High Performance with Joe Sprange - James Castrission

Wow what an awesome conversation with James, I hope you enjoyed it too.  I am personally in ore of the courage and drive he demonstrated during his incredible expeditions.

My takeout are the keys to his success are;

- Brilliant use of his blueprint document to manage risk, logistics and support the sponsorship work
- Having a mindset that anything is possible
- Team Success comes from clear goals, along with working to your own strengths
- An attitude towards balance that is realistic
- His modern view on parenting that inspires kids to safely engage with risk

I hope you took something out of this conversation that you can take into achieving more of your potential in 2022!

Sharing a podcast is the ultimate gift, so if you know of someone wanting to achieve their highest potential please share it with them. And remember if you haven’t already hit subscribe so you don’t miss an episode of High Performance with Joe Sprange.




Renown Australian adventurer & motivational speaker, James Castrission founded MyAdventure Group in 2015 (myadventuregroup.com.au). MyAdventure Group offers Australia's premier adventure based development programs. The two arms of the business cater for clients in the following markets:
1. Adventure retreats for the general public
2. Corporate & team adventure based development programs designed to drive cohesion and output of high performance in the business.

James is a professional adventurer who in 2008 became the first person to kayak across the Tasman Sea. Two years later he completed the longest unsupported polar expedition of all time.

In his early life, he worked as a management consultant. He has taken many of these valuable lessons & theories from the corporate world into the outdoors. James has authored 2 bestselling books (Crossing the Ditch & Extreme South), writes regular columns for many leading magazines & speaks at conferences all over the globe. Cas is a currently a father of two and strongly advocates the value of getting parents, children and corporate teams into the outdoors.

Transcript

Unknown Speaker  0:04  
My name is Joe Sprange. I'm a husband, a dad, a business owner, a triathlete, and underwrites rugby coach, and I love talking to people. I started running fun runs when I was six, and have recently completed my 50th trifling, have worked in advertising and marketing. But now I've run my own personal training business.

Unknown Speaker  0:25  
My goal is to be the best I can be as a husband, a dad, a triathlete, a boss, a coach. So I love talking to others, who I respect on the secrets of how they got to where they are today. My passion is about finding the key to unlock potential. So that's what my podcast is all about.

Unknown Speaker  0:46  
I interview everyday people who perform at extraordinary high levels, I collect a bunch of those keys and I share them with you. This is high performance, Joe Sprange. Hit subscribe now to stay up to date with our latest podcasts.

Unknown Speaker  1:14  
My guest today is James castration. I really enjoyed my conversation with James.

Unknown Speaker  1:21  
He's a husband, a father adventurer, and a business owner.

Unknown Speaker  1:28  
We talk about his amazing expeditions.

Unknown Speaker  1:34  
But what I enjoyed most about our conversation was him articulating how he achieved these amazing feats.

Unknown Speaker  1:46  
His blueprint document that helped with logistics, and risk management,

Unknown Speaker  1:52  
his opinion on mindset.

Unknown Speaker  1:56  
And the opportunity these challenge presented to him

Unknown Speaker  2:01  
also really enjoyed his attitude to modern parenting. Hope you enjoy the conversation to get to get started. We've got James castration with us today. This is the fourth episode of high performance with Joe Joe Sprange. And as a kid, I used to love Arctic and Antarctic explorers, Ernest Shackleton more soon, Robert Falcon Scott, these guys were amazing. So some of the things that James has done have really inspired me personally. He's, he's a guy that's full of energy. So I'm really grateful to have him here today. But James, I really think it's an interesting when you see where someone's got to, is to find out where they started. So tell us about your childhood growing up.

Unknown Speaker  2:52  
And a little bit about how you got started in adventuring. Yeah, so first up, Joe, thanks for having me on. Super stoked to be on and look really looking forward to our chat today. Yeah, I'm just I grew up as a kid in Sydney, two siblings up on the North Shore. pretty average kid at school. I love sport. That was my outlet. And that's what, that's what I really, really did enjoy. However, towards the end of my schooling years, I had a knee operation that kind of put me out of rugby, and cricket and all the things I loved. And I got pretty plump, in my last few years at school, got pretty fat, was then carrying about 25 kilos extra carry these days now. And in those last couple of years at school, I did apply myself in my education. And I guess that's what I really did focus in. And I, I guess, education and learning didn't come particularly naturally to me. But one of the big things you 1011 and 12 taught me was the effort you put in you get out. And so I started you know, I took pride in working harder and studying longer than anybody else. And I think that was a really valuable lesson for me in those early teens, that you put the work in and and you get the results. And I think that's held me in good stead with all the adventuring I've done and everything else I've done with life after that. So I guess the education side of things. As a family, the holidays we used to do would be formal drive trips around the place, but always go camping. We never went overseas. It was just Yeah, trips up the Fraser Island out the deserts and that's how we spend our school holidays. And tell me did you think you got a reward for your hard work? When you're at school and your what you're really applying yourself? Yeah, I think initially it was a real frustration for my poor mom trying to teach my timetables and trying to get me to remember spelling and that kind of thing. But then as you know, I took over the reins in the latter years of school, and I couldn't I couldn't play sport. It really was a valuable lesson for me and I actually I took this

Unknown Speaker  5:00  
Seeking enjoyment out of knowing that I'd put in more work than anybody else. And so, you know, I couldn't be on the rugby field, I couldn't be at the matches on a Saturday. So I'd like to sit down for 10 hours at my desk and smash out some work and know that I was putting on work while everybody was there playing sport. And so I did end up getting the results I really wanted when I left school, and that that attitude of you're completely all in and commit to something work hard. And that's how you do get results. Would you have considered yourself balanced? Not at all. And it's funny, it's an interesting one, any success I've had in life, and it's really quite passionate about this topic around balance and trying to understand it. Because any area in my life where I have exceeded in the past or excelled or done well in, there has been no balanced. And that particular time of life. And it's not, I'm not saying that that is a way to end a path to fulfillment or happiness. But it is a part to knocking off big goals. And I, the more that I've thought about it, the more I think that life is kind of kind of like waves coming in, or sets coming in on a beach, and sometimes you need to push hard, and then you just need to ease back, you can't be maxing at 110% and fully pushing your whole life. But in order to if you are driven and you do want to achieve certain certain big goals and big targets, yes, I think you need to get that balance out of whack for a while. And then you need to be all in. Yeah, that's, that's brilliant. I couldn't agree with you more. And I think so many people would, would agree that you've got to oscillate between that intensity of chasing that big goal, and then you've got to let yourself recover. I sort of you know, it's almost like life's an interval session. Right.

Unknown Speaker  6:43  
So tell me about the first adventure you went on right? One, Joey, you know, it's the rest in the recoveries where, where you do grow. And so when you when you get back from that big goal, whether it be an Ironman with a big city surf, whether it be something at work, you do need to invest in those other areas of your life with friends, family relationships, and, and really address those areas that you've you've let go when you've been committed to that big goal. 100% I know we talked about this after your Ironman, I think when you do an Ironman, the perfect thing to do as a family holiday, immediately follow it

Unknown Speaker  7:17  
immediately. So tell me when you got out and you did something that you think you'd consider an adventure.

Unknown Speaker  7:25  
So after school,

Unknown Speaker  7:28  
I started getting into some tiger walks with some friends. I remember getting on the train down at Chatswood station with a few mates and I had all my bushwalking gear and one of them said, What are you doing mate? We're going to do a 30 hour push, we're not going to be sleeping, what do you bring up for the sleeping bag for sleeping mat. And that was completely foreign to me never heard of anything so stupid. And you know, ultra running really wasn't that big a thing back in the late 90s and early 2000s. And so that concept of pushing through a night and trying to navigate not sleep and have a cap file with some snags just was completely foreign to me. You got to ask what we got completely spanked. But it just opened my eyes up. I'm like, wow, this is awesome. And so the trip started off, you know, just make from school, we were bushwalking. And then one day we thought kayaking is kind of like walking on water and open up a whole lot of things. So first year uni we were headed down to Thredbo and three, three mates from school. myself and two other mates. Yeah, we thought we'd try and be the first people to pedal down the length of the Murray. So that was a two and a half 1000 Kilometer pedal. We walked in from Thredbo found the source of the Murray spent a couple of days getting absolutely destroyed in the upper Merri rapids and getting everything wet and everything hypothermic and all that kind of fun stuff, picked up our kayaks and

Unknown Speaker  8:53  
49 days later we we we hit the the ocean, down near Adelaide. And it was a it was an amazing trip. And it really taught me a lot about myself, but probably the biggest thing it taught me was, you know, three mates, we we thought we were 100% aligned and what we'll try to achieve down there. And so we all went we had the same objective, we went down they want to fell down this river. But when we got on that river, I realized that the way that we'd all define success was completely different from one another. So one might Andrew, you know, he comes from a bit of a racing background. And he assumed yes, we're going to throw down the river but we're going to smash ourselves we're going to do big days, we're going to get down to the nice and quickly and just try and get back home before Christmas. Whereas other make Jonesy pretty laid back kind of character. We're going to float down the river do a bit of fishing, stop off at all the local towns and pubs and neither was right or wrong. But it was the fact that we hadn't defined what success look like for us as a team. And it was a big lesson I took away from my future adventures was it and those conversations have to happen right up front before you find

Unknown Speaker  10:00  
Instead of executing, what motivated you to go from a, what sound like a 30 hour trial run to a 49 day, you know, paddle that no one else had done before. I feel like two quick, quick escalation. Yeah, it's like turning up to a party having one beer and go, Let's have 12 Viega bombs, you know,

Unknown Speaker  10:20  
I think that probably sums up my personality.

Unknown Speaker  10:26  
Yeah, that's pretty much it. Um, we want to do something big. We had all this time over, you know, some a period of uni break. And it just seemed really exciting and really unknown. And I think the biggest, biggest thing we've probably done before that was maybe

Unknown Speaker  10:43  
the Terminator Mittagong, bushwalk, which would have been five or seven days or something. Yeah, that was the biggest thing we've done before that, and we never really done any big power trips. And so it was, I guess it was the excitement of the unknown. I think, through my life, that's what attracted me to adventure is the fact that,

Unknown Speaker  11:01  
you know, our lives are so amazing here in Australia, but they're also so predetermined. And that's the great thing about adventure, introducing that chaos, a bit of uncertainty, and just see what you're capable of. It's amazing. One of the things that I want to tap on when we talk about some of your other amazing trips, is that a lot of people you talk to about high performance about doing something better in their job, you know, getting a promotion, selling more widgets in their business, or you know, maybe they're an athlete, and it's about going faster, or winning the game or whatever. But for you, particularly in your next two big adventures. Highperformance is about staying alive. Did you look at that trip that first trip and go, Hey, we could die here? Or if we don't do this, right, we could be in big issues, or were you just looking at how much fun was it? It was going to be?

Unknown Speaker  11:48  
We went in very naive, a lot of people said to us, you're not going to be able to navigate that that upper section of the Murray. It's one of the reasons why the river hasn't been traversed like that before. It's incredibly tough terrain. There's no tracks in there.

Unknown Speaker  12:04  
Big, big Ozzy UPS country and on the river itself, lots of overgrown terrain in there. And so we were like, Yeah, it'll be fine. What could possibly go wrong kind of energy. And when we got there, we did get our asses handed to us, we got completely warped. There was no way we could get down the river. Apart from being in the river. There were grade three, pushing grade four rapids that we had to surf on our packs, we didn't have any proper waterproofing, sleeping bags, everything and it was all snow melt was completely solid within a few hours. There were times we get thrown down some rapids and pulled underneath the water and held down for a while. It was pretty terrifying. And that was probably the first time we were like, wow, yeah, we've got ourselves we've bitten off more than we can chew here. And so that was the first time then I think probably the most exposure to that concept of

Unknown Speaker  13:03  
I guess the if you don't execute properly you don't come back is probably been the mountaineering that I've done around the world. And now nearing it's just incredibly high objective danger. And there often is very little room for error.

Unknown Speaker  13:19  
You hear those mountains where you know, the ratio of death to summit

Unknown Speaker  13:25  
a pretty close so you've paddle you're 1819 years old, something like your pal down the Murray River. Where to from there was it was it that the point you were like how do I make this my my my life? Or were you like no, I'm gonna keep going down a normal path at this stage. No, I still go down a normal path adventure was playing a bigger role. So I started getting into my rock climbing and my lots of canyoning, and I was loving the bushwalking did a few little adventure races at that time. But now I went to Sydney Uni did a commerce degree was working for a big four child accounting firm, then my child accountancy then moved across to consulting. And I guess when I was in there I was I kind of left and right and up and down in the organization. And I said, Look, it all seems so predetermined and so organized. And I know where I'm going to be in this life in five years and 10 years and 15 years time. And I guess that really freaked me out, eventually was given this outlet where I was discovering who I was and what I was capable of. And often the the outcome was completely uncertain and unknown. And that's what I loved about it. Whereas my life for 40 5060 hours a week was completely predetermined. And that idea of introducing some chaos and some uncertainty

Unknown Speaker  14:42  
really appealed to me because I just felt that the confines of my life were just too predetermined and and I feel claustrophobic in it. Yeah. How did how did you hatch the plan to paddle to New Zealand because you know that they you can fly right

Unknown Speaker  14:59  
Chris

Unknown Speaker  15:00  
The funny that

Unknown Speaker  15:02  
obviously not, not not for you, absolutely. How did it how did it start? Ah, it was actually on the Mari one day, so we're paddling along was probably 45 degrees or stinking hot and judges standing next to me I said Mike, can you imagine paddling symbolizes to this river. But instead of us pulling over on the shore each night, you reckon it would be possible to paddle a kayak from Australia, New Zealand. And he was quiet for a couple of minutes and then just pedaled away from me shaking his head, he just didn't want anything to do with the idea initially, but it planted the seed. And then when we got back from the Tasman, or sorry, the back from the Mary trip, it was kind of gnawing away in our heads. And we started tickling with the idea. And I think that comes back to what we talked about initially, we were kind of, we weren't all in we were, you know, we both had jobs, we both had lives, and we were kind of doing it when we could fit it in. And when we talk to people about the project, it was a very non committal kind of attitude. And when you're like that, first off, it's hard for yourself to make much progress with the objectives. But secondly, the people around you don't want to be or aren't particularly inspired by that kind of commitment. So it wasn't until we both quit work, committed to it 100% that we started to form a bit of a team around us and started to make the thing actually happen.

Unknown Speaker  16:21  
I imagine with a trip like that, that preparing it like I've I've read your brilliant books, that you know, you had to build a kayak and you had to get money and all that sort of stuff. Tell us a little bit about the process from Yeah, let's let's let's try and do this to to to getting ready to go like, what steps did you take? And how did you go about it?

Unknown Speaker  16:45  
So I think the biggest thing was, most people thought it was impossible. And I think that's probably what attracted me to the project the most. It was like, Okay, how can we make the impossible possible. And so before we started occurring, any sponsorship, before we started, even thinking about the design of the cake, we spent about 12 months, just researching different topics, trying to understand how we could I guess address where most people's concerns were, but start to put this thing together, because initially, I had no idea what the actual cake was even going to look like. And there was a whole lot of, say, safety gear that we need to fit in there. And, you know, what's the design design going to be like? What's the how long it's going to be like, what are we going to sharks and containerships and all that kind of stuff, and big storms and we didn't have answers to those things. But we started formulating a bit of a battle plan. And that end up being about 100 Page risk management document which showed us exactly what we needed to do. And that blueprint, not only did it show us what we need to do, but it also provided

Unknown Speaker  17:44  
prospective and future sponsors and stakeholders in the project a whole lot more faith in us, because it looked like that we just weren't flying by the seat of our pants that we that we'd actually done some serious work on trying to make it happen. So all those years as a management consultant writing big long documents for clients came in handy once 500%. And it was very, it was quite a tactile very hands on kind of documents. So it was quite practical. And it really did address all those major concerns of people. And then where we didn't see that it would add value which would end up doing when we go into a sponsorship meeting. And you know, people would be asking all those questions about what do you do with sharks? What are you gonna do with big storms? What are you gonna do navigation, we have a good guy literally drop on the table, this risk management document, and we're like, Alright, these guys are well prepared. Now let's talk about the return on investment. And how did you like, I'd know nothing about how to manage a shark in a kayak in the Tasman, you know, how do you how did you? How do you fight and the answers to those questions or even know what questions you needed to ask? Yeah, it's a really good question. I think where we started was just asked every single question we could possibly ask. And we came up with about four pages of questions and didn't have any answers to any of them. And then we just systematically started going through trying to answer them. When we couldn't get an answer, or come up with an answer ourselves through googling or researching. We started reaching out to different people. And I think that's what I meant when we when we weren't 100% committed to the project. We got very non committal kind of answers back. But when people saw that we're just totally frothing. And we were 100% in that's when we started to get a lot more interest from other people and start to form a bit of a team around us and they were experts in different facets of the expedition.

Unknown Speaker  19:27  
And

Unknown Speaker  19:29  
God you your buddy for this adventure. What route Did you did you guys discuss which who does what role Oh, you're going to do risk management, you're going to do sponsorship? How did you guys work together in this process? Yeah, so we definitely had our strengths and our weaknesses and it was really important to recognize them. So John is his strength. He's amazing with detail and so things like how laminate structure things like working with the designer and the engineer. He was awesome and same with the 12 volt system on the on the kayak and understanding

Unknown Speaker  20:00  
The wiring, all that kind of stuff is a much bigger kind of higher level picture person. And so that kind of detail just drives me crazy. And I'm not very good at it. And I don't pay enough attention to the market minute detail. And I'm much better at understanding the big project and project timelines, and how do we pulling the different parts and making sponsorship happen and where the media then fits in that kind of bigger picture? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, you're always going to be successful as a team, when your strengths and weaknesses sort of yin and yang with each other. How? Exactly, yeah. So I'm, like, I'd encourage anyone that's really interested about these trips to read the books, because they're wonderful. And the detail in them is is huge. And and give us give us the overview of the trip, you know, how did it go? Which, you know, I know there were lots of challenges on the trip and stuff. So tell us about it. Yes, I guess the quick dirty five minute version of it.

Unknown Speaker  21:02  
So we we did design, and we built the kayak, and the first time we put our, our dream kayak on the water down a bobbin head and Sydney, and it just flopped over on its side. And we were committed with sponsors, we will commit to be out there in a month, you know, month time, it was absolutely devastating. And so we went through a 12 month redesign and rebuild process, which was incredibly painful when we had to essentially rebuild the kayak. So what why did it capsized? You obviously had people helping you design this thing, what was the combination of a few factors. And it was interesting when it first happened, we pull the brain trust of the project together. So the marine engineer, the boat builder, the designer over in the UK, and electrical engineers well, and within a few minutes are all just pointing blame and yelling at each other saying it was because of this was because of that, in essence, it was a combination of a whole lot of different factors.

Unknown Speaker  22:01  
The chi was probably too narrow. The electrical engineer had added too much weight up the top. The boat builder had put in he kind of overspent things as he went on the fly and didn't follow the design. Exactly. So it's a combination Mahalo to different factors. And rather than kind of assigning blame, it's about okay, guys. We know it's not working. It's not really about whose fault it is. But what we can do now to focusing on what we can do to fix this situation, and kind of thinking forwards, not backwards. And so we went through the REAP rebuild redesign, we tested, tested, tested, tested. And then we found ourselves out there. November 2007. We paddled out off the coast of foster found the EAC which the big strong current that rolls down the east coast of Australia that started pulling us out towards New Zealand initially made some incredible progress. So 90 days we're halfway across, we just could not believe our progress. And we started getting smashed by some big storms. 12 meter seas, winds up to 100 kilometers an hour. They pushed us into a big circular Whirlpool and Miller Tasman Sea. And for two weeks, we went round and round in circles in the middle of Tasman, we just could not fight the wind and the current and the strength of it. We paddle 150k back to Australia to try and break through this current will stuck in

Unknown Speaker  23:19  
by being further south we're out of put keep pushing on. We then had barnacles come up on the attach themselves to the cart so we had to jump overboard scrub them off. That then attracted sharks who then came up on the kayak and started slapping us around and rubbing themselves up against us for a few hours. So by this point, will pretty smashed and you know averaging maybe two to three hours of sleep a night it was pretty hard to sleep out there.

Unknown Speaker  23:43  
provisions were quite low. But after 62 days and 3318 clumps of paddling when we arrived in the shore of New Zealand, it was a welcome we'll never forget there were over 30,000 people on the beach to greatest in friends family networks around the world. We're in helicopters and boats came out the greatest was absolute chaos. It was amazing. Oh, wow. I still remember watching it on the news. I thought it was incredible. Tell me about an average day on the in the kayak in the middle of the Tasman, you know, do you paddle alternately? Do you sleep? You know, how does it work? Yeah, so we found the most efficient way to paddle such a big heavy craft was the two of us. So every now and then we had to push through the night to break free current systems and whatnot. And we would rotate through the night. And when only one person is peddling, it uses up a whole lot more energy for the output that we're actually getting. And so more often than not, we'd wake up about 5am in the morning. We'd we'd get out into the cockpits with our breakfast out there. And we'd basically spend the whole day out on the in the cockpit paddling

Unknown Speaker  24:50  
East so yeah, drawers New Zealand. Yeah, constantly checking our compass bearings. Every couple of hours. We'd look at the GPS to see if the currents were doing something funny.

Unknown Speaker  25:00  
And then in the evening, before we get back in the cabin, we try and wash ourselves with about 100 mil of fresh water to help with the salt sores and the to get some of that salt water off our bodies. Then we get back in the cabin naked, cook up dinner, communicate with our support team, that the know how we were going out there.

Unknown Speaker  25:21  
Yeah, so that was a, I guess a standard amount a day out there.

Unknown Speaker  25:25  
It's incredible. It's just absolutely incredible for that many days to be doing to be doing that.

Unknown Speaker  25:31  
How did you feel a week after you'd finished.

Unknown Speaker  25:36  
It was interesting. Often I felt I after trips, and even after something like doing an Ironman that I this, these blues that come over you you've been committed to a goal for so long. And then you don't have that same drive. And that same structure in your day in that same area that you're you're pointed towards and particularly with the Tasman crossing.

Unknown Speaker  25:57  
Every single cell in our body was focused on getting to New Zealand and life, once we got to New Zealand hadn't even been considered. We had no idea what we're going to do. We when we arrived in New Zealand, we didn't even have clothes organized for us. We literally arrived with the pair of thermals, we left Australia in, we had no clothes over there. Like we just everything was focused on getting to New Zealand. And when we got there, we were pretty overwhelmed with the reception that we got from everyone and, and all the media and all of this and that was going on. And so I guess we got swept up in that for a few weeks, or some amazing parties and bits and bobs. But pretty quickly after that. Yeah, the opportunity to write a book came up. So I guess I'll throw myself into that. Then there was this thing that I'd never heard of before called Corporate speaking. And we had a whole lot of inquiries that we started doing and really enjoyed that. And it's amazing how that's one of flourish into one of the main things I do these days.

Unknown Speaker  26:56  
Tell me where there were points in time where you didn't think you could finish. Were you sitting there going?

Unknown Speaker  27:03  
No, I can't say I can't imagine us getting to New Zealand.

Unknown Speaker  27:08  
Yeah, and I think that's one of the beautiful things about adventure.

Unknown Speaker  27:14  
Is that uncertainty if

Unknown Speaker  27:19  
if it was predetermined if it was, you know, if and I wish, I often hear people talk about trips or about different sporting accomplishments, and they're like, No, I was always going to do it. And on these big trips, there's so much out of your control and so much uncertainty, that it even It wasn't until probably day 61 That it was a done deal that we're gonna make it across, you know, those constant uncertainty, whether or not it was going to happen. And what's it like between you and Jonesy, when you're stuck in this whirlpool in the middle of the Tasman and you know, your foods probably been used up quicker than it should be and stuff. And it's looking tough. How do you to interact? More often than not, we I mean being made since we were 15 was great. But on the flip side of it, we're also as bad as married couple on Sundays. And the reflection of the stress of the situation often gotten very vigorous. And it wasn't the fact that we had each other's guts it was just the frustration of due to weak circle or the conditions or whatever was going on, it was easier to take it out on each other than it was on the environment because yelling at the waves isn't going to do much. Whereas you get a bit of a reaction when you roll someone else up. If you could tell your self in foster one thing before you left in 20 with 2020 hindsight, what would you tell yourself?

Unknown Speaker  28:47  
Ship the boat over to New Zealand go back the other way.

Unknown Speaker  28:50  
Would that have been better from a currents and winds perspective that we started 100 years of historical data and notice that 60 to 70% of the wind was meant to come from Australia and loss across the Tasman at that time of year. In the 62 days out there, we got six days out of 62 that actually came from that direction.

Unknown Speaker  29:10  
So would have been better than that year in New Zealand. Yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. Okay, so we know that you like to escalate quickly, because you went from the Mary to the Tasman pretty quickly. How did what's the journey you've finished this, you've done some corporate speaking what makes you want to go

Unknown Speaker  29:28  
to Antarctica and do an incredible expedition like that. When you introduce me draw, you're talking about some of those famous explorers you know, amazing age of adventure turn of last century. I also love those stories. And for me, Antarctica represented the Charlie Chocolate Factory of adventure. You know, that was the that was the pinnacle. And so the, you know, the, the opportunity to be able to do a trip down there after Tasmin was was made more possible. It's a tough

Unknown Speaker  30:00  
I'm hostile, expensive place to get down to, and we're having some runs on the board, it really gave us that that step into it, I'd always wanted to go down there. And for me, that was the ultimate proving grounds. I absolutely want to trip down there. I also felt that we, we've done a lot of great things on the test want to get across that stretch of ocean. But there are also some massive weaknesses. And I always thought the biggest weakness on board that kayak was us. And more particularly more specifically, it was their mindset. And I wanted to do another big trip and and test my mind and test my I guess, resilience and grit and a few things that I've learned about mindset through the years on another big trip.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai