About the Author
RONALD EPNER, MD
The author was taught to sail by his father starting at age four. He graduated from Renssalear Polytechnic Institute as a chemical engineer and went to work for Esso Research and Engineering Company, participating in the design of petroleum refineries. After a few years, he and his new wife moved to Mexico to study medicine, albeit in Spanish. He graduated from Cornell University Medical College in 1976 and eventually specialized in orthopedic, hand, and microvascular surgery. He became interested in personal growth in the late 1980s. After experiencing a vision quest, at fifty years old, he retired from his orthopedic practice to sail around the world and provide emergency medical care to fellow sailors. His first patient at sea was himself, as he sustained a heart attack far from shore. He kept himself alive for three days until he was medevacked to safety. He has always been an avid tennis player and, in retirement, devotes his time to playing tennis, studying Covid-19 vaccines and their effects, building things, woodworking, cycling, and dabbling in cryptocurrency.
Why and How The Book Was Written...
In my early 40s, I thought I had accomplished almost all of my life’s goals. I was an orthopedic surgeon. I had built a wonderful practice of five orthopedists. I had a big home, a big bank account, expensive cars, a great sailboat, a wonderful wife, and a family. Something was wrong, though, and I didn't know what it was. I seemed never to be living in the moment. I seemed to be of life but not in it. My wife suggested we enroll in a program called “Life Mastery.” It was intended to teach personal enlightenment, and although I didn’t think I needed to be there…..it took me a year and several seminars before I did! After a few years, we both decided to do a vision quest with the group. We all were separated in our own tents avoiding even eye contact with anyone else. We were not allowed any distractions. We fasted for three days and thus avoided eating and preparing food as a distraction. We were provided all the water we needed and just remained alone without thoughts, no music, no books except a pen and our journals. We didn't know what to expect and waited for whatever might come.
​
For me, the first two days were torture. My mind kept going continuously and I wasn’t learning anything new. However, on the third day, everything changed. My mind went QUIET for the very first time! It was a unique experience and opportunity because one could ask yourself any question and get an answer directly from your higher self. What’s important to me? Do I love my wife? Do I love my kids? Do I love my work? What do I want to do with the rest of my life? How important is money?
A yes answer was felt with great warmth almost glowing in the heart. A no answer was absent any feeling. For a full day I asked myself every question I could dream of and wrote them down in my journal.
Those ideas were life-changing for me, and I was fortunate because only about one-third of the group had a similar experience.
I discovered; my life's dream was to sail around the world in my own boat. It took several years to build up enough courage to act on the idea but I now had a compass. In 1998, I moved full time onto my sailboat "Always Saturday." After five years of preparation and when my first mate was willing and somewhat competent, we left Beaufort, NC, in 2003 with two other crew members. I thought having other competent sailors on board for our first 1200-mile open-water passage to the Virgin Islands would be prudent. It sure was! That decision probably saved my life!
The two-week journey turned out to be far from ordinary! After the first week of sailing eastward towards Bermuda, the weather changed, and we encountered a gale from the north blowing us south. This would normally have been welcome as it would speed us south, but the weather off of Puerto Rico was setting a one-hundred-year record for rainfall. It might evolve into a tropical storm, putting it directly in our path. In the middle of the gale with high seas and 40 knots of wind, stressed out and desperately trying to avoid the low in Puerto Rico by getting as far east as possible, I suffered a heart attack in the middle of the night. I went into cardiac arrest in the cockpit but spontaneously converted back to normal sinus rhythm. I knew that we were 400 miles from the nearest land. To survive, I had to figure out a way to keep myself stable for three days without IV fluids, oxygen, and heart medicines. The heart attack set in motion a tale of survival where I saved my own life, I believe, three times. Unexpected events continuously challenged us, so it was never clear whether I would perish or survive. I used my laser intention to survive and overcome every obstacle. It became a spiritual experience as I had to use my medical background and my engineer’s problem-solving ability to improvise a method to stay alive. It was like playing with a deck of cards loaded with jokers ending with the biggest joker of them all.
Afterward, I wanted to share my experience with many sailors, hoping that they would learn from it should they ever encounter a heart attack at sea.
After the boat was sold years later, I was on a commercial cruise ship in Alaska one morning when I met a ship’s engineer. We got to talk, and I related my tale. As I left the conversation, a man I had never met approached me and said, “I couldn’t help but overhear your tale. Has anyone ever told you that you must write and publish that?”
I shared that many people had, but I had never followed through. He declared that he was a publisher, his wife was an editor, and the story needed to be written and published. They spent the next week trying to convince me, and by the time the cruise was over, I was ambivalent.
When I returned home, my sailing partner of twenty-one years decided that she and I needed to part ways, and very quickly, she left. I found myself bouncing off the walls of a 2800 sq. foot house, so I decided to give writing a chance, as I had never considered myself an author. After several failed attempts, I felt I needed to create a greater context for why we were on a sailboat in the middle of nowhere, traveling to the Virgin Islands.
To do this, I chose to go back to my childhood and relate how I had learned to sail. As an adult, reviewing my early years, I realized that my mother had taught me skills that I had never fully appreciated, and retrospectively, I realized I had spent my entire life using these skills to dream up and create my reality. I have lived a fulfilled life replete with challenges, adventures and successes. Writing the book thus became a “brain dump.” I wrote these memories down as fast as I could type. The entire manuscript just flowed and was completed in only three months. Afterward, I was able to make peace with my mother, who had been dead for almost 50 years.
The manuscript was initially directed to blue-water sailors who might want to glean practical knowledge of surviving a heart attack at sea and learn some not-so-well-known maintenance tips from a sailor with seventy years of experience. However, it became much more of an engaging tale of self-discovery and a road map to creating whatever one wants in life. Part of the book was taken from contemporaneous blogs, which transport the reader into the reality of crossing oceans and exploring exotic places. The armchair sailor would also enjoy this tale.
I called my new publisher friend, ready to send him what I had written, and he informed me that he had given his company to his son, who was taking it in a different direction and could not publish the work. I was content to use the manuscript as a family heirloom. However, years later, after reading the tale, my uncle contacted an old girl friend of his and asked me to send my writings to her.
The book was published and available on Amazon this past November. After reading the book, a professional book reviewer wrote a glowing recommendation, contacted me, and helped me realize that this work was far more than a traditional sailing memoir and could even be well-received as a movie. I have initiated a third-party review to substantiate my belief that this book may have wings.