You've probably heard the story of Ken Barnes, Jr., the Orange County (CA) man whose attempt to sail solo around the world ended with near-fatal consequences off Cape Horn. But the Los Angeles Times' Dana Parsons thinks Barnes should hold his head up :

Barnes is the guy who, in his mid-40s, had a bit of a midlife crisis and decided to do something about it. He sold a house and a pool-cleaning business he'd built up over 20 years, and bought a 44-foot boat.

... You probably heard how it turned out. A couple of weekends ago, with his boat disabled and adrift off the southern coast of Chile near Cape Horn, he was rescued from the Pacific by cod fishers.

Not a very heroic end to a midlife crisis, unless you happened to be one of the cod fishers.

And that note of dejection resonated throughout the interview Barnes gave that ran Monday in The Times. ...Barnes gave (LAT reporter reporter Garrett Therolf) the bottom line: "I had my chance, and I failed."

And this is where I jump in, uninvited, into Barnes' world.

There are a lot of ways to fail in this world, but spending your own money to sail around the world only to be laid low by a fierce storm is not one of them.

... Barnes was unlucky. That's different from being a failure.

How can the voyage be a failure when he described it as the trip of a lifetime, the one that would validate his life on the planet? Is it a failure to feel like you're living a dream and to experience the solitudinous joy of lolling for hours at sea or watching lightning strikes that feel like they're inches away?

Is it failure to manage a boat in rough seas, all alone, and realize later that you were "on the edge of my abilities," as Barnes described it to Therolf?

That's not how I'd describe failure.

Rather than wait for someone to punch his ticket, Barnes punched his own.

People find satisfaction in different ways. Most of us don't need to circumnavigate the globe to feel fulfilled. Or if we did, we wouldn't dream of trying it.

But how can we not admire someone who did try it, especially when all the money and effort came from his own pocket?

Even with his communications system intact, Barnes must have had moments when he thought he might not make it. His masts were down and so was his electricity. Out there alone, he was a blip on the global scene and in danger of being lost to history.

I will assume that had he gone down, he wouldn't have done so cursing the fates for not sending someone to rescue him. I'll assume he'd have died with at least some last thoughts that he had truly lived.