Almost everything good in my life came by moving toward fear.
Best-selling author Hugh Howey was just barely into his double-digit years when he began fantasizing about sailing around the world. Perched in his tiny Sunfish, he would spend his days on the water off the coast of North Carolina, tacking back and forth and dreaming of crossing the Atlantic, Howey recalls of his pre-teen days. “I had no idea how far across it was,” he says. “In my mind, I could sail a few days and reach Europe.”
While in college, he bought a 27-foot harbor cruiser to live on, but he dropped out a few years later and sailed the boat from Charleston to the Caribbean. Over the next decade, Howey had racked up tens of thousands of miles on superyachts and became a professional captain, he says. But it didn’t quite scratch the itch he had since his youth. “While I was working on big, fancy yachts, I dreamed of setting off on a sailboat again to see the world at my own pace,” Howey recalls.
After his writing career gained momentum and his novel series SILO (which has been adapted into a television series and launches on Apple TV+ on May 5) became a chart-topper, Howey had enough money in the bank to help design and build a 50-foot catamaran in South Africa. Finally, at age 40, he set sail toward Australia, crossing the Atlantic and Pacific in a five-year-long adventure. “I was pretty exhausted from book tours and turning out two or three novels a year, so I jumped at the chance to take a break,” he adds.
Here, Howey shares the biggest takeaways from his sail across the globe, how he embodies the Equinox lifestyle, and the challenges he’s ready to tackle next.
How did you mentally and physically prepare for your journey, and how confident were you when you embarked?
Howey: “If you go to any marina in the world, you'll find dozens of sailors with dreams of sailing around the world. Many of them might even have dates in mind for embarking on their grand voyage. They'll be saving up, stocking the boat with offshore gear, and making repairs big and small. Almost none of them actually leave the dock. There's always one more thing to fix before they go. Or there's one little upgrade left to do. Or a little more money to sock away.
“I lived among sailors like this in college on my little boat. One day it hit me that I was going to end up like these sailors with big dreams and zero plans. What was stopping me from setting off? Myself. Just me. So I set an arbitrary date, sold off everything I didn't need, and tossed my lines off the cleats. What I learned sailing around the islands is that you only need enough food and water to get to your next destination. That's it. Everything else is either bonus or excess.
“This attitude carried over to my yachting career, where I found that I could set off on any boat bound for any destination with very little notice. [Make] a quick trip to the grocery store, check the oil in the engine, and shove off. Whatever you need to fix you can fix along the way. Sailing around the world ends up being a whole lot of daysails — you just don't end up in the same harbor at the end of the day. And sometimes you need to lash the wheel and sail through the night.
“By the time I got on my catamaran, I was able to push off from F Cape Town knowing I wouldn't sail back to the United States for a few years, at the very least. [I wouldn’t] depart from Panama heading to French Polynesia 4,000 miles away like it was any other morning. I think perhaps my writing helped me get ready for those long voyages. Sitting down to a blank screen and jotting the first sentence of what will be a novel, or a trilogy of novels, is a lot like leaving one coast bound for some distant other.”
When you felt fear on your trip, was it existential or brought on by real-life threats?
Howey: “Both — plenty of both. There were several times that I thought I'd die. Things break in heavy storms, and when you're alone, you often have to put yourself in dangerous situations to fix them. Shimmying along the boom after my outhaul snapped one day — the mainsail flapping like a loose flag on a 75-foot mast — I had to grab the aft end of that sail with its heavy metal ring and snake a line through it. The sail was trying to throw me off the boat, and the ring was cracking in the air like a whip — it could easily have split my skull in half. There were safer ways to manage this, but I'd been sailing alone for five days from New Zealand toward Fiji, and the lack of sleep and heavy weather cut my IQ in half. A few situations like this still give me cold sweats when I think about them. Plus, the run-ins with sharks, and the time I jumped in the middle of the Pacific to get a line out of the rudder and got mauled by a man o’ war.
“The existential dread came in waves like the tides, but not nearly as predictable. In the remote islands of the South Pacific, I found it easy to imagine never coming home again — never seeing friends and family that I'd known my entire life. [I’d] just make new friends, who would only ever be passing through. Sailing alone vast distances gives you an internal strength that realigns your old fears: You start to feel like you can do anything, but this self-reliance has drawbacks. I can't think of a worse punishment than being immortal and alone. That's what it felt like sometimes. But most of the time, the tides were high and the solitude brought a connection to nature that I haven't been able to reproduce in any other way.”
Equinox encourages its members to “explore their edge.” What does that mean to you?
Howey: “Almost everything good in my life came by moving toward fear. That's been my most reliable compass. Setting off on a small boat, or jumping on a ship larger than any I'd captained thus far, those were very scary moments. On the other side of them, I found paradise. Writing a book to completion and handing it off to strangers is terrifying. But once I conquered that, a new career opened its arms to me. For me, exploring my edge has meant doing whatever it is I least feel like doing in the moment.
“When I was in my teens and early 20s, I liked to see how much I could push my body. Could I go three days without sleep? A week without eating? I set arbitrary goals like that and found out where my breaking point was. It was almost never where I expected. Going without sleep was more difficult than I imagined. Going a week without talking on a solo sailing voyage was easier (but stranger) than I thought. One of the wilder adventures in my life came from driving coast to coast nonstop [for] over 36 hours.
“For me, finding my edges has made living in the center more enjoyable. A bed never feels the same again after a week-long sailing passage alone, only snatching 15 to 20 minutes of sleep at a time. A grocery store never looks the same again after crossing the Pacific. Deprivation has made me savor the nectars everywhere that I used to take for granted.”
What do you think people can gain from actively embracing the unknown or uncontrollable?
Howey: “The first sense I ever had of free will came after I realized I had none. It's a paradox, but it makes sense when you feel it. I stopped believing in free will in my 30s, and when I learned to accept that, it was like a puppet seeing all the strings attached to its limbs. This reaction was because of that evolutionary urge. That reaction was because of my energy levels, or mood, or nutritional state. Some other reaction was a learned behavior from friends or family. Most reactions were a combination of genetic makeup and environmental stimuli. The illusion that I was in control was just the story I told myself after responding and taking some action.
“Once I embraced this, I started telling myself what I think are more accurate stories about why I did certain things. My difficulty avoiding sweets wasn't because I was weak — it was because we evolved the urge to consume cheap calories whenever we encounter them. We evolved this because calories used to be scarce and infrequent. It made perfect sense to gorge on fruits and honey when we could. Who knew when our next meal might be?
“With a better story running through my mind, my behavior changed. I grew a resistance to the tugging of all those various puppet strings. This isn't really free will (it doesn't exist), but by encountering a set of ideas that made me accept and embrace the concept, it changed me into someone who started resisting ugly impulses and following a different, healthier path. If a thousand people read the above response, one or two might bend a little in the direction I went. Before long, you learn that the people we become depends very much on others, and there's beauty and poetry in that.”
Equinox pushes its members to stay curious and acquire new skills. What skills have you picked up from sailing?
Howey: “The greatest skill I learned was patience. It was probably my greatest weakness as a kid. I couldn't sit still unless I was on some grand adventure inside a book or playing video games. My mind or my body needed to be active, and even better if it could be both. Sailing taught me the joy of sitting between the sea and sky with only the horizon on my mind. I still succumb to impatience, but I'm much better at just being. “
What role does fitness and wellness play in your life, and what are your goals?
Howey: “I've always been active, so I've stayed in great shape, but in my late 30s I started taking fitness very seriously. It started when I was on a book tour. For a few years, I was on the road as much as I was home. I just said ‘yes’ to every book conference that asked me to speak. Suddenly, I had a gym in every hotel. I started carrying protein powder with me on my trips. I put on muscle very quickly and loved how strong I felt, how light on my feet. It opens lots of doors when you can jump on any adventure without hesitation. Long hikes with heavy packs were suddenly easy. And there's no way I could've sailed a 50-foot catamaran all by myself had I not built up that strength.
“My goal has mostly been to remain lean. There's a lot of research on how extra weight shortens our lives and the toll it takes on our joints. More than the quantity of years, I enjoy the quality of life that comes from feeling agile and strong. I don't ever want to have an opportunity for adventure that I have to pass up because my body can't keep up with my ambitions. I'm sure that day will come eventually, but I think it gets here quicker when you start getting comfortable with the idea.”
Where do you find inspiration now? Is there a new challenge that's exciting to think about?
Howey: “Most of my stories come from headlines or history books. I read a lot of non-fiction, and I spend a lot of time with people smarter than me, asking questions and thinking about the human condition. Reality is weird. There are infinite numbers of strange stories to tell. For me, inspiration just means grabbing one of those stories and riding it to the end, seeing where it takes me. There's no way to get to them all.
“My next challenge is to remain calm while ‘SILO’ airs on Apple TV+. It's going to be intense having so many people dive into this world. A lot of fans from the last decade will be eager to see what this version of the story looks like, and tons of folks who never read the books will get to see this world and these characters for the first time. It's a very exciting time for me. After that, I have another transatlantic crossing to look forward to, this time with a childhood friend and my wife. Off to find my edge again, and spend some time with the horizon, between the sky and sea.”