Learning to sail, both in the company of as well as completely apart from the world of visually impaired sailors, has been one of the most freeing experiences of the past year. Being an active part of both groups has taught me to experience and value the world in new ways.

As I’ve written previously, the color blue in The Palette Project is going to be represented by the ocean. Specifically, it has turned out that the nearest land mass will be New Zealand. I’ve been very fortunate that there have been so many men and women who have been so very generous with their time and skills, and crossing from Australia (representing red for the film) to New Zealand makes the first two legs of the film come together in an exciting way. New Zealand is the birthplace of the blind sailing community… at least, that’s what my research for the film is telling me right now. I’m sure there have been individual sailors with vision impairments before Don Mason gave it a go, but as I understand it, he is one of the central figures who helped create competitive racing crews composed of blind and visually impaired drivers and helmsmen. Today, there are established crews in Auckland, San Francisco, Newport, Boston and Tokyo among others.

I learned about the sport while the idea of trying to cross a busy intersection with a cane was still a formidable challenge. It’s still not always easy, and I imagine in a world of total sightlessness, if and when that day comes, it will be yet another seemingly impossible task to master, but one which is of course a skill which necessity and simple pride of independence will require handling on a daily basis. However, crossing the virtual street, or dock, to helm a sailboat is the kind of activity that lets people with handicaps assert in a very concrete way that the biggest barrier to physical accomplishment is one’s own mind. On the water really can steer your course by the feel of the wind. You can be the literal captain of your destiny.

To date, I have been part of two different crews. The first crew was via the Marin Sailing School’s nonprofit sailing program for the blind and visually impaired. I’ve been so fortunate to have been a part of this group that I wanted to give back in any way i could. That’s why the New Zealand leg of the film is being undertaken as an advocacy partner for this group. MSS teaches sailor who can compete in national and international competitions, and the logistics of supporting a local, Bay Area team are challenging. Working with these fine men and women is the chance to make sure their, now our, work continues.

I’ve also been incredibly fortunate to have been added to the crew of a boat that competes in races on San Francisco Bay and the surrounding area. This experience has been equally valuable.

When I started this particular journey, I had made a point of saying things like “I don’t want to be a member of a blind hiking group. I want to be a member of hiking group that doesn’t care that I’m blind.” I think it’s time to amend that position and say that what I really want is to be a member of both. The ear lie way of expressing that sentiment now seems disparaging to the former in the pursuit of the latter.

Sailing with both a crew of blind sailors and a crew of sailors in which I’m the only one with a physical handicap offers two unique perspectives. Blind racing and conventional crew racing are unforgiving environments, but I mean this in a positive way.

I have always had a rather black and white view of team competition: if a team did’t win because of you, then the team won in spite of you. This is a pretty harsh way of putting it, and it sounds like I’m pushing the ego button with both hands, but what I mean is that every member of a team has a significant role to play. If you do everything that is expected of you to the best of your ability, and maybe even beyond what you thought were your limits, and your team wins, then the team won because of you and everyone else on the team who also performed to those standards. However, if you do not do your job to the best of your abilities, then even if the team wins, there was a drag on performance.

I’d like to think I’m honest enough with myself to say that so far, as part of a fully sighted crew, three of four races our team has won have been in spite of, not because of my performance. I don’t like admitting it, but truth is truth. It speaks volumes that the crew is hanging in there while I work up to their standards. A lot of what happens on a conventional sailboat is, naturally, based on sight and visuals. Everything from spotting pockets of dead water (and hence, dead wind), trimming the sails so the telltails stream backwards to the very simple job of seeing where each line leads to which sail. These are basic sailing skills for which most people can be forgiven if they take those skills for granted.

I don’t have those skills. It’s a credit to the two crews I’ve sailed with that there is an openness to the idea that there are other ways. There’s always another way, but it sometimes takes some pretty creative thinking. That creative thinning has happened as part of the two teams.

I have to follow the advice of one of my forerunners in the blind community, Erik Weihenmeyer. He’s the climber who summated Everest and who, this past summer. successfully completed a solo kayak run through the Grand Canyon. In his book, “Touch the Top of the World,” he wrote that the mantra that gets him through his challenges is that the things he can’t do, he’ll lean to let go of, but the things he can do, he’ll learn to do well. The key to this idea is that the challenge of one’s life is to work every day to assume that the list of things one can do is ever growing. The example he gave was setting up a tent in subzero environments when he can’t take off his heavy padded gloves that deaden his sense of touch. He learned to do this task well so that his teammates wouldn’t have to do it for him. This, in my mind, is winning as a team because of, rather than in spite of you.

What I’m learning to do well is run the lines on a boat. The sighted crew on this team can look at a line and see where it goes and how taut it needs to be.  I can’t do that, but I can learn through practice and repetition, exactly where each line sits as it runs across the deck and through clutches, winches and cleats, and what it feels like when the lien is set correctly for a meaiver. I can compare what the wind feels like when I do this correctly. I can learn when an action by the sailor on the foredeck requires my cooperation on the mid-deck so that I can do my part without being asked exactly when the time comes. I can, in short, learn to do a skill well. It’s this this hard earned process of forming muscle memories on this boat that has been so gratifying and, dare I say, fun. Practicing the movements over and over so that when the time comes, locating the correct line by feel is second nature, locking and unlocking the lines and setting them to an optimal position is easy and feels right to me, and also helps shave precious seconds off our time. That goal of saving seconds appeals to me. I did it for years as a reporter, bargaining for an extra three seconds for a story or cutting down a piece when those extra seconds were not available. Speed and accuracy matter, and as an editor who has worked with a deadline that is inflexible and inviolable, this also speaks to me.

When you’re a reporter, the first reality check is that nobody ever tells you that you did a good job. Usually, the best you can expect is nobody excoriates you for doing a bad job. Everyone is too busy looking at the next deadline to worry about what already happened. I’m looking forward to the day I do my job on the boat so effectively I don’t hear the words “good job.” It’s just assumed that of course I did a good job… on to the next hurdle.

As a team.