Battling the Storm

One of the scariest moment of my life for me has to be , not when I thought about ghosts and spirits or saw a horror movie, but when we battled a fierce storm in, what is considered to be, one of the roughest sea in the world, The Bay of Bengal; on a wooden boat no longer than fifty five feet in April of 2014. 

It is an experience that is hard to put down in words. 

I understand that , although it was a fierce storm , it wasn't the worst recorded. There were storms that were far more intense with winds over 180 kmph. This one must be around 60ks.

But to us, that storm in the sea, in the middle of no moon night was a a battle between life and death. With waves towering almost 10 feet and winds gusting over 70 ks we felt that at any moment we would be swallowed by the sea. 

To make matters worst, the storm was sudden and didn't give us time to prepare. In the midst of this black swan commotion, our anchor was stuck on the sea bed (the storm had hit us while we were anchored). My 2nd In charge, Somir , had the presence of mind to cut the rope and let go of the anchor in order to save our lives. 

Of course, we survived to tell the tale. 

I made a promise to myself that never again would I let a sea storm take us by surprise. 

The 55 feet wooden boat I faced the storm on

There has been storms that we have faced at sea that were more intense than this one. We always managed to cope up to it. 

The difference? 

We were always prepared. 

After that experience , when ever we set out on that course, I always treble checked the weather.

First on the news website, then on the satellite channel and lastly on  port bulletins.  I also subscribed to a very advanced , very accurate Sat Nav facility to keep me up breast with the real time weather conditions.  

Result , I have faced more severe storms while sailing, but I had always known what to expect and what to do. 

And in knowing what to expect i.e. the worst, I was able to prepare to encounter them adequately. 

The reason I share this story is because there are a lot of learnings from this storm encounter that is applicable in life. 

You don't have to be out at sea like me to experience what storms are like. 

You may be facing a storm right in the middle of a metropolitan city , sitting at the comfort of your home, inside your self. 

Storm of problems, of strain in relationships , of finances, of direction. 

These are the storms of life. 

Sometimes it takes us by surprise. 

Sometime we always knew it was about to strike. 

The question to ask ourselves is , how are we going to handle it? 

When faced with a situation we have two options always option to us. To fight or to flight. Both might be the right decisions given the circumstances. The choice is of course ours to choose how we wan to respond. 

The point here I am trying to drive is that we have to respond. Weather we like it or not. 

So if we have to respond to the storms of our lives, how should we do it? 

There can be many approaches to it. 

Taking lessons from the analogy from my sailing experience I have the following points 

1. FACE IT HEAD ON

I spoke to and took guidance from very senior captains who gave me invaluable information on both how to tackle the storm and how to avoid them completely. 

Because I was open to be taught I found experienced people willing and happy to teach me. One of the best lessons they shared was to avoid the storm altogether. 

They also shared that, if caught in storm, to FACE IT HEAD ON. 

Facing the rising and threatening waves it would be far better out in the sea than near the shorelines. 

Facing the waves head on gives far better chances of survival, than trying to run away from it or attempting to find a place to hide. 

In the storms of our lives, I have found it a better idea to always face it. That of course is not the most comfortable choice but its a choice that gives me more results and peace. 

If the situation demand that I need to talk to a certain person and confront (gently. I would be covering a session on the art of confrontation in which we would learn how to confront people without offending them), I do it. 

If the situation requires me to introspect and find that the mistake has been mine, I find it much better to accept and to apologize than try to cover it up or to hide. (I would be taking a session on how the admit mistakes, learn from them without be-littering yourself.) Workplace and corporates find ways to put blame on others and in many companies a culture to blame becomes a way of life. It is important that as leaders we learn how to put across mistakes that has been made by ourselves or by people who work under us and take the responsibility to correct it and to learn from it. Admitting mistakes in a right attitude is not a weakness, its a strength of a person intending to learn. 

  

2. USE THE CURRENT AVAILABLE TECHNOLOGY 

After that stormy incident at sea I have made it a ritual to check the weather thoroughly. In fact before we set off one of the key discussions with my crew is always the hour by hour weather for the number of days we would be sailing. 

Thankfully we have the technology available to help us and we have to option to use it for free or to also avail more advanced services by using paid versions. I had done both. Result? Better preparedness. 

In April 2018 a cyclone in the Bay of Bengal started to develop. I got the notifications straightaway from the SatCom even before the news media flashed it. As per the trajectory the storm was headed straight towards us. The time span from the inception of the cyclone and it making landfall was roughly about a week. At that time we have scheduled a landmark cruise for an organization that was planning this cruise event for the past one year. People from abroad was scheduled to fly in and people from around the country had booked their tickets to gather for this one of the lifetime event. And here I was looking at the development of the storm and knowing in my heart through intuition and experience that the cyclone had a huge possibility to hit us. 

Five days before the cruise event I took the call to cancel it. The funny part was when I made that call, we were experiencing clear blue skies and bright sunshine. Keep it in mind that predicting cyclones is extremely difficult and they can fizzle out sooner than expected as well.  I did come under a lot of fire from the organizers when I announced my cancellation, understandably so, but I had a peace in my mind and heart that I was taking the right call. 

The end of the story was the storm did hit us severely and everyone who were a part of that scheduled cruise event thanked me for taking the call to cancel. Later they had willingly rescheduled their event to next year.

I was able to take the leadership and make that call because I used the available technology that gave me the right information based on which I was able to make a decision. 

In life we have various systems and technologies which , in the required sphere of work, gives us adequate information, analysis and data. One of the readily available resource available are software that can give us compiled information on our finances and spending. Apparently many of us do not use it , not because some of them have a subscription, but because we lack the simple discipline to feed in and sync data.

I have been using account softwares for both business and personal expenses for sometime now and it has drastically help me improve my financials in terms of planning and spending. Nowadays I am able to make decisions based more on data than on my whip and fancies. Of course it has saved me a lot of headaches and worries. 

I have a vertical that I called 'Tech Synergy'  where I cover the resources that we can use t help us better our lives and to progress more efficiently. 

Tech Resources are available widely and with little search and study, I am sure we would find suitable platforms to optimize and max out our respective area of operations , requirement and interest. 

3. LEARNT MY LIMITS

With that storm one of the most important point I have learnt are my limits. Because I was placed or pushed under these circumstances I got to know how much my crew and boat could be pushed. I got to know that in that small fifty five feet wooden boat, I could face wind gusts upto 65 ks. Beyond that I would need a bigger vessel with more powerful engine. I had gone on to charter bigger vessels and faced storms about 120ks comfortably. 

When we know our limits, we learn way to increase tolerance by expanding or investing. Knowing that bigger challenge in life would require a bigger ship (team and equipment) we would be able to counter stormy issues more comfortably. 

If our challenges are small, probably we or our family people are enough to handle it.  If the challenge is huge, probably we would require more people, team and resources to sort it. 

Knowing our limits gives us the ability to prepare to strengthen or to adopt considering the storm that we facing in our lives. 

Chartering Bigger Vessels 

How do you face your storms? Are you already in one? 

Would you flight it or would you fight it. 

What strategies are you going to adopt to face it or prepare for it. 

I hope that my experience has given you an encouragement to face it and I am optimistic that with honest introspection and action you would get better in handling them because they would always be around. 

Wishes

Vishal Tupper