“Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.”

Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind

Stress is not a disease you can cure or eliminate, it is a condition we all experience. In sailing, the amount of stress you can experience can drastically build up to a distress situation and the risks and outcomes of such situation can be dramatic. Sailors are well trained and used to cope with potentially stressful situations and their panic threshold is higher than the average person. Sailors and crew, however, are not immune to the dangerous effects of high level of stress exposure.

The ocean is a wild environment that doesn’t forgive errors and forces sailors and crew into extreme conditions. Facing the ocean requires preparation, training and a strong dose of confidence in your ability to cope with the unexpected.  While we can control our training, the safety standards and the maintenance of the boat, our rigging and sail trimming, we can’t control the waves, the wind, the tide, equipment failures, medical emergencies and many other variables that can transform sailing into a constant source of stress and danger.

Stress is our reaction to pressure. It is the name given to the experience we have as we physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually respond to life’s tension. We need stress because it has many positive benefits, keeping up the attention level and the reactions of our body. When engaged in a situation where the ability to control and perform are crucial we benefit from the physiological responses of stress. In fact we usually don’t consider unimportant events stressful.

Stress is also a process that occurs when there is an imbalance between environmental demands and response capabilities of the organism, and when the environmental stimuli are likely to tax or exceed one’s personal coping capacities. The ability to endure stressful situations and to accomplish tasks is influenced by individual variables; training and perceived self-efficacy varies from person to person. Crew under stress or experiencing psychological health issues are operating at reduced capacity and can put both the boat and her passengers in danger.

Events that cause stress are called stressors.  Events also don’t always come one at a time and don’t leave because another one arrives. Stressors add up. The cumulative effect of minor stressors can be a major distress if they all happen too close together. Too much stress can take its toll on people and their ability to organize.  Too much stress leads to distress and often produces a combination of worry, nervousness and fear, emotions that if not controlled effect a sailor’s ability to perform.

Here are some of the effects of the stress:

• Difficulty making decisions
• Forgetfulness
• Constant worrying
• Carelessness
• Hiding from responsibilities

Stress can be better described as a recursive relationship between environmental demands, social and organizational resources and the individual’s appraisal of that relationship. If you feel the resources are not enough to cope with the problems this evaluation will affect the performance. Sailing requires a huge amount of resources, from the personal ones of the sailor’s to the organizational ones that depend on the owner and the management. In fact the environment that surrounds a crew at work is not limited solely to the natural setting and the boat. The social and organizational environment around the boat can be a source of stress as well or more than a severe gale. Expectations from the others, socio-political and family events, the organizational culture can turn into a hostile and uncontrolled source of stress. We tend to focus on stressors like cataclysms or severe weather conditions but one of the greatest sources of stress is daily hassles that may cause tension, irritation or frustration. Things such as broken equipment, livelihood worries, prolonged isolation or lack of privacy, all these repetitive daily hassles become chronic strains, persistent, difficult and demanding situations where a stressor that we are normally able to handle can turn the situation into a real danger.

Here are some suggestions to keep the level of stress reasonable.

• Safety first: all the safety systems are set and operative and crew is trained to use them
• Spaces and equipment are kept up and enable the full control of the boat by crew
• Prevent crowding – enough privacy when needed, enough social interaction when wanted;
• Seek guidance – talk with somebody trustworthy
• Prevent overtiring with adequate levels of rest
• The livelihood is assured and the work is rewarded
• Be real – organization’s goals and tasks should be realistic and achievable

The life of a sailor is very demanding and can be extraordinarily stressful – but we can be better prepared for the inevitable challenges of life at sea by learning how to navigate stress itself, as it can help us perform at our best. The way to safeguard against stress-related symptoms and dangers is build strategies to become more resilient – by increasing the ability to prepare for, recover from and adjust to life in the face of stress, adversity, trauma or tragedy. To build resilience requires personal resources but it’s not only an individual work; it involves families, colleagues, community, and professional counselor when necessary, because the stress management is based on the support of healthy relationships to share in a positive way the amount of stress that life at sea requires.