Top 69 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Sailors

It seems like people my age are over-protected today, even to the point where a lot of parents refuse to put their kids in the position to make important decisions, to aspire to great things, because they don't want to put them in a position to fail.

If we could build an economy that would use things rather than use them up, we could build a future.

You don't have to be someone special to achieve something amazing. You've just got to have a dream, believe in it and work hard.

I am a citizen of the most beautiful nation on earth, a nation whose laws are harsh yet simple, a nation that never cheats, which is immense and without borders, where life is lived in the present. In this limitless nation, this nation of wind, light, and peace, there is no other ruler besides the sea.

TAKE A DEEP BREATH EVERY MORNING; SAY THANK YOU FOR YOUR HEALTH. THE ALTERNATIVE IS UNBELIEVABLY TOUGH.

It's not a sin to get knocked down; it's a sin to stay down

Start first and increase your lead.

The only way to get a good crew is to marry one.

I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea.

It's out there at sea that you are really yourself.

At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much.

Blisters are a painful experience, but if you get enough blisters in the same place, they will eventually produce a callus. That is what we call maturity.

Just as a fisherman cannot catch fish unless his line is in the water, a wildlife photographer cannot shoot great wildlife images unless he or she is out there with camera in hand and the knowledge of what to do then the 'magnificent moment' occurs.

All the ingenuity, all the high-tech gear, all the jury-rigging sometimes the sea would rip it all away until there was only you, the Creator, and His mercy.

The seriousness of my situation started to sink in, and again I fought panic. I pushed it down, but it was harder this time, like my insides were an open can of shaken soda and I was trying to keep it from bubbling up out of the top.

Fewer people have successfully solo-circumnavigated the globe than have journeyed into space.

I’m an ordinary girl who believed in her dream.

Going up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.

Sailboat racing becomes a game of chance only when you are not prepared

If you can't tie good knots, tie plenty of them

Rethinking the future: It is a profound challenge, at the end of an era of cheap oil and materials to rethink and redesign how we produce and consume; to reshape how we live and work, or even to imagine the jobs that will be needed for transition

Every man needs to find a peak, a mountain top or a remote island of his own choosing that he reaches under his own power alone in his own good time.

Slowly, my brain let me in on the fact that I had just come this close to dying.

Wild Eyes was built for speed and I was flying down walls of water twenty and thirty feet high.

My real log is written in the sea and sky; the sails talking with the rain and the stars amid the sounds of the sea, the silences full of secret things between my boat and me, like the times I spent as a child listening to the forest talk.

When I saw the plane, I was absolutely astonished! Two emotions crashed over me: surging joy and crazy fear.

There's a plane flying over me and I'm looking forward to being able to relax and not worry about the weather or boat speed.

You do not ask a tame seagull why it needs to disappear from time to time toward the open sea. It goes, that's all.

But none of that kept me from picturing what a tsunami might look like if it did rise up and roar toward my little boat like some watery blue version of the Great Wall of China.

When you sail on a boat you take with you the minimum of resources. You don't waste anything. You don't leave the light on; you don't leave a computer screen on... on land we take what we want

The questions that used to bother me at times, do not weigh anything before the immensity of a wake so close to the sky and filled with the wind of the sea

There are a number of places on marine charts where even the most weathered sailors point and say, "Right there, nothing can go wrong. Everything has to go right." One place is the turbulent passage south of Cape Horn. Another is the dead center of the Indian Ocean.

I will never try to steer myself into a situation that I know might create a discussion after the race any protest immediately cuts down on my social hours after the race is over.

I knew that even if I was able to call for help, I was in a place so remote that it wasn't likely there would be anyone who could help me. And even if there were, it could take weeks.

In that moment it dawned on me that everything has to line up perfectly for something to turn out this awful.

One day that same year, I told my dad that someday, I would sail around the world alone.

Judging from the way they sat and goggled at the drag on the stage it was obvious that they were indulging in delightful fantasies that brought to them substantial memories of the girls they had left behind in London or Manchester. As the Quartermaster Captain lisped after performing before a particularly rapt audience: 'I bet there were more standing pricks than snotty noses tonight'. Astonishingly, I suspect he was right. We probably helped to keep the home fires of passion burning.

You don't have to be anyone special to achieve something big. You just have to want to do it.

Being at sea is like watching the whole world in high-definition.

I will never forget the feeling of walking into my home, a place that while drifting helpless in the middle of the Indian Ocean I wondered if I would ever see again.

Let Beth Leonard inspire you to sail around the world, explore the high latitudes, or discover your own capacity for adventure. Each nugget in this 'dream becomes reality' series of revelations is worth a thousand pictures.

The winds were blowing from west to east, pushing Abby's boat toward the rocks as Abby struggled with the autopilots below. If Wild Eyes reached those islands, she wouldn't run aground, keel in the sand. She would be smashed into pieces.

The swells were amazing! As big as three-story apartment buildings!

I ain't going to let nobody steal my dream.

If a big wave came at the wrong moment, it would sweep me off into forty-eight-degree water, where I might last twenty minutes. Drowning quickly might be better.

When you start you're trying to achieve staying alive and getting home. If you can do both of those, then you stand a chance of breaking the record.

You are only as big as the dreams you dare to live.

I wanted to break the record, of course, and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted.

You can't change conditions - just the way you deal with them.

There's a price to pay for the speed, and that is danger. And to push that hard on a boat - it does take a lot out of you and is incredibly stressful.

There is a massive economic opportunity out there to be taken without waiting for government legislation.

The linear 'Take - Make - Dispose' system, which depletes natural resources and generates waste, is deeply flawed and can be productively replaced by a restorative model in which waste does not exist as such but is only food for the next cycle

When a sailor overcomes crushing adversity, there's a massive sense of accomplishment.

On October 19, 2009, my sixteenth birthday, Wild Eyes officially became mine! Now it was really happening.

The terrifying physics of going up-mast in heavy seas are inescapable.

I will definitely attempt to sail around the world again. In fact, I can't wait for the chance to try again.

I had begun to think that dreams are meant to be no more than dreams and that in reality dreams don't come true. Then my brother (Zac) left on his trip. It was amazing to see all the support that he got from around the world and to see how everyone worked together to help make his dream reality. Watching him do this really made me believe that I could too.

For me... it was always about the challenge of making this voyage... It was always a calculated risk, but life is a risk.

The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.

I'm one-hundred-fifty miles off Cape Horn, both autopilots are broken, and my boat is drifting toward one of the nastiest chunks of ocean on the face of the earth.