Episode 28: Missions 2026 accomplished - “Good girls go to heaven, the rest go wherever they please.”
A special-cuvée champagne A special-cuvée champagne A special-cuvée champagne Mission 2026 accomplished
On Sunday 20 September, after 250 nautical miles and a century of history in our wake, we landed in Geneva, our bags full of wonderful memories.
It all began on 5 September 2026. Six women boarding a 45-foot sailing boat on the island of Carloforte, off the south-west coast of Sardinia. On paper, our mission looked simple: two weeks to sail, to train and, above all, to learn how to be a crew.
The reality was rather more complicated. Some of us already knew one another well, others did not, and our experience at sea varied enormously. A few other questions were lurking at the back of our minds: am I fit enough? Do I really know my knots? What if I get seasick? And not forgetting the main challenge: how do you tame a ten-tonne beast and work with the elements? So, to blazes with the doubts. Let’s go.
First of all, we built up our technical skills under the kindly eye of Yoda, our skipper. We went over the manoeuvres until the movements became natural and we found our collective rhythm. We also learned from our fumbles and from the unexpected turns that sailing inevitably throws at you. Whoops, the anchor running out too fast to the bottom. Blast, the chain jamming and refusing to go down. “What’s that odd thing dangling at the top of the mast? It looks like a VHF aerial…” It is at moments like these that our skipper fully earns her nickname: when everything goes sideways, Yoda always finds the solution.
Alongside the technical side, our communication adjusted too. More and more we had those moments when nobody speaks any more and a glance exchanged during a manoeuvre is enough. Somewhere between two tacks, the fine-tuning of the sails and the miles slipping by under the hull, something was being built. Not to mention the long evening conversations, the stories of adventures lived in every corner of the world. We talked a great deal, laughed a great deal, shared a great deal. Deep stories, light ones, and some completely improbable.
What helped, no doubt, were the moments of sheer joy. Reaching at ten knots in a well-established Force 4, the boat accelerating and that heady feeling that, for a few instants, everything is exactly where it belongs. There were the dream coves where we did not exchange a word for two hours, listening to the cicadas and the clanking of cowbells. And the small things: Niki’s excellent cooking, a coffee-ground body scrub that did not rinse off as easily as expected, cucumber face masks, the regular swabbing of the deck (good grief!), a few flights on the gennaker halyard. What else? This cruise let us live fully in the present moment, to the rhythm of things that are in the end very simple: the wind, the boat, each other, the anchorages, the meals.
So, no mutiny to report? No Ponyo in a remake of Pirates of the Caribbean? Quite the opposite. What we will remember is the openness to one another, and the goodwill that gives each woman her place. It is the richness that arises when six different paths meet on a few square metres, with the sea for a horizon. You learn a great deal from others by listening to them, and perhaps more still by watching them: how they react, how they help, how they take their place or leave it to someone else. On board, each of us gradually found hers, without ever being boxed into it. The roles circulated, the reflexes built up and, almost without noticing, we grew together. And to crown it all, we celebrated two christenings. Welcome to Ponyo (Aline) and to Niki (Carinne).
To close: sailing in the wake of Bonita 1925 and of our five adventurers also meant looking differently at the landscapes we passed through. Retracing their track a century later, finding places again such as Capo Sant’Elia, Capo Cavolo and the Basilica of Our Lady of Bonaria, recognising what they had seen and noting what had changed. A century separated us. The boats, the means and the world had changed, but the sea and its challenges go on linking our stories.
So, mission accomplished? We set out to sail and to build a crew. We came back with a few new nicknames, more confidence and more closeness, and above all the wish to keep moving forward together. Because in the end, being a crew is perhaps not only about learning to sail well together. It is about learning to look in the same direction, while leaving each woman free to be fully herself.
Mission 2026 accomplished. Roll on next year, when we pick up Bonita’s wake properly, from Sardinia to Sicily.
Signed, the Bonitas
Ponyo, Flash, Niki, Jumpy, Yoda and Sunny
Sardinia, Italy, October 2026
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