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In Cape Horn: The Logical Route, Bernard Moitessier wrote about the joy of sailing into a harbor at night. Not just entering a harbor, but sailing in.
“It is wonderful to enter a harbor at night. A hundred times better than in the day,” he wrote. “For in daylight, you’re always a bit inhibited by the presence of onlookers who might think that you want to show off or demonstrate how well you can handle a boat. You try in vain not to care, you still feel ill at ease. At night, on the other hand, everyone does his job, without fuss, because he likes doing it well, with the boat as the only witness.”
I’m almost certain I have referenced this passage in another article, perhaps several, and yet it still bears repeating. The joy Moitessier expresses in the simple act of sailing his boat is captivating. It inspired me to learn how to sail—how to really sail—all the boats I’ve skippered to experience for myself that which the philosophical Frenchman so eloquently describes.
For as long as I’ve worked as a sailor, I’ve sailed into and out of harbors. Sailing as a deckhand on the 74-foot schooner Woodwind on the Chesapeake Bay, when conditions were right, we’d make a lap under sail around the mooring field in Annapolis at the end of our two-hour day sails. Annapolis Harbor is pretty tight in summertime, and 74 feet is a lot of boat. We did it anyway as a test of seamanship (and partly as a marketing tool). We called these runs “harbor burns,” and they were a hit with the guests onboard, we sailors on deck, and the tourists ashore.
Perhaps my proudest moment as a skipper came in 2009 when Mia and I worked for Broadreach, leading a group of teenagers in the Eastern Caribbean. The 32-day itinerary saw us sail from the French side of St. Martin down island all the way to Trinidad. Broadreach’s Arc of the Caribbean program was really about leadership, taught through sailing at sea and community outreach ashore.
The first 10 days were pretty intense with sail training; the kids had little to no boating experience, but they learned fast, and soon we were sailing onto and off of mooring balls, executing quick tacks and jibes, and performing our own harbor burns in Gustavia among the superyachts in St. Barths.
In Nevis, my kids were tested when I switched places with the skipper of our buddy boat running a parallel program to ours. We ran each others’ kids through a series of drills to test their skills as sailors and boathandlers. I was a bit stressed and distracted when I saw that my kids hadn’t left their mooring ball yet—until I saw why. They were hoisting the mainsail. They were going to sail off!
When the kids I was testing completed the series of tacks, jibes, reefing, and unreefing, we returned to the mooring ball under power, secured the boat, and tidied up. I had a front-row seat to watch my kids wrap up their day. Sure enough, they came in under sail. Their first attempt to grab the ball failed, but they didn’t panic. Instead, they bore away, jibed back out of the harbor, and made a second run under sail, nailing it next time round. I couldn’t stop smiling. I hadn’t briefed my kids to do that during the test, nor was it required in the curriculum. They’d done it of their own accord…
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