, I take solace in his story. Sometimes, letting go is not surrender but courageous—a choice to stop racing towards the wrong heading. To let go is to reclaim the freedom to chart a new course, to hear the hum, and perhaps even, like Moitessier, to save my soul.