So I’m in the coral lagoon of Raroria, French Polynesia after a 4,000 mile Pacific
crossing via the Galapagos to the Marquesas.
The lagoon is quite amazing, it’s literally a lake in the middle of a heaving ocean.
Here the boat is still for the first time in months.
Because she’s registered in Sydney, Australia, people in New York kept asking
me if I’d sailed the boat all the way from Sydney, so before I left the U.S.
I sailed up to Sydney, Nova Scotia, so I could say “Yes, I have.”
Here in Raroria I am closer now to Australia than New York and the Australian
flag is more common so people don’t ask me that anymore.
Since the start the rough plan has been “Sydney to Sydney,” but as I get
closer to realizing it I’m beginning to question if that’s best for me.
I’m concerned on reaching Sydney, my home for so many years, it will feel like
a project completed and I’ll be left saying “What now?” and I don’t have the
answer to that, and I never want to find myself in that limbo again.
A sense of purpose can be elusive. It’s a bugger if you lose it, debilitating if
you can’t find it and I imagine worse if you’ve never had it.
Many of my former Vanderbilt students struggled with it.
Born into privilege they often found themselves overwhelmed by the
opportunities in front of them and confused as to what they should do with
their lives.
On the other hand I was born lucky. True on leaving school at 13 I had no
Idea what I should do either. I had earlier on thought about being a cartoonist
but a tough school kicked that out of me so I left to become an apprenticed
motor mechanic.
Two years later I got into art school and my life was changed completely.
From that moment on I knew exactly what I wanted to do and knew I needed
to be very good at it.
It’s a path that kept me fascinated and occupied for my entire working career
and a great believer in the benefit of constraints, or put another way,
limited opportunities.
“Give me the freedom of a tight brief” is good advice in the creative world.
It’s why poets for example in pursuit of creativity often restrict themselves
with disciplines like sonnets or haiku’s.
When I left my role as Worldwide Creative Director of Saatchi & Saatchi I was
quoted as saying I wanted to have more than one life in my lifetime, by which
I meant I didn’t want that role to define me.
What I didn’t count on was the decade that followed.
Purposeless, clinging to the past, and struggling for a new direction I didn’t
find until I re-connected with my boyhood passion for sailboats.
Living in Berkeley San Francisco at that time, desperately unhappy, I would

in moments of despair wander down to the marina where I could watch the
boats on the bay and walk amongst them on the marina, dreaming of what
I would do to this or that one were she mine.
The last time I walked there I asked a man working on a small boat
a question and having no answer he responded by asking if I had a boat on
the marina.
When I said “No” he pointed at the ‘No Trespass‘ sign and told me to get off
the dock.
Full of despair and coming at one of the lowest points of my life it was the
kick in the guts that got me back on my feet.
Humiliated by my circumstances I took the last of my savings, flew to England
and bought the same kind of boat I’d had 30 years ago.
A Pheon built Vancouver 27.
Then everything fell into place.
With the boat in England I moved to New York to be closer for the refit needed
for a trans-Atlantic crossing.
On hearing I was coming back to New York my long-time friend Tony Gulisano
invited me to talk with the One Club for Creativity.
The CEO Kevin Swanepoel offered me the position Director for Creative
Development, a role in which I was able to make a worthwhile and meaningful
contribution to the industry.
2 months after moving to New York though Covid and lockdown hit, so with
the boat neglected in the UK boatyard I eventually had her shipped over to
Brooklyn.
And now here we are halfway across the Pacific.
To what purpose though? 
I doubt I will go through to Sydney.
I will probably touch Australia further North then head up into Asia, but I don’t
know, and all is dependent on my continuing good health.
So in truth I’m quite directionless right now.
The difference is I’m at peace with it.
My purpose is the journey.

To quote what I’m told were Alan Fletcher’s* last words:
“I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m on my way.”

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*(Alan Fletcher 1931-2006. Brilliant British graphic designer and co founder of the international design group ‘Pentagram’.)

 

 

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one's favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe's couplets:
Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it!

 

William Hutchinson Murray 

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