to starboard was the Sugar Loaf Mountain in the Wicklow Hills, south of Dublin in Ireland; the pimpleon the port quarter was the English Lake District topped by Scafell Pike; and the smudge (I almost swear to this) was the mountains of Galloway in Scotland. The great island astern, the continental center of things, with its magnificent bulk and all the signs of a thriving civilization, was the Isle of Man, from where I’d sailed five hours before.
The coffee had gone cold in the mug, and the motion of the boat was so slight that the surface of the coffee had crazed into a milky skin. Nothing moved except the sea itself, running like a deep river down to the ocean. I loved the breadth and stillness of it—the painted islands, the flawless wash of the sky, the winking, rainbow water. The stillness was so complete that the structural tensions of the boat itself were making themselves audible. Plank on beam; larch on oak. The woods were straining, each against the other, their acids bleeding and mingling as the sea pressed in. Not many people ever know quite such a magical solitude as this.
Then I saw that I had company. It was many miles away, as small as a gnat or a dust speck; an aircraft of some sort, flying fast and low over the water to the far south.
The weather was breaking when I came to the Isle of Man. I’d sailed down from the Clyde through the straits between Ulster and the Mull of Galloway, to find every wave in the Irish Sea snarling and baring its teeth. A thin rain was falling and there was no land to be seen anywhere.
Gosfield Maid
slammed and jolted like a country bus on a bad road. I sailed it up to where the Isle of Man should have been, and found just rain and lumpy sea and untidy rags of foam. The island was not where it was marked on the chart. Either that, or I wasn’t where
I
was marked on the chart. I checked and rechecked my last bearings. Nothing seemed wrong. I hunted with binoculars for a lighthouse or a cliff or the white water of a coastal shoal, and drew a monotonous greeny-gray blank.
As islands nearly always do, the Isle of Man came up unexpectedly, in the wrong place. It was steaming straightpast my bows like a rusty ship, and I half expected it to disappear again into the murk, flying a disreputable flag of convenience from its stern. I slid along its side where the water was calmer, grateful for the shelter it offered but not much impressed by the vessel itself. Only a very tired sea gull would have brightened at the sight of its dank greenstone cliffs, the dripping ledges of bare rock, the heather looking like a black fungus in the rain. A castle came and went—but after Scotland I was tired of castles. Then a dismal holiday place with an empty beach and a line of boardinghouses on a promenade.
At the southern end of the island there was an islet which looked even sadder and rainier than its parent; and between Man and the Calf of Man there was a narrrow channel, no wider than a city street, through which the tide was streaming like a millrace, the water humped and broken, piling against boulders, creaming white as it thundered through the Sound. What was oddest about this place, though, was that I could see the sea beyond and it was definitely
lower
than the sea on which I was afloat. Calf Sound was a hill of water, a chute through which one half of the Irish Sea was doing its damnedest to fill up the other.
I had been bored before; the life of Man had struck me as being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and mercifully, after only fifteen miles of it, short. But this was one of the most unboring performances that I’d ever seen the sea put up. I called the Manx coastguard over the radio and described Calf Sound to him in all its glory.
“And it’s safe to go
through
there?”
“Stick to the middle of the channel. Keep the beacon to starboard and Thousla Rock to port.”
“It’s all white water.”
“You’ve got about twenty meters under you all the way through.”
Half
The coffee had gone cold in the mug, and the motion of the boat was so slight that the surface of the coffee had crazed into a milky skin. Nothing moved except the sea itself, running like a deep river down to the ocean. I loved the breadth and stillness of it—the painted islands, the flawless wash of the sky, the winking, rainbow water. The stillness was so complete that the structural tensions of the boat itself were making themselves audible. Plank on beam; larch on oak. The woods were straining, each against the other, their acids bleeding and mingling as the sea pressed in. Not many people ever know quite such a magical solitude as this.
Then I saw that I had company. It was many miles away, as small as a gnat or a dust speck; an aircraft of some sort, flying fast and low over the water to the far south.
The weather was breaking when I came to the Isle of Man. I’d sailed down from the Clyde through the straits between Ulster and the Mull of Galloway, to find every wave in the Irish Sea snarling and baring its teeth. A thin rain was falling and there was no land to be seen anywhere.
Gosfield Maid
slammed and jolted like a country bus on a bad road. I sailed it up to where the Isle of Man should have been, and found just rain and lumpy sea and untidy rags of foam. The island was not where it was marked on the chart. Either that, or I wasn’t where
I
was marked on the chart. I checked and rechecked my last bearings. Nothing seemed wrong. I hunted with binoculars for a lighthouse or a cliff or the white water of a coastal shoal, and drew a monotonous greeny-gray blank.
As islands nearly always do, the Isle of Man came up unexpectedly, in the wrong place. It was steaming straightpast my bows like a rusty ship, and I half expected it to disappear again into the murk, flying a disreputable flag of convenience from its stern. I slid along its side where the water was calmer, grateful for the shelter it offered but not much impressed by the vessel itself. Only a very tired sea gull would have brightened at the sight of its dank greenstone cliffs, the dripping ledges of bare rock, the heather looking like a black fungus in the rain. A castle came and went—but after Scotland I was tired of castles. Then a dismal holiday place with an empty beach and a line of boardinghouses on a promenade.
At the southern end of the island there was an islet which looked even sadder and rainier than its parent; and between Man and the Calf of Man there was a narrrow channel, no wider than a city street, through which the tide was streaming like a millrace, the water humped and broken, piling against boulders, creaming white as it thundered through the Sound. What was oddest about this place, though, was that I could see the sea beyond and it was definitely
lower
than the sea on which I was afloat. Calf Sound was a hill of water, a chute through which one half of the Irish Sea was doing its damnedest to fill up the other.
I had been bored before; the life of Man had struck me as being solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and mercifully, after only fifteen miles of it, short. But this was one of the most unboring performances that I’d ever seen the sea put up. I called the Manx coastguard over the radio and described Calf Sound to him in all its glory.
“And it’s safe to go
through
there?”
“Stick to the middle of the channel. Keep the beacon to starboard and Thousla Rock to port.”
“It’s all white water.”
“You’ve got about twenty meters under you all the way through.”
Half
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