A sailboat never stops moving in water. Its perpetual motion fueled by wind and waves gives life to its inanimate body. Even at anchor and dock a sailboat reacts to external forces in an immediate way. Unlike land bound vehicles and motorized aircraft a sailboat moves with and not against forces of nature. It is a thing of beauty, a manmade phenomenon, a vessel made of curiosity for exploration.

We built boats as our first "spaceships" to go beyond the horizon across a liquid medium inhospitable to humans that makes up more than 70% of the earth's surface. The early Polynesians and Vikings were probably the first to venture farthest from shore to expand their horizons either by necessity, ambition or both. Both cultures traveled thousands of miles of open ocean to inhabit "new" lands. The Polynesians in particular landed on remote islands, mere dots upon a vast ocean, that had never been inhabited by humans. They were the first.
I could write pages on how remarkable the Polynesian voyages were, how navigating without instruments and charts and finding their way repeatedly is almost unimaginable, but they knew the way. They observed nature as a whole. They saw celestial bodies rise, fall and move across the sky. For them wind and waves put up signs, open sea highways built by forces external to planet earth itself. Billions of years makes for a lot of wisdom...and they tapped into it.
The early navigators were sailors. They searched their place in the universe to find their way. Maybe they understood that their place in this world was to show the way to others that we are not separate, but connected. Maybe they knew that as the planets and stars moved across the sky, and as our Sun stirred the wind and waves, and as our Earth's molten core of spinning magma created the islands they fell upon; they knew that they were part of it all and not lost. They had the chart all along and saw that all the roads lead back to us, that we our a celestial body by which others can find their way.

So what about the sailboat set upon the sea which holds the navigator? Well, it is the earth upon which he stands, his life pod set in perpetual motion by external forces, his vessel to find his way.

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