Beyond the Horizon: Bert Terhart's Resilient Exploration

He achieved this incredible feat during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic , but , as you'll discover in today's episode , what Bert accomplished was far from safe . It was daring , challenging and deeply inspiring . So get ready to set sail and experience the world through the eyes of Bert Terhart . Welcome to Journey with Jake .

This is a podcast about adventure and how , through our adventures , we can overcome the challenges of life that come our way . While I expect you will learn some things about different adventures , this show will entertain you . Each episode will feature different guests or guests as they share experiences and stories from the different adventures they have been on .

Not only will you be entertained , but you will also hear the failures and trials each guest faces , and what they have done or are doing to overcome the hardships that come their way . My goal is to take each of us on a journey through the experiences of my guests , with the hope that you'll be entertained and inspired to overcome your day-to-day challenges .

After all , it's not all about the destination , as it is about the journey . Welcome to another episode of Journey with Jake . I'm Jake Bushman , your host , and I'm so glad you're here . Before we dive into this wild episode with Bert Terhart , I have a few quick housekeeping items . First , subscribe to the podcast episode with a Bert Terhart .

I have a few quick housekeeping items . First , subscribe to the podcast . Make sure to follow Journey with Jake wherever you listen to podcasts . And don't forget about YouTube . You can find the show there by searching Journey with Jake podcast . Second , follow me on Instagram . Stay connected and get updates on the show by following me at Journey with Jake podcast .

It's the best way to see what's coming up and learn a little about me personally . Third , journey with Jake is proud to be part of the Podmatch Podcast Network , home to a wide variety of incredible podcasts . Check them out at podmatchcom forward slash network .

Finally , I'm thrilled to share that I'm a participating author in Sacred Spaces , volume 3 , releasing on February 18th . My story is featured in Chapter 8 . For more information , I'll include a link in the show notes where you can get some more information about the release of Sacred Spaces Volume 3 , which I am super excited about .

Now let's talk about today's episode , if you enjoyed this conversation with Bert Terhart , be sure to check out episode 46 , featuring Lauren Landers and her incredible sailing journey . It's one of the most popular episodes of the show . All right , let's set sail and get to my conversation with Bert Terhart , all right ?

Well , I'm excited I've got Bert Terhart on the show with me today . Bert , welcome to Journey with Jake .

That's just the background , obviously , but yeah , we're going to talk a lot about your love for the ocean and sailing and circumnavigating the world and things like that . Before we do that , though , I always like to know a little bit about your background , kind of where you're from , where you grew up , a little bit about who Bert is , if you don't mind .

So I started out . I grew up in the prairies , about nine miles north of North Dakota , so you know , within spinning distance basically of Minot , which is a great big sack base . I'm sure some of your listeners will know that . You know where that is . So that isn't exactly , you know , ocean sailing country .

But I'm Dutch and my father used to row and sail to school . So ever since I was a little kid all I ever did was get in a boat or an inner tube or log and put a sail on it or paddle and try to get somewhere . So sailing is kind of in my blood . I mean you know I can honestly say that .

But I ended up thinking I was going to go in the Navy to follow my father's footsteps . I went to military college the Canadian equivalent of West Point . I found out I was colorblind . So they said okay , bert , you got two choices . Well , they don't call anybody by their first name in the Army . They go hey , terrahart , you've got two choices .

You can join the army or you can join the army . What would you like to do ? So I wasn't about to quit , so I ended up in , couldn't go to the Navy , end up in the army . I figure , if I'm going to be in the army I should do something hard , because it turns out I guess I just like doing hard things .

So I joined the Canadian Special Service Force wasn't my first love . So when I thought I get out of the army almost as quick as I can , I , you know , finish as a platoon commander , which is a great job actually it was just . It was just like one giant camping trip . I really loved it , but it I couldn't , I I wasn't . I wanted to go to sea .

So then I thought well , you know , I'll go back , cause I figured I could get on a boat and do some real oceanography . So as soon as I graduated , you know , with all my fancy degrees , I became a scientist and the first thing the Canadian government did was shut down any , any and all you know research going to sea .

So there I was stuck in front of a computer . This , this isn't turning out so . So I had a friend who was a uh , who's still ? He still worked for this guy . He's a , he's a medical doctor . And he said hey , bert , you can program . I said , sure , I can do that . And he said , well , can you program some ?

I have this big idea for a clinic , but it needs to be automated . Can you do all the software ? So I did it and that launched me into a , basically an adult . A lifetime of I had my finger firmly stuck in the adventure slash , explorer , pie , and that's just the things I've done or attempted , have just gotten bigger and bigger and bigger .

So , in a nutshell , I would say soldier , scientist , explorer , adventure serial entrepreneur , because I started more than a couple of companies , big software development companies that have been really successful . I'm still doing that because I'm just too stupid to stop . I guess I just can't stop .

I just love it , Like , if you like your work , I mean that's which is everyone says it's trite , it's easy to say , but if you really love what you're doing , it's pretty hard to stop . And I'm , you know I'm very fortunate to work with people I really love . So that's allowed me to go out and do crazy things , like you see here in the background .

So I've been all over the map and all I've ever wanted to do is get on a boat . So there you go , and it doesn't matter how big by the way , it's not anything . So there's , in a nutshell , a little bit about me .

So , firstly , you have to be prepared to get there slowly . There's something about the motive power of nothing , because you can't see it , see the air , you can feel it , but it's enough to drive you across an ocean or , for that matter , around

the world . Of course , people have been sailing for a very , very , very long time , and I'm a history buff , so if you clearly I'm a history buff , every single name that you can mention , anyone and if they were an explorer or an adventurer , they have to go from A to B .

At one time they got on a sailboat from Alexander the Great to Benjamin Franklin , to Einstein , trying to get across the Great , to Benjamin Franklin , to , you know , to Einstein trying to get across the ocean . They have to get on a boat somewhere to do it , and Canada in particular .

Canada was literally put on the map by people traveling by boat , by canoe in particular . A lot of American history was driven by people trying to get from one coast to the other , whether sailing around the Horn or trying to paddle across the country .

I mean , I'm on the West Coast , so the Columbia River , explored by canoe , put on the map by David Thompson , the city of Astoria , named after John Jacob Astor , who was one of the first millionaires in the United States . He was a fur trading guy .

He decided that he was going to sail around the horn and start a fur trading company to rival the Northwest Company in Canada . It's going to take beaver pelts to ship them to China of all places , because there was a big demand for funny hats in China at the time , if you can believe that .

So there's Astoria , there's the Columbia River , I mean the town of Astoria named after John Jacob Astor , whose grandson , by the way , died on the Titanic . So there's this amazing web associated with traveling on the ocean by sail , the craziest , slowest way you can do it .

Like I said , I can turn my mind off , which is a good thing if you're a tech guy and a bit of a scientist , and there's something magical about it , not just in terms of getting you from A to B . But there's something magical about tying you to everything that's come before .

So here on the Pacific Northwest again , I can sail to those places that Captain Cook or Vancouver or Bly or Bodega da Quadra or La Prue all these guys I can actually go and walk the same trails , look at the same trees , stand on the same rocks , because it hasn't changed that these guys were , and so you're bound inexorably to if you go there with an open

mind to all those things that have transpired before . So there's something magical about all that . So that's why I love getting on a boat .

So he has the heart of an adventure , because you have to .

If you step , if you're willing to step out your front door with an open heart , by definition in my mind , then you're unexplored because you're prepared for whatever transformation is going to come your way , as opposed to , you know , stepping outside like this , you know , looking down at the sidewalk Doing what I've done .

It's very , I have to say , it's almost impossible , you know , for your spouse . So it's , I'm not married , I'm divorced , as you can most . You might well imagine , it's pretty hard .

I mean , it's impossibly difficult , for it's impossibly difficult for anyone who actually cares about you to say if I were to say to you , assuming you care about me , is to say that , hey , I'm going to disappear over the horizon for the next nine months . I may not come back . The chances of me coming back are probably are less than 50-50 .

You won't be able to talk to me . You'll never you won't see me , but I love you . Bye , that's , that's impossible . The stomach , yeah , it's really tough , I know . To be perfectly honest , there's a certain element that's very selfish about it . So it's very hard on relationships . So I'm still very good friends with my wife .

My kids are fantastic , so I've been really , really lucky that way . But it's pretty hard on your family . As an example , the day before I went on the circumnavigation , I told my dad you know I'm leaving tomorrow . I didn't tell him . I didn't tell anybody , actually , except for the shore team , which happens to be my sister . I didn't tell anybody .

I told my dad , who'd been around , who sailed around the world on ships big ships , not small boats through the normal commercial route , so not anywhere near where I was going and he looked at me and the only thing he said was I thought you were smarter than that , which is probably the best advice I got , because he knew exactly what I was getting into .

But I didn't tell him until he had no choice because I was leaving in less than 12 hours . My brother found out when I was a thousand miles offshore , west of you know , west of the bottom of Baja California and the reason I did that was because the chance of you actually leaving are very slim .

The boat might not be ready , you might not be ready , you might not be healthy , like I mean , three weeks before I left I fell off the mast . So I fell 60 feet to the , you know , to the deck broke , four ribs cracked , my sternum collapsed , my right lung partially concussed . But I went anyway . So three weeks later .

But the point is it's very tough to go because the boat has to be perfect , you have to be perfect , have to have a weather window , all those things . So I felt , okay , it's not fair for me to say to my dad I'm leaving in six months .

He'll , of course , worry for six months , like everybody else would be crazy worried , and then say , okay , well , I'm not going , but I'll try again next year . So another 12 months of worry .

But you know , at least I've , I've absolved myself from , from the guilt , I suppose , of not telling people . So it's , I don't . That's a long way of saying it's . This is really hard . It's really hard on on the on the people , because it's so incredibly dangerous , like it's beyond imagining how tough it is to sail nonstop , solo , around the world .

So , as an example , to give you some numbers , 6,000 people have been to the top of Everest . 600 people have been in space . 300 people have sailed solo , nonstop , around the world Nine people . I'm the ninth person to have done it with just a sextant pen , paper watch . I'm the first North or South American to do it .

And when I came back in 2022 , since then there's been a couple other people have done it as part of a big race . But the hardest thing , it's just about the hardest thing in the world to do , like I said , 6,000 people to Everest , nine people like me , so it's really tough .

It was going to be hard , and so I didn't want him to worry and then to paddle across Canada , solo across Canada , using only maps that I made in a compass , no electronic navigation whatsoever . I'm the second person to have done it . The first person traveled with his dog . His name is Mike Ranta .

He's just a character and a wonderful guy and just a beast in a canoe . I said hey , Mike , while you're cheated , you went with your dog . He's your best friend , so I had to go alone . So at least you took a friend .

The only thing that is the same is getting lost . So we're hardwired Like it's one of the reasons from a tech guy . It's one of the reasons why Google Maps is so unbelievably , unbelievably successful . They make more money in maps than they make on anything else . And we're hardwired . They make more money in maps than they make on anything else .

And we're hardwired Like it's part of our DNA Actually , well , not our DNA , it's part of our social hardwiring to map our locations , because , I mean to put it bluntly , maybe 5,000 years ago , if you couldn't remember where the berry patch was from year to year you weren't making it , you were toast .

You can very quickly drum up the feelings of someone living , say , 5,000 years ago by throwing away your phone , throwing away the GPS , throwing everything away and taking like 10 steps into the thick bush in the Northwest rainforest and you are lost man and that feeling that starts rising up in you , that panic that starts rising in your gorge and the cold sweat

on your forehead is exactly the same that everyone else felt before you . Now , going to sea , most people aren't afraid of going to sea in the waves and everything . They're afraid of losing sight of land . Because they are lost man , because there is nothing out there . There's no signposts , it's not painted .

The nearest person to me was 200 miles that way on the International Space Station . So I was like 2000 miles from the nearest land .

So using only a sextant it's very easy to get , but they only had a sextant , that's all they had was their you know , their mathematical , their ability to figure out where they were based on stars , planets , moons and what time it is . So if you can't do that , then you're lost at sea , like literally lost at sea , and there is nothing .

Like I said , there's nothing more terrifying . You can't create a more terrifying experience , other than being eaten by a wild animal , I suppose . But then , getting lost , right Getting lost .

There was no sun , there was no moon , there were some stars . So I'm just guessing . I'm guessing how fast , I'm guessing at where I am , I'm guessing what the drift is , I'm guessing at you know how the wind , current and waves have bounced me around . I'm guessing at what my course was , you know , diligently writing everything down .

It's interesting , let's just put it that way . It's the same . It's the same . Actually , you know , I had people tell me it's crazy . I was in Lake of the Woods , for example , and Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake and borders on the United States . Lake of the Woods and Rainy Lake and borders on the United States .

Rainy Lake is just north of the US border . It's very , very important in terms of Canadian history , in terms of where the United States and Canada decided to put their map .

It's very important in terms of how the Northwest , not just of Canada but also the United States was mapped , but there's 14,000 islands in Lake of the Woods and there's 100,000 miles of coastline . So everywhere you look is a point is a bay , is an island . So there's nothing , it's indistinguishable .

So as I was paddling my way through there , guys would stop what are you doing ? Give them a brief explanation . So are you lost ? I said no , not at all . You have to be lost because it's impossible to know where you are around here because they then they actually they have you know , the gps and a chart plotter their track there back and it's impossible .

They just can't imagine doing it without all the all the new stuff , which is crazy because the only way it got there was people did it without

you know , quote unquote all the new stuff right , we're just so hard .

If you had to walk to school , could you get there ? He goes , yeah . So could you walk to a nearest grocery store ? He goes . Yeah , I could get there . Sure , could you walk to where the parliament buildings are ? He goes . Yeah , could you walk to the ferry terminal ? He goes . If you could walk that far , he goes . Yeah .

Could you walk to my place , which is 100 kilometers north , just straight north , just walk north ? He goes . I think I could . And he wasn't just saying yes for the sake of yes , but if you just stop and think about , okay , if I had to get to the grocery store , could I do it ? And the answer is yes , I mean we don't actually do it anymore .

People pull out their GPS and ask Siri how to get to the McDonald's when it's like but it's there , you just got to peel a few layers .

The sun comes up in the east every morning . I just got to go the sun's coming and just start walking 90 degrees , you know , to the east and I'll get to Seattle . And I have to . I don't have to worry about it for as long as I'm headed south . Seattle is about . From where I am is about 90 miles away , maybe a hundred .

So I don't actually have to worry about Seattle until I get to , until I get to mile 80 or 90 , right , then I have to start paying more attention . So for the , for the greatest chunk of that distance , I just have to have the dumbest navigation in the world , which is to walk south . Right , that's it .

To figure out how far north and south you are is actually very easy and it was figured out by the Egyptians a very long time ago . You can do it with a couple of sticks and the sun and get really good at it , and you'd be able to tell that you're within , say , 10 or 20 miles of Seattle , and then you can start paying attention .

The simple , and you'd be able to tell that you're within , say , 10 or 20 miles of Seattle and then you can start paying attention . This simple navigation has been with us for a long , long time . It's been around a long time because getting lost is no fun , right ? So , yeah , no , absolutely . Yeah .

So I kind of paint the picture for it .

At one time I was labeled the safest man on the planet by Yahoo News , which was like ridiculous because at the time I was in the Southern Indian Ocean .

So when you go around the world , well , I left Victoria , victoria , british Columbia , so just north of Seattle and basically you head southeast sort of halfway between Hawaii and the mainland and then go south until you can start angling , sort of , you know , southeast towards Cape Horn .

So Victoria , bottom of South America is Cape Horn across the South Atlantic to the Cape of Goulas Cape of Goulas , which is people think it's Cape of Good Hope , but the southernmost tip of Africa is Cape Agulhas Across the southern Indian Ocean into the South Tasman Sea .

So now I'm south of Cape Lewin , which is the western extremity of Australia , then I go beneath Tasmania , which is southeast Cape , and then I go beneath New Zealand , which is south Cape ,

and then I go as far west as I possibly can , headed back to north to South America , and then I turn straight north , so you get basically straight south of Hawaii and then go straight north as hard as you can , pass through Hawaii and then get over top of the North Pacific High and then back to Victoria .

It's the most extreme marine environment in the world and perhaps the most extreme environment in the world period , for a number of scientific reasons , oceanographic reasons , which I can tell you about because that's what I did . But that's the trip . So Victoria to Victoria 265 days alone at sea , 28,800 and some nautical miles . I came back in 2019 and 2020 .

And then I went casting around looking up something else to do and I figured I should paddle across the continent . So I did , and then this past summer I thought I should go back to the Aleutian Islands I'm not sure if anybody's ever watched that the reality series the Deadliest Catch , where all these ? Yeah . So I decided , you know , maybe 10 years ago .

So it seems like every couple years I'm off on some because it takes it takes a year at least to plan these things out and get them prepared and get fit enough to do it and get prepared the boat or whatever has to be . Yeah , those are kind of the timelines for those things and there's all sorts of crazy stories about any one of those things .

They're full of misadventure . You and I talked earlier about the flip side of every adventure coin is misadventure . They're both full of adventures . Side of every adventure coin is misadventure and they're both full of adventures .

And if you're not prepared for the misadventure , you should probably , you know , hang up your cleats and not not go outside , because it's part and parcel of the , you know , of the whole thing and it's actually what makes it all worthwhile . Um , if it were the first person to sail around the world .

His name was robin knox johnson , now sir robin knox johnson . He was a brit . It took him 312 days . He finished in , you know , april of 1969 , just before man walked on the moon . To give you some idea of how hard it is , man had been to the moon and back before . Someone sailed solo , nonstop , around the world 20,000 years .

And so , anyway , some you know rather coy British journalist or reporter asked him . So , robin , you know was it hard ? And he said , if it were easy , it'd be raining whiskey . So , which is which I figure is good advice , because you know which is which is a , you know , very interesting way of saying that there will be misadventures .

So I had , I had plenty and and they , they , they ran the whole gamutut . It's like on the boat , I ran out of food . I was down to less than 800 calories a day , because it's for a bunch of reasons . So we can talk about that . This picture you see behind me , the boat is basically straight up and down .

I turned the boat more or less upside down three times . I spent more than 50 days becalmed , not all at once , but over the course of the whole trip . So you know , being with no wind , which translates it was about 55 days actually which translates to 50 , easily 5,500 miles , which is basically the stretch from , let's say , fiji back to Vancouver .

So almost two months . You sit there , running out of food , running out of water and , of course , just because there's no wind , it doesn't mean that the waves are , you know , go away , so you can't do anything . I spent all that time strapped down in the boat , just getting beat to within an inch , just hammered , because the boat is just going .

You know , it's just , it's just banging . There's no when , the , when the wind are in the sails . Of course you can imagine , you know the , the wind is the boat's like this . It might be going up and down , excuse my hand but when there's no wind , all the boat does is this , just , it's everywhere . It's horrible .

And you sit there cursing your existence and and the . You know all , all the gods that may have had a hand in your , in your particular , you know , in your particular stretch of or your particular slice of paradise , let's say . You're cursing every single one of them and railing at . You know every small creature that you can see .

But you know , the experiences run the gamut , like the nights are to die for , because they are just unbelievably beautiful . The stars are something that you cannot imagine . The ocean itself is not much of a romantic , but it has its moods . So you can , it's literally you can . You know .

I remember being in the Indian Ocean once and looking out at the waves , you know , wondering . There wasn't much wind . I thought , you know , man , oh man , I got to get some breezes . I got to get going because I was late you know , you're always late and there was a storm coming up behind me , so I needed some wind to be able to move out of the way .

All these things are weighing down on you and looking out at the ocean , and suddenly it's as if someone had taken their hand and just brushed it across the surface and every wave was gone . All that was left were little tiny cat paws and it was like the whole universe had just , you know , exhaled this huge sigh of relief .

And the moment passes within you know , 30 seconds , and if you weren't there looking , if you weren't there , you know , just outside , you would have missed it . It's pretty amazing to be a witness to that when you , when you yourself , need it the most . Right Because you're , like I said you were very anxious , you're very worried , nothing has gone right .

You know , blah , blah , blah , and suddenly the universe just just exhales and you go . Okay , that that the you know , the mood just changed . So , and it wasn't me like I'm , it's definitely external . So , and you can , so that the ocean itself has these , these moments of of incredible beauty , and I , I mean , I could change the background .

There's some other backgrounds that I have to show you . The skies are like . It's unbelievably beautiful . It's , firstly , it's unbelievably wild . It's chaotic in ways that you can't possibly imagine the good way to imagine it . The waves in this picture here are probably in the order of 18 feet high .

Imagine standing on the opposite side of a four-story apartment building and looking up at the top . That's the size of an average wave that you see in the back here . Now imagine you're in that same place , but you look up at an eight-story apartment building .

That's the size of the waves that are coming at you when it's stormy , and it's not just one apartment building , there's legions of them marching down on you . And , of course , it's beautiful and it's , you know , it's like looking at a mountain . A mountain itself is this . There's this unbelievable beauty about it . But you can't just go .

You know , I'm just going to go up in the mountain and , you know , lie naked on the rocks and commune with nature , because tomorrow morning you'll , you'll . You know , you may as well be part of the of nature , because you won't be taking a neck , you won't be having your next breath .

And we had talked earlier about how I feel about the Southern United States . It also is incredibly beautiful . But you also cannot go out there , lay naked on a rock and expect to see tomorrow morning , right ? So there's this , and it's not malevolent . There's malevolent . There's nothing malicious about it , it's just what is . So there's this amazing beauty .

That's just what is , but it's you have to . You have to at least be humble about being there . If you're not humble , then you're in the wrong place .

quiet , there's no wind , you're getting bumped around . You're also by yourself . You're alone .

You know what can I do to preserve water , to preserve food ? So the CPU cycles that you have running upstairs are constantly going . Like I slept , I never slept more than two hours . I never slept more than two and a half hours for the whole time I was away during any 24 hour period . I never slept more than 90 minutes at a time .

So I would sleep 90 minutes Usually . I tried to sleep . I usually tried to be asleep between three and five 30 in the morning , because three o'clock in the morning is when you do this . You know that typically that's when humans do the craziest things .

That's when you'll , that's when you'll fall off the boat , that's when you'll make a bad decision , that's when you know , that's when you'll fall asleep drive in your car . That's when you'll , you know , run into an , you know drive off the road , and I know that .

So I wanted to be asleep during that period and I would pick some other time during the day when it wasn't too busy , and then you know I , I would just catnap , I would sleep . You know , set my alarm for 20 minutes and just you know , sleep that way . It takes some practice , it's different for everybody , but I mean that's the way it was .

Because you have to sail the . That's the only , even though it's very , very difficult to move around and sometimes you've got to be strapped down . That's the only time that you can really fix something .

If there's something broken with the wind vane or something broken if there's some sails you've got to fix , or whatever the case might be , the only time you can do that is when the boat's not moving , ie they don't need the wind vane or any of the steering gear or the sails or whatever . Machinery is not being used .

So machinery , so we have to charge batteries and things like that . So you're always busy . So that helps . It helps keep you occupied . The other thing is I never left with the idea that I was going to quit , like , oh , if it gets hard I'll stop . Let me relate . I'm a soldier , I was a soldier .

So can you imagine if you had an army where you said to all the pointy end of the stick , the infantry guys or the tankers . You know guys , if it gets hard , just call it quits , we'll head back to the hotel . No , like they don't get that option . Right , it's hard , too bad , right , you're just going to keep , you're just going to have to stick it out .

You know none of those people ever . So none of those like a soldier or anybody else in those kind of circumstances they don't get the option of quitting . So I never gave myself the option of quitting . I said if I leave , something catastrophic has to happen . The boat has to break , or I have to get really sick , or something like that .

I think that's more than half the battle . Just decide beforehand what circumstances would have to conspire against you for you to actually consider quitting To me . I had a very well-defined idea of what that looked like . And the other thing is you mentioned being alone . So there's a massive difference between being alone and being lonely .

They are not the same thing . The loneliest I've ever been in my life is at a Vancouver Canucks hockey game with 22,000 screaming fans , none of whom cared that I was there , and everybody happy to spill their beer and me . You know , anytime anybody scored . So you're .

You are a complete and utter non-entity , which isn't to say that it's not an enjoyable experience , but it can be incredibly lonely , right Cause so being away , I had a tremendous number of people following me on social media . I had kids from all over the world . There was close to 3,000 kids following this trip .

It's from faraways , kenya to New Zealand , all over North America , britain . The rule was if you email me , I email you back , because that's the only way of communicating . I had was . I had a very low bandwidth satellite connection that allowed me to email , but I , you know , you couldn't . No one could send me a picture .

I couldn't browse any of those things . All I could do was write a text and then send it off , and then I would . I had very I had . I was able to send low , low resolution pictures . So that's what I did . I sent them to the shore team and then , you know , they it because I couldn't , I didn't . I had no idea what was going on

actually in social media or anything like that . I just knew that I would write something and I wrote something every day . I was never lonely . I was , because there's all these people that you don't know who felt if they fell out of the sky and hit you or landed on the deck , you wouldn't know who they were . And they were .

They were completely invested in my success . They wanted to see the trip come to a successful conclusion . They were just and , which is pretty , which is really normal If you read the accounts of you know any any other sailor .

You know people who are climbing mountains , people who are crossing continents , people who are , you know , doing crazy things like trying to drive a car or a motorcycle or a mountain bike around the world , or whatever the case might be . Joseph Campbell would have something about that .

It was have to say something about the mythos that surrounds people who take on things that are perceived to be heroic . Not that I'm casting what I've done as heroic . Please don't get me wrong , because I'm persistent . I'm not very smart , but I'm persistent . I wouldn't say I'm heroic , but my point is that there's something in well .

Let me rephrase it If you look in every major religious tradition , you know people always stumble off into the wilderness for 40 days or something like 40 days . So you know Jesus disappears into the wilderness for 40 days . Muhammad goes off into a cave for 40 days . You know , buddha ends up , you know , meditating by himself , sort of thing .

And so there's something , there's something hardwired in all of us , something that that that we can relate to , cause these are .

If you look at these as just stories I'm not just saying , I'm not just categorizing the stories but if you look at them from just an allegorical context , then you can see that they they seem to resonate literally with billions of people . So there's got to be some truth to it , right ?

Otherwise it wouldn't be something that we can all you know , from all walks of life we can relate to . So there's something about people stepping out into the wilderness , however you choose to describe it Like . The ocean is a vast wasteland , it's a wilderness . The surface of the moon wilderness , like .

Oh , there's another good example Think how many people were totally invested in Neil Armstrong and the whole world , right , the whole world wanted them to succeed wildly . So there's something that just people latch onto that seems to resonate with them .

And what's been interesting to me is that in all the things I've done , when I try to describe them as best I can to someone who doesn't know me from anybody , there's something about what I've done that resonates with that person that I never would have thought and never in my wildest imagination is what I thought , that this particular element of my particular

story would resonate with that person . And it does . And as a result , I get a perspective not just on them but on myself and what I've done , in a completely different light . So it is unbelievably rewarding to be constantly given these new perspectives on yourself and what you've done .

That in itself is , you know , is motivating , because you go oh , you know , I had no idea that , you know this would resonate in this particular way .

So again , that's kind of a long way of saying you know you're alone , but never lonely , because there's all these , all the people , of course , that are wishing you success , but then again there's all these things that are running in the back of your head . Like I got as an example , I was able to succeed .

I've been successful not just in business but in , you know , in everything I've done , because I'm very conservative . You might not think I'm conservative . You know doing crazy things , but I'm very conservative . It's very easy to sail the boat to bits . Anybody can do that .

Anybody can get on a boat , put up all the sails and just disappear over the horizon , never to be seen again , because the boat will just come apart . It's very easy to say I'm going to go climb the mountain and just start running up the hill without any gear . You're not coming back . If you're conservative , then the chances of you succeeding are far greater .

So I'm very conservative , although the things I've taken on admittedly have a high degree of risk .

But it's like I said you have to be very , very sure that what you're doing is going to fall within the realm of well I won't even say the following within the realm of your own expertise , because you have to be very sure of what you can do and what you can't do . I knew that , as an example , I knew that I could stay up for 90 minutes .

I knew that I could get by in a long time with very little sleep and what I would need to still function . I knew how I could get by with not eating very much food , but I knew that I couldn't get by with being cold .

So I spent more money on clothes than I did on sales because I had very , very expensive you know gear to keep me dry , cause once you're wet you never dry . Same same one . I spent more on clothes traveling across the country . You know canoeing and walking than I did on anything else , so I knew that's a limitation , right ?

So as long as you have some idea of what your limitations are and some ideas of what your capabilities are , then you stay well within those , then the chances of you succeeding are very , very good .

One of the tricks I learned in the army and I used , you know , have used ever since was to play a game that we used to call the , the when if game , or what I've called the when if game . So humans are very , very optimistic . You will look at something that has a very low probability of happening and your mind will just blow it off .

You can drive down the freeway with no divider , going as fast the other side of the road and you won't give it a second thought . Right , because the probability , the probability of that of an , of a car careening into your lane , the probability of that happening , is extremely low , right . So you just , you just blow it off .

But if you're , if you're going to play a game with an unlimited downside risk , like saying , sailing around the world , you have to consider the every possibility that has a very low event of an event happening , happening . So , instead of saying to yourself , what if the mass comes down ?

Because in your mind , humans , optimistic that we are , will go , oh , that'll never happen , and then you'll blow it off , well , what happens if the halyard breaks ? What happens if the rudder comes off ? Or what happens if the wind vane breaks ? Or what happens if you run out of food ? You could just blow all those office , as you know .

Low event happens to say you know whatever . However , if you do that , you end up lying sweating in your bunk and your bed because you'll just be , you'll just be paralyzed with anxiety because you don't have a plan for anything except hope .

I , very early on , I sat down and spent like two days writing down what do you think of all the crazy things that could happen , and then writing them down . So I had a plan A , b , c and D and even a plan nine from outer space for everything . So if the mask comes down , what am I going to do ?

Not , not , I never said what if , because as soon as you say what if ? Your mind blows it off . But if I say when the mask comes down , then right away your mind starts thinking about a solution . Right , it goes . Okay , I need an answer for that , as opposed to oh well , it'll never happen . So I had these one-if .

You know I played one-if and you know soldiers do this all the time , or they should do it , and you know people that . You know commanders who have lost major battles have never considered that the enemy's going to . You know , climb up over the cliff , the famous , you know battles , planes of Abraham and Canada battles in the second world war .

They just say , oh , you know , no one's going to , no one's going to scale the cliffs , no one's going to sail up the St Lawrence because it's too hard . But then someone does it and they're taken by surprise and , you know , catastrophe .

lots of things to do to keep you well and truly occupied , even when there's nothing going on .

I could get , you know , I could get struck by it . The stove that comes loose . It comes flying across the cabin . I played the one F game before I left . So when the boat goes upside down , what's going to hit me ? That's the stove , that's the floorboards , that's the batteries , that's every book , that's everything .

So when the boat turns upside down , where's the water going to come from ? All the hatches , the portholes , the lights , everything . So I made sure before I left that when the boat turns upside down , that A , it's not going to fill with water . Because that's your first job as captain .

The water stays on one side of the hull and you're on the other , and the other one is you don't get hurt because , again , you're trying to sail conservatively so you can't get hurt .

I made sure that I had everything nailed down and if you go to the blog , for example , you look inside the boat , it looks tied up to the dock exactly the way that it would be at sea , because the only thing that can come loose is a cushion right , that's it . And hit you Like , oh my God , my pillow hit me .

You know there's a one-if game and I turned . So , sailing in a violent storm near the end , I'm out in the cockpit because I'm trying to prepare for when the wind shifts . So when the wind shifts , that's when the waves get chaotic because the wind is blowing one way , the waves are going one way .

In the Southern Ocean the wind shift is very violent , so it might be blowing , say , 45 to 55 knots one direction and then 10 minutes later it's blowing 65 to 75 knots , which is close to 175 . Knots is like 90 miles an hour in a direction that's 90 degrees to that .

So you can imagine the waves that are going one way are now suddenly being forced 90 degrees by an incredibly strong wind the other . So the waves get chaotic and you can't be asleep during that . You can't be asleep at the switch . So you have to whenever the wind shifts and you have to stay ahead of the boat .

You can't , you can't wait for this to happen , because then you're caught with your pants down , which is , you know , at sea or otherwise it's always a bad idea . So I was awake , waiting for the wind shift and this one , a gust , came through right at the wrong time . So the giant wave picked the boat up .

I go smoking down the face of this wave hit the bottom . Giant wave pick the boat up , I go smoking down the face of this wave hit the bottom , the boat broaches and the gust comes in and just knocks the boat over . So between the wind knocking the boat over and the wave breaking behind me , it just basically flips the boat . It happens in three seconds .

It took me longer to describe it than it happens , because the waves come at you at about 40 miles an hour , like literally 40 miles an hour a cubic meter of seawater . So you hold out your arm , you know , three feet by three feet by three feet , it's a pretty small box that weighs one metric ton or 2,200 pounds .

So you have hundreds of thousands of tons of water that just smash into the boat and of course it's just like a cork it just gets rolled , snapped over .

So I find myself swimming , I find myself in the ocean swimming up to , you know , up to the cockpit , where , so I know the boat's upside down , or at least past 90 , because everything that used to be flat is now vertical and underwater . And I thought , firstly , is the boat going to come up with a mast , which it did , because I was .

Before I left , I replaced every piece of rigging on the outside of the boat , thinking that you know that if , if the boat gets turned over , I want the mast to come back , and if it doesn't come back , then I want big pieces of the mast to come back .

So , so , and then I thought the boat you know the inside of the boat better not be filled with water , because that's another , it's a disaster . Well , you know it's another issue , but it was fine and that happened three times . So there's there's an example of when of you know when something Right .

So you know , I you know , as we used to say , prior preparation prevents piss , poor performance . That was the army thing . So you know , being it goes a long way , it really goes a long way .

It would take me sometimes 10 or 15 minutes to put a boot on , because it takes that long to get across the boat safely and then it gets that long to wedge yourself into a place where you can actually use two hands , which means you're not hanging on to something . You've got two hands on a boot . So how do you get three points of contact ?

Because you have one foot , one hip and one shoulder wedged in a doorway because the motion on the boat is so violent . But I was in the Indian Ocean again , sailing north to get out of the way of a cyclone or typhoon there and I was hanging on with two hands like this onto the cockpit in front of me . You know the Dodgers got this railing on it .

I was hanging on to that and I looked behind me to see what was going on with the wind vane and I couldn't quite get my head cranked around .

So I took my hands off this handhold and in the time it took to take those hands off , I got flung off the boat and bent over backwards , double over top of the compass , which had a protecting stainless steel thing , and I hurt my back . I hurt my back and then I fell into the cockpit and hurt my ankle .

I thought , okay , well , that sucks , because if you get hurt then you're done right , because you're . I thought , oh geez . So I crawled into and I was luckily going north and the weather was actually pretty good because I was avoiding this massive storm that was coming down from Madagascar .

Basically I was east of Africa and in the Goulas Current , which is a really nasty place , anyway . So I'm going north , right , getting away to this big storm . As the storm was coming south , I hurt myself . So I crawl back into the cabin and I strap myself down to the bunk , thinking , okay , the weather's decent , the boat's fine .

If I can just recover a little bit so they can actually move around , then I'll be okay . So , after laying down for 24 hours , I had written something , and one of this a school teacher from Winnipeg who had an entire elementary school following me .

They emailed me , or she emailed me and say , hey , the class is loving blah , blah , blah stuff and one of her little kids when I had read one of the things I'd written and he had spontaneously jumped up and said . He jumped up and said something like you know , don't quit , mr Terhart .

So in when I was in military college , you're always called by , you're always called Mr Terhart . There might be a flurry of profanity before and after , but it's always Mr Terhard .

And I thought to myself at that time if I disappoint this little kid because I'm hurt quote , I'm not bleeding , I'm fine , I'm just a little uncomfortable If I disappoint that kid by quitting , then I'm doing the wrong thing . That little kid had as much to do with me finishing as just about anything else that I conjured up myself .

In that one moment I wasn't conservative , I got hurt , and in that one moment that I needed help the most . When I was at you know , as lonely as you could possibly get , because there's no help coming , there's nobody near you for thousands of miles away .

This one little tiny voice from a little kid who's never met you , will never meet you and only knows you from a couple of snippets . That is enough to get you up and get going .

So there's maybe some I won't necessarily say the highs and lows , but it gives you maybe some idea of the range of emotions that pour through you , because one of the things about being there is that there's no filters , right . The only filter you have is the filter that you apply yourself .

The choices are to behave very badly or to behave very well , and when I say well , you know you end up doing things that are constructive as opposed to , you know , deconstructive . So yelling at the wind although I yelled and swore at the wind and complained isn't helpful . It doesn't do anything and then after a while you go .

Well , that was ridiculous , yeah that was really stupid . That didn't help at all , you know , further ahead . So why don't you do something constructive ?

You have to self-regulate , I suppose in a way that's pretty hard to relate to , because most people aren't in those situations where there's nobody around for thousands of miles and there's plenty of stories of people going , you know , crazy , like just stark , raving mad as a result of not being able to , not being able to to regulate .

So the most famous one is , um ,

the guy who was part of the race that , that Sir Robin Knox Johnson , you know , won . He uh , there's a , there's a movie that was made about him and uh , it's . It's really kind of a sad story , but but he , you know , he went crazy .

He couldn't face the fact that he was going to fail and that he felt that the only way that he could succeed was to win , which , of course , is just crazy wrong . So he ended up it's kind of a long story but it's worth researching . He ended up killing himself , jumping off the boat , leaving his log behind , anyway .

But this idea of self-regulation is , you know , it's really important .

And because it's 4.30 , it's relatively light , because it's up north in Canada , it's a wilderness . There's no one around for hundreds and hundreds of miles , you're just there's nobody there , because you know every sound in the bush , right , I know ?

Suddenly I'm sitting up in my little tent and I know something's not quite right and I look over to my left and there's a bear that's just clawed his way into the tent and he's trying to make off with my pack . That has everything in it , right , and I played WinF . So if he takes my pack anyway , so it's not good and I had a plan for that .

When I wrote about the story on the blog , people said well , did you punch the bear in the nose and did you have a knife , and did you use your bear spray and your bear panger ? So here's what I basically said If you think you're going to win a knife fight with a bear in a telephone booth , then you're probably mistaken .

And if you think you're going to light off a can of pepper spray at a bear in a tiny tent , the only thing that's going to happen is that you're going to want the bear to eat you because you yourself are going to be covered in pepper spray , so you want to be put out of your misery as soon as humanly possible .

If you launch a bear banger at a bear in a nylon enclosure , pretty soon you're going to be engulfed in flames that have now melted onto your skin because you've melted every piece of nylon around you and you'll again want the bear to eat you to put you out of your misery .

And if you think that you're going to punch a bear in the nose , then maybe you probably shouldn't go in . The bush . My when if plan , when the bear comes in the tent , was to yell , because that's the only thing that you could possibly do .

So the only thing you don't actually know is that if you open your mouth , maybe nothing comes out , which which I've seen happen to people in really exceptional circumstances . So I opened my mouth and Captain Terhart came out , like your parade voice , you know , came out and the bear took off . So luckily the bear took off , but there there's another .

So I had a . I had a when if plan for when the bear comes in the tent , and that was to yell . Even though I had knives and axes and pepper spray and all that kind of stuff , you just couldn't use it in a tent .

So he drove the British Admiralty , his maps , which were a complete figment of his imagination he just made them up , those maps single-handedly drove the British , which was the most powerful empire in the world at the time , they drove them for two centuries to look for the Northwest Passage .

It's following the footsteps of Peter Pond and Alexander McKenzie , of course you know McKenzie river , and then down the shore of the Eastern , of the Southern Eastern part of the Arctic ocean , the Southern coast , following the footsteps of Franklin , who of course died miserably , and then John Ray , the Canadian surveyor , who , who you know , found him , sort of thing .

So I'm , I'm doing that , I'm doing that trip leading , leaving the BC-Alberta border . It's about 40 , 45 , 4,600 kilometers , again by canoe , solo , again with just maps , and so that's coming this summer . And then I'm planning another circumnavigation the year following , when I come back .

So to try to set I didn't set a record because Suburban is very slow , so I'm going to try to do that again . So I always have plans . I always have plans , of course , and there's all these other things going on .

Like we completely and utterly confuse we as humans , people confuse extraordinary with the grandiose and the large , like the word itself just means literally it's extra , which is any tiny bit is extra out of the ordinary . So anything that's extraordinary , which is a little tiny bit out of ordinary is , by definition , extraordinary .

So if you're willing to step out your front door , if you're willing to step out your front door with an open heart and an open mind , then you are on an adventure because you are doing something extraordinary .

Literally , you've gotten up off the couch , turned off Netflix , put your phone down , made the first step outside and then , if you're willing to look around , I guarantee you , if you stop and look at a blade of grass and just wonder how the hell did that get there ? Everything that you see around you is a miracle .

Like I mentioned how beautiful where you live is . It's beautiful in a different way than , say , alaska , or the Bering Sea is beautiful or the ocean is . I grew up in the prairies , which I think an extraordinary , you know beautiful place . So adventure to me is anything that happens that's outside your front door , not that inside .

You know , with kids , can't be an adventure on its own . But you know , literally , you know figuratively , to step outside whatever that comfort zone for you is , and it does not have to be large . In fact , if you think that it has to be large , I think you're sort of headed down the wrong path . It's the process .

If I imagine I was going to sail 28,000 miles , as an example , or paddles and walk 7,800 kilometers , it's an impossible undertaking , but I can always take one more step . I can always sail the next six minutes , which is one mile . You know , basically it's six knots , or you know 10 minutes it's . I can always do that , right , which is a very small chunk .

So that very small chunk in itself is the adventure and you just have to keep , you know , stacking them one on top of the other , and it doesn't matter where the , it doesn't matter where the stack ends or where the stack goes , which is part of the misadventure , part of it , right , you plan to go here and you end up there .

I want to do this and you end up doing that , and the journey itself is going to be transformational in ways that you cannot possibly imagine . It will change you . It will change the people that you meet . There's a symbiotic relationship , of course .

This wonderful relationship you have with the people that you meet and the people that you don't meet , like the small child or kid I talked about

. It'll take you to places that you can't imagine . It's just . But you will not do that unless you take that one tiny step , so that one tiny step encapsulates every single thing that there is to encapsulate about adventure . So that would be my short answer to that .

I learn so much from Bert , just as I do from all my amazing guests on Journey with Jake . Thank you again , bert , for inspiring us with your thoughts and journey and , of course , a big thank you to all of you , my listeners , for tuning in each week . If you're not already following me on Instagram , be sure to do so .

At Journey with Jake podcast , I'll be sharing some exciting announcements about new content coming in February . Let's just say , even though February is the shortest month , it is packed with plenty of content , so stay tuned on Instagram for updates .

Looking ahead , my next episode features Gary Arndt , a world traveler , multi-time American travel photographer of the year and host of the Everything Everywhere daily podcast . It's going to be another fantastic episode , so don't miss it . Just remember it's not always about the destination as it is about the journey . Take care , everybody .