What an incredible night it is. A long, smooth swell comes at Robin’s stern, dark except where it reflects the light of a 99-percent full moon that shines down  from above the cockpit. About an hour ago, we saw the first lights of Block Island to the northwest. And then the city of Newport began setting off some spectacular fireworks, announcing our approach.

Or maybe it was for the tall ships.

We’re feeling pretty high right now at 10:30 p.m. as we make landfall in the United States. What began a long time ago as a passing thought and took root as a minor passion has almost been accomplished.

In the middle of the afternoon, however, it appeared that we were being visited by the ghosts of dead-calms past. The wind slowly backed around, as they say, from the northeast to the southeast and then, on the verge of becoming a nice southwesterly, died. I put the port whisker pole on the genoa. The sail hung limp, like laundry on a basement clothesline. The waves rocked Robin, and the boom clanged, whipped one way and the other by the mainsail. You know the feeling. We’ve been through this a couple of times.

By now, we just open up our reading material and begin the wait, knowing a wind will eventually stir.

My reading material was the book on clouds that, a couple of weeks ago, informed me of a coming gale when two little cumuli leaned east toward the morning sun. I looked for the picture of clouds that resembled what we were seeing. The news wasn’t good. They indicated, the book said, “no immediate change.”

The autopilot became superfluous. I turned it off, locked on a course, and Robin drifted to an easterly heading. Then it was a westerly heading. The wind gauge read one or two knots. But then it read two or three. I pushed the boom to starboard and tied a preventer in place and then began hand steering on a direct course for Newport.

It was as if the wind gods just wanted to be sure I was looking. Slowly, they huffed and they puffed and now, we have a 5 to 7 knot breeze from the west and are making 4.5 to 5 knots.

Now in the dark there are lights to the north and west. I just turned on the engine to run the radar to be certain we’re not aiming for a tug and barge like one we encountered here on the night of June 9. The breeze is cool. Monica is in her berth, but she’s ready to get up when we close in on Red Buoy No. 2, the finish line of the Bermuda One-Two, now 18.8 miles ahead.