May 15, 2023

I think that one of my problems is that I trust people too much. Because of this trust, I often fail to see the signs or heed advice.  In hindsight, I see that this betrayal was indeed a long time in the making. I gave both these men my loyal support for twenty years and never once doubted their loyalty to me. As the saying goes, “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.” I don’t intend to have this happen again. I will still continue to trust people, but I will watch them like a hawk going forward. My closest advisors now are all proven good and loyal people and we have set up a structure to prevent any hostile takeover attempts in the future.

Words from a trusted friend and former crew member: 

On all the Antarctic campaigns I sailed on with SSCS I kept a daily log diary…I found the “Divine Wind” log recently and hereby state that on Tuesday January 31, 2012 @ GPS 62*09′ S/154*24′ W, as I joined the bridge for my midday to 4 watch, Alex Cornellisen asked me to have a private chat in the Comms room. He was very agitated and launched into a rave that he and Hammar were working on a plan to take over SSCS and, therefore, displace Paul Watson…I told him that the only thing of interest to me was to stop the whalers, thats why I wore the black T shirt, and that he should just get behind the campaign…HE WAS PLANNING THIS COUP FOR TEN YEARS, FFS!

…I will keep this little log book as a memory that you can never trust anyones motives when driven by power games…