As Richard Stubbs of Medford, Ore., was beginning his career as a child and adolescent trauma therapist, a supervisor warned him that most therapists burn out in the field “because children’s work is so hard.”

“I’m 10 years into it, and I can tell she’s right,” Stubbs said.

So he decided to build a sailboat, then he decided to sail it down the Mississippi River, and then he decided to self-fund a documentary about it.