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ON THE WIND
By Chris Caswell

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I realized that one of the pleasures of sailing is the ability to return to darkness. Sitting in a quiet cove, with the horizon marked by the
scissored black cut-outs of pine or palm trees, is to know pure relaxation. The stars may be reflected, if you’re lucky, in the smooth water, or you may see the anchor lights of other boats moving in gentle arcs against the constellations.

January 2006

Sailing takes you far from the light-polluted
world

We were standing outside my garage, Leo and I, in the warmth and humidity of the Florida night. Leo is my across-the-street neighbor and he’s a good guy, even if he does have a powerboat. No, actually he’s a Great Guy, because he loaned me a generator after Wilma ravaged our part of Florida.

Being willing to loan a generator, when there is no refrigeration, no ice, no air conditioning, or anything else that we take for granted, is above and beyond. It’s like the stranger who says, “Hey, need a kidney transplant? Take mine.”

It was a beautiful night and we were looking off to the east. Leo said, “You can see the loom of lights in Palm Beach.” I looked at him like he had just grown fangs and pointy ears. “Loom,” I asked? “Loom? Where did that come from?”

It’s a word I hadn’t heard in years, particularly considering the light pollution that is now the accepted norm. Loom is the slightly eerie glow to the sky caused by lights from a city below, and sailors have used it to check their navigation for centuries.

On a long overnight race, you’d scan the horizon for the loom of the city where you were finishing, or you might watch for the occasional loom of a lighthouse even when you couldn’t see the light beam itself.

And it was, of course, the perfect word. Saying, “Gee, look at the lights reflecting in the clouds” sounds sort of lame, as does “How come the sky is so bright over there?” No, loom is the right word because the glow does seem to loom up in the night sky.

Normally, you’d never notice the loom in my area because I’m so surrounded by cities that the entire night sky is diminished by the light. It’s the reason that astronomers are putting their telescopes on mountain tops in Peru just so they can see distant stars invisible from the rest of our light-polluted world.

That darkness was, perhaps, the only pleasure I derived from our slow tango with Wilma. With no electricity in our area, there were no street lights, no billboards, none of the flickering blue shadows from televisions. The only break in the darkness was a passing car, a flashlight as someone ventured onto sidewalks littered by trees and downed power lines, or an occasional candle.

None of this was enough to lessen the immense black bowl of the night sky, shotgunned with pinpricks of light from distant galaxies. It made for enjoyable nights, even if I didn’t have cold beer or ice cream.

I searched my shelves until I found the plastic star-finder, and settled outside to see what could be seen. Even with the naked eye, I could pick out many of the constellations overhead, just like men had done for thousands of years.

I realized that one of the pleasures of sailing is the ability to return to darkness. Sitting in a quiet cove, with the horizon marked by the scissored black cut-outs of pine or palm trees, is to know pure relaxation. The stars may be reflected, if you’re lucky, in the smooth water, or you might see the anchor lights of other boats moving in gentle arcs against the constellations.

One of the strangest experiences I’ve had at sea was being becalmed in the middle of the Pacific at night on a mirror-smooth sea. The stars, and even the moon, were so perfectly reflected that you couldn’t find the horizon, so it seemed as if our boat was a satellite in space, surrounded above, below and on all sides by stars.

There is something about the night sky that puts everything in perspective. It can make you feel very, very small and insignificant but, at the same time, it can connect you to the universe and make you feel so alive.

Sadly, our go-go-rush-rush world doesn’t have much time for night skies. Too often, I look around an anchorage and hear the sound of televisions or video games when there should be families sprawled in the cockpit or on the foredeck sharing the awe of the universe. Why can’t they miss an episode of “CSI Wherever” or “Lost” in exchange for seeing Venus rise above the horizon? Or to really see the man in the moon?

As a youngster, I’d grown up with a fascination and a respect for the night sky, in part because my father had been a wartime navigator who could glance at the sky and rattle off Betelgeuse, Sirius and Polaris, the Pole Star, faster than most people read road signs.

After graduating from dinghies to ocean racers, I acquired one of those plastic sextants and discovered the satisfaction of being able to place myself with some certainty on earth. At first, of course, I surprised myself by being in unusual places such as Morocco or somewhere in the Bering Sea when I thought I was in my own backyard. With practice, I could confidently put my hand on a page-sized chart of California and know that I was somewhere under my hand.

Unfortunately, I think that GPS and satnav and even video games have made any interest in the stars seem as antiquated as the horse and buggy. Kids today seem to have better things to do than watch for meteors.

One reason the sky was so primeval after the hurricane was that flight operations didn’t resume at nearby airports for several days, so there were none of the flashing lights on passing airliners, although I was mildly amused to see an occasional pinprick of moving light: satellites. Those weren’t in the skies above Viking raiders or Roman oarsmen or Lord Nelson’s fleet, and the only moving lights in Nat Herreshoff’s universe were meteors.

You don’t have to endure a hurricane to rediscover the night sky, because it can be there any time you sail. You don’t even have to find a deserted anchorage, because all you need is to get far enough away from the light pollution of civilization to see the stars.

Too many sailors think of sailing at night as a necessary evil to be endured when your daysail lasts too long, but sailing at night can be a joy with the sails black against the starry sky. Sailing really can connect you with the stars again: just remember to look up.

After Leo sauntered off, I realized I was so surprised by his use of the word “loom” that I hadn’t been jealous of those who were causing the loom with their electricity.

After all, I had the night sky and they didn’t.

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