The Eighty2 departs on the departure date at the departure time. Not approximately. Not when everyone is aboard. At the time the weather window requires and the passage plan determined and the twelve members were told when they booked.
This is not the rigid enforcement of the rule for the sake of the rule. It is the expression of the specific quality of the offshore sailing life that makes the offshore sailing life what it is: the departure time is the departure time because the offshore passage has conditions, the weather window, the tidal timing, the daylight for the harbour exit, the passage schedule for the next anchorage, that the departure time was chosen to use correctly, and the departure that happens one hour later is the departure into the conditions that the one-hour delay produced rather than the conditions that the departure time was planned around.
Most of the people who join the Naora membership live in the professional life where the start time is the approximate start time, the meeting that begins five minutes late because the previous meeting ran over, the dinner reservation that begins when the last person arrives, the schedule that accommodates the person whose circumstances produced the delay.
This is the professional and social flexibility that the functional adult life requires. It is also the structure that the departure time of the offshore sailing passage does not accommodate, not because the offshore sailing life is inflexible but because the offshore life is inflexibly accountable to the conditions it depends on rather than the convenience it provides.
What the Fixed Departure Gives the Member
The fixed departure is the kindest thing we do because it produces the commitment that the offshore sailing experience requires to be the offshore sailing experience. The member who arrives the evening before and sleeps and boards at the agreed time has made the commitment in the physical form, they are there. The commitment is complete. The offshore life begins when the mooring lines are let go, and the mooring lines are let go at the time the passage requires them to be let go.
There is a specific quality to the morning of the departure that the member who has arrived the evening before and slept and is at the boat at the right time receives and that the member who arrived the morning of and was rushing to make the departure does not receive in the same quality: the composure of the person who has nothing urgent to resolve because they resolved everything the day before.
The departure from this composure is a different departure from the departure from the rush. The offshore life that begins in the composure is the offshore life that produces what the offshore life is supposed to produce. The boat departs on time. This is the beginning of the gift.
