{"id":6077,"date":"2016-09-02T13:31:22","date_gmt":"2016-09-02T13:31:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=6077"},"modified":"2016-09-02T14:15:41","modified_gmt":"2016-09-02T14:15:41","slug":"the-right-place-at-the-right-time-as-luck-would-have-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sailpandora.com\/?p=6077","title":{"rendered":"The right place at the right time, as luck would have it."},"content":{"rendered":"

Economist, Robert Frank, from Cornell, recently published a book\u00a0about the role of luck in achieving success suggesting that those who do well\u00a0owe a larger amount of their success to luck than they might think or be willing to admit. \u00a0An article about his\u00a0book was published on\u00a0Bloomberg.com yesterday. \u00a0Successful?Was it luck you or are you just smarter than everyone else? \u00a0It’s short and you might find it interesting. \u00a0Click here…<\/a><\/p>\n

Personally, I have wondered many times\u00a0how important luck is to how things turned out for me as I\u00a0stumbled my way along over the years. \u00a0What might have happened if I had been born into another family or continued to hang out with that bad guy who lived next door when I was in my early teens. \u00a0No, don’t ask me about that. \u00a0I won’t tell anyway as it was a long time ago.<\/p>\n

A retired friend of mine does loads of traveling and I once asked him how he managed to retire young and do so well in spite of a relatively modest background. \u00a0His answer was “I chose my parents wisely”. \u00a0Ok, got it, luck again… Perhaps Frank is on to something…<\/p>\n

“Bob, what in the #$*& are you talking about?”<\/p>\n

Ok, to the point… \u00a0When Brenda and I were visiting Sag Harbor the other day aboard Pandora, \u00a0we visited briefly with friends who were there aboard their\u00a0Nonsuch 30 cat rigged sailboat. \u00a0 Before going ashore that morning Brenda and I took our dink over to\u00a0say Hi\u00a0and saw that there was a launch (when dinks grow up they are called launches) alongside\u00a0with two guys aboard. \u00a0It turned out that they were the captain and engineer aboard a\u00a0130′ motor yacht.<\/p>\n

Brenda and I enjoyed talking to them and after a while\u00a0I mentioned, in my always shy and retiring way, that I’d love to crew for them, unpaid of course, if they needed an extra set of hands when making a\u00a0passage.<\/p>\n

The captain, amazingly said, and I paraphrase here but you’ll get the gist of it, \u00a0“How about making the run with us to Florida next week?” \u00a0 “Well, sure”, I said, after making a quick glance toward Brenda to see if I was going to get in trouble. \u00a0(I wasn’t. \u00a0Whew!) \u00a0 So, that’s it. \u00a0I rendezvous with them\u00a0next Wednesday and head out for Ft Lauderdale.<\/p>\n

The captain’s name is Mark. \u00a0I’ll call him Captain Mark. \u00a0(It would have been fun if his name was Ron, wouldn’t it?) \u00a0 You know, the cult classic Captain Ron?<\/em>\u00a0 In keeping with my love of random stuff in blog posts, here’s the trailer for that flick.