I have been reading books by Bernard Cromwell now for nearly a year. I felt I needed save the following excerpt from his book Crackdown. “ I like the sounds of a boat sailing at night. The sounds are the same as those of daylight, yet somehow the night magnifies and sharpens the creak of a yielding block, the sigh of air over a shroud, the stretching of a sail, the hiss of water sliding sleek against the hull, the curl of a quarter-wave falling away, and the thump as a wave strikes the cutwater to be sheared into two bright slices of whiteness. I like the purposefulness of a boat at night as it slits a path across an empty planet. I like the secretiveness of a boat in the blackness, when the only thing to dislike is the prospect of dawn, which seems like a betrayal because, at night, in a boat under sail, it is easy to feel very close to God—for eternity is all around.” Those words really struck home as I experienced the same feelings when standing watch alone at night.
