Life’s dreams can weather the worst storms of fate

Here’s hoping Ken Barnes Jr.’s latest trip -- a solo voyage around the Cape of Self-Recrimination -- crashes on the rocks.

If that’s too cute, here’s what I’m trying to say: The Newport Beach man is being way, way too hard on himself.

Barnes is the guy who, in his mid-40s, had a bit of a midlife crisis and decided to do something about it. He sold a house and a pool-cleaning business he’d built up over 20 years, and bought a 44-foot boat.

Lots of people buy boats. Not many people decide to sail them alone around the world. But that’s what Barnes set out to do in October when he left Long Beach Harbor for points known and adventures unknown.

You probably heard how it turned out. A couple of weekends ago, with his boat disabled and adrift off the southern coast of Chile near Cape Horn, he was rescued from the Pacific by cod fishers.

Not a very heroic end to a midlife crisis, unless you happened to be one of the cod fishers.

And that note of dejection resonated throughout the interview Barnes gave that ran Monday in The Times. He told reporter Garrett Therolf that the last thing he’d wanted to do was impose a burden on others. The whole idea was to pull this off alone, which was why he named his boat Privateer.

He was the subject of media coverage that captivated a chunk of the public, and Barnes indicated he hadn’t enjoyed his moment in the publicity glare. He still couldn’t look at pictures of his crippled boat, likening it to the pain of leaving a beloved but ailing dog on the side of the road to fend for himself.

Barnes gave Therolf the bottom line: “I had my chance, and I failed.”

And this is where I jump in, uninvited, into Barnes’ world.

There are a lot of ways to fail in this world, but spending your own money to sail around the world only to be laid low by a fierce storm is not one of them.

I say that ever mindful of a number of readers who said Barnes was a fool to set out and that he cried for help when his foolish mission ran into trouble.

Yes, some people can do idiotic things with a boat and needlessly imperil others, but there’s nothing to suggest that Barnes is one of them. He apparently planned his trip meticulously. Nor, as some other sailors told me last week, would Barnes have had any guarantee of being rescued on the open sea if a problem occurred.

Barnes was unlucky. That’s different from being a failure.

How can the voyage be a failure when he described it as the trip of a lifetime, the one that would validate his life on the planet? Is it a failure to feel like you’re living a dream and to experience the solitudinous joy of lolling for hours at sea or watching lightning strikes that feel like they’re inches away?

Is it failure to manage a boat in rough seas, all alone, and realize later that you were “on the edge of my abilities,” as Barnes described it to Therolf?

That’s not how I’d describe failure.

Rather than wait for someone to punch his ticket, Barnes punched his own.

People find satisfaction in different ways. Most of us don’t need to circumnavigate the globe to feel fulfilled. Or if we did, we wouldn’t dream of trying it.

But how can we not admire someone who did try it, especially when all the money and effort came from his own pocket?

Even with his communications system intact, Barnes must have had moments when he thought he might not make it. His masts were down and so was his electricity. Out there alone, he was a blip on the global scene and in danger of being lost to history.

I will assume that had he gone down, he wouldn’t have done so cursing the fates for not sending someone to rescue him. I’ll assume he’d have died with at least some last thoughts that he had truly lived.

I’d think having a glimpse of your death might make you feel quite alive.

Barnes will return to relative obscurity. If I had to hazard a guess, it would be that anyone sturdy enough to sail the world will be able to resume life as most of us know it.

But I’ll take another wild guess that he’ll be consumed for a while by the question that often follows life-changing moments:

Now what?

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.