The sailing community around the world came together in mourning in June. The news of solo sailor Charlie Dalin’s death settled thick and heavy, as if moist winds of grief had rolled in from the south and condensed into a low-lying sea fog.

A grey veil descended, obscuring harbour walls of racing ports far beyond France for a time, as we parked up in a collective sorrow. Then thunderstorms raged. And finally the fog lifted, leaving in its wake the lasting wound of a fresh cut breeze.

It takes a special type of legend to earn this kind of global admiration and respect. Charlie Dalin was one of those forces of nature. To use Henry Van Dyke’s famous last words: “Gone from our sight. That is all.”

In reflecting on Dalin’s illustrious career, it’s hard not to think about the incredible feat he achieved – not just in two line honours finishes in two consecutive Vendée Globes, but the fact that he achieved the latter overall win while undergoing cancer treatment. To me this is akin to the love letters to sailing and freedom sung by Moitessier.

Dalin said himself that he was “the happiest man in the world” the day he finished the Vendée. But clearly there was something special for him in the pursuit of a solo around the world race itself, as well as in sailing up the channel into Les Sables d’Olonne to come home a winner.

His story is so thought provoking, it tempts us to ask ourselves would we make the same choice? Would I, given the chance, pursue a ‘race of my dreams’ – even if it meant sailing away from shore for months on end while tackling such a heavy diagnosis?

But it’s impossible to know our answer until we face it for real. And more importantly, it’s the wrong question.

Sailing isn’t a job. Or just a means to an end or destination. Sailing is itself the summit. And for everyone that mountain takes a different form. Every sailor hears something in the wind that pulls them away from the security of the shore.

And while we can’t know for sure how intense our love affair with the ocean really is until it’s tested for real, we can look deeper at what this moment would really ask us. How is sailing meaningful to you?

To honour those heroes who were pulled out to sea by something so powerful it was worth risking everything, we should ask ourselves ‘What is my Siren call?’

Excellent sailors are defined by race results and technical mastery. But the great sailors? They are defined by that and the depth of their relationship with the sea. That soulful connection that leads them to make extraordinary and courageous decisions, as well as sail in a way that is unmistakably their own. That’s true seamanship.

Like most young people, when I began sailing I thought very much in polarities. Straight out of an education system in which there was a sliding scale between pass and fail, naturally I thought the same applied: that there were good sailors, bad sailors, and right and wrong ways.

I concentrated on learning the rules and the laws of physics, practising proven safety techniques, and reading up on data. It was useful to learn the science of sailing, but it wasn’t enough.

If I could go back in time I’d tell my younger self to think more about her connection with sailing. There is a romance that cannot be unwoven from the fabric of this sport. We all, in one way or another, love sailing as much as life itself.

I’d tell her to stop twisting and contorting herself into a version of a skipper she thought was correct by other peoples’ standards and quit trying to be the sailor she ‘ought’ to be. And instead, ask herself what is sailing’s real magic? Then channel it. So that she can better withstand the real, hard, character-defining challenges that offshore and ocean sailing inevitably presents.

If the science of seamanship teaches us how to sail, the art of seamanship teaches us why. The greatest sailors master both.

Charlie Dalin didn’t just teach us how to win a Vendée Globe. Plenty of sailors can explain the routing, the foils and the weather. He reminded us that the deepest reserves of courage are drawn not from skill or expertise, but from love. Love of the sea and of sailing and of freedom and of – well, whatever else you find out there!

Every great sailor heard that call in a different way.

Our task isn’t to imitate them.

It’s to discover our own.

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