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"The single most important thing you can do, by far and bar none, to become a safe and happy offshore cruiser is to go to sea as crew with an experienced skipper on a good boat. No amount of inshore sailing or reading replaces this vital step on the road to becoming a competent offshore sailor."

"I'm in the Northwest Passage, I'm cold, I'm wet a lot, I'm hungry, I'm sleep deprived, like properly sleep deprivation at times. I had every right and reason to be miserable, right? Cold, wet, tired, hungry, and miserable. But being miserable was not going to give me sleep. It's not going to give me a warm meal. It wasn't gonna give me a hot shower. It wasn't gonna give me any of those things. So you might as well enjoy the moment, you know?"

"It's called wayfinding, princess. It's not just sails and knots. It's seeing where you're going in your mind. Knowing where you are, by knowing where you've been."

"A lot of risk comes from trying to speed things up. A lack of patience changes the outcome."

"The more technology we add, the more likely we are to get ourselves into a situation where that stuff absolutely must work, and the less likely it is that we will be able to manage safely without it."

"The least advertised tragedy is the fear or dislike of sailing that can be instilled in your prospective sailing partners when your lack of skill leads to a few incidents that could have been avoided if you'd spent a little more time practicing sailing skills."

"Cause without the bitter, baby, the sweet ain't as sweet."

"Part of seamanship is making good decisions, and as we all know, at sea you don't get too many bad decisions."

"That's how you succeed doing crazy stuff, right? You gotta be conservative in your day-to-day, even though the overall plan is not conservative, it's kind of crazy. But stay in the middle, man."

"The word 'experienced' often refers to someone who's gotten away with doing the wrong thing more frequently than you have."

"What did we do all the time on this uneventful passage? Nothing, absolutely nothing, except live in communion with our boat, which was sailing happily towards the Marquesas, the Tuamotus, Tahiti, with plenty of wind, wind, wind. One must have sailed far away from any land to know how full and rewarding a day at sea can be without anything happening. It is so different from coastal sailing where one is always a little apprehensive, tense, prepared for anything. Out there, in the open sea, we were prepared simply to live."

"Success is a dangerous element in any endeavor. Embrace the struggle. Beware the achievement. For it steals your caution even as it leads you down the next unknown pathway."

"You've got it in you, alright, everyone's got it in them, it isn't a special dispensation from a selective Providence. It is just a question of whether you have the guts to apply it. It struck me that I must be pretty dumb, for most people come by it naturally, but I had to sail across thousands of miles of ocean to find out that courage is the key to living."

"We all have to humble ourselves and realize that we've all made bad decisions. Now, most of us get away with them."

"Decision is the hardest part — execution is easy." Robin's consistent philosophy across every venture, from the Golden Globe to the Clipper Race, is that once the decision is made, the obstacles largely dissolve. He doesn't agonize; he acts. "The thinking about it is the hard part. It's much easier to make the decision and get on with it."

"People really don't truly understand what real life is until you experience being that far offshore away from land. And it is unbelievably the best feeling on the planet. And I would do anything to be back every day."

"Sailing, to me is the perfect outlet of all of my crazy, wrapped into one."

"I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts."

"Sharing the wisdom of the high seas, with those wise enough to seek it out."

"The tough part is making departures, shedding the shackles of society's expectations, kicking the addiction of electronic connections, subverting the guilt of our own obligations, and pushing off the dock physically and metaphorically."