The perfect sailing moment

Nostrodamus

Nostrodamus

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www.cygnus3.com
Even in the wonderful world of sailing there is a moment or time when everything is just perfect.

That utopian moment you will never forget when everything in your world is just right.

Mine was at seven in the morning in Greece, the sun coming up over the hills, no other boats around, sat on the deck with my wife watching it all and dolphins playing around the boat.

For that brief period of time everything just seemed right.

Do you have a perfect sailing moment?
 
Seeing the sunrise at sea is usually pretty special to me.

Then again I was once following a boat with wind vane steering, as soon as they cleared Hurst Narrows the couple engaged it and disappeared below; the boat did a complete 360 with the sheets pinned in, so hopefully someone had their special moment at sea !

Of course no-one here has done anything like that. ;)
 
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Perfect day

Returning from the Channel Islands on a Sigma 38, the forecast was SSW F4 - a perfect spinnaker run!

I rigged the sheets and guys, repacked the spinnaker, raised the main, sailed off the buoy and as we cleared Braye harbour wall popped the spinnaker.

One gybe mid-Channel, and then one to enter the Needles Channel on the flood. By now the sun was just thinking of going down, so perfect yellow and orange colouring on The Needles. Time for a glass of vino we thought. Bliss.

Only problem was as we approached Lymington - the spinnaker halyard shackle had had all day to jam in the sheave and not even two crew hanging on the luff could get it down. We were now approaching Jack in the Basket at some 8 knots plus the tide and were to windward and overtaking two other yachts - it was getting interesting.

An inspired thought entered my head - just wrap the spinnaker round the forestay and at least it's depowered and we can sort it out in the marina. And so we then had a great story to retell in the marina as we finished the wine!

Perfect.
 
several "moments"

astonishingly the slug has a real name - it is Moments

so I have many of them

arriving at the boat late at night and climbing into a the birth knowing the weather forecast for the morning is a cracker

the moment when the keels just kiss the mud and the slug slowly slides to a slithering stop

then the moment a few minutes later when the inexorable rise of the tide picks us up again and we drift on up stream

I still get a thrill when I can see the bottom while still sailing - that is the east coaster in me

but best of all is drifting aroubnd a new bend in a rural river or estuary with the rising tide and the wind behind - to see new territory revelaing itself in front of me


just a few square metres of genoa rolled out - coffee cup in hand

that is nirvana for me

and iver the past four years I have had many such wonderful moments

I am a lucky bloke

Dylan
 
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Can't say I've yet experienced the perfect moment but there have been many, many magical moments over the years:
Gun Cay, Bahamas, silhouetted against a blood red dawn after a crossing of the Gulf Stream from Florida.

Toasting the sun setting on the last day of 1999 at Hawks Bill Cay, Bahamas.

Crossing the Mona Passage from Dominican Republic to Puerto Rico, the lights of Mayaguez twinkling in the distance as the wind returned after a dead calm, feeling Adriana come alive again as her sails filled.

A golden dawn on the Great Bahama Bank, anchored in 7' of gin-clear water but out of sight of land.

But the perfect moment? Perhaps it's still to come.
 
Delivering the boat back after a race, from Pornichet to Lorient. Sailing upwind in flat seas, full main and solent, not a cloud in the sky with the moon rising half full, stars brilliant and crew asleep below. 2 am and perfect.

Rounding the Fastnet rock.

Finishing the first leg of the mini transat in Madeira - 25-30 knots of wind, full main and big kite (way too much sail up!) and three boats chasing me. They all finished within 6 minutes - behind me. :)

Seeing the coast of Brazil at 7 am - first land seen for more than three weeks.
 
Sailing at night down the moonbeam. Seeing a moonbow (rainbow at night). Surfing at 10kts with a 100yd wake astern of phosphorescence and occasional lakes of it either side from shoals of fish. Seeing both sides of the Channel between Poole and Cherbourg (60nm) at the same time, seen several times at night but once only by day. Seeing the green flash, twice now in 50 years. Just being afloat!
 
How lucky are we???

How many?

Of of many is this one near the top,
Solo, somewhere on the way north of Caribbean looking for wind, becalmed, couple of shearwaters been following the boat for ages, jump in for a swim in 4km deep water.

Flat calm.

One of the shearwaters paddles over to me , let's me stroke it's head. I swim over to the other one, pick it up and give a little kiss on it's head. It squirms a bit but we're friends.

On an empty ocean with an empty boat 20' away.

Even within a period of stunningness, that few minutes was head and shoulders above. :)
 
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