What is a sailor?

What makes a sailor? Doing a few day sails here and there? Participating in local regattas? Knowing how to rig a boat and pour coffee underway without serving the bilge pump first?

After the Pacific Cup, I tend to agree with Erik Orsenna's definition. A sailor needs the following qualities:

1. Endurance: the sea operates on its own timeline, one that we need to adapt to. A storm or a day without wind will last however long the sea decides. All we can do is react to the situation
2. Physical strength: try to grind Nathan up Elise's mast and you'll understand...
3. Reading the weather: using instruments, technology, looking at the sky, the surface of the sea, etc...a sailor will anticipate and try to be ready, just ahead of the change.
4. Ability to make fast decisions: the sea can be violent, unpredictable (yes I know, I just talked about anticipation) and very very fast changes. Disaster can strike at any time - and it is almost guaranteed that on any passage, something will break. A sailor will have to react fast, for both safety and comfort.
   
5. Handyman: out at sea, It's McGyver style...and a long-distance race will probably be awfully suspect if nothing breaks. This is what I have begun to LOVE about sailing (boat ownership and a Pac Cup teaches you this) - look at a problem, try to figure out a simple way to solve it yourself, based on what you have around, or can easily get. Always make the best of imperfect circumstances. What a school of life!
6. The art of napping: night and day may differ only by the length of your watch...and given the uncertainty described above, a sailor will want to sleep whenever possible. There's never a 'well, I can sleep later this afternoon'...it's now or maybe not for a while...Also, sleep can be divided into infinitely small chunks of time...

More importantly, I think that a lot of sailors like the sea because it is a pure test of life: it's a place where the size of your wallet isn't so relevant - a place where your training, your preparation, your optimism and realism will make a difference. A place where sometimes, even these won't matter.

The sea is an indifferent blob of ondulating liquid. It is a rough, cold, wet or too hot, abrasive environment. It is hard on boats as it is on their crews. But it is so liberating to focus on the moment, even in planning - we plan for the next few hours, the next few minutes - one mile at a time - and we reduce our considerations to the most basic survival requirements: biological and naval.

The quest for self-fulfillment comes from our throwing ourselves against this moving wall, again and again. Until we see what finally sticks.