John F Kennedy was the consummate helmsman, figuratively and literally. His long political career, first as a Congressman and US Senator, then as America’s President, was a case study in steering and trimming his sails to take maximum advantage of constantly changing conditions.

He had the instinctive ability to read the ever-shifting public mood, to gauge fluctuating political realities, and to react to them immediately.

When his intuition occasionally failed him, as in the disastrous 1961 US-backed Bay of Pigs invasion intended to oust the Soviet Union’s puppet regime in Cuba, Kennedy learned from his humiliating experience.

He accepted full responsibility for the fiasco, made sweeping changes in the upper echelons of the US national security apparatus and, a year later when confronted by the Cuban Missile Crisis, steered a calm, resolute and successful course through that harrowing exercise in nuclear brinkmanship.

Perhaps not surprisingly, he often credited his lifelong love of the sea for the skilled, steady and largely unshowy helmsmanship he brought to public life.

Kennedy grew up on the water. The greatest love of his life was arguably the 26-foot sailboat Victura he owned from the age of 15 and he was decorated for gallantry as a result of his military service in the US Navy during the Second World War.

So trust Kennedy to invoke the almost mystical connection which exists between all of us and the ocean during some otherwise dry, largely business-like remarks to a dinner for 1962 America’s Cup crews.

“I really don’t know why it is that all of us are so committed to the sea, except I think it’s because in addition to the fact that the sea changes, and the light changes, and ships change, it’s because we all came from the sea,” he said. “And it is an interesting biological fact that all of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears.

“We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea — whether it is to sail or to watch it — we are going back from whence we came.”

He ended by reminding the American and Australian sailors and organisers competing for the Auld Mug in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1962 they might be racing against one other, but they were also racing with one another against the always changing wind and sea, against always unpredictable conditions.

He hardly needed to add that much the same applies in other areas of life.

The fact we may be in competition against one another in politics, business or some other area does not mean our roles are not actually complementary. We have common goals in mind and common hazards to overcome. The slain President’s words should still resonate in modern Bermuda, now to host both the 2017 edition of the America’s Cup as well as the qualifying regattas.

Every Bermudian, being born within a mile of the water, is bred amphibious, a distinguished chronicler of our people and folkways once famously observed. So we all know that surpassing tie to the sea Kennedy described as well as we know our own names.

But whether we spend much time on the water or not, most of us understand the broader meaning of what he was saying — the need for all of us to steer and trim our sails so as to take maximum advantage of constantly changing conditions, the need to demonstrate adroit helmsmanship to reach the most desirable destination.

The America’s Cup and its Qualifiers present Bermudians with an enviable, world-class opportunity to pursue the common cause, to overcome common obstacles.

It is an opportunity for us to put aside the fractiousness and disunity which so often characterises Bermudian public affairs and so often results in each side pressing its own end to the neglect of the common good — and achieving precisely nothing whatsoever.

It is an opportunity to tighten our community bonds by embracing what could be a genuine community-building exercise and then to move Bermuda forward with that renewed sense of confidence and purpose which comes from success.

And it is up to all of us to be helmsmen in this undertaking. As someone once said, the pessimist complains about the wind while the optimist simply expects it to change. The genuine leaders adjust the sails and steer windward.