Thirty-six hours on the helm brought me to Isla Cedros. I’d waited three days, anchored in a sheltered cove on the mainland, before venturing across: two full days on either side of a long night of stars and clouds and a quarter-moon that came up very late after bright Venus had fallen below the horizon, and then a blue dawn that infused everything—the rocks of the island, Cormorant’s sails and equipment—in an azure haze. My watercolor was a tribute to solidity, to life in community, and to the fact that although the sea calls to us, we are terrestrial creatures.