Atlantic Britain Read Online Free Page A

instruments worked was an integrated one and no depth gauge in the system meant noreadings from anything: no depth of course, no wind speed, no wind direction, no boat speed, no speed over the ground, no course made good, no electronic compass. There was also no light in the magnetic compass and no autohelm. We would have to stand at the wheel, watch and watch about, three or four hours on, three or four hours off, no breaks while you were up there, for the forty hours or so it was going to take us to cross the wide open reach of the Atlantic known as the Celtic Sea.
    Driving down south, the sea began to lift under us. We passed the famous Manacles Buoy, marking the killer rocks off the Cornish coast, on which the bell clangs lugubriously day and night, day and night, like a graveyard sexton of the deep. As we passed near enough to read the word ‘MANACLE’ painted on its vast metal body, George said, ‘That bell will still be ringing when we are up in Donegal, or in Orkney, when we are out at sea in the worst storm you have ever known. And it’s been ringing these last ten years, for as long and anywhere you have ever been.’
    It felt as if we were pushing our fingers deep into the dark. No instruments, no autohelm, no compass light, both of us tired, the boat on her first day outfrom a refit. We would have to use a hand-held torch to read the bearing on the compass, to align the boat on her distant destination, one of those blessed harbours in the southwest of Ireland, Baltimore or Schull or Crookhaven, a good 250 miles from here. It was a four-way meeting: ocean, boat, me and George, a test set by the first for the other three.
    The Lizard light loomed through the thickening dark. We stayed a mile off the headland but still the sea was roughened by the tide, full of huge barn-door breakers. They were coming at us, the whole of the bow plunging into them, burying the bowsprit up to its socket, and the bulk of water driving back along the deck. The spray was lit in the nav lights on either side in huge green arcs of red and green water. There was no sprayhood and every second or two the water burst and rattled on to our waterproofs as the boat plunged on. ‘Brave’ George called her then. The night was clear and phosphorescence was sprinkled down to leeward like a reflection of the stars. The
Auk
was passing her exam.
    ‘Go down,’ George said to me and I slunk down into the safety of the bunk, away from this, sleep instant and deep. No thought for the man on deckand the rattling of the seas as they came over him. Just the warmth and welcome of my own private, down-filled harbour. George was simply going to be there for four hours, as I was to be for another four hours in four hours’ time. In a way, the sea sets too much of a test to reveal the intricacies of character. I, of course, know George ashore, the subtle and layered interactions of his strengths and weaknesses, the certainties and uncertainties, the withdrawals and generosities that make up any man. But at sea, particularly a demanding sea as it was that night, that internal play of the self does not appear. It is a simplified world and the sea only asks the simple question: are you on or are you off? Can you do this or can you not? It doesn’t care why, or even how. It only expects a yes or a no.
    At one in the morning, George woke me. I came up, he gave me the bearing, handed me the torch, and I took his place at the wheel. The stars were coming and going through the clouds. Our course was to leave Scilly to port and then bear away for the Irish coast. The Lizard light had sunk below the horizon but the light on the Longships reef at Land’s End was still clear behind me to the east. The lightship on the Seven Stones, the rocks that sank the
Torrey Canyon,
waswinking to the north of me. In the south, the arm of the Wolf ranged across the night. Ahead, Round Island light, to the north of St Martin’s in Scilly, led me onwards. Beyond it, the loom of