Yesterday afternoon, while perusing Boston.com, Your Survival Guy clicked on an article about a great white shark sighting at Stony Beach in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, on the Fourth of July.
It piqued my interest because Your Survival Guy and fam just happened to be in Woods Hole earlier on the Fourth, going to and from Edgartown, MA, from Mattapoisett.
Most great white shark sightings you read about are out on the Cape in Chatham on the Atlantic, not in Buzzards Bay.
Anyway, if you don’t live under a rock, you know it’s the 50th anniversary of the movie Jaws. Great white sightings have a special allure this season, especially for clickbait “news.com” websites and the local news.
When I think about Woods Hole, I have anxious memories. Not from shark sightings but from sailing/motoring through the Hole when I was a kid. Sailing to Hadley or Great Harbor, especially Hadley, is the one in my mind when Buffett sings about that “One Particular Harbor.”
Navigating Woods Hole is—or can be—scarier than any great white shark sighting.
You see, the current runs strong through the “Hole” and everyone, especially the sport fishing boats, are in a rush to get to the fish and the fast ferries out of New Bedford, MA skim through it as if no other boats exist. Imagine the city bus plowing through the streets, and you get the picture.
Our power boat, the Tom Sawyer, has twin 300 hp Yamahas, so getting through the current and boat traffic is a piece of cake (sort of). But on our 30-foot Intrepid O’Day sailboat with a 15 hp diesel Yanmar, going against the current was no fun at all. If you want time to stand still, being on our sailboat, the Sunset against the current in Woods Hole was a good way to do it.
How does this relate to investing? I can’t tell you how many investors I’ve spoken with during my lifetime. A lot. Close to 30-years with double digit conversations daily adds up. That’s compounding relationships into the hundreds that I have today.
Building solid relationships on trust takes years.
Like going through Woods Hole on a sailboat I was forced to feel the anxiety of it all because it took time. It’s why when people ask me what kind of boating I do I say I grew up sailing which is why I powerboat today.
Sometimes you need to make money slowly, let it breathe, understand how hard it is to make it and feel the anxieties of life. It’s a master class in understanding risk and realizing, like I have, that your risk tolerance is usually an intolerance.
Action Line: That doesn’t mean my investments always go up. That doesn’t mean I don’t run into rough weather boating. But if I stayed in cash, never left the dock, or never spoke with investors, I would have never experienced what it’s like to be a compounding machine. That’s what I want for you. When you’re ready, email me at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com. And click here to subscribe to my free monthly Survive & Thrive letter.
Read more about our trip here:
- Your Survival Guy’s Boat-Shoes-on-the-Docks View
- Your Survival Guy: “You Wouldn’t Have Liked It”
- Your Survival Guy Finally Got in the Boat
Originally posted on Your Survival Guy.
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