Category: sea

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moorings

It’s always leaving, that’s what this sailing life is. It’s making a fresh friend and then casting off the lines that tie you and drifting away into the dawn.

I love so much, that’s my problem. I moor myself readily to each new dock in each new harbour, my heartstrings and dock lines pulling tight in the wind. And then we’re off again, your unattachable heart merrily seeking the next temporary destination while I’m still trying to undo the knots I’ve looped myself ashore with. And it’s not just people I grow fond of: the rounded hills at the mouth of the loch across the sound, the sudden misted glows in the sky behind the boat yard, the night-time curve of the village lights around Marine Road… And that grey-cloaked heron croaking by each eve, and the wee rock pipit flitting from deck to deck in the mornings, and the eiders which are always paddling about, calling to each other in incessant gulps and gargles.

So now, at the end of another winter’s berthage, I’m brimming over like this bay at this high tide. I used to be a solitaire, but there’s something about these groups when you find them – the friendly marina crew, the happy gang of harbour staff, the quick communities of sailors sharing docks and drams – all these sea friends and shore friends; all this coming and going in my heart.

Port Bannatyne marina, Bute, Argyll, Scotland
11th April 2018

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North Sea crossing

Still shellshocked, seashocked, windstruck, hullshaken. Still lolling, rolling, rocking. Still rippling swells rising in my eyes, tipping in my ears. Still dizzy, a bit faint, the ground not entirely steadied. Still stiff, my muscles taut from pressing my back into the swinging berth, trying to hold myself there, trying to stay still. But even ashore there’s still no stillness. Even ashore there’s no rest.

Måløy, Norway to Lerwick, Shetland
21st July 2017

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circle

6.30 pm, 66°13’13″N. An Arctic tern wings past the sun, which is high in the west above a row of bunched fluffy grey clouds. A broad platinum path blazes to the horizon beneath it. The east wind is getting colder and the mountains behind it increasingly snow-covered: an unending panorama of tiny pointed peaks, uplifting and continually startling to look at. Ahead loom the Træna islands, steep bumps growing ominously; one island a single jagged fang, almost frightening to look at.

9.35 pm, 66°28’54″N. The wind has picked up to about fifteen knots and we’re flying along at well over six. Up, up we go, over the surface of the rounded world, the minutes of latitude rushing by our hull.

9.45 pm, 66°30’0″N. We’re looking into the Arctic now, past the sharp teeth of Træna, towards distant ranges of snowy peaks, whipped like icing on a Christmas cake. A slight yellow glow warms their north-west-facing hollows as the sun slowly gravitates across the sky; as we ride north to greet it.

10.08 pm, 66°33’02″N. I sit with the handheld GPS and watch the numbers tick upwards.

10.14pm, 66°33’48″N. We have crossed the Arctic Circle! The sun lies behind a bank of grey cloud in the north-west with small scraps of cloud below it outlined in livid gold. A patch of rainbow hangs in front of the mountains to the east, the sharp peaks beyond all softened by the sun’s rosy-tinged touch. Ahead, above the northern horizon, a clear band of sky stretches like a luminous yellow promise. We sail on towards it.

foredeck and mainmast of boat on cold sea with pale yellow light on the far horizon ahead

Norwegian Sea
8th June 2017

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kindliness

Sea of the Hebrides: The skipper often comments on how sea-kindly Ara’ Deg is, how well her hull is shaped for the sea. Slim-bodied and long-keeled, she rides the water gracefully, large seas as well as calmer ones, maintaining direction and momentum and moving with and round the waves rather than against them.

Sailing in Ara’ Deg, we become sea-kindly too, the sea abrading the hard edges we’ve built up on land, gradually smoothing and softening us. As it always does, lapping and licking with gentle admonishing waves or relentlessly pounding us under steep surges of nausea, the sea wears us down, breaching our resistance, until we are humbler and kinder, until we are less.

Lochinver harbour: The sea smooths but the wind sharpens, tearing strips off us and whittling the edges of our words until their slightest glance will draw blood. We’ve come in from the open sea and are tied up to a dock but the wind screams through, cold and shearing and unrelenting. And so we lie here, straining at our ropes, underslept and restless, waiting for a lull, waiting for kindness to return.

Castlebay to Lochinver
2nd May 2017

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Castlebay

on a calm mooring
on a calm morning

Castle Bay, Barra, Western Isles, Scotland / Bàgh a’ Chaisteil, Barraigh, Eilean Siar, Alba
22nd April 2017

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marina

I sent photos of the marina: the still water brightly gleaming, the hills snow-covered in the distance, the boat bathed in soft late afternoon sunlight. I invited them to come and visit, telling them of how spectacular the sunset had been and adding that we still have some Aberlour aboard. Later I tucked myself into a thick downy cover beside a slowly ticking wood fire and thought snugly of them over there on the mainland, held in Glasgow’s bright busy lights.

I thought I would slide quickly into a deep sleep but instead I listened to the wind pick up and wheech round the breakwater, the halyard of the boat in the next berth start clacking against its mast; felt the waves start slapping, felt the boat begin its classic dockside jerk and sway. In the morning I woke cold and underslept and significantly less smug. But then the water stilled itself, the hills glowed rosy in the morning sun and, walking out from the marina a few hours later, a small white flower stood pink-edged against the blue twilight chill.

Boat life. Nothing beats it.

pink-tinged daisy flower seen from the side in front of blue sky, blue water and low dark hills in twilight

Port Bannatyne, Isle of Bute, Argyll, Scotland
22nd November 2016

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the wee things

It’s the wee things, always the wee things. Whether in the middle of the daily routine or swept up in a great adventure, it’s the small gesture which catches us and which somehow, surprisingly, completes.

On the moortop, the stretching views and snow-struck hills are focused into the tiny buffeting of a small white downy feather caught in the yellowed grass. On the sea, the rough grace of the Minch is collected into the handful of froth thrown up by a rogue wave slapping us broadside, which catches the sun before it falls, making a momentary rainbow.

Beauty blooms so quickly.

Cwm Garw, Glamorgan, South Wales / The Minch, north-west Scotland
11th February 2016

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tenderness

It was a dark and stormy night when we arrived, dropping anchor finally at midnight. Ara’ Deg, our ship, had borne us through it, her yard snapped and her mainsail useless, but ploughing on with her foresail and newly-fixed engine. It was rough sailing but we tied ourselves on, and up and down the waves through hammering rain she carried us, two bodies in one.

We rode it out together – the skipper kept us sailing and I kept my nerve – and we’re glad for that. But when the morning comes and the sky clears, we take separate tenders to row ashore to the sunny Irish harbour we find ourselves beside.

We tie them up at a set of stone steps on one of the piers. Each is tethered with its own painter and each has its own shape and buoyancy – one a rigid fibreglass shell, the other a plump inflatable. As such, they have divergent trajectories of drift, as we do once we climb up onto land. Yet while we are gone the tide – washing in, washing out – nudges them together. And when we return, there they are, sitting on the exposed sand, gunnel to gunnel, as if despite their different tendencies they belong together after all.

small scruffy fibreglass tender and inflatable grey tender beached side by side

Kilronan, Inishmore, Aran Islands, Ireland / Cill Rónáin, Inis Mór, Oileáin Árann, Éire
15th September 2015