And I feel safer in a small boat in bad weather than I do in a bad neighborhood in any American city.

The reason people can still do unnecessarily dangerous things for recreation when even a daily commute in city traffic can be life-threatening is because they feel they have control. Human beings are engineered by evolution to handle stress, primitive man was an animal, always under attack by forces he did not fully understand.

But he could always do something about it. He could run, hide, fight, sacrifice to the spirits, or even just wait til things got better, things like disease he could do nothing about, so there was really no point in worrying about them. Death, struggle and pain were so common they were no surprise when they came.

Modern man lives in a much more benign environment. His threats are vague, unidentified, and often trivial by comparison to early Man's: lawsuits, unemployment, debt, failing to get a promotion, tax troubles. And there is usually nothing you can do to take action and stop these gentle catastrophes. You just have to sit and wait til they catch up with you.

Lack of fear does not mean an absence of danger, it requires the knowledge that you have the ability to do something about it, the resources and skills to fight back. I've never been in a jam on a boat where I felt there was nothing I could do to help myself. As long as I had a sword in my hand, the battle was not yet over.

There is one exception. On a particularly windy day, I couldn't get my kicker started to enter the marina under power. I did not have the confidence I could bring her in to the dock under sail without colliding with another boat causing damage to myself or someone else. And I had a group of helpless passengers watching me deal with a real emergency they were totally unqualified to help with, and expecting me to do something about it. My ego and reputation was under attack, and all I could see was expense, conflict, humiliation, since I knew I did not have the mechanical expertise to diagnose or repair an outboard motor.

As it turned out, I anchored out and pulled the cover on the engine and the problem was easily visible and corrected. The starting lanyard had gotten tangled up on the interior mechanism, and it was a trivial job to undo the knot and put it right. It required absolutely no skill or knowledge to fix it. The kicker came to life on the first pull, but the feeling of dread and unease I felt when threatened with what is really only a minor inconvenience far exceeded the fear I felt during some of my lonely midnight battles with flogging sails.

It was a good thing to know about myself. Fear is more a result of your lack of confidence in dealing with danger than it is a concern over the level of hazard you are in. I know, it doesn't make any sense from a logical or practical standpoint, but knowing that about yourself makes you stronger and wiser.