On Fridays We Speak French
…the night we sailed 5 hours with a spotlight, headphones, and tea
We left the anchorage at 10pm, motoring out into the blackness with only a beam of light on the bow to guide us through the lobster pots and navigation markers. The occasional 4th of July firework lit up the night sky, bringing smiles to our faces. Perrine was on the bow with the spotlight, and I was at the helm, watching the chart and radar closely for any invisible hazards.
Darkness at sea can be quite disorienting. Without vision, other senses are heightened. The eerie, rhythmic songs of bell and gong buoys feel closer than they are. As I zoom around on my fancy chartplotter to navigate us, I can’t help but think about what it might feel like to do this without modern technology. No wonder there were so many shipwrecks!
Shortly after our departure, the moon appeared on our port side, deep orange and low on the horizon. Its color faded as it rose higher in the sky, but still, it gifted us with a little extra light to navigate with. As we are both new to cruising New England–the land of lobster pots–we weren’t sure how careful we really needed to be with our flashlight navigation. Airing on the side of caution, Perrine stayed up on the bow for almost the entire trip, only returning to the helm to sit with me whenever we passed over deeper water (where we felt the likelihood of lobster pots was quite low).
To communicate without waking our sleeping guests, we each popped a headphone in one ear and called each other on the phone. And as it was Friday, we spoke in French! A couple weeks ago, Perrine had the idea of instating “French Fridays,” on which we try our best to only speak in French to each other. Though I was once quite fluent, studying the language throughout college and living abroad in France for several months, my vocabulary has become very rusty in recent years. Seeing as Perrine is French, we decided this would be a fun exercise to help me brush up! Of course, it becomes difficult to stay in French when we have guests aboard, since we don’t want to be rude, but when we have uninterrupted time for conversation like we did during this night sail, it works quite well.
We remained this way for nearly 5 hours, happily chatting away in French. The use of this second language (for me) made the entire journey more enjoyable! It stimulated my brain so much that I hardly felt the sleepiness that should’ve been overtaking me.
Thinking about the whole situation from afar, I laughed to myself. Just two 20-something year old girls just sailing through the night speaking French and drinking tea along the coast of New England. Not another soul around. Aside from a strange, chaotically lit fishing vessel and one other small boat, we saw no one.
As the hours passed, we talked about everything under the sun (or moon, I suppose)...We told stories from our past, discussed the strange fishing vessel, relayed information about which navigational lights we should be seeing next, etc. I nearly responded to the fisherman in French on the VHF!
Around 4am, we approached the Stonington breakwaters. Entering a harbor at night, especially one you’ve never visited before, is always a challenge. However, I find it more fun than scary. I tend to envision the landmarks from the chart before I can actually see them, and once they appear in real life, I’m either validated or confused. (Ideally not the latter.) This entrance went very smoothly. Though there were many unlit markers, the beam of light Perrine was shining back and forth was enough to catch their reflective tape, enabling me to match them with what I was seeing on the chart.
The anchorage in Stonington is quite small, wedged between two mooring fields and a channel. Fortunately for us, we found a nice spot just next to a large sailing superyacht and promptly dropped the hook. The satisfaction of safely navigating 38 nautical miles in the darkness and anchoring smoothly in a new harbor was reward enough for our sleeplessness. After standing watch for several minutes to ensure our anchoring spot was secure, we tucked in for a well-earned 4 hours of sleep before our next long day ahead!
