Thread. Sailing, Covid19, and Bell Trinity Park.

In my sailing days on Georgian Bay, I often sailed through the Thirty Thousand Islands where navigation is important. There are a zillion rock hazards under the surface.
I just followed the..

2/ boats ahead of me. Until one day I saw the boat ahead bang onto an underwater ledge and spring a leak.
That's when I realized that following others was usually fine, unless they were all following the wrong boat lol. So I took a navigation course from experts. Next time

3/ my wife asked why I steered off the course the others were taking. I just said "because I know where I am and I don't know whether they do".
As we go through treacherous waters in a pandemic, I think it's important that we take responsibility for our own navigation. How do we

4/ do that? We go take a "navigation course" - this one by following the experts, not the crowd, then trust ourselves to do what is safest. There are rocks everywhere and they are invisible below the surface. But if we have the right map and equipment,

5/ we improve our chances. Now if we go to a park or a store during covid19, we can see how others are relaxed their social distance. They might even laugh at us for being "scared" to not go through that narrows with them. It's a sunny day.

6/ It's *hard* to not take that shortcut. But we owe it to ourselves to be in charge of our own sailboat and look after our crew. Sometimes that means wearing a mask where others stare at you, sometimes it means taking the harder course and skipping the easy and popular route...

7/ There is only so much we can control in a storm, but we *can* control how we educate ourselves on navigation. If more skippers do that, maybe we'll all be a little safer, even that boat that is lost but chooses to follow us.
Stay safe.