I came across this the other day and thought I'd share. I love all the information that is laid out in the video and I'm sure most of you who read my writings already have some reasonable understanding about the topic at hand, but the truth is my sailing gets defined at the 8:50 mark of the video. Enjoy!
"An intuitive feel and a practical understanding", that has to be the yin and yang definition of most sailors. Using that hard practical understanding of our world and how it works in order to achieve the emotional and spiritual release from that same world.
"Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings:"
These famous words of John Gillespie Magee, Jr. come to mind when I think of sailing only as sailors we manage to marry the sky, that Magee so gently describes, to the water that Joshua Slocum embraced.
Both forces focused and tuned by over 3 tons of fiberglass, aluminum and sail. Literally tuned until the tiller hums and vibrates. With two fingers on the tiller and eyes looking upward and forward, always, upward and forward, watching for the slightest change in a piece of ribbon. Main halyard at the ready or a quick tweet to the traveller in order to reach that sweet spot where you don't have to do anything, balanced on the edge of a blunt wind. It's during these moments that I sit back with practical understanding of the physics involved of balancing all the forces at play and, breathing deeply, I intuitively feel and appreciate the connection that is made. That ever important relationship, not with nature, no, not with the water or the wind but with the One. The One who created all these things. It's then that I understand and know why I sail.
Fair Winds and Following Seas
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