Three Ways To Capsize A Boat Part 5

NIGHT BEGAN TO FALL and the pale cliffs of the Kent coast were replaced by distant lines of light. With the deepening of the darkness the sea, too, vanished, and we seemed to move through a fathomless blackness, with just the glimmer of foam in our wake to place us in the firmament. High in the shrouds the red light of the port lantern shone dimly on the mainsail. A few scattered stars peeped from behind the scudding clouds. A faint silver glow on the northeast horizon intensified until a bright shard of moon rose from the dark, shook herself, and began her climb into the night sky. The gale had abated and become a light wind blowing from the west, just what we wanted to drive and the pale cliffs of the Kent coast were replaced by distant lines of light. With the deepening of the darkness the sea, too, vanished, and we seemed to move through a fathomless blackness, with just the glimmer of foam in our wake to place us in the firmament. High in the shrouds the red light of the port lantern shone dimly on the mainsail. A few scattered stars peeped from behind the scudding clouds. A faint silver glow on the northeast horizon intensified until a bright shard of moon rose from the dark, shook herself, and began her climb into the night sky. The gale had abated and become a light wind blowing from the west, just what we wanted to drive Hirta Hirta, now under full press of sail, northward toward the North Sea and Scandinavia.

We all sat in the c.o.c.kpit-a large sunken area on the open deck, like a big wooden bath with benches, that surrounded the wheel and compa.s.s. There was the friendly glow of a couple of cigarettes and the comforting scent of thin curls of smoke, as we talked quietly, almost with a certain reverence, so as not to dispel the enchantment of our first night at sea. Each of us cradled a mug of hot tea, for it can be murderous cold on the deck of a boat in the North Sea on an April night. Hannah was below, wrapped in peaceful sleep, rocked by the waves and cuddling her rag doll, Rowena.

Now the great pleasure of ocean voyaging, as opposed to day sailing, is that as the land drops away astern, all the woes and worries that afflicted you on dry land-all the things you ought to have done but have left undone, all the drab detritus and clutter of your daily existence-slough away like the old dry skin of a snake. You feel renewed and newly alive. There's nothing you can do about any of that old stuff, so you forget it and just attend to the business of navigation and survival ... because getting things right on an ocean voyage in a small boat is simply a matter of life and death.

This phenomenon, which strips people down to their essence, happens every time you leave the land. But just as surely, when finally the lookout perched high up the mast shouts, "Land ahoy!," you are overwhelmed with longing for the land, and mysteriously ready and eager again to immerse yourself in that cloying bog of cares.

Sensing all of this, we mused and chatted, sounding one another out, testing the parameters where you could and couldn't go when it came to needling one another's sensibilities. There was a tentative pleasure in getting to know one another, in the knowledge that we were soon to be hurled together and shaken up in conditions of the weirdest intimacy. Tom had warned me that to be confined together in the cabin of a small wooden boat, tossed among the terrors of the open sea, has the effect of a pressure cooker. Feelings that are best left simmering beneath the surface burst forth in extremis and have to be dealt with to make life even halfway tolerable. Tonight, though, we took a mild and friendly interest in one another, bandied compliments, trying to show ourselves in our most appealing light, without overstepping the mark. We each sipped whisky from a mug, the traditional treat at the start of the night-and the whisky in its wonderful way warmed our hearts and our spirits.

And then it was past midnight and a reverential silence fell for the s.h.i.+pping Forecast. Like anybody else I had heard the s.h.i.+pping forecast before on the radio; a meaningless almost mystical incantation, the clear, clipped tones of the BBC enunciating, "Dover, Thames, Humber, Dogger, German Bight ... Fisher, Fair Isle, Cromarty, Viking, Faroes, Southeast Iceland ..." and so on; comfortingly obscure names that had suddenly become both personal and pressing for us. Even its theme tune, "Sailing By," which I had always thought rather vacuous, took on a different form, its rippling arpeggios charged with meaning and emotion.

From now on we would hear "Sailing By" each night as we plied our way north, until we'd sailed so far that not even the BBC could reach us.

"IT'S TIME TO START the watch system," announced Tom. "We'll do four-hour turns, two to a watch: John, you can have Mike, and Patrick can be with Chris. As skipper I don't have a specific watch but you can call me any time, day or night." the watch system," announced Tom. "We'll do four-hour turns, two to a watch: John, you can have Mike, and Patrick can be with Chris. As skipper I don't have a specific watch but you can call me any time, day or night."

And so I found myself doing ten until two in the morning, just Patrick and me alone in the c.o.c.kpit while a steady wind drove us northward through the night. Patrick spoke with the softest of Scottish accents. He was an experienced sailor and beneath his gentle well-mannered exterior he was really hard, tough as a nut, the result of years in the army. I was happy to take orders from Patrick as he knew what was going on, and I knew nothing.

"Take the wheel, Chris, and keep her on that heading, zero one five, while I go forward and give the sails a tweak."

I took the wheel and peered myopically at the dimly illuminated compa.s.s in its binnacle just inside the cabin hatchway. At that distance of about two and a half yards I couldn't quite make out the figures. This was a problem for me all the way to Vinland. What I would have to do was abandon the wheel for a moment and move forward to get a clear sight on the compa.s.s, then leap back for the wheel before the boat had moved too far off her course. Naturally by the time I got back to the wheel Hirta Hirta would have changed course by a few points, so I would have to dart forward again to the compa.s.s, nip back and give a tweak to the wheel, then forward again to see if I had got the adjustment right. It was far from satisfactory, but resulted in a certain sort of a zigzag progress in roughly the desired direction. would have changed course by a few points, so I would have to dart forward again to the compa.s.s, nip back and give a tweak to the wheel, then forward again to see if I had got the adjustment right. It was far from satisfactory, but resulted in a certain sort of a zigzag progress in roughly the desired direction.

On a starry night the whole thing became easier because you could get your course more or less right, then find a star close to some fixed point on the masthead, and then keep the relation of the star constant to it. The problem, however, with this much more romantic method of navigation is that the stars are also sailing in a circular fas.h.i.+on across the bowl of the night, and if you fix on just one star, you end up going round in a great circle. So you must change your star every five or ten minutes to keep on track.

On that first watch, as Patrick beavered about on the foredeck in the dark, I listened to the creaking of the mast and boom, the whistling of the wind in the shrouds, and the rus.h.i.+ng of the waves against the hull. And I thought how wonderful it was to be here out of sight of land, and heading for Vinland.

At ten to two I went below to make tea for the next watch and wake them up. It just remained to write down in the log what had or had not happened during the watch-changes of wind direction, course, anything of interest spotted-and then slip thankfully into my sleeping bag to sleep. And oh, how I slept ... the rocking of a boat and the sound of water slipping along the planking are the most wonderful aids to tumbling deep into sleep and dreaming. Unfortunately, though, it never lasts.

At six, in the light of a gray dawn with the rain streaming from a sky the color of slate, the grinning face of Mike, the boat's boy by virtue of his being the youngest member of the crew, appeared with a mug of tea. "It's a horrible day," he observed. "And it's time you were up and in it. I'm going to bed."

I rolled out of my bunk, and before it had time to get cool, Mike rolled into it. This peculiar form of intimacy is known as "hot-bunking."

THOSE FIVE DAYS ON the north sea, my first proper voyage, pa.s.sed in something of a blur. Mostly there was little to see but rolling walls of water, sometimes gray, sometimes brown, and occasionally green, bearing down on us in endless procession. Sometimes they glinted or shone with pale sunlight, but more often they were opaque and brooding, and then all of a sudden the midday sun would break through the mists, and the sea would turn a deep pellucid blue, sparkling and glittering. the north sea, my first proper voyage, pa.s.sed in something of a blur. Mostly there was little to see but rolling walls of water, sometimes gray, sometimes brown, and occasionally green, bearing down on us in endless procession. Sometimes they glinted or shone with pale sunlight, but more often they were opaque and brooding, and then all of a sudden the midday sun would break through the mists, and the sea would turn a deep pellucid blue, sparkling and glittering.

There was a curious soporific feel to the days, the long hours pa.s.sing without any particular interruption or event. The watch system was relaxed during the day, and we would take a trick at the helm whenever we felt the inclination, or busy ourselves with the constant tasks of whipping and splicing ropes. On land it would have been too tedious to bear, but here at sea I seemed to enter a completely different state of mind, the consequence of a hint of seasickness and not nearly enough sleep. I never got an uninterrupted night's sleep; three or four hours was the longest the watches would allow you. We would doze during the day to make up for lost hours, but could never quite shake off a heavy-lidded torpor.

This had the effect of blunting the intellect a little and enhancing the feelings. I'm moved too easily anyway, but on the high seas I found myself constantly brought to the edge of tears by the simplest of things: a sudden burst of sunlight from behind a cloud, or a pleasing notion, or a particularly vivid thought of a loved one. And the simple act of standing at the wheel, watching the red sails billowing into the sky, and feeling the great black hull surging swiftly through the waves, filled me with ineffable delight. I suspected that the others were similarly affected, but these were private thoughts and we left them unsaid. Tom, as skipper, was constantly occupied with the maintenance of his beloved boat and by extension the safety and well-being of the crew. He would strip down the diesel engine and clean the injectors, cast an eye on the wear and tear of the running gear (the ropes and sails), which suffered from constant chafing, and stay aware of our course and position, as well as finding useful things for us to do.

Ros looked after the galley, keeping us well fed and happy. Curry, which she did well, has an almost supernatural effect on a wet, cold crew on a nasty night at sea. And for much of the day she would be teaching and reading to Hannah. The rest of us would take it in turns at the helm, trim the sails, and do whatever tasks Tom had allotted to us. And on the odd occasions when the sun deigned to appear, everyone would rush onto the deck and try to fix our position with a s.e.xtant.

Mike, John, and Patrick were making use of the trip to brush up on their navigation techniques, taking advantage of Tom's considerable skill. This was long before the days of GPS, and an ability to use the s.e.xtant was essential for ocean navigation, quite apart from the fact that mastery of this traditional instrument was an art in itself. Navigators have relied upon this beautiful device of gleaming bra.s.s for hundreds of years, and just to slip one out of its case and hold it to your eye casts you into the unbroken spell of time that links you to Columbus, Magellan, or Henry the Navigator.

The ideal time to take a sun sight on a s.e.xtant is at noon, although of course this is not always possible, as the sun is not necessarily s.h.i.+ning at noon, especially in the dismal lat.i.tudes toward which we were heading. In theory, though, you can take a sight at other times of the day as long as the sun is visible above the horizon and you have an accurate watch. But if it isn't noon, it complicates the calculations no end.

On our boat, if the sun were visible just before noon, the navigators would gather on deck and prepare their instruments. Then, as the moment of the zenith approached, they would adjust the ingenious little smoked mirrors to catch the exact moment the sun ceased its climb and started to drop. That was exact celestial noon, and the figures so accurately etched into the bra.s.s arms and arcs of the s.e.xtant could now be read off and entered into the calculations. This was also an opportunity to check the accuracy of the chronometers, that is, our watches.

Next everyone would tumble down the ladder to the chart table, where there would be a frenzy of calculations and poring over navigation tables. Then there would be such sucking of pencils, and muttering and leafing through pages gray with tan and cosine and sine, and date coefficients and declination and other unfathomable logarithms, until the final calculation was made and an estimate of our position arrived at.

Although I dearly wanted to be involved, there were only three s.e.xtants...o...b..ard and it became obvious that if I were to muscle in on the master cla.s.ses, it would all become a bit of a scrum. For the first couple of days, I graciously bowed out. But on the third day the desire to navigate got too much for me; I cracked, and, seizing a moment in the afternoon when everyone else had returned to their bunks or allotted tasks, I crept up on deck with Tom's s.e.xtant and took my own sight. It wasn't a particularly opportune moment to take a reading, but it would have to do. Unhurriedly and with all the figures at my disposal, I busied myself down at the chart table all on my own with the complex calculations.

My deliberations moved inexorably toward their conclusion, until at last, panting mentally from the excess of mathematical gymnastics, I had the numbers. Excitedly, I drew in my lines across the chart, trying vainly to ignore the little copses of half-rubbed-out pencil marks that indicated everybody else's approximation of our whereabouts. These were quite closely grouped.

However, as my pencil slid along the ruler toward the spot where it would intersect with my first plotted line, the truth began to dawn on me that things were not as they seemed. I removed the ruler and stared, brow furrowed, at the crossed pencil lines. Either everybody else was wildly out-which seemed to me the more likely option-or else I myself had slipped up badly. For my estimate of our position, far from being about fifty nautical miles southwest of the northern tip of Denmark, as the other navigators tended to agree, had us high and dry on the top of a prominent hill just to the south of Sc.u.n.thorpe.

Hurriedly I rubbed out the lines. It seemed best to keep this disappointing discovery to myself. In fact, I resolved to leave the s.e.xtant work in the future to the eager navigators, for it was hard to imagine a useful result coming from my own offbeat deliberations. So far out to sea, though, you never know exactly where you are, anyway. And it doesn't really matter that much. It's only when you draw close to land that you need an exact position, in order not to pile your boat onto the bricks, as Tom would have it.

Although I never quite got the hang of s.e.xtant maths, Tom did show me how you can get a rough idea of where you are by "dead reckoning." This is a matter of plotting your course onto the chart. You have to make allowances for tides and currents, magnetic variations, leeway (which is the way that the wind blows you a little sideways off your intended track), and your speed, which you ascertain by streaming a device known as a log-a primitive instrument with a propeller on it that you throw into the sea way behind the wash of the boat. You plot all this information, along with changes of course, wind speed, and direction in the logbook, and on the basis of it you have some idea of where you are ... although-unless you're very slick-not much.

DURING ALL OF THOSE five long days sailing northward to Norway, we saw no sign of land, and, apart from the odd distant s.h.i.+p, there was not much to see on the sea, either, except a few birds. five long days sailing northward to Norway, we saw no sign of land, and, apart from the odd distant s.h.i.+p, there was not much to see on the sea, either, except a few birds.

I bemoaned this to Tom one day, or at least mused aloud about the monotony of the sea compared with the variety of the land with its ever-changing views of rocks, flowers, and trees. But he wouldn't have any of it. "Birds," he declared, "are the flowers of the sea. They're the living element of the seascape; they give it color and personality and endless variety. There's not an oceangoing sailor who doesn't care about birds. Even if you didn't give a fig for birds before you went to sea, you soon come to love them. They're your constant companions and you get to know everything there is to know about them."

And sure enough, the longer we were at sea, the more I came to see the truth of this. The presence of birds was enough to dispel our loneliness and fill us with fascination. Tom and Ros, Patrick and John knew all there was to know about them and could recognize different species when they were no more than distant specks far away among the waves. We all had our favorites. Mine was the fulmar, a fat little gray-and-white gull with an amiable disposition and a quizzical look-a companionable sort of bird that you felt might be sticking close to the boat for the company rather than just the search for food. There were plenty of fulmars wheeling around among the waves as we sailed up the North Sea, though as we journeyed north I transferred my allegiance to the gannet, which started to make its appearance in ever greater numbers.

Gannets are bigger than fulmars and more slender and graceful. They dive spectacularly from a great height; they fold up as they hit the water and down as far as two hundred feet they can give a fish a run for its money. To my mind that should cla.s.s them as amphibians, although this is not generally conceded. But to see a flock of gannets fis.h.i.+ng, plummeting from sixty feet up in the air, racing among the schools of fish and then launching themselves from the waves again for another high dive, is one of the unforgettable sights of the sea. And then there's the strangeness of the gannet's cry, for it sounds just like a raven, a sound you a.s.sociate more with the loneliness of heather-clad moorland than with the rolling wastes of the ocean. "Gark ... gark," they cry.

Gannets fly vast distances but go home to their nests most nights for a kip. Fulmars, on the other hand, are a tougher lot. They are pelagic, which means they live almost entirely at sea. They will go for months, even years, without touching land; indeed the only time they do touch land is when they lay their eggs and rear their young. In the case of the fulmar, she doesn't lay her first eggs until she's eight years old, so once a chick leaves the nest it spends the next eight years of life at sea. It's hard to imagine this companionable creature spending so many years with nowhere to perch for comfort and warmth other than the waves of a high sea.

"If we were off in the southern oceans," Tom told me one morning, "you'd see albatross, and just the sight of an albatross will wrench your heartstrings. They're big and graceful and they range over all the oceans of the world, and they live in terrible loneliness as if there really were a curse upon them, just like in the poem." Sadly, albatross rarely come north of the line, so we didn't get to spot one, and I fear that a certain restlessness has now descended on my soul-in that special place where we keep our thwarted ambitions.

Along with the bird-watching and s.e.xtant studies, Tom and most of the crew had a pa.s.sion for the Vinland sagas, the ancient Icelandic tales of Leif Eriksson's discovery of Vinland. Indeed, Tom's expedition had been premised in part on a desire to follow the journey of Leif Eriksson, who in about AD 1000 set out from Iceland for Greenland, but was blown by storms way to the southwest. As a consequence, Leif was the first European to discover the Americas, which he called Vinland. The saga about his voyage recounts at great length the dastardly exploits of-and I am not making these names up-the unappetizing Ragnar Hairybreeches, the loathsome Erik Bloodaxe, and our hero Leif's mother-in-law, the redoubtable lady Thorbjorg s.h.i.+p-Bosom.

For myself, I was never entirely taken with the Viking saga and its rawboned fare. Instead, I buried my head in a volume of Edward Lear's nonsense verse, which I found in the s.h.i.+p's library. I began with "The Dong with a Luminous Nose," which I learned by heart during a day's watch, to entertain Hannah. But it was "The Jumblies" that captured the imagination of everyone onboard, with its chorus: Far and few, far and few, Are the lands where the Jumblies live; Their heads are green, and their hands are blue, And they went to sea in a Sieve.

Being a vintage wooden boat, Hirta Hirta had a tendency to leak in a heavy sea, so the appositeness of this was lost on n.o.body. Indeed, it wasn't long before most of the crew could reel off quotes for appropriate occasions as well as chant the chorus. And so the time fairly zipped by-and in five days we had reached Norwegian waters. had a tendency to leak in a heavy sea, so the appositeness of this was lost on n.o.body. Indeed, it wasn't long before most of the crew could reel off quotes for appropriate occasions as well as chant the chorus. And so the time fairly zipped by-and in five days we had reached Norwegian waters.

This was, according to Tom, "good pa.s.sage-making." We had averaged roughly five knots, which is about the speed you back your car into the garage, or toil uphill on a bicycle slowly. Now you might well consider this and conclude that such a journey is a waste of time, and on the surface of things you might be right. It's an expensive form of travel, too; during five days at sea we had probably consumed enough whisky, Mars bars, tea, canned food, and diesel to buy each of us a flight. And most of the time we were rather wet and cold ... and during the first twenty-four hours almost everyone was stricken by seasickness.

It is undoubtedly a madness. And yet I remember reading in Antoine de Saint-Exupery's Wind, Sand and Stars Wind, Sand and Stars of how the author once told a Bedouin camel driver that in his flying machine he could do in two hours the journey that would take a camel caravan ten days. The Bedouin pensively scratched his aquiline nose, and then looked deep into the aviator's eyes. "Why," he asked quietly, "would a person want to do that?" of how the author once told a Bedouin camel driver that in his flying machine he could do in two hours the journey that would take a camel caravan ten days. The Bedouin pensively scratched his aquiline nose, and then looked deep into the aviator's eyes. "Why," he asked quietly, "would a person want to do that?"

I'm with the Bedouin every time here. I'd plump any day for exploring the beauty that the world has to offer. I know people who have never slept a night beneath the stars. In fact, there are probably people who have never climbed a hill, nor swum in a river or a lake. It's time they did.

AT LAST WE SAW to the north a thin gray line a little more distinct than the horizon. As the hours pa.s.sed and the breeze drove us on, the line became clearer and finally resolved itself into the jagged cliffs and forested islands of western Norway. We had only been five days at sea, but even so there was a tremendous desire to set foot on dry land. There are those who would have it that sailing is like banging your head against a wall: it's only good when you stop. And it's hard to deny that one of the greater pleasures is pulling in to a quiet bay or a harbor at the end of an ocean pa.s.sage. To walk in the woods, to climb a hill or go to a bar or a bakery. to the north a thin gray line a little more distinct than the horizon. As the hours pa.s.sed and the breeze drove us on, the line became clearer and finally resolved itself into the jagged cliffs and forested islands of western Norway. We had only been five days at sea, but even so there was a tremendous desire to set foot on dry land. There are those who would have it that sailing is like banging your head against a wall: it's only good when you stop. And it's hard to deny that one of the greater pleasures is pulling in to a quiet bay or a harbor at the end of an ocean pa.s.sage. To walk in the woods, to climb a hill or go to a bar or a bakery.

As we slipped behind the outer islands and entered the more sheltered archipelago, the sea became calmer, and Hirta Hirta churned along unimpeded by the waves of the open sea. We lay around on the deck oohing and aahing at the beauty of the place ... the little green valleys, the cliffs and waterfalls and huge ranges of snowy mountains all reflected in the deep, still waters. But the serenity of the scene was, apparently, quite deceptive. According to Tom there were winds that could all of a sudden rush down the mountains and knock a boat like ours clean over. Katabatic winds, he called them, that could spring at you from the still and silent landscape like a wild beast breaking cover. And they could rush the other way, too (these were called anabatic winds), knocking boats like ninepins as they raced from the water straight up the mountainside. churned along unimpeded by the waves of the open sea. We lay around on the deck oohing and aahing at the beauty of the place ... the little green valleys, the cliffs and waterfalls and huge ranges of snowy mountains all reflected in the deep, still waters. But the serenity of the scene was, apparently, quite deceptive. According to Tom there were winds that could all of a sudden rush down the mountains and knock a boat like ours clean over. Katabatic winds, he called them, that could spring at you from the still and silent landscape like a wild beast breaking cover. And they could rush the other way, too (these were called anabatic winds), knocking boats like ninepins as they raced from the water straight up the mountainside.

We mulled this over silently. Fortunately neither wind made a showing that day, and we moved on uneventfully through the baffling maze of islands and fjords that hide the entrance to the port city of Bergen. And there we did what sailors do, which is go to a bar and drink beer, our faces full of wind and our bodies swaying with the memory of waves. Norway was ruinously expensive back then, and the beer was well beyond our modest means, but we had to have it and, believe me, it had never tasted so good. We felt special, in the way that you do when you come in off the sea, or down off a mountain, or out of the wild ... we existed on a slightly different plane from those around us.

Not long after, we slipped our moorings and headed south, and after a day of cruising easily in the flat water of the fjords, we dropped anchor in the bay of Norheimsund, a little town on the Hardanger Fjord. It was apple blossom time, and there is simply nothing, as Tom had said, quite like the Hardanger Fjord in apple blossom time. The fjord itself is a place of heart-stopping beauty, with its sheets of deep calm water spreading inland for a hundred miles among idyllic valleys, backed by snowcapped mountains. In early summer this effect is heightened by the glowing mists of pure white blossoms that s.h.i.+ne from the apple orchards as if bright patches of snow had lingered in the warm green valleys, and beneath the trees the meadows are a dense carpet of wild flowers. It made you wonder why anyone would want to leave such a place, especially to head out on the desperate sea route to Vinland.

We were in no hurry to leave the fjords, as we were waiting for the late summer melting of the ice pack, so we wandered, wafted by gentle breezes, from harbor to harbor and fjord to fjord, marveling at the beauty of it all. We ate pollock, because it was too expensive to buy anything to eat in Norway, and the fjords were alive with pollock. We kept a line trailing from the stern of the boat, and we lived off pollock stew and pollock curry and pollock fried and baked and boiled. To accompany it, we drank whisky from the s.h.i.+p's stores as, after our first experence, we knew we couldn't afford the beer. Pollock and whisky ... well, you could do worse.

And then one night, moored to the fish dock in some wind-blasted town way out in the outlying islands, we were invaded by drunks who had smelled the whisky. The Norwegians have a weakness for this sort of thing; it's the long gloomy Nordic winter coupled with a general Scandinavian propensity for the bottle, a hangover no doubt from the Vikings. The first inkling of the drunks' presence was a crate of beer that appeared through the skylight and then was lovingly lowered on to the saloon table. After this display of good intent, we had to invite them down, and there they proceeded to make ruinous inroads into our whisky supply, while regaling us with incomprehensible stories in Norwegian. Eventually Tord, their ringleader, stumbled over to the galley to see what we were going to eat.

"Vot is dis?" he asked, poking a pollock with distaste.

"That," said Ros defensively, "is what we're going to have for supper. It's pollock."

"Pollocks!" spluttered Tord, his great beery red face aghast. "Pollocks? n.o.body eat pollocks. I tell you not even cats don't eat pollocks. Why you eat that fish?"

"Well, it doesn't cost anything," countered Ros. "There are plenty of pollocks in the fjords."

Sobered a little by thoughts of our desperate diet, Tord sat down, took a big slug of whisky, and said: "I get you some proper think to eat. I work in der meat biznis." Nothing more was ventured about the preponderance of the pollock in our diet, and after another hour or two of heavy, heavy drinking, interlaced with forays of meaningless twaddle in Norwegian-the sort of session you wish had never got started-he and his cronies finally crawled ash.o.r.e, leaving us to slump c.r.a.pulously into our berths.

The next morning, when we had a mind to continue sleeping, there came a stumble and a thump, some feverish shuffling and a whispered oath. It was Tord coming back, as he had promised. The skylight darkened (it gets light at about two in the morning in June this far north), and the familiar beery face peered in and guffawed. With a crash a heavy piece of unidentifiable meat hit the saloon table ... then another ... and another ... and finally a fourth.

"Ho ... vid dis stuff you don't haf to eat no more pollocks. Open up de door; I need some more drinking ..."

We weighed this option up. There was not a man among us who felt inclined to continue the drinking session with our benefactor ... but then there lay in a heap on the table four enormous legs of smoked mutton. This was proper Viking fare-they had been big sheep and their legs would do us all the way across to Vinland without the need to troll for more pollock. To take a drink or two with Tord was clearly a moral obligation. Tom dug up the loose floorboard and fished forth another couple of bottles of whisky ... and off we went again. It transpired, in the light of the illuminating conversation that ensued, that Tord had nicked the mutton from the meat works where he was employed. It didn't matter much anyway, he said, because he had just been given the boot ... oddly enough for drunkenness and pilfering.

The smoked mutton, shaved thin with a hasp knife, was the most delicious thing you could imagine ... well, at any rate better than pollock. Tord had at a stroke raised the gastronomic level of our journey from desperate to something close to gourmand.

For some reason that escapes me now, the four legs of mutton were hung in the heads. The heads, as nautically minded readers will be aware, is the boat's lavatory. Ours was a tiny curved compartment containing a small porcelain bowl decked with a baffling array of levers and plungers. On the wall, now unfortunately obscured by the mutton, were the instructions that told you the order in which these things had to be operated and how ... and, to a certain extent, why. Curiously enough, the ceaseless thumping of those muttons on the wall of the heads remains to me one of the most enduring memories of our Vinland voyage.

IN NO TIME AT all it seemed that May had given way to June, and July was looming. It was surely time to cut loose from the tiny and hospitable harbor towns where we had moored and throw ourselves once again upon the mercy of the open sea. Yet, although we all claimed to be champing at the bit to be off, there was a discernible note of reluctance among us sailermen (as the locals called us) to wrench ourselves away from our newfound friends-whole families we had got to know in the waterside towns had welcomed us into their homes-and cast ourselves on the mercy of the North Atlantic. So we stalled for a few days by putting in at one of the outermost islands, ostensibly to make some small repair, but in reality storing up a last bit of comfort from the warm, dry land before committing ourselves to the horrible icy cold and danger that we all knew lay ahead. The island was too small to have cars. It had a toy-town port and a cl.u.s.ter of colored wooden cottages linked by neatly tended gravel paths. A dozen or so sodden sheep looked at us without interest, and the postman, with his little trolley, kept his head down against the wind and rain and ignored us altogether. It didn't seem quite real. all it seemed that May had given way to June, and July was looming. It was surely time to cut loose from the tiny and hospitable harbor towns where we had moored and throw ourselves once again upon the mercy of the open sea. Yet, although we all claimed to be champing at the bit to be off, there was a discernible note of reluctance among us sailermen (as the locals called us) to wrench ourselves away from our newfound friends-whole families we had got to know in the waterside towns had welcomed us into their homes-and cast ourselves on the mercy of the North Atlantic. So we stalled for a few days by putting in at one of the outermost islands, ostensibly to make some small repair, but in reality storing up a last bit of comfort from the warm, dry land before committing ourselves to the horrible icy cold and danger that we all knew lay ahead. The island was too small to have cars. It had a toy-town port and a cl.u.s.ter of colored wooden cottages linked by neatly tended gravel paths. A dozen or so sodden sheep looked at us without interest, and the postman, with his little trolley, kept his head down against the wind and rain and ignored us altogether. It didn't seem quite real.

Leaving this last reach of land, heading west toward Iceland, we listened gloomily to the forecasts: "West Viking, Faroes, Southeast Iceland, westerly force seven increasing eight occasionally nine, driving rain ..."

"Right on the nose," grumbled Tom. "Just our luck; the prevailing winds ought to be out of the east at this time of year. It'll be tough setting out into the teeth of that ... but I think we've got to go."

And thus we left the safety of the fjords and set course to the west and out into the trackless wastes of the North Atlantic. Neither Mike, the youngest of our crew, nor I had ever sailed across a proper ocean before. The English Channel and North Sea, for all their bl.u.s.ter and rage, were a munic.i.p.al duck pond compared to the vastness of the ocean we were about to navigate. Perhaps in recognition of this I slumped over the rail and vomited copiously to leeward into the gray water; further forward, I saw Mike was doing the same thing.

John, that quiet and dependable man of the sea, emerged from below with mugs of hot tea and, catching sight of the pair of us, turned pale, banged the tea down, and dived for the last available s.p.a.ce at the rail. Vomiting is like yawning: you see somebody else doing it and immediately you want to do it yourself. Tom, striking a seamanlike pose, and Patrick at the wheel, grinned knowingly at each other as they calmly sipped their tea and helped themselves to our ration of chocolate digestive biscuits. Being sick is rarely agreeable, but when you are on the first leg of an ocean voyage, and you are wondering why you are there anyway, it somehow makes everything even more ghastly than it already is. And it was pretty ghastly however you looked at it. With the mainsail up and sheeted tightly in, we were motoring, as there was not much wind yet and what there was was dead against us. The sea was unrelieved gray, and there was a nasty chop crossing the swell that was coming in from the high winds to the west. Hence the vomiting: the motion of the boat was horrible. Behind us stretched for half a mile or so our track of flat water and bubbles, punctuated by swiftly dissipating dollops of vomit. The pollock will enjoy that The pollock will enjoy that, I thought miserably to myself.

There's not a great deal you can do when seasickness. .h.i.ts, except wait it out in the knowledge that it'll soon be over. For me, pills and wristbands just dull the ache and block the reflex to heave. But mercifully, after a few hours, the worst of it fades and a bit of energy and optimism returns, like welcome gusts of fresh air. Ch.o.r.es become manageable rather than heroic endeavors, and small pleasures take on a special sweetness-the warmth of the first sip of a mug of tea, before the wind and the spray instantly turn it to ice; the deliciousness of the chocolate spread thin on the top of a digestive biscuit; the peaty burn and the welling of inner warmth that comes with a sip of whisky; the comforting sound of "Sailing By" and the s.h.i.+pping forecast; the warmth in Ros's voice below as she read Hannah a story, and Hannah's own absorbing accounts of the excitement of each day.

Night fell ... or rather it didn't fall, this being summer up toward the Arctic Circle. There was just an intensifying for a couple of hours of the various grays that seemed to compose our world. There were no stars to steer by, so I was bobbing back and forth between the binnacle and the wheel, while Patrick busied himself below with some charts. It was too cold to sit the whole four-hour watch on deck, so we took it in turns to go below and thaw out by the little potbellied stove that warmed the saloon. The rain had stopped and the wind had come round a little to the north, which meant that we could sail more or less on the course we wanted to get to Iceland.

Hirta was heeled well over, slicing smoothly now through the waves; the choppy sea had calmed with the onset of night, making her motion far less unpleasant. Recovered by now from my bout of seasickness, I was enjoying the pull of the wooden wheel and peering into the twilight and thinking how lovely the land would be when we reached it. Reykjavik ... I knew nothing about the town and had never expected to visit it. In fact, Iceland itself had a magical ring to it. But eclipsing this by a long way was the thought of sailing to the New World. Can anything ever beat that for romance? I had never been to Newfoundland or Canada or even America before and had never felt particularly drawn to those lands on the other side of the pond. Though in a way that hardly mattered: it was the journey that was the thing ... to buy a ticket and get on a plane was all very well, but to navigate your way across the perilous ocean, driven by the winds in the centuries-old manner. Well, it was one h.e.l.l of a way to get to a place. was heeled well over, slicing smoothly now through the waves; the choppy sea had calmed with the onset of night, making her motion far less unpleasant. Recovered by now from my bout of seasickness, I was enjoying the pull of the wooden wheel and peering into the twilight and thinking how lovely the land would be when we reached it. Reykjavik ... I knew nothing about the town and had never expected to visit it. In fact, Iceland itself had a magical ring to it. But eclipsing this by a long way was the thought of sailing to the New World. Can anything ever beat that for romance? I had never been to Newfoundland or Canada or even America before and had never felt particularly drawn to those lands on the other side of the pond. Though in a way that hardly mattered: it was the journey that was the thing ... to buy a ticket and get on a plane was all very well, but to navigate your way across the perilous ocean, driven by the winds in the centuries-old manner. Well, it was one h.e.l.l of a way to get to a place.

"Hey, Patrick," I called, lonely at the helm and eager for a little improving conversation. "What are you doing up there on the deck?" Patrick was lashed by his safety harness to the mast, and slithering about with the bucking and rolling of the boat, making the most minute adjustments to the unfathomable array of ropes that const.i.tuted Hirta's Hirta's running gear. running gear.

"I'll be with you in a minute," he gasped as he panted and puffed at the hauling of some particularly weighty lift. "Bring her up on the wind a touch, will you? ... While I get this throat purchase tightened up."

Obediently I heaved a little on the wheel, and Hirta Hirta lost her speed, her sails flapping uselessly as she lay head to wind. lost her speed, her sails flapping uselessly as she lay head to wind.

"Right, that'll do. Pay off again and we'll see how she goes ..."

I spun the wheel back, the boat heeled as she caught the wind again and surged forward just the tiniest bit more swiftly than before. Patrick lurched back into the c.o.c.kpit, wiped the spray from his face with his hand, and wedged himself in beside me.

"Is it really worth it, Pat ... all that b.u.g.g.e.ring about you do up there?"

He looked at me kindly and grinned.

"Well, it keeps me out of trouble ... and it sort of makes me happy." He looked up squinting at the billowing red sails, black against the gray of the arctic night.

"Wait a minute ... no, look at the staysail. See where the front of it is slack? Well, that's because the jib is curling the wind round and spilling it onto that bit, so the staysail is having less effect in driving us on. Now, if I slacken off this rope here just the littlest bit ... like this ..." He grunted as he slipped a loop from the catch, or cleat, beside the c.o.c.kpit, let it run a couple of inches, and then cleated it up again. "Now the staysail's full of wind and tight; the s.h.i.+p's working just that little bit more efficiently."

"OK," I said. "I see."

"And the thing is," continued Patrick, rather pleased to be able to impart this nugget of arcane nautical information, "when you're sailing twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week, the tiniest bit more efficiency can make a big difference to your journey time. At full speed we're doing about seven knots, * * so if you can up that by just a quarter of a knot, you're really getting somewhere. Also it's a matter of pride: you want your boat to be sailing as good as she can. And what's more important, you want everyone else to see you're doing the thing right." so if you can up that by just a quarter of a knot, you're really getting somewhere. Also it's a matter of pride: you want your boat to be sailing as good as she can. And what's more important, you want everyone else to see you're doing the thing right."

I peered into the pale cold light, where not the slightest speck or flicker of movement denoting any other vessel could be seen.

"Not out here, of course not," he continued, "though when Tom comes up, the first thing he'll look at is the sails, and if they're not pulling as they should, he'll think we're a bunch of farmers ... if you'll excuse the expression." Patrick grinned at this and slapped me playfully on the back.

"Here, give me the wheel for a spell and I'll see if I can't make something approximating a straight course."

I slipped down the companionway into the warmth of the galley and boiled a kettle for some tea and smeared some marmalade onto a handful of digestives. It's scarcely doc.u.mented the comfort that can be derived from this unlikely combination of raw materials. But they played a big part in the simple happiness that Patrick and I shared, munching and sipping as Hirta Hirta, all her sails full bellied, taut, and pulling at optimum efficiency, surged through the towering seas toward the distant New World to the west. Below, everybody else was wrapped in the sweet com fort of sleep while Patrick and I, in hushed tones despite the rus.h.i.+ng and roaring of the waves and the wind, exchanged views on the subjects of war and women and the way to live a rewarding life.

WE PUT IN TO Iceland, instead of sailing straight past, because it's not every day you find yourself high up in those lat.i.tudes, and we had a yen to visit the place. But also because Tom wanted to consult the experts on the Greenland ice pack, the belt of sea ice that girdles the coast, to see if we could chance an approach, and the ice-monitoring station was in Reykjavik. Iceland, instead of sailing straight past, because it's not every day you find yourself high up in those lat.i.tudes, and we had a yen to visit the place. But also because Tom wanted to consult the experts on the Greenland ice pack, the belt of sea ice that girdles the coast, to see if we could chance an approach, and the ice-monitoring station was in Reykjavik.

There wasn't a marina for yachts in those days in Reykjavik, so we tied up at the fish dock, which (as you'd expect) smelled nauseatingly of fish, with heavy overtones of diesel. But if the truth be told, we didn't smell too good ourselves, and we were pleased to have anywhere at all to dock after a couple of weeks at sea on the pa.s.sage from Bergen. What we all needed was a drink ... and a bath.

Now the first of these was harder to find, as although Iceland had won independence from Denmark back in 1944, the draconian drinking laws imposed by the colonial power seemed still to be in operation. The only place you could buy a bottle of even the mildest liquor was the state booze monopoly-I forget the Icelandic term for it-and this unappetizing establishment was only open at times when normal working folk had no possibility of getting to it. On the odd occasion when it was open, there were long, long queues of shamefaced Icelanders, shuffling along in the bone-crunching cold out on the street. When you finally made it to the counter, you had your identification checked by the sort of humorless, boot-faced a.s.sistants you'd expect to find running the show in a funeral parlor. The simple joy of just slipping out and buying a special bottle of wine to share with a loved one or some friends just wasn't an option. No wonder these people were driven to distill their own grog at home.

The laws were relaxed if you were going to have something to eat, so we ended up at a pizzeria, and a very good pizzeria it was, too. The speciality of the house, and the dish that has made the place for me ever memorable, was horse pizza ... that is to say, a pizza that, along with the more traditional tomato and mozzarella and oregano, had horse on it. Horse can be a little on the fibrous side, but is much appreciated by the Icelanders, who are the most pragmatic of people.

In terms of personal hygiene, things had come a long way since the days of Ragnar Hairybreeches, for even the most cursory reading of the sagas indicates that fastidiousness in matters of cleanliness did not figure high with Vikings. For us things were bearable so long as we stayed within a certain radius of the fish dock, but as we moved farther afield we became horribly conscious of the unspeakable miasma that followed us. In the horse pizzeria, for example, we had not failed to notice a certain ripple of disdain among the other customers.

The reason for our disgusting state (and I do not include the much more wholesome Ros and Hannah in this) is that it was just too d.a.m.n cold at sea to wash. The only man among us who was bold enough to strip off and wash in a bucket on deck was Patrick ... and that was because Patrick had been in the army for years and was hard as a brick. The rest of us sort of let things slide and, as a consequence, each of us was encrusted in a layer of sweat and dirt, trapped inside damp wool, unwashed socks, and underwear that was best not mentioned.

Fortunately within hours of landing, Ros had managed to find the public baths, and we all trooped along armed with lotions and potions and unguents and sundry instruments-abrasive cloths, scrubbing brushes, pumice stones, and sponges. The public baths in Reykjavik were, it turned out, pretty special-a great steaming hot lake, heated by geothermal energy. There was a huge gla.s.s wall that you could dive beneath and come out in the chilly open air among the crowds of happy Icelanders, gaily disporting themselves in the steamy waters, for it seemed that, at any one time, half the population of the city was in there.

We soon discovered that going to the baths was about the most fun to be had in the city. Keeping clean seemed to be a national obsession. So we, too, wallowed in cleanliness; we scrubbed up like cherubs and came out of there pink and gleaming. During our stay in Iceland we would sometimes go there as often as three times a day, perhaps in the clearly erroneous belief that the cleaner we got, the longer it would last us on the next leg of our journey.

It seemed we would be remaining on dry land for at least a week-anything to put off the awful inevitability of our next stint at sea. So I decided to head off and see something of the island. I stuffed some dried cod and some bread and chocolate inside my sleeping bag ... and of course a slab of the ubiquitous mutton ... slung it over my shoulder and trudged off along the road that leads north out of Reykjavik. I didn't know where I was going-I didn't even have a map of Iceland-but I was young then, and full of confidence that one road or another would lead me back to my friends and the boat.

Iceland, it appeared, was an elemental sort of a place, warmed by fire and steam, but lashed ceaselessly by fierce winds, a part of the earth that had remained more or less the way things were before the fishes had crawled from the sea and started their long journey to becoming people.

I saw geysers, pools of evil-smelling sulfurous sludge that boiled and bubbled in a sinister way and then all of a sudden e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed a plume of hot smelly water into the sky. You don't get more elemental than that, I mused. Then I found myself at Gullfoss, which is a waterfall, colossal beyond dreams, that filled the dark, treeless country around with drifting mists and fearful noise.

But most wonderful of all was Thingvellir, the site of the Althing, the first Norse parliament. Here was a deep quietness, and a mystery such as I have never experienced anywhere else. It was a curious landscape lying between a rocky fault line and a shallow lake; everywhere were still clear pools and utter silence. The only building was a little white wooden church down near the lake, the only sound the haunting cry of the arctic tern, which occasionally you would spot, hovering over the pools like a delicate white swallow. I sat for long hours as evening fell, completely bewitched by the sheer strangeness of the place.

Later, hitching back toward Reykjavik, I was driven along the sh.o.r.e of a fjord. Steep green fields ran down to the edge of the furious wind-lashed water.