The Long Way: Sheridan House Maritime Classic

by Bernard Moitessier

There are so many things in the flecks of foam and the water that runs along the side. I could not ask for more; I have it all.

The whole universe meets in the staysail.

I am starting to realize that I too need to be protected from the camera.

Thanks to this extra lightening (food, kerosene and line weighed 375 pounds) I was able to completely empty the forward and aft compartments, concentrating all possible weight amidships. As minor as it may be, the point is scored on three different levels: Faster in light airs.

Less sail up in fresh winds,

Better prepared for the very foul weather in the south,

For beyond any starving Indians and penniless sailors, one grim scene keeps coming back to me: the big gale I took with Françoise a few years earlier, during which Joshua nearly pitchpoled.

Yet it is a hard card to play, this need I feel to reassure family and friends, to give them news, pictures, life—to bestow that infinitely precious thing, the little invisible plant called hope. Logic shouts at me to play the game alone, without burdening myself with the others. Logic would have me run SE, far from land, far from ships, back to the realm of the westerlies where everything is simple if not easy, leaving well to the north the dangerous area of the convergence. But for many days another voice has been insisting ‘You are alone, yet not alone. The others need you, and you need them. Without them, you would not get anywhere, and nothing would be true.’

Sailing is a compromise between distance covered and mounting fatigue, for both crew and boat; and fatigue can snowball fast.

‘This time, old man, your number is up.’ And I remembered the page on destiny in Wind, Sand and Stars, on the absolute need to follow one’s fate, whatever its outcome. I, too, was going to end up like Saint-Exupery’s gazelle, whose destiny it was to leap in the sunshine and die one day under a lion’s claw.

When Henry and I had had to work out a really sticky problem together, neither of us was allowed to mention it. No bursting out with ‘Say, I’ve got an idea! What do you think of this? . . .’ It was not allowed, because the thing had not matured enough, and putting forth an idea that was not worked out in detail wasted the other’s time and kept him from letting it ‘ripen’. Only that evening or the next morning would we talk about possible solutions. By then, the ground had been gone over in detail, and all we had to do was get to work without groping, by the shortest path.

When you have seen the eddies caused by salinity differences in the Panama locks, one prefers to give a wide berth to similar phenomena when they are on an oceanic scale.

Sure, I would like to get out of this lousy place by crowding on canvas. But if the weather turns mean, as it very quickly can here, I am much better prepared with shortened sail. Wiser in my weakened condition. Nothing to worry about, far from it . . . but I am asking Joshua to do her best until I get back into shape.

I am full of life, like the sea I contemplate so intensely. I feel it watching me as well, and that we are nonetheless friends.

The rhythm of the sea is not the same as that ashore. At sea I wake up almost automatically around midnight, feeling fresh, and go back to sleep an hour later. This gives me plenty of time for a turn on deck to feel the heart of the night and sense what is around.

Ashore, coffee keeps me awake, but not here. And I sleep all I like during the day. People often imagine that sailors are a breed of supermen; that we almost never sleep, spend all our time handling sails, never get a hot meal. If they only knew!

The days go by, never monotonous. Even when they appear exactly alike they are never quite the same. That is what gives life at sea its special dimension, made up of contemplation and very simple contrasts. Sea, winds, calms, sun clouds, porpoises. Peace, and the joy of being alive in harmony.

You can spoil everything, trying to go faster than nature.

Strong winds in the upper atmosphere cause large density gradients between layers of air at different temperatures. The stars then twinkle more than usual, because of the increased refraction bending the light. And when the high altitude winds blow very hard, this almost always tells of an approaching disturbance, or at least unsettled weather.

Things almost always pick up at dawn. If you can hold out until dawn, you will probably hold out until the end.

one should never treat fairy tales lightly.

Free on the right, free on the left, free everywhere.

I have almost reached a turning point along my way. I know, I have known since the Indian Ocean, that I no longer want to go back.

The difference in efficiency is largely due to the boat’s now having a set of small, easily handled sails with lots of reef bands, a present to my boat for this trip. Also to the winches, which were not there before.

deep within himself man may carry the same instinct to leave food aside, as animals do in the solemn moments of their lives.

Heaving-to is really best when one no longer knows what to do: come about without touching the sheets, put the helm alee, stretch out in the cockpit, eyes closed, and then see things as they are . . .

Heaving-to allows you to look things over while body, nerves and brain relax and get back to the simple rhythm of the sea. After a peaceful quarter hour spent dreaming, everything was clear again.

let my mind heave-to for the duration. It was by reading Henri de Monfreid as a kid that I learned the trick: stop thinking, stop acting, make no decisions; time will do its work, soothing everything.

Life is wonderful when you can really live it, as animals do when only the present instant counts.

Round the world goes further than the ends of the earth, as far as life itself, perhaps further still.

the 28 guys of the Endurance, crushed by ice in the Weddell Sea, all came through because they rediscovered that which joins the spirit to the essential, beyond exhaustion and freezing cold. Henri and José Bourdens pulled through as well, on their raft, with bits of string . . . and something more.2

When you have long skirted vast expanses stretching to the stars, beyond the stars, you come back with different eyes.

My Chinese nurse would say that the earth could not protect this god in us unless we respected both the earth and the god. She said we should give offerings to the earth, that it honoured at once the earth and the god in us.

I am really fed up with false gods, always lying in wait, spider-like, eating our liver, sucking our marrow. I charge the modern world—that’s the Monster. It is destroying our earth, and trampling the soul of men.

Everything is in place. I feel a great strength in me. I am free, free as never before. Joined to all nonetheless, yet alone with my fate.

Maybe I will be able to go beyond my dream, to get inside of it, where the true thing is, the only really precious fur, the one that keeps you warm forever. Find it, or perhaps never return.

Sailing in these waters, if man is crushed by his feeling of insignificance, he is borne up and protected by that of his greatness.