Zen on the Bow

“The great thing about [horse] racing is she can get deeply immersed for two or three hours at a stretch. And it is completely different from her everyday work—a switch-out from what is going on in the world that is worrying or unhappy,” said Michael Osmond. “One of her private secretaries told me it has a very good, therapeutic effect.” – “Elizabeth the Queen, the Life of a Modern Monarch,” by Sally Bedell Smith

Sailing is like that, a switch-out indeed as we commune with the Great Outdoors. It is, in the title of the magazine cover illustrated, a voyage. (At $100 a copy, the magazine costs almost as much as a three-hour voyage.)

Of course, sailing is fun and healthy and athletic. But it is a voyage of discovery, and nowhere is that more the case than riding on the bow of the sailboat. Here we are on the quietest part of the boat, where the loudest sound is that of the water lapping at the hull. In the case of the York River, the waves rise one or two feet height. People fall asleep up here, and they fall in love. Come with Let's Go Sail and get engaged on the bow.

[Princess] Anne wrote that sailing gave her ‘’an utterly detached sensation that I have only otherwise experienced on a galloping horse. Testing your skill against nature, your ideals, and the person you would like to be." –Sally Bedell Smith