LEAVING MY Comfort ZONE

At 78, I decided that I wasn't going to let my age get in the way of making memories of a lifetime with my son.

- MICHAEL PSCHORR

The captain of the 55-foot Holman sailing yacht was crouched down and leaning over me with great anxiety. "Are you OK?" he asked. "Dad, are you OK?"

I was, indeed, OK, which was as much a surprise to me as anyone else, given that I had hurtled across the galley like an unstrapped astronaut at liftoff. The boat had pitched, I hadn't been paying attention, and I had gone flying so fast that I would have just kept going if not for a cabinet that stopped my midair trajectory.

My ego was bruised-"Pain, Dad, is a great teacher," he saidbut I was fine, which is more than I could say for the cabinet door. And that, in itself, was really saying something, because the boat dated to 1985 while I dated to 1939.

Yes, my friends had told me that I was "loco" to sign on as crew at age 78 for a 2,850-nautical-mile passage from San Diego to the Panama Canal. It wasn't the first time that my son, Christian Pschorr, who is service and program director for Hylas Yachts, had asked me to join him on a passage, but for the past few years, I had refused. Days and nights of getting pounded by bad weather, I feared, might leave me unable to hold up my end of the responsibilities. I didn't want to let down the rest of the team.