The Naora conversation is thirty minutes with Antony. Those thirty minutes are most useful when the person arriving at them has already thought seriously about the fit rather than using the call to begin thinking about it. The ten questions below are the questions that the conversation produces for most people.
Working through them before the call makes the call better. In some cases, the answers make the call unnecessary: the person who answers all ten honestly will know whether the conversation is worth having before they open the calendar.
The Ten Questions
One. Is there a specific quality that you are looking for from the next significant experience in your life that the experiences available to you on land are not producing? If the answer is yes and you can name the quality, the call will be useful. If the answer is no, the call may be premature.
Two. Are you comfortable with genuine discomfort? Not the managed discomfort of the challenging corporate retreat. The genuine physical and social discomfort of being in real conditions with real people with nowhere to go when the conditions or the people become difficult. The offshore life produces both regularly. The member who is comfortable with both has the right disposition for the voyage.
Three. Can you be honest in a group of people you do not yet know well? Not the performed honesty of the person who says difficult things for effect. The genuine honesty of someone who says what they actually think because the context they are in produces that quality rather than its performance. If you can do this, the Long Table will be one of the most valuable experiences the voyage produces. If you cannot, the Long Table will be uncomfortable in a way that reduces rather than enriches the voyage.
Four. Do you have the specific blocks of time available in your life in the next two years to commit to one or more legs of the voyage? The minimum leg is one week. The maximum for the Coastal membership is one week per year. The answer to this question is a logistics question rather than a values question, and it is worth answering before the conversation rather than during it.
Five. Are you drawn to the offshore sailing life specifically, or to the idea of a sailing voyage in general? The distinction matters. The idea of a sailing voyage is available in many forms. The offshore sailing life, the night watches, the open ocean, the self-sufficient vessel in the remote anchorage, is available in fewer and the Naora voyage is one of the most specific expressions of it. The person who wants the idea may find a closer fit elsewhere. The person who wants the offshore life specifically will find it here.
Six. Are you willing to be in a small community of people whose company you did not choose for an extended period? The invitation-only selection means the people aboard have been selected for specific qualities, but it does not mean you will have chosen each of them personally. The ability to find genuine value in the company of people you did not select is the specific social skill the offshore community requires.
Seven. Are you comfortable with the financial commitment? Not the amount in isolation but the amount relative to what it produces and what the alternatives produce. If the financial commitment requires the justification of the cost-benefit analysis rather than the recognition that this is what this experience is worth, the call will need to produce that justification rather than moving forward from it.
Eight. Does the person in your life who will be most affected by your absence understand and support what you are considering? The voyage that is taken over a partner’s genuine unresolved objection is not the voyage the Naora Circle is designed to produce. The partner who has the questions deserves the conversation. The article on this website about what your partner needs to know is the starting point for that conversation.
Nine. Are you in a life phase that makes extended absence from the land context possible? Not whether the absence is convenient: it is rarely convenient. Whether it is possible. The parent of young children, the founder in the middle of a funding round, the executive in the first six months of a new role: these are phases where the absence may not be possible regardless of how right the fit is in every other respect. The honest answer to this question determines whether the booking is for now or for a later chapter.
Ten. When you imagine telling the people who know you well that you are going on the Naora voyage, what is the quality of the feeling that the imagined telling produces? If the feeling is the specific combination of excitement and rightness that significant decisions produce when they are the right ones, the call is worth having. If the feeling is primarily the anxiety of the person who is not sure whether they deserve the experience, the call is still worth having, but the conversation will need to address the deserving question before it can address the fit question.
