The Problem With Life Rafts

By Tim Bryant, Board Chair, The Inn of Last Resort

Years ago, I went sailing in Charleston’s Race Week with a friend who owned an A40RC Archambault racing boat. We did a couple of days of ocean races with a crew of five or six, 26 miles per day. The weather was perfect, and it was a lot of fun.

Sailing is one of my great loves. My dad bought a Scorpion when I was young, and we sailed many hours on the lakes and bays of North Carolina. Later on, we moved up to a 17-ft. Hobie Cat and spent some “quality time” in the wind and waves at Myrtle Beach, Holden Beach and on Bogue Sound at Emerald Isle. We lost that boat off of Holden Beach at Lockwood Folly one summer, and Dad bought a Hobie One on the way home. Each one of those boats had stories behind it that helped shape me in some way.

Lord, Don’t You Care?

I’m also an avid reader of books on sailing and the sea and the storms that challenge and change men’s souls. All of this has given me a personal perspective on Bible stories like “Lord, don’t you care?” on the Sea of Galilee, when the disciples feared for their lives as Jesus slept in the boat. Or when Paul was shipwrecked, in Acts 27, or even the moment when Peter stepped out of the boat and onto the water. I came across a quote that really struck me from the book “The Water in Between – A Journey at Sea” by Kevin Patterson. It is an interesting snapshot of life itself and the choices we make:

“Life rafts have killed hundreds of sailors by offering a false solution to problems on the boat. In a storm in 1979, a fleet of sailboats in the Fastnet Race was hammered off the coast of England by Force 11 and 12 winds and 28-foot seas. Of the 24 boats that were abandoned during the worst of the storm, 19 were subsequently recovered afloat. Seven of the sailors from these abandoned boats died in the sea. If they had remained on their boats and worked to preserve them, they would have preserved themselves. It is not surprising that sailors in battered boats start looking toward the life rafts. But it is often a fatal temptation.”

For the past 30+ years, the Safety At Sea seminars have taught sailors that you never step into a life raft, you only step up to one. If your boat is not lower down in the water than the life raft is, you stay on the boat, because boats have a greater ability to survive than life rafts.

The Life Choices We Make

There is just so much to think about in that paragraph from Patterson’s book, in terms of the choices we make in life, relationships, family and business. It’s rich and thought-provoking for me. So many times in the storms of life, I’ve looked for my own answer and jumped into the closest life raft—sometimes to find myself safe and other times in worse shape for the choice. It makes me wonder how often I’ve missed what God was really trying to work in me by looking for “my way out”—a perceived easier solution. I’m working on not panicking and responding with patience, peace and wisdom. I may not be there yet, but we all need to remember: the alternative can be fatal.