The Long Way: Sheridan House Maritime Classic

by Bernard Moitessier

But when things really get rough, I sometimes seem to become a cold, lucid observer from another world.

Wind, Sand and Stars,

Conor O’Brien, whose Indian Ocean crossing

And when blue-tinted land appeared on the horizon, looking as it did to the mariners of old, all nimbed with mystery, a few of them felt that our rigorous techniques should leave a door open to those gods which the modern world tries so hard to exclude.

My real log is written in the sea and sky; it can’t be photographed and given to others.

old sailors who know that some boats always get through, and others don’t.

I am wool-gathering as usual, as I often do when everything is for the best, and all you have to do is breathe peacefully and thank heaven for its gifts.

I know, I have known since the Indian Ocean, that I no longer want to go back.

And the Horn will be in the wake when the Falklands are too, not before.

Henri de Monfreid

stop thinking, stop acting, make no decisions; time will do its work, soothing everything.

Cruise to a Cruel Shore by Henri and José Bourdens (Souvenir Press)

there wouldn’t be those thousands of cars with hard, closed people all alone in them,

The violent things rumbling within me vanished in the night. I look to the sea, and it answers that I escaped a great danger.

The essential sometimes hangs by a thread. So maybe we should not judge those who give up and those who don’t.