Summer Migration

It’s 4am and I’m standing at the helm, wide awake in excitement as we close the last 15 miles between us and land. A vibrant orange light seeps upwards from the horizon, sharply blending into the pre-dawn blue of the sky. Several stars are still visible. The water begins to glow as well—a deep, electric blue, as though it is charged with energy from the darkness of night. I’m amazed by the saturation of colors so long before sunrise. The light precedes the sun by over an hour. Every few minutes, the colors evolve, softening first to a pastel purple and pink, then back to orange and yellow as the sun finally peeks over the horizon.

With 20kts of apparent wind on the nose, I tack the boat in zigzags towards our destination. Why don’t you just go straight?? is a question I’ve been asked before. Well, what fun would that be?! The physics of sailing simply won’t allow that. In fact, it feels like the wind always makes you work particularly hard for those last few miles, almost as if it doesn’t want you to return to land.

This morning, I don’t mind. I embrace the feeling of hand steering, solo at the helm as my crew sleeps below. It’s chilly, but in a way that makes me feel alive, maybe even in a bit of a flowstate. As if the unfortunate wind direction wasn’t enough, I’m racing the tide, too. I’ve entered Long Island Sound with a favorable current, but the tide is about to switch. We were just a couple hours later than I’d planned. Just after sunrise, the waves began to build, forming short, steep mountains. We crash through them, bucking up and down. Just 10 miles to go! Our speed drops to a meager 4kts. We’re fighting it now. The wind builds to 25kts. It’s beginning to be quite unpleasant, actually! I turn on the engines to help push against the current. Somehow, these last 5 miles are the worst conditions we’ve had throughout the entire 1,111nm (I know, isn’t that a fun number!) trip north from the Bahamas.

I’ve been living aboard Tiger Lily for the past six months, sailing her from the Virgin Islands to Florida, then to the Bahamas, then up to North Carolina and onwards to New England, where I’ve just arrived. Though this is my first year on this boat, I’ve made the early summer run from Bahamas to North Carolina three times now. Moving boats around the world has begun to feel like a natural part of the changing seasons. Boats are like birds. They migrate north and south, always chasing warm temperatures. (Sometimes east and west too, but unfortunately, I haven’t experienced that migration just yet.)

It felt very full circle, sailing back into Wrightsville Beach, entering the familiar inlet at night and dropping anchor in Banks Channel. I spent six years of my life there! It’s where I grew up from child to adult—I graduated college, began my captaining career (maybe not in that order, actually), moved aboard a catamaran, and sailed off to the Caribbean for two winters. Last summer, I left North Carolina in search of something new, moving home to Michigan to rest and reflect. I hadn’t even been home for three weeks before I was offered my current position, captaining Tiger Lily. The timing was perfect—I spent an “in-between” summer traveling, visiting friends, and upgrading my sailing licenses, then in the winter, it was time to migrate back southwards to meet my new boat. I was jumping back into a very familiar seasonal cycle, just on another boat.

I’m always striving to have new experiences. I want to sail different boats, navigate foreign waters, explore new places, etc. Yet, there’s something beautiful about returning to a place. Knowing that you’ve gone and come back. Reentering a familiar world in a different capacity. Docking Tiger Lily next to my old boat, Bella, in Wrightsville Beach was wonderfully and terribly nostalgic. Maybe growth requires both seeking new experiences and revisiting old ones, to truly see how far you’ve come.

It was bittersweet to leave that familiar place, heading out into a dark ocean to continue the journey north. I took one last ocean dip at sunset, letting my skin and hair soak up the warm water. There won’t be any of that in Maine! This year, the geographical boundaries of my seasonal migrations have expanded in both directions—I’ll be going farther north than ever before, and heading farther south in the winter, as well. A known pattern, but new territory. Forever in that circular rhythm that sailing creates.