Weekday Mornings Leave the Most Options Open for Rescue, Recovery, and the Next Attempt
I’m Rikutsu Konetaro, and whenever I try something new while sailing, I almost always choose a weekday morning. I make that decision after checking the weather, sea conditions, tides, and marina operating hours.
The reason is simple. If something goes wrong and I cannot resolve it on my own, I want to preserve as much time and as many options as possible for dealing with what happens next.
If a problem arises, I may need help from friends, marina staff, maintenance specialists, or even the Japan Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard provides emergency response around the clock, but marinas and repair services have operating hours, and friends have their own schedules.
Even after help arrives, there may still be work to do: recovering the boat, securing a berth, arranging repairs, or finding a way home. If someone is injured, medical attention may be necessary, followed by examinations, treatment, and possibly hospitalization.
A single incident can therefore set off a chain of events, each requiring additional time and resources.
A problem that occurs at 10 a.m. and the same problem occurring at 4 p.m. may leave me with very different options for resolving it that day.
This leads to a principle I follow whenever I attempt something unfamiliar:
The time required for a new challenge must include not only the attempt itself, but also enough time to deal with unexpected consequences.
Leave Time for What Comes Next, Whether at Sea or on Land
I apply this principle well beyond sailing.
For example, having spent many years working as a clinical physician, I follow the same rule when I become a patient myself.
If I develop a new symptom that does not appear medically urgent, I schedule my medical appointment for a weekday morning and leave the afternoon free.
Years of treating patients have taught me that a medical consultation can lead to unexpected developments requiring considerable time.
Additional tests may be necessary. A procedure requiring rest, hospitalization, or referral to a hospital with more advanced facilities may be needed.
When that happens, the amount of time remaining during regular clinical hours becomes important.
Specialist consultations, diagnostic testing, admission arrangements, and coordination with other medical institutions all take time. Starting early increases the possibility of completing the necessary steps that day.
It may also reduce the need to ask medical staff to handle avoidable arrangements outside their normal working hours.
I apply the same reasoning when practicing a new driving technique in a rental kart or testing a new SUP-FOIL setup.
Whenever I attempt something unfamiliar, particularly a technique or adjustment that has yet to become second nature, I prefer to begin while plenty of time remains.
The starting time of a new undertaking should be chosen with its possible aftermath in mind.
That is my basic approach to managing time and risk.
Why I Leave a Larger Safety Margin When Driving Mountain Roads on Weekends
There is one practical exception to my preference for weekday mornings.
When practicing driving on winding mountain roads, I sometimes choose weekends or public holidays because there is less commuter traffic.
But that choice introduces another consideration.
Based on my personal experience as a former clinical physician, there were situations in which the medical staff, diagnostic services, and specialist care available at night, on weekends, or on public holidays felt like less than one-tenth of what was available during regular weekday hours.
Emergency medical services continue to operate, but the depth of personnel and resources available can differ substantially from that during normal clinical hours.
For that reason, I deliberately increase my safety margin when driving mountain roads on weekends or holidays.
I pay particular attention to my approach speed at blind corners, cold road surfaces, and the distance between my car and other vehicles. My aim is to keep the probability of an accident as low as possible.
The most convenient time to undertake an activity is not necessarily the time when the widest range of options will be available if something goes wrong.
I take both considerations into account when deciding how to proceed.
The Self-Taught Learner’s Problem: Not Knowing What You Don’t Know
Why am I so concerned about preserving the ability to respond to unexpected situations?
The answer has much to do with the fact that I have taught myself to sail.
I also operate motorboats. Powerboat handling is a complex discipline in its own right, but electronically controlled engines and modern onboard equipment can sometimes make it possible to operate a boat reasonably well by feel, even with an incomplete understanding of its underlying systems.
Sailing presents a different set of demands.
The wind, sails, rigging, and the structure and function of each component all influence how the boat behaves. Wear, deterioration, and changes over time can also affect its operation.
I have never attended a sailing school or studied under a sailing instructor. I have built my experience independently.
Consequently, there may be things that an experienced sailor regards as elementary knowledge but that I have never learned.
I may encounter situations in which another sailor would be astonished and ask, “Wait, you didn’t know that?”
This raises a fundamental problem for anyone who learns independently.
There is a profound difference between knowing that you don’t know something and not even knowing that there is something you don’t know.
In the first case, you can investigate the subject, ask someone, or conduct an experiment.
The second case is more troublesome.
If you have never imagined that a particular problem exists, it will never occur to you to investigate it.
A self-taught learner’s knowledge contains blind spots whose very existence may be invisible to the learner.
Without an instructor or mentor to point out those gaps, I must find ways to uncover them through my own experience.
That is why I carefully put my experiences into words, record what happened, and revisit those records to examine my understanding.
The act of describing an experience precisely often reveals uncertainties that were hidden beneath a vague feeling of having understood it.
And sometimes, direct experience suddenly exposes a blind spot that I had never even suspected existed.
When Something I Had Never Even Considered Actually Happened
One morning, while sailing, I unfurled the jib and noticed that its lower section looked unusually baggy.
I wondered whether the tension in the line supporting the sail had gradually decreased, allowing the sail to settle slightly downward under gravity.
While sailing, I lacked the time and mental bandwidth to investigate the exact cause.
Instead, I adjusted the jib halyard, the line used to raise the jib.
The bagginess disappeared.
I had observed a phenomenon, formed a hypothesis, and applied a technique I already knew. The condition improved, although the underlying reason for the change in tension remained something to investigate after returning to port.
Until that morning, I had never even considered the possibility of encountering this particular problem.
Yet, when I thought about how the jib worked, it was entirely plausible that a change in tension could alter the sail’s shape.
Fortunately, I was able to deal with the situation using a technique I had already learned, and the irregularity never developed into a more serious problem.
But the most important lesson was more fundamental than anything about jib adjustment.
Something I had never even thought about could actually happen.
I realized that I did not even have a complete picture of what I didn’t know about the jib.
And just as I had encountered this unfamiliar phenomenon, I might encounter many others that lay entirely outside the range of things I had imagined.
This, I believe, is an essential part of learning independently: accepting the existence of such unknowns while gradually expanding the boundaries of one’s knowledge.
Why Weekday Morning Challenges Make Both Recovery and Learning Possible
When a problem lies entirely outside our imagination, preparing a specific response in advance becomes difficult.
That is precisely why I place so much importance on preserving the options available after a problem occurs, in addition to anticipating what might happen beforehand.
Starting a new challenge on a weekday morning is one way of doing that.
If something unexpected happens, I can use the remaining time and available support to bring the situation under control.
And when the day’s sailing ends safely, I take a shower, eat, recover my energy, and sit down for a quiet, one-person debrief.
I review what happened.
What did I observe? What did I infer? What action did I take? What was the result?
I examine the experience, put my observations and reasoning into words, and record the questions that emerge.
Those questions become hypotheses to test during the next attempt.
On the next occasion, I put those hypotheses to the test.
And perhaps I encounter yet another unexpected phenomenon.
I bring that experience home, think it through, and develop another hypothesis.
In this way, I gradually turn my own experiences into knowledge.
For me, self-directed learning means taking responsibility for keeping this cycle of experience, reflection, hypothesis, and experimentation in motion.
The simple habit of beginning new challenges on weekday mornings helps me preserve two valuable resources: the time needed to bring unexpected situations under control, and the time needed to turn those experiences into what I will learn next.
Want to know more about the author and the thinking behind this site?
→ About Rikutsu-Kone-Taro
