This is a transcript of Mad Mariner's MadCast, the podcast that covers all aspects of boats and boating. In this edition, our guest is John Otterbacher, who had eight surgeries before deciding to box up his life and go sailing with his wife and daughters. His book, "Sailing Grace," is about their six-year adventure. Now back home, he shares his insights on relationships, raising children and living aboard with Mad Mariner Editor Glen Justice.

Let's start at the start. Give our listeners a brief description of your experiences, starting with the first time you had heart trouble.

John Otterbacher: Well I probably shouldn't have been surprised by that first heart attack although it did occur at a health club up in Michigan. And the irony of that wasn't lost even as I thought I was dying. It was like, "I'm going to die in a health club of a heart attack." But, you know, I had been a bad boy most of my life and I just proved to be an incredibly bad patient for the next eight months.

I had a series of increasingly serious heart episodes and eight visits to surgery. In those eights months, they told me that they couldn't fix my heart and, after a lot discussion, that a transplant was a real long shot for a wide variety of reasons that I won't go into. So, you know, I went home in August essentially to try to survive long enough for them to come up with some miracle cure, but there was nothing on the horizon and I held on grimly. I had Barbara and I have three kids and at the time our son was in the middle of his emancipation struggle. And that wasn't pretty.

We also had an 8-year-old and a 4-year-old, daughters both of them. So for a couple months I simply held on, gritted my teeth, pain in my chest 24 hours a day, a long walk being one from the bed to the bathroom. Then one evening Barbara and I had dinner when the kids were gone. And I just told her I wasn't any good at this survival stuff. I hadn't lived my life that way and I just couldn't envision this working out. And so she said you know, "What do you have in mind?" And I said, "Well we had planned to take our boat, Grace, and go sailing next summer."

And she kind of got that look on her face. Here I am standing on a banana peel, you know, and one foot out the door I suppose. And I said, "And if I'm going to die I'll probably die by June. I mean if I'm going to die I will die by June. I'm not going to make it to June, this is October." So she had that quizzical look on her face and I said, "How's about we make a deal and the deal is this. If I live until June we go sailing."

That's one hell of a deal.

Otterbacher: Yeah well Barbara is not only very, very smart and clearly the lucid member of our relationship, but she's also very wise and she knows who she's dealing with and she could see the truth in what I was saying. So she said, "Okay, it's a deal. If you live to June and still feel up to it and want to go, we'll go." And so...

You guys had some sailing experience at this time?

Otterbacher: Yeah we did. We had gone out for a year – about a year and a half six years prior to that. And we'd gone out at that time with three years of sailing experience in the Great Lakes, three summers. And we had done an Atlantic circle spending our summer and fall in the Mediterranean and our winter and spring down in the Caribbean. So we had done some passages and I had done a solo passage of the Atlantic from Casablanca to Barbados. So it's not that we didn't have any sailing experience. It's just that my heart was seriously damaged enough that it seemed, well to most people, including our parents and especially our parents I suppose, a little counter intuitive that we would be talking about going sailing, you know, with a damaged heart.

That was one of the big questions we wanted to ask you. There are just so many risks involved in doing what you did. And yet you did take some steps to mitigate those risks and everybody knew the risks involved. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about how you guys dealt with the very real risk that your heart could at some point be a problem while you guys were on the water.

Otterbacher: Well I mean again the whole project seems counter intuitive and I would be the last person to suggest that somebody with a bad heart, what they should do is go to sea.

And I would also say I don't feel at all defensive when people say things, subtle things like "are you crazy?" I mean I'm not offended by that or put off by that at all. On the other hand, you know, I had prior to these heart attacks been doing some pretty strenuous long distance running for 15 years. I was very athletic and in very good shape in spite of the episodes that I had and the surgeries. The other thing was that I just knew enough about Barbara and I and our long-standing relationship to know that moving away from the kind of pressure packed existence that we have on land and moving out to sea where most of our challenges would be physical in nature and not emotional or psychological or stress based would be good.

We just figured that I should rebuild my strength in the course of that year and I worked out daily from October to June. I acquired a kind of operational wisdom about when my heart started to get in trouble, so that I knew when to back off. Given that she had considerable sailing skills also, as did our young children, we just figured that sailing through the Great Lakes, Erie Canal, down the Hudson, down the East Coast to the Caribbean and spending the first winter down there would give us time to both sharpen up our skill sets and partner on the sailing. And also time to better understand whether my heart was settled enough and strong enough to make the Atlantic crossing, which is what we ultimately did. After spending a winter in the Caribbean we decided to sail across – back across to Ireland. In spite of my name I'm three quarters Irish. And the idea of being the first member of our family, 150 years later, to go back to Ireland was a very big deal and a very big incentive.

You mentioned sharing duties on board and your book talks about skill sharing between you and Barbara. Obviously this is a topic that many boaters address, getting two parts of a couple to run the boat in equal measure. But you guys seemed to get there. Can you address that?

Otterbacher: Well I'd like to think that we got there. But the truth is you never get there. And our goal was never to have everything divided 50/50. We bring different competencies to our relationship and to our life together and to our sailing also. I am a very strong heavy weather sailor and I am at least as fascinated by stormy weather as I am put off by it. And that makes me the ideal helmsperson during very, very heavy weather. Barbara, who's quite capable of taking the helm in any conditions, is much better at holding the rest of the crew together and doing what I think is a considerably more difficult job, which is being with the kids and marshalling them through the heavy circumstances.

When we weren't in heavy weather we would pretty evenly divide the time. We ended up being out there for six years and after the first year the kids were very, very able sailors and were, working as a tandem, quite able – particularly on long transatlantic passages – to handle the night shift. They took a great bit of pride and pleasure in their ability to come up at 11 at night and, if conditions were mild, to assume the helm from 11 until 7 in the morning. And we came very quickly to trust their judgment and their ability to do that.

You've had your kids on the boat at all stages of life and at all different ages, from infants all the way up to teenagers. Maybe you could speak to how you can do that successfully? How do you put aside some of the fears many have about going significant distances with children on board? What's the successful recipe?

Otterbacher: First of all is, we talk "” we tell them that courage doesn't mean anything unless you have fear. Too often people will say to me, "Well I would be afraid." Of course we had our fears. Barbara had her fears and I had my fears and the kids at different junctures had their fears. Courage again isn't the absence of fear. Courage is simply not letting the fear make all of your life decisions. And that's true on land or on sea.

So we didn't go out there fearless. In fact, I don't think I've ever gone out of the harbor on any significant passage without my anxiety very available to me – more available than I would want it. Nor is that the case with Barbara or the kids. So we own the fear. Acknowledge the fear. Acknowledge what's realistic about it. But in the larger scheme of things, I guess my bigger fears have to do with living a life that is dictated by fear. If I were to prioritize the things that scare me one of them would be trying to live with absolute and ultimate safety in all situations, which means I wouldn't be very good at a relationships, obviously, because intimacy is pretty scaring business, you know. Relationships are very hard work and sometimes scary business. Family is terrifying, if you've got your eyes open.

So my biggest fears really have to do with the extent to which I could let my absolutely understandable fearfulness get in the way of extending myself to live some of the dreams that I have, to reach my full potential. There is a natural tendency to kind of contract back from your life and I don't want to do that. I just don't want to get to the end of my life and say, "Gee, I wish I would have done that" or "if only." I don't want to lead an "if only," "maybe," "should have," "could have," "might have" kind of life.

I wanted it to be "you do things, you make mistakes, of course you get scuffed up along the way, you extend yourself, you go for it all," whether it's in relationship or any place else. And of course you're going to get knocked around a little bit and of course you're going to get your heart broken a little bit. But in the end, at least you have the satisfaction of saying, "Damn, it I went for it. I went for it." And to some extent I suppose our family has been overexposed to that kind of mentality, meaning that we probably make more damn fool mistakes than most other people do, but maybe live a few more of our dreams then is common.

What impact have you seen on your kids? Is the impact different at each age?

Otterbacher: Yes it is. On our first trip which was a little over a year long. We took our son John Ryan, who was then 13, and our daughter Kate, who was 8 months old. And John I think benefited mightily from the trip, but it was also difficult because he didn't have a teenage peer and that was challenging for him. I think that on balance he had a very good trip and he carries himself now, 15 years later, with a kind of quiet but very real physical confidence that shows in his personal and his professional life. I like to think that some of that self reliance and physical confidence came directly out of living outside the normal "let's go to the mall, let's play video games" mentality of most adolescents.

Our younger daughters were out there for six years and we'll start with what they weren't exposed to. For six years they didn't live in front of a TV set. They didn't have cell phones, nor did we. They didn't have to deal with cars and school buses and all of that. We lived a very simple, very primitive, very stripped down life. We were living on relatively little money but we lived extremely well.

I also like to think that they got a very close 24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week, 52-weeks-a-year sense of what a good relationship looks like. Barbara and I are blessed in that, years later, we're still crazy about each other. And even though we bring vastly different capabilities and characteristics to the table, we get along really, really well. And so our kids were kind of exposed to watching two adults harmonize their life and work out their differences sometimes in difficult circumstances. They saw, operationally speaking, what true love looks like. I mean not glossy Hollywood type love, but real solid on the ground and unapologetic love.

So I think that they'll be less likely to flee into lives that are defined by the 30-second attention span. And they're more inclined to live deeper lives and ideally end up in relationships with their family and friends that are substantive and fully functional. I mean, that's what I hope for them anyway. All I can say is they come back and they're very good students. They're very independent. They seem pretty confident of themselves. And they're doing better than making their way after six years of living out of the American school system.

Is there a best age to bring children aboard, one age where you think it really catches more than others?

Otterbacher: I think that any time from 2 to 10 would be my suggested time, depending on how long you have. I think it is ideal. I mean when kids are in their adolescence, their job psychologically is to separate from us. It's pretty hard to do that separation when you're in a 40 foot boat. I mean, that's a lot of work for everybody, you know. So I really think that the ideal time is sometime from toddler to 10, when the kids naturally can most benefit from being with their parents and there's the least amount of wear and tear between kids and parents.

Did you do anything special to prepare the kids for going out? Obviously you raised them with the boat, but for distance passage making, was there some preparation specific to the children that you aimed just at them?

Otterbacher: No, no. We did sail with them as much as possible during their early years and that's probably the best gift we could give them. They didn't find going out there strange. It was like more of the same, only larger, longer doses than before. And even in those first Atlantic crossings – we ended up doing four crossings on that six year trip – after they realized that their parents were doing just fine, they would always look in our eyes whether cloudy weather or sunny to check how we were doing and take their readings off their parents. The kids took their readings from us and treated those Atlantic crossings by in large like extended camp outs.

Maybe you could speak to how you went about preparing. What's it like to box up your life and do something else, and how do you accomplish that?

Otterbacher: It was challenging on many fronts. First of all, we knew that we were committing financial suicide. And all I can say is that we were comfortable giving up on the idea of establishing a portfolio. We were in our money years when we left. And we realized that we'd come back and we wouldn't have a financial portfolio. But we were also very clear that if we did this right we would come back with an emotional portfolio that would pay dividends every day.

You had a brilliant line in your book about that. You called it "the wealth of needing less."

Otterbacher: Well, I've always thought that was true. It's a line I think originally from St. Francis of Assisi. I don't think he used that line but that was the idea, that true wealth had as much to do with needing less as it did with having more. And that's always made sense to me. So we lived, as I said, very frugally. Largely our preparation was to pay off our boat, which was a lot of work, and to pay off our inner city house, which was less work because we bought a very inexpensive inner city house.

But we mostly lived on the rent from that house for the entire six years. And lived again very, very frugal lives. But how do you measure wealth? We woke up every day, kind of looked at each other and started laughing. It was like, "how did we get this lucky that we are up in the Baltic Ocean and the islands of Denmark or Copenhagen or we're up the river in Seville, Spain or we're in Barcelona or we're in Rome or we're in London or we're in Paris, for that matter, living on a shoestring but living very, very well."

We have never looked back on that. Never second guessed that judgment and it's a kind of wealth that probably a lot of people can't relate to, but for us it's just fine, thank you very much. We'll settle for what we've got.

When you're going through the tough work of putting careers on hold and boxing up your stuff and putting away a house, is there a mindset that you need to fall into to really get all of that done? It must feel like a war.

Otterbacher: It's like editing a book. It's brutal because what you're doing is you're putting aside 9/10 of everything you think you need and stripping it down to the bare essentials. I happen to have a kind of perverse affection for the process. I've always liked the idea of going the distance on as little as possible. So even though it was very difficult for all of us to pair away and pair down to that favorite pair of jeans or two, you know, those five pair of underwear that you're taking – and I mean literally to do that kind work and box up the rest and send it to Goodwill – it was exhilarating also because while you're paring away your physical possessions. You're ramping up the importance of the things that really matter, the relationship you have with each other, the relationship you have with your dreams, the sense of adventure that ignites and energizes your life. I could feel myself getting energized. I think it was experienced differently by each of us, but we could feel ourselves becoming more energized, even as we set aside the things that would otherwise occupy our time and attention.

Is there anything that you could say to the person out there who is nurturing these kinds of dreams, has all the reservations that you probably had at some point, and has to walk through all of the problems that that you have walked through?

Otterbacher: Well, in the most primitive form, we have two options. One option is the universe gives us the capacity to dream but not to fulfill our dreams. So it's really a sadistic universe that gives us that capacity but then punishes us with all these unfulfilled, unlived dreams. The other possibility is that the universe is evolved and self regulating and that it gives us the capacity to dream, not just to torture us but to lead us in the direction of the next great adventure in our life.

I'm not saying that sailing across oceans has to be it. If somebody really wants to open a kite shop, well maybe they ought to open a kite shop. And I don't think we should do these things without thinking about it and taking into account the downsides and the risk involved. But I just don't think that our dreams are there to torture us. I think they're there to inform and energize our lives. And we ought to at least pay very close attention to them before we discard them.