The difference is that at sea you can not drive to the shoulder when you do not even know what to do. You do not even have a brake. Even if you are spared a storm you have to overcome some challenges. On waters often you can not see your road, but if you miss it your boat will break a leak and sink. The trucks you meet on the road are at sea huge freighters with the multiple speed of a sailing boat. They indeed have to avoid your sailing boat by law but they are so heavy and idle that in case of doubt your right will be of no use. Often the most difficult part of a sailing trip is docking at a narrow port. There the wind can be your friend or your enemy and it can develop enormous forces with a yacht of 4 until 16 tons even with taken in sails.

All driving licences for pleasure crafts includes a theoretical training an maritime law (ducking rules and nautical signs), seamanship (safety and handling a vessel), meteorology and navigation as well as a more or less intensive practical training of maneuvres for docking and taking off, man-over-board and driving a bearing.

If you understand the forces of nature it´s a great pleasure to control and to use them. And what could be more pretty than sailing alongside a coast only with the noise of sea and wind or to conquer faraway counties and harbours behind the horizon?

Certainly common to all sailors and mariners is the phenomenon as longer they had been sailing as more carefully and suppliantly to nature they are.

Photographer: Stefan Hein