There’s a moment in every passage when the horizon stops looking like a line and starts looking like a doorway, one that has led to some of my richest, weirdest, most memorable landfalls in life.
This doorway has opened my world to a forgotten rocky cove in New England where lobster pots outnumber townspeople. There was a sunburned cay in the Caribbean where the bar ran out of ceviche before noon (tragic) but the rum kept flowing. And there was the foggy inlet in the Pacific Northwest where the water was so still, it reflected the cedar trees upside down. I half expected to meet a totem pole carver paddling out to greet us.
None of these places were on my must-see lists. None had popular marinas or cocktail menus with foamy signatures.
And yet, they’re the ones I still think about, especially now as we roll into the holiday season with its built-in nostalgia. There’s just something about those out-of-the-way places and the people who make them unforgettable.
In “The Man on the Beach” in the November/December 2025 issue, author Fabio Potenti captures the feeling perfectly. He and his crew found themselves on a speck of an island in the heart of the Pacific where a Fijian cattleman named Mua welcomed them with a sevusevu ceremony, fresh coconut milk and a dawn climb to a hilltop view that stretched forever. What stuck for Potenti wasn’t just the island’s beauty, but Mua himself: his rituals, his quiet humor, his generosity, his sense of belonging to the land and sea.
I’ve never been to Fiji, but I’ve been on enough docks, dinghies and backwater anchorages to know the magic of meeting the man on the beach, or the woman running the dockside café, or the kid who shows you the shortcut to the bakery. I imagine every sailor reading this magazine has a Mua somewhere in the logbook too.
I think back to an autumn cruise down the Eastern Seaboard. We dropped the hook in a Lowcountry gunkhole so small, the town dock was a glorified picnic table with cleats. A local crabber rowed over at sunrise (his engine had quit) and asked if we had a spark plug wrench. We did. He left us a paper bag of still-steaming blueberry muffins his wife had baked that morning.
Or the time in Sint Maarten when I misjudged a crosscurrent and managed to “park” my charter boat against the last piling on the dock, loudly, in front of an audience. A local kid hopped down, tossed my line to the right cleat and made me look like I’d meant to do it that way. He didn’t even stick around for a tip.
In the Pacific Northwest, where the rain and fog can make you feel like you’re starring in your own black-and-white film noir, I remember slipping into a cove lined with old cedar pilings, remnants of a Native American fishing village. We walked the beach at low tide, following patterns of clamshells and cedar bark. The sense of history was so strong, we could almost hear it underfoot.
These experiences all share a theme: kindness given and received, respect earned and returned. Arrive as a visitor, leave as a friend. That’s the real gift of cruising: the slow accumulation of human connections.
As sailors, we talk a lot about spare parts, reefing early, keeping a weather eye. But the best preparation for any passage might just be packing an open mind and a generous spirit. Offer the first wave. Learn a few words of the local language. Bring an extra bundle of kava roots or a bag of cookies. Share your tools. Listen more than you talk. These gestures are the cruising equivalent of good seamanship.
And remember to be good to yourself. Cruising can be as humbling as it is rewarding. Mistakes happen, gear breaks, tides surprise you. Give yourself the same patience you give others. Laughter helps. So does remembering why you went cruising in the first place.
Carry a little of Mua’s spirit with you. Slow down. Accept the coconut milk. Climb the hill for the view at sunrise. Say thank you. Leave a muffin.
Whether we’re crossing oceans or gunkholing in the local bay, we’re all in this together. One big, salty, slightly rum-spattered community of wanderers.
