From the boardroom to the helm of a Balance 482
What happens when a lifetime of engineering massive commercial ships meets the unpredictable reality of the open ocean? For Paul Britton and his wife, Meg, the answer arrived in May 2022 when they flew to Cape Town to take delivery of their new catamaran, Rodeless.
As fate would have it, their Balance 482 was Hull #007. They joked with friends that their new life would likely be “shaken and stirred,” and the oceans certainly put that theory to the test. Despite having never lived aboard a boat before, the couple spent the next three years traversing more than 30,000 nautical miles across three oceans.
In his newly released book, Trimming the Fails: A Memoir From the Seas, Paul shares an honest account of what it truly takes to chase a blue-water dream. As the book’s synopsis describes:
“What followed was not the brochure version. There were champagne days on a beam reach and idyllic sunsets off the bow. There were also 40-knot winds and 20-foot waves in the North Atlantic, a shredded spinnaker in the mid-Atlantic, orcas attacking sailboats off the Iberian coast, and other surprises from Mother Nature along the way. Meg's rule was simple: THREE strikes and Rodeless would be sold. Trimming the Fails is an honest account of what is required to chase a dream - the preparation, the fear, the seamanship, the marriage, and the grace that carried them home.”
Click here to get your copy on Amazon.
To celebrate his book launch, we invited Paul to share how his engineering background helped him build a dream that could withstand the trials of the ocean and the story behind the name Rodeless.
Engineering a Blue-Water Reality
During our sailing journey, I often heard people say, “You are living THE dream,” and “The goal is to die with memories, not dreams.” I started planning for this adventure in 2015, and during the COVID lockdown, Meg and I mapped out how to make it a reality.
I spent the last 15 years of my career developing designs for very large ships that carry natural gas. Designing a sailing catamaran does not follow the same process that I used in the development of large gas carriers, with a few exceptions: both vessels need to be designed to float and remain stable! After a detailed investigation, we determined that the Balance 482 was the ideal choice for our adventure because of its focus on performance and cruising characteristics.
I was completely sold on Balance’s VersaHelm concept, which enables steering from the elevated helm or the protected cockpit. I was also very excited to be purchasing one of the early hulls of a new design where we had the unique opportunity to define the technical specifications, and outfitting it with every possible feature that I thought necessary to cruise the world’s oceans.
We made several suggestions during the design and build process to modify the boat to suit us, including tweaks to cabinetry, upholstery, and technical gear. Balance was incredibly interested in incorporating feedback and creative ideas from us, as well as other early boat owners, into their base model designs. The opportunity to participate in this collaborative process was an amazing and fun experience.
After sailing over 30,000 nautical miles and crossing three oceans, I can attest to the claims Balance makes about the design of this exceptional boat. Rodeless proved its performance pedigree as we achieved many 180-to-200 nautical mile days. With daggerboards down, Rodeless could sail at 8–10 knots in an Apparent Wind Angle (AWA) as high as 35°, and Apparent Wind Speed (AWS) of 12–18 knots. The 482 was also as structurally sound as I could possibly imagine, handling the stress of all the heavy seas that we went through without fail.
Many people believe that picking the boat brand, size, and options are the hardest and most important decisions that are made when you buy a boat. I would argue that these are the easy decisions to make as there are plenty of sources to get solid recommendations for design specifications. Naming your boat, on the other hand, is very difficult and a personal decision. Sailors love being asked how they named their boat. Here is our story….
The Story of Rodeless: From a Pipeline Project to a Family Legacy
The inspiration for the name Rodeless Traveller dates back to the late ’90s, when I was working on a challenging pipeline project in Russia. One evening, following a day of endless negotiations, I was walking back to the hotel with my Dutch colleague, Harry, when he started to recite Robert Frost’s poem, “The Road Not Taken” (often called “The Road Less Traveled”). The poem explores the choices we make, the paths we don’t take, and how we later look back on those decisions.
At that point in the project, I faced a critical choice: continue working away from home, or move back to Houston. I knew this decision could have a massive impact on the health of my marriage and my family. But as Frost wrote, “I could not travel both.” So, I made the decision to come back to Houston to be with my family and start a new job, taking what the poem calls “the other, as just as fair.”
Years later, that choice came full circle. In 2001, I recited Frost’s poem to my daughter Lauren’s class for Career Day. Fast forward twelve years, Lauren took her own “road less traveled” and moved to Singapore for work. During a visit home to Houston, we finished a run together when I noticed a new tattoo. It was the poem’s final lines:
“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”
I was completely overwhelmed. Realizing that a lesson shared so many years before had shaped her life so deeply gave me a profound sense of clarity. The following spring, when we bought our first boat, I knew exactly what her name had to be: Rodeless Traveller.
The Sailor's Jargon Behind 'Rodeless'
Of course, I had to incorporate some sailor jargon into the name. Merriam-Webster defines a rode as the line or chain used to attach an anchor to a boat, while a traveller is a system of tracks and pulleys used to adjust a mainsail. The double meaning was perfect: if your boat is “rode-less,” you have no way to anchor, meaning you are destined to put a lot of miles under your hull. Plus, as we know, boats do not follow roads.
We considered many alternative names for our new Balance 482, but then discovered a beautiful coincidence. The national tree of South Africa, where Balance catamarans are custom built, is the Yellowwood Tree. It felt like a direct nod to Frost’s “yellow wood.” We then chose the national bird, the Blue Crane, as our logo.
Though we loved the full name Rodeless Traveller, we realized it was far too long. Imagine coming into a foreign port and having to spell the name phonetically over the radio with the port authority or Coast Guard:
Romeo, Oscar, Delta, Echo, Lima, Echo, Sierra, Sierra — Tango, Romeo, Alpha, Victor, Echo, Lima, Lima, Echo, Romeo.
So we decided to stick with Rodeless, short and sweet, and we named our dinghy “Traveller”. It remains a fantastic conversation starter. Travelling over 30,000nm in less than 3 years, we experienced the adventure of a lifetime as we put a lot of miles under our hulls as the name implies.
Trimming the Fails: Lessons from the Salon Table
During our 1st big passage from Cape Town to the Caribbean I started writing daily blogs and was amazed at how many people followed our journey and commented with questions about everything from how we do it to what it is like traversing such large oceans out of the sight of land. As the years passed, I learned about myself including the hard lessons of patience, perseverance, adaptability and respect for Mother Nature. Learning these lessons inspired me to sit down and write Trimming the Fails. Anyone can learn the skills required to sail around the world, but learning the harder lessons comes with trial by fire and getting out there and experiencing life on the water.
I hope that this book inspires aspiring voyagers to have the confidence to contemplate such a challenging experience if they are truly interested in sailing away. Fear of the unknown is what holds most people back from ever making the decision to do something like this. I guess if I could choose one thing that Trimming the Fails provides is the focus that ‘Fear is Unproductive’. Identifying your fears and then taking productive steps to define what training and experience you need to face and overcome that fear will move you toward your goals.
I would love to be a NY Times Best Seller, but my personal hope is that my grandchildren are inspired to take the Road Less Traveled when they read the tales of their grandparents’ journey.
