The Bermuda 1-2 race begins in Newport, Rhode Island, a week from Friday. There's a lot that I will miss when Robin is absent from the starting line.
There is the camaraderie with the other sailors, several of whom have become friends since we first began competing in 2007. The regulars are a wonderful mix of personalities, the same juicy social concotion you'd find in any group of very active people; local legends and borderline lunatics, egomaniacle boasters, nearly shy wallflowers, the pretentious, the extremely competent and always the funny and the fascinating. I can't think of one of them I've not enjoyed, and so of course they will be missed.
I'll also not get to sail back from Bermuda with the best crew anyone could have -- Monica. Those two trips, in 2007 and 2009, were filled with adventure and were, in truth, the most intense sailing she and I have done together in our lives. First time it was eight days, and we arrived back in Newport at 3 a.m. under a moonless sky. The second time, we'd come through a storm that took our self-steering devices (both the windvane and the electric autopilot.) We arrived in about six days, under power and out of the race. But still, it was an incredible six days with the one I love.
But while I'll miss both of those components of this race, I've just recently understood that what I'll miss most -- since you can have both of the above when you're ashore -- is the wonderful, prolonged solitude that a singlehanded race affords.
You make a decision to sail singlehanded six hundred plus miles offshore with the knowledge that you are doing something with risks and that you, alone, are responsible for avoiding those risks.
The first time, you decide to go and hope that you have the knowledge, the skill and the good sense to reach your distination safely. The second time, you know you have those qualities, and you smile as you await the starting gun, welcoming the undisturbed days you are about to spend, prepared to find your way to fit into the rhythms of the sea and of the days and nights, ready for the blowing rain, the lightning, the crystaline pinpricks of stars on an otherwise black night where the heavens above reach down to embrace you, to take you in as one of their own.
I will miss all of that very much. It couldn't be this year, but 2013 will arrive soon enough and by then, Robin will, we hope, be eager and ready.