Sabot Secrets

Career

Sabot Secrets
by Burt Dubin



I can’t tell you how I got the sabot. It was there one morning moored to the sewer pipe a foot or so out from the bulkhead at Baton Rouge Avenue. Our small house was only 50 feet from the water. For a year or so that wonderful boat was my big toy. Then it was gone. And, oh, the cosmic lessons I learned while I had it.

It had a centerboard, a rudder, the 15-foot mainsail, no jib, and oarlocks and oars, just in case. And a little toot-toot bicycle horn.

In that vessel I taught myself to sail. I learned to turn into the wind, to tack, to make the most of the prevailing wind and tide. I could sail anywhere I wanted to go. All based on using the tiller and the sail to engage whatever wind and tide there was.

My favorite sport was to sail south about half a mile to the Dorset Avenue bridge linking Ventnor with Ventnor Heights. It was an old drawbridge, complete with bridge keeper and 2 huge arms that came down as the bridge was opened up to allow boats to pass.

My 15 foot mast couldn’t make it under the bridge. I’d toot my little horn as I approached. The great arms went down. The bridge slowly opened. I, a little kid was able to stop the whole world to let me pass. Wow!

Then, once safely beyond the bridge, I’d tack, turn around and stop the world once more as I sailed home to dinner. Such a thrill. Such sense of power.

Lesson 1: Head into where the wake will be when a larger boat than yours goes by.

The twin engine Chris Craft tore along about 15 feet away on my port side. I was wide-eyed, fascinated by its sleek lines and its deep throaty sounds. Well dressed men and women in their nautical blue and whites were lounging on the rear deck, laughing and drinking as the roared past my little sabot.

The moment their huge wake reached my small boat, (skippered by a not-very-aware 9-year old,) I was capsized, my 15-foot mainsail flat on the water, I, instantly dumped into the water of the back bay behind Ventnor, New Jersey.

Lesson 2: Engage prevailing conditions to get yourself from where you are to where you want to be.

This was cosmic. I’ve carried that lesson with me for over half a century. Sailing that little sabot I discovered one of the crucial secrets to the attainment of whatever I want.

The winds and tides of life simply are. They are neither good nor bad. They simply are. And whatever they happen to be at the time, they are a force, a living force. All you have to do, as the navigator of your transit across the ocean of your life is recognize the currents of the wind and water. Then to engage those currents. Armed with this wisdom, nothing can stop you if you simply set your sail to engage the wind and hold the tiller resolutely to engage the tide.


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Burt Dubin, a 20 year veteran of the business of speaking, coaches and mentors speakers and wanna-be’s world-wide. Burt works with people who want to be speakers and with speakers who want to be masters. The words of his clients, the admiration and respec