Nick Bladen – Part 4 – Bass Strait Kayaking Voyage

It is inspiring for me to read about such an amazing human-being with such a love and passion for what he does in his life. Nick believes that we are navigating the adventerous journey of life, none of which will ever be the same. He believes we need to realise and take command as Captains of our own destiny, have faith in our own abilities and take action on that which is deeply important to us.

The information below will give all of us an insight into this amazing kayaking journey – enjoy.

On December 28 2008,  Darren Smith (personal friend and team mate) and I set out on a personal pursuit to kayak across the Bass Strait, a stretch of water between mainland Australia and Tasmania that is notoriously rough and twice as wide as the English Channel.

This trip, at first was not successful (more commonly referred to as a failure) due to extreme weather conditions, and our most experienced team members dropping out, and also irreparable boat damage. Given that we all make haste to share our successes, and good news….I feel more value would be gained from a blurb about our “failure”.

There are three parts to this trip summary:

1. What is Failure?……..
2. The Lessons Learned…..
3. The Over and Out of It…..

Part 1 – Failure

“Failure refers to the state or condition of not meeting a desirable or intended objective, and may be viewed as the opposite of success”……..When the idea came up to kayak across the Bass Strait, we had an initial meeting to gauge the interest from other parties. We gave each other 1 week to decide. The options were; “I’m in” or “I’m out” – no fence sitting allowed. We got 7 definite team members commit, and the planning began with 3 months lead time. Our first attempt was very rushed, and did not involve much preparation – well, not the right type anyway. However, we had decided to commit to the goal and went about making it happen the best way we knew how to at the time.I believe that when trying your hand at anything, one’s only real responsibility, and capability, is to figure out exactly what we want, to develop a clear picture of that, and then start moving towards it. The how is usually out of our control, but it is our actions that will send a strong message that we are truly committed to experiencing whatever our stated goal is. The process is definitely one of co-creation between preparation and fate. Fate being the intangible thing which puts us at the hand of something we cannot control, but we are able to respond to. As for the Kayak Voyage, we knew what we wanted to achieve. That was clear. How we were going to achieve that….well, that was not really known.

The story, and how it unfolds will be in our next installment. I couldn’t help thinking as I was re-reading this last passage of Nick’s writing that this philosophy could be used for anything in your life. Some things are out of our control, but the one thing we do have control over is our response to our life’s situations. Knowing you do have control over that response and taking back that control from the “things” that happen to us all is very powerful.