Nature, Always the Winner

Please welcome Michael Uhrich as our first-ever guest blog contributor!

This excerpt- published with his permission- is part of a multi-part trip diary/travelogue that Mike is compiling which chronicles the delivery of a Lagoon 50 from Fajardo, Puerto Rico to the Chesapeake. The finished product will also include some of his excellent photography.

Mike is a wonderful friend and sailor with several thousand offshore passage miles under his belt. His bio and contact info are at the bottom of the page. Mike is available for deliveries and boat restoration consultation.

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There is a quiet beauty to a departure. At 4:30 a.m., coffee filled the cabin, sharp and black, a ritual of courage in a porcelain cup. We ate quickly, hardly tasting the food, the act more about readiness than appetite. By six, the lines slipped free. Geoffrey stood at the helm, steady as a metronome, guiding Lucero out of her slip with the calm of a man who had done this many times before. He was precise but unhurried, easing her stern away from the dock, coaxing her bow toward the channel. The boat seemed to trust him. For a moment, as the marina lights faded and the horizon opened, we still carried the illusion that we were in control.

But control at sea is a fragile thing — like mist, it vanishes in the first hard wind.

The harbor mouth widened, and the Atlantic lay waiting, silent and infinite. The sunrise painted Lucero’s bow in gold, the kind of blessing that tempts one to believe the day will honor your plans. At first, the ocean played at gentleness. Spray flicked across the bow, playful and bright. But as we pressed farther out, the sea’s voice grew sharper. The wind urged the spray higher, clawing at decks that should have stayed dry. The trampoline forward began to breathe water, each crest pushing through as though the ocean were reaching inside the boat to remind us of its presence. The north wind sharpened to twenty knots, hard and insistent. Lucero met it with both diesels roaring at 2400 RPM, no sails up to steady her. She climbed the waves like a mountaineer and then fell into troughs with bone-cracking force. Six feet became the new measure, not in any graceful sequence, but in chaos — confused, broken seas with no rhythm to count, no pattern to anticipate.

Inside, the cabin windows turned opaque, a white shroud of spray. The world outside ceased to exist, replaced by the roar and slam of water and fiberglass colliding. Ceiling panels shuddered, drawers rattled, every joint of the boat spoke in groans. It was not just noise, but revelation: we are small. Motion itself became rebellion. Standing up was an act of defiance, a dare against the sea’s authority. Each attempt to rise was punished by gravity, hurling bodies sideways into bulkheads, slamming knees into tables, bruising shoulders against doorframes. The floor was no longer floor but shifting geometry, tilting, falling, rising without pattern. Even sitting demanded vigilance, every muscle tensed against the next violent drop.

And in that struggle, I realized something: the ocean was not simply tossing us about. It was stripping away our illusions. We imagine we stand on solid ground, that our posture is our own. But out here, even standing upright is a privilege the sea grants — or denies. Control is revealed for what it is: temporary, conditional, borrowed. Lucero does not bow to us; we bow to her, and she bows to the waves. This was the pecking order.

When you fight the flow, you suffer twice — once from the blow, and again from the refusal. In that moment, bent against Lucero’s lurches, I understood. Defiance might lift you for an instant, but it is surrender — the acceptance of instability, of being carried — that keeps you alive.

And then, the sea truly revealed its hand. So far, this had only been the opening act!

In a moment, Lucero was lifted so high it felt like she had broken free of gravity, straining upward as though she might sprout wings. For a moment, she hovered in weightless silence. Then she crashed. The slam into the trough split the air like thunder. The entire super structure shuttered punctuated by the forward drop-down window released and crashed into its casing reacting to the downward inertia as if to say I’ve had enough! Lucero was desperately trying to communicate with us using the only words she knew. A wound two by three feet wide now lived where the window once hung. Ceiling panels surrendered, raining down inside. Water forced its way in, not in gallons, but enough — enough to strip away the last veil of safety.

It was in that crash that the illusion dissolved. Control—so dear to the human mind—was shown for what it is: a fiction. The great misperception? I think so, the belief that we command nature. The truth is otherwise. The wave does not negotiate. The tide does not wait. To sail is not to conquer, but to learn the art of participation.

Defying gravity, somehow Joe, Geoffrey, and I fought the window back into place, our fingers slipping, bodies bruised against the cabin walls. Somehow it held. But in that instant, we knew: this was no longer seamanship, but hubris.

Standing upright became an act of defiance, yet also a meditation. Balance was not found by resisting the motion but by flowing inside it. Breaker by breaker, the lesson deepened. A wall of water approached at eye level and this is where reality comes into complete clarity. It was humbling. The Atlantic did not ask for our mastery. It asked only that we listen, that we yield enough to move with its rhythm, and in doing so, remember that belonging is richer than control.

With the window up, Andy’s eyes found mine. He did not need to speak. The question was plain: Do we go on?

The sea had already answered. Another wave lifted Lucero, slammed her down with such force the hull itself seemed to cry out. That was the decree. The decision was made.

We turned.

A hard starboard, 180 degrees. Instantly, resistance ceased. The fury that had battered us became a helping hand. The north wind filled our backs. The waves that had risen as enemies now carried us home, sometime providing a mountain of water to slide down. Almost instantly, the violence gave way to relief, shoulders loosening, jaws unclenching. Silence fell across the crew — the silence of those who have glimpsed the edge and been spared.

We think we steer life as a helmsman steers a ship, yet more often we are like a man carried by a current. You don’t command the waves — you ride them. You don’t order the wind — you move with it. Our charts, forecasts, and engines were scaffolding built on the illusion of mastery. The sea brushed them aside as easily as foam on a crest. Out here, the perception of control dissolves like salt in water.

And the paradox is this: in surrender, there is safety. To fight every wave is to break. To yield is not defeat, but harmony with what already is.

By the time Charleston’s breakwater appeared again, humility had replaced pride. There was no shame in retreat — only wisdom. Forecasts had failed, but forecasts are only probabilities. The sea is an absolute. She is not cruel, not kind, only true.

At the dock, the familiar scar revealed itself: the main halyard had chafed again. Twice replaced, twice undone. Tomorrow, a rigger would mend it. Repairs to rope are simple; the deeper repair was in us.

That night, the Charleston sky blushed with sunset, and I thought of Geoffrey guiding Lucero from the dock at dawn with such calm. How quickly that sense of mastery dissolved the moment we left shelter. Perhaps that is sailing’s truest lesson: to move, within hours, from control to surrender. To learn that control is not something we hold, but something we imagine. The sea always wins. But her victory is not malice. It is simply the fact of what she is. And the gift is that she lets us try again tomorrow. To live another day, to see another sunrise, to make another attempt — sometimes, that is victory enough.

Captain Andy prepared to leave for his commitments on shore. His absence would be felt; his steady presence at the helm and calm judgment in heavy seas had become part of Lucero’s rhythm. Yet sailing is always about transition—crews change, winds shift, and each new configuration asks for its own balance.

The next leg north would belong to me, to Joe, to Geoffrey, and to Geoffrey’s son, Ben. A new crew, a new chance. We would inherit the lessons of the past days, carrying forward not just the boat, but the humility the sea had already impressed upon us. For now, though, there was nothing more to do. The tools were stowed, the lines secured, the boat quiet against her berth. The night air softened the sting of salt still clinging to our clothes, and fatigue pressed down heavier than the day’s seas. Tomorrow would bring its own demands, but this evening asked only for rest. And so we yielded, letting go of thought and plan, the boat rocking gently under a sky that seemed, for once, to be at peace.

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Michael Uhrich is a musician, teacher, sailor, with 26 years of sailing experience. A jazz musician and recording engineer, he has spent decades guiding students while pursuing voyages by sea and bicycle that shape his perspective. He passionately resurrects old sailboats and documents his journeys through photography, video, and writing.

For delivery inquiries, Mike is at rruhrich@gmail.com