Q: When you first started learning to sail, what aspect (or aspects) did you find most challenging? Was anything easier than you expected?
A: The hardest part of learning anything new is allowing yourself to be a beginner again. It was incredibly humbling to walk into a world I knew nothing about and fail, get hurt, try again, repeat. One of the hardest parts of sailing, beyond how physically demanding it is and the muscle it requires, is the mental shift it asks of you. You can’t be “in a rush.” You can’t force it to be anything other than what it is. You wait for the weather; you wait for the wind; you ride what you have right there in front of you at that moment.
Q: Do you feel your time at sea was an isolated chapter in your life, or have you considered embarking on another longterm voyage someday in the future? If you were to set sail again, what might you do differently?
A: I think another voyage is in my future, but I think it will look different. Perhaps taking off in a RV to explore our beautiful country! My sailing experience taught me that everything is “figure-outable” if you want it badly enough.
Q: In writing this memoir, you drew from journals you kept during the voyage, as well as the various audio and video materials you produced at the time. Having revisited these materials with the benefit of hindsight, did you feel that your perspective now differs significantly from your perspective “in the moment?” If so, can you give an example?
A: In the book, I talk about a “re-wiring of self.” Motherhood has re-wired me as significantly as this sailing adventure did for me! Now I see the world from those eyes. People ask me all of the time how I would feel if my children did something like this and my answer is, I’d feel the same way we all feel when we’re faced with something new and unknown: nervous. But I want adventure for my children, and now I know this valuable nugget: Ask for help! Ask for the resources they’re plugging into to feel confident in their adventuring of choice.
Also, when I look back on those videos, I have the hindsight of knowing everything would end up okay. I would tell the Sheena in the memoir that “This is not going to end how you think it will. It’ll be so, so much better!”
Sheena Jeffers, MSEd, is a writer, mother, certified wellness coach, doula, and yoga and dance instructor from Virginia. Her work has appeared in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the Washington Examiner, Waterborne magazine, Sailing Scuttlebutt, and the anthology Facing Fear Head On: True Stories from Women on the Water. She has been featured on TODAY.com, the Inspired Woman’s Podcast, and the Roanoke Times; and in 2016, she was awarded “Millennial on the Move” by CoVaBiz Mag. During her travels, she was the host of podcasts Breathe Full and Seas Life for Good, as well as the producer of a sailing YouTube channel that gathered over 10,000 engaged followers.Today, Sheena is loving her full days as a mother living by a river, who keeps her lifelong flame for ballet and contemporary dance ablaze, and who, in times of trouble, always remembers to consult the moon.
