WEBVTT
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This past week, I took my normal trip to Cleveland.
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I go to Cleveland two or three times a month, and I usually leave from Wilmington.
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I either go through Chicago, Atlanta, LaGuardia.
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Not a direct flight, right?
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So this past week, though, I ended up going through O'Hare in Chicago.
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When I left Chicago to go to Cleveland, we we crossed Lake Michigan.
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As I looked out the window, I gotta be honest with you, it was beautiful.
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It was calm, it was blue, it was peaceful.
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I could see it just miles and miles of blue water.
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It was peaceful enough that from 30,000 feet, you forget what a body of water like Lake Michigan is absolutely capable of.
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And I was sitting there thinking, as a captain, I've learned some things about the water, right?
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You never judge what it is capable of based only on what it looks like right now.
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I've been offshore numerous days when the ocean was slick as glass when I left.
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And throughout the excursion, I've watched the conditions change, the winds come up, the seas and the waves build.
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Something that was completely manageable a few hours earlier suddenly demands every bit of your attention.
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Water has a way of reminding you that just because you've crossed it before doesn't mean you can stop respecting it.
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As I was looking across Lake Michigan, it reminded me of a story from a long time ago.
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A story about a captain, an old wooden schooner, thousands of Christmas trees, and a trip to Chicago that didn't end the way it was intended.
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That was back in 1912 when the ship was called Ralph Simmons.
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It was a three-masted wooden schooner that was built in Milwaukee in 1968.
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By 1912, she had spent 44 years working the Great Lakes.
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Think about that, 44 years.
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Not a new boat.
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She'd hauled lumber, she had seen weather, she had crossed those waters again and again.
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One of the men aboard the boat was Captain Herman Schoonman.
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Around Chicago, people knew him by another name, and that was Captain Santa.
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You see, for years Skoonaman had been bringing evergreen Christmas trees south to Chicago and selling them directly from the ship.
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And apparently Captain Santa did more than just sell the Christmas trees.
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He became known for giving some away to churches and families who could not afford one.
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His arrival became part of Christmas in Chicago.
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I mean, think about it.
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Just imagine this, right?
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An old schooner coming across the lake, coming into the city.
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Imagine that the masts were decorated, Christmas trees were stacked aboard, people were waiting, families were waiting.
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And for a lot of people, when Captain Santa arrived, Christmas had arrived.
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But there was a problem with the business that he was in.
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If you're delivering Christmas trees, you've got to set sail close to Christmas.
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And on Lake Michigan, that means November, right?
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Every experienced captain on those waters knew what November could bring.
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Cold.
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Gale force winds.
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High waves, conditions that could deteriorate very quickly.
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Schoonerman knew that, right?
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He was not experienced.
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I mean, he's made these trips for years.
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And maybe that is part of what makes his story so interesting.
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You see, late in the afternoon on November 22nd, 1912, the Ralph Simmons left Thompson, Michigan, loaded with evergreens and headed to Chicago.
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The barometer was falling, the winds were increasing.
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The old schooner headed out.
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There were crewmen aboard along with passengers believed to be some lumberjacks that were trying to get back to Chicago for the holidays.
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The exact number is really not as uncertain, but most historians estimate there were 16, 17 crew members in pastures.
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None of them ever made it to Chicago.
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The next afternoon, the Ralph Simmons was caught in a northwest gale.
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And about 3 o'clock, a lookout at the Kowani lifesaving station spotted a schooner several miles offshore.
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It was headed south.
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And she was flying a distress signal.
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I want you to think about that.
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At some point during the crossing, this experienced crew and this old ship had got into some trouble badly enough that they were asking for help.
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The Kowani crew could not catch her.
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So they sent word south to the life-saving station, I think it was two rivers, at two rivers.
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Those men launched into the same exact conditions that the Ralph Simmons is in, tried to intercept her.
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But when they reached the area where the ship or the schooner was supposed to be, she was gone.
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No final message home, no survivors that could ever explain what happened.
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Captain Santa, the crew, the passengers, thousands of Christmas trees.
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Gone.
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For years afterwards, Lake Michigan gave pieces of that story back, right?
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Christmas trees would wash ashore.
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But the ship itself was still missing.
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And for nearly 60 years, nobody knew exactly where the Christmas tree ship rested.
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But in 1971, a diver by the name of Kent Bell Richard found a wreck northeast of Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
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It was about 12 miles off of shore and roughly 160, 65 feet beneath the surface.
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It was sitting there on the bottom of Lake Michigan, and it was the Rouse Simmons.
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Amazingly, most of the hull was still intact.
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Her cargo was still there.
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There were remnants of the Christmas trees that she had been carrying to Chicago inside the wreck.
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Sixty years earlier, families had been waiting for those trees that never came.
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Archaeologists later studied the wreck and found clues about her final moments, right?
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The ship rests facing Wisconsin's shoreline rather than continuing south towards Chicago.
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That tells you it was trying to alter the course.
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It was trying to get to Wisconsin.
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Her crew had been working with the anchor gear.
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The port anchor was found away from the bow.
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So the evidence suggests that something had gone seriously wrong, and the crew, they may have actually been trying to hold the ship into the wind.
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But she eventually went down bow first.
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She struck the lake bottom so hard that it actually dug deeply into the sand.
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Rigging was thrown forward, masts were dislodged and broken.
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We're never going to know every detail of what happened aboard the Ralph Simmons during those final minute minutes.
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And I think that matters.
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He should have waited.
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Maybe.
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But I'm always cautious about judging a decision from the comfort of knowing how the story ended.
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You see, Schoonerman, he knew Lake Michigan.
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He knew the business.
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He's made that journey before numerous times.
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There were customers waiting in Chicago.
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There were people depending upon him.
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There was a season that did not give him an unlimited time.
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You see where this is going?
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Because in his mind there were probably a dozen reasonable reasons to leave.
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That's the part of the story I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
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You see, most bad decisions in our lives do not announce themselves as bad decisions.
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They usually come wrapped in reasonable explanations.
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Hey, I've done this before.
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It would be fine.
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We don't have much choice.
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People are counting me, I've handled worse.
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We're committed.
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We have too much invested to turn around now.
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Does that sound familiar?
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Because we do this in business with our money, with our relationships, our health, our calendars.
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We keep going because we've gone this way before.
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And sometimes experience, which should make us wiser, can quietly make us comfortable.
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And my friends, that's dangerous.
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Experience is valuable, but experience does not give us the authority over conditions.
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I've run boats long enough to know that, right?
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The ocean does not care how many hours I have in the helm.
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It doesn't.
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A storm doesn't look at a captain's resume.
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Conditions are conditions.
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It's a good captain's responsibility to continually reassess them.
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What's the wind doing now?
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What are the seas doing now?
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What's the boat telling me?
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What has changed since I made the original plan?
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That is not fear.
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That is awareness.
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There is a huge difference between the two.
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Fear is going to tell you, do not leave the dock because something might happen.
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Where awareness is understand what is happening before you decide whether you're going to leave the dock.
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They are not the same thing.
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And that's where the story intersects with something I talk about constantly, right?
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I tell you to follow the plan.
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I believe that.
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Discipline matters.
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I believe that.
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Consistency, execution, they matter.
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You can't abandon a plan every time the wind changes direction, but following the plan does not mean blindly ignoring new information.
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A good plan requires awareness.
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It requires us to look up from what we're doing long enough to ask whether the conditions have changed.
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Maybe the destination is still right.
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Maybe the goal hasn't changed at all.
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But the course might need to.
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Maybe you slow down, maybe take another route, maybe you wait.
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And yes, sometimes you return to the dock.
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Changing the course is not always quitting.
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Sometimes it's seamanship, right?
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Sometimes it's leadership, it's wisdom.
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This week I was sitting safely inside an airplane looking down at a beautifully calm Lake Michigan.
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There was no November gale, no distressed schooner, no Christmas trees floating in the water.
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Just miles and miles of blue.
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And somewhere beneath that water rests an old wooden ship that left port more than a century ago.
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A captain had a destination and he had experience.
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He had people depending on him.
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He's made this trip before, but that day the conditions were different.
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There's probably something in your life right now that you've crossed a hundred times before.
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A relationship, maybe a business or financial decision, a leadership problem.
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Maybe even something as simple as the way you're spending your time.
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Do not assume today's crossing is safe simply because yesterday's was.
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Look at the conditions.
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Pay attention to what changed.
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Respect what is in front of you.
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Follow the plan.
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But never become so committed to the plan that you stop being aware of the water around you, being aware of your surroundings.
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Being committed to the destination does not require you to ignore the weather.
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Sometimes the strongest decision that captain makes is not pushing forward.
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Sometimes it's changing course.
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I I hope that this made sense, and I hope you don't mind me doing something a little different and taking an old story that I remembered while I was sitting on an airplane to bring home to you, hopefully, a point that makes sense, right?
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There's a difference between fear and awareness.
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Follow your plan, but guys, be aware.
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Be aware.
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I want you to get to your destination.
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You may have to order the course, but I want you to get there.
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I tell you every week I believe there's greatness inside of you because I do believe that.
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I believe that.
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I hope this helped.
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If you know somebody that could use this, send it to them.
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Share it with them.
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I appreciate the comments.
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I appreciate the subscriptions that many of us subscribers.
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I appreciate all of that.
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And at the end of the day, my number one goal was that you get it.
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That you get it.
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I hope your week is great.
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Stay the course, be aware.
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And I look forward to seeing you next week.
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Thanks, guys.
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This past week, I took my normal trip to Cleveland.
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I go to Cleveland two or three times a month, and I usually leave from Wilmington.
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I either go through Chicago, Atlanta, LaGuardia.
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Not a direct flight, right?
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So this past week, though, I ended up going through O'Hare in Chicago.
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When I left Chicago to go to Cleveland, we we crossed Lake Michigan.
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As I looked out the window, I gotta be honest with you, it was beautiful.
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It was calm, it was blue, it was peaceful.
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I could see it just miles and miles of blue water.
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It was peaceful enough that from 30,000 feet, you forget what a body of water like Lake Michigan is absolutely capable of.
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And I was sitting there thinking, as a captain, I've learned some things about the water, right?
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You never judge what it is capable of based only on what it looks like right now.
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I've been offshore numerous days when the ocean was slick as glass when I left.
00:01:05.280 --> 00:01:13.359
And throughout the excursion, I've watched the conditions change, the winds come up, the seas and the waves build.
00:01:13.599 --> 00:01:20.640
Something that was completely manageable a few hours earlier suddenly demands every bit of your attention.
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Water has a way of reminding you that just because you've crossed it before doesn't mean you can stop respecting it.
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As I was looking across Lake Michigan, it reminded me of a story from a long time ago.
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A story about a captain, an old wooden schooner, thousands of Christmas trees, and a trip to Chicago that didn't end the way it was intended.
00:01:43.439 --> 00:01:47.840
That was back in 1912 when the ship was called Ralph Simmons.
00:01:48.159 --> 00:01:53.680
It was a three-masted wooden schooner that was built in Milwaukee in 1968.
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By 1912, she had spent 44 years working the Great Lakes.
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Think about that, 44 years.
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Not a new boat.
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She'd hauled lumber, she had seen weather, she had crossed those waters again and again.
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One of the men aboard the boat was Captain Herman Schoonman.
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Around Chicago, people knew him by another name, and that was Captain Santa.
00:02:19.599 --> 00:02:27.680
You see, for years Skoonaman had been bringing evergreen Christmas trees south to Chicago and selling them directly from the ship.
00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:31.360
And apparently Captain Santa did more than just sell the Christmas trees.
00:02:31.439 --> 00:02:36.960
He became known for giving some away to churches and families who could not afford one.
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His arrival became part of Christmas in Chicago.
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I mean, think about it.
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Just imagine this, right?
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An old schooner coming across the lake, coming into the city.
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Imagine that the masts were decorated, Christmas trees were stacked aboard, people were waiting, families were waiting.
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And for a lot of people, when Captain Santa arrived, Christmas had arrived.
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But there was a problem with the business that he was in.
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If you're delivering Christmas trees, you've got to set sail close to Christmas.
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And on Lake Michigan, that means November, right?
00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:19.439
Every experienced captain on those waters knew what November could bring.
00:03:20.080 --> 00:03:20.719
Cold.
00:03:21.919 --> 00:03:24.240
Gale force winds.
00:03:25.280 --> 00:03:29.680
High waves, conditions that could deteriorate very quickly.
00:03:30.000 --> 00:03:31.759
Schoonerman knew that, right?
00:03:31.919 --> 00:03:33.039
He was not experienced.
00:03:33.280 --> 00:03:35.520
I mean, he's made these trips for years.
00:03:36.080 --> 00:03:39.599
And maybe that is part of what makes his story so interesting.
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You see, late in the afternoon on November 22nd, 1912, the Ralph Simmons left Thompson, Michigan, loaded with evergreens and headed to Chicago.
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The barometer was falling, the winds were increasing.
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The old schooner headed out.
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There were crewmen aboard along with passengers believed to be some lumberjacks that were trying to get back to Chicago for the holidays.
00:04:06.159 --> 00:04:14.240
The exact number is really not as uncertain, but most historians estimate there were 16, 17 crew members in pastures.
00:04:15.199 --> 00:04:18.240
None of them ever made it to Chicago.
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The next afternoon, the Ralph Simmons was caught in a northwest gale.
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And about 3 o'clock, a lookout at the Kowani lifesaving station spotted a schooner several miles offshore.
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It was headed south.
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And she was flying a distress signal.
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I want you to think about that.
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At some point during the crossing, this experienced crew and this old ship had got into some trouble badly enough that they were asking for help.
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The Kowani crew could not catch her.
00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:56.560
So they sent word south to the life-saving station, I think it was two rivers, at two rivers.
00:04:57.199 --> 00:05:04.560
Those men launched into the same exact conditions that the Ralph Simmons is in, tried to intercept her.
00:05:04.639 --> 00:05:09.680
But when they reached the area where the ship or the schooner was supposed to be, she was gone.
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No final message home, no survivors that could ever explain what happened.
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Captain Santa, the crew, the passengers, thousands of Christmas trees.
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Gone.
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For years afterwards, Lake Michigan gave pieces of that story back, right?
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Christmas trees would wash ashore.
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But the ship itself was still missing.
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And for nearly 60 years, nobody knew exactly where the Christmas tree ship rested.
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But in 1971, a diver by the name of Kent Bell Richard found a wreck northeast of Two Rivers, Wisconsin.
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It was about 12 miles off of shore and roughly 160, 65 feet beneath the surface.
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It was sitting there on the bottom of Lake Michigan, and it was the Rouse Simmons.
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Amazingly, most of the hull was still intact.
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Her cargo was still there.
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There were remnants of the Christmas trees that she had been carrying to Chicago inside the wreck.
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Sixty years earlier, families had been waiting for those trees that never came.
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Archaeologists later studied the wreck and found clues about her final moments, right?
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The ship rests facing Wisconsin's shoreline rather than continuing south towards Chicago.
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That tells you it was trying to alter the course.
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It was trying to get to Wisconsin.
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Her crew had been working with the anchor gear.
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The port anchor was found away from the bow.
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So the evidence suggests that something had gone seriously wrong, and the crew, they may have actually been trying to hold the ship into the wind.
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But she eventually went down bow first.
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She struck the lake bottom so hard that it actually dug deeply into the sand.
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Rigging was thrown forward, masts were dislodged and broken.
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We're never going to know every detail of what happened aboard the Ralph Simmons during those final minute minutes.
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And I think that matters.
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He should have waited.
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Maybe.
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But I'm always cautious about judging a decision from the comfort of knowing how the story ended.
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You see, Schoonerman, he knew Lake Michigan.
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He knew the business.
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He's made that journey before numerous times.
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There were customers waiting in Chicago.
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There were people depending upon him.
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There was a season that did not give him an unlimited time.
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You see where this is going?
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Because in his mind there were probably a dozen reasonable reasons to leave.
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That's the part of the story I haven't been able to stop thinking about.
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You see, most bad decisions in our lives do not announce themselves as bad decisions.
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They usually come wrapped in reasonable explanations.
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Hey, I've done this before.
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It would be fine.
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We don't have much choice.
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People are counting me, I've handled worse.
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We're committed.
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We have too much invested to turn around now.
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Does that sound familiar?
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Because we do this in business with our money, with our relationships, our health, our calendars.
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We keep going because we've gone this way before.
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And sometimes experience, which should make us wiser, can quietly make us comfortable.
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And my friends, that's dangerous.
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Experience is valuable, but experience does not give us the authority over conditions.
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I've run boats long enough to know that, right?
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The ocean does not care how many hours I have in the helm.
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It doesn't.
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A storm doesn't look at a captain's resume.
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Conditions are conditions.
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It's a good captain's responsibility to continually reassess them.
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What's the wind doing now?
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What are the seas doing now?
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What's the boat telling me?
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What has changed since I made the original plan?
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That is not fear.
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That is awareness.
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There is a huge difference between the two.
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Fear is going to tell you, do not leave the dock because something might happen.
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Where awareness is understand what is happening before you decide whether you're going to leave the dock.
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They are not the same thing.
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And that's where the story intersects with something I talk about constantly, right?
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I tell you to follow the plan.
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I believe that.
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Discipline matters.
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I believe that.
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Consistency, execution, they matter.
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You can't abandon a plan every time the wind changes direction, but following the plan does not mean blindly ignoring new information.
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A good plan requires awareness.
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It requires us to look up from what we're doing long enough to ask whether the conditions have changed.
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Maybe the destination is still right.
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Maybe the goal hasn't changed at all.
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But the course might need to.
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Maybe you slow down, maybe take another route, maybe you wait.
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And yes, sometimes you return to the dock.
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Changing the course is not always quitting.
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Sometimes it's seamanship, right?
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Sometimes it's leadership, it's wisdom.
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This week I was sitting safely inside an airplane looking down at a beautifully calm Lake Michigan.
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There was no November gale, no distressed schooner, no Christmas trees floating in the water.
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Just miles and miles of blue.
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And somewhere beneath that water rests an old wooden ship that left port more than a century ago.
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A captain had a destination and he had experience.
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He had people depending on him.
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He's made this trip before, but that day the conditions were different.
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There's probably something in your life right now that you've crossed a hundred times before.
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A relationship, maybe a business or financial decision, a leadership problem.
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Maybe even something as simple as the way you're spending your time.
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Do not assume today's crossing is safe simply because yesterday's was.
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Look at the conditions.
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Pay attention to what changed.
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Respect what is in front of you.
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Follow the plan.
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But never become so committed to the plan that you stop being aware of the water around you, being aware of your surroundings.
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Being committed to the destination does not require you to ignore the weather.
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Sometimes the strongest decision that captain makes is not pushing forward.
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Sometimes it's changing course.
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I I hope that this made sense, and I hope you don't mind me doing something a little different and taking an old story that I remembered while I was sitting on an airplane to bring home to you, hopefully, a point that makes sense, right?
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There's a difference between fear and awareness.
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Follow your plan, but guys, be aware.
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Be aware.
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I want you to get to your destination.
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You may have to order the course, but I want you to get there.
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I tell you every week I believe there's greatness inside of you because I do believe that.
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I believe that.
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I hope this helped.
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If you know somebody that could use this, send it to them.
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Share it with them.
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I appreciate the comments.
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I appreciate the subscriptions that many of us subscribers.
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I appreciate all of that.
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And at the end of the day, my number one goal was that you get it.
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That you get it.
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I hope your week is great.
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Stay the course, be aware.
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And I look forward to seeing you next week.
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Thanks, guys.
