The Longest Night

The Atlantic Coast of France, in May, approaching the longest day of the year. The day was beautiful, but inside, my stomach turned violently. I knew this moment had to come in my sailing journey if I wanted to get closer to my dream: my first night alone sailing.

Before leaving the safety of land, my brain raced at 1,000 mph—every possible outcome and solution passed through my head.
At 6 pm, I slipped off the pontoons with the aim to be back in the same place by 8 am. Hardly the grandest sailing trip ever planned.

Étienne had worked out a course for me to sail. Leaving the harbor, I passed the shipwreck that reminded me of the consequences of one error, then sails up. The moment I shut the engine off, it was just me, the boat, and the wind in beautiful silence. My stomach began to settle.

Every boat that passed me leaving the channel, I took painful note of. Out of the channel and into the bay, I went to change sails. For the first time, I realized one false step on the bow and no one would come to get me. My knees, normally relaxed in a dance with the ocean’s motion, were stuck solid. Every movement seemed fraught with risk.

The boat began to speed up into the sunset, but I was too scared to trust myself to even take a photo of the spectacle in front of me. The boat started to hum. As day gave way to night, I neared the south of the island I was to go around. Behind it, the wind became unstable; each shift knocked me out of my rhythm. Each shift made my heart accelerate. The boat crashed over each wave, causing a shudder to pass through the boat and me.

Each second felt like the final second before something went horribly wrong.

The stars were crystal clear, each one shining like a diamond, unlike my mind, which raced into a blurry mess. The rocky coastline of the island at night seemed mismatched to its name, Belle Île.

Continuing to turn around Bellie Ile’s 14km radius, by now passing its offshore side, I saw another boat. Its direction ever-changing, its lights blinding me. My brief calm was shattered. In my mind, images of that shipwreck came back to me. I couldn’t figure out a safe way to pass this fishing boat. One moment we were going to have a collision; the next, it was fine. Too overcome by fear to even consider asking their skipper if they’d seen me.

With not-so-Belle Île getting further behind me, the bright lights of the city I left began to grow bigger. The boat beneath my feed started smooth out. The sky began to brighten, as did my nerves. Finding the buoys that marked the channel home, my heart began to calm, my brain started to slow, and my soul began to think I could survive a night alone sailing without sleeping.

This was originally written for a writing contest - its been on my computer for a while, I decided what the hell why not put it on here.