Motoring slowly, trying not so that you can break the calm. Seagulls, lolling on liquid glass, too lazy to move out of my manner. I steer around quite a few – others move reluctantly.
The light slowly removal – fierce heat of the day in it’ s wake. Barra now a low strip of land miles away – back between sky and sea. A shadowy base to highlight a Hebridean Sunset. So a lot of it. From the tiny wisps with cloud over Mingalay during the south to the misty individuals of – where – North Uist? Harris? In the north. This is the ocean of the Hebrides where so many good boats have died while in the screaming chaos of the northern storm. My forth crossing this year and I’ ve only sailed it once! Motored the rest in total calm! What a summer! I’ ll get my comeuppance here one day. My little ketch which has laughed off force 6 and also 7 and occasionally 8 down during the Firth of Lorne will struggle here one day.
Hours earlier, and ‘ Petra’ lies becalmed ten distance east of Castle Bay as a searing summer day starts to die. The sea is glassy smooth, gulls sit, silent, somnolent. The sail boat not moving. To go on or back? On – fourty miles of motoring, to return, to loose what minimal progress made today. All through a torrid afternoon, lying in the cockpit of a listless boat. Perhaps a breeze arrives at close of evening. It does not. The day fades into day-glow during the north-west. What in Shetland they call the Simmer Dim.
Dusk, 11pm, a dolphin rolls out of the swell to look, ten yards away, then delves. Again he’ s certainly, there, a moment, he looks at me as he turns, I look at them – we touch, that oh so different intellect of his, and my verizon prepaid phone – then he’ s gone, melting into a swell – silent, sublime, so strange. Dolphin please don’ t go – oh I want that contact with you actually again, there’ s something I need to learn. But he fully gone, I feel bereft. I feel ---. A memory, long ago, of someone on some sort of train – of course, he stirs a memory, no more. But all my life I’ ll try to maintain that soft, that joyous moment once again.
Midnight – dark or simply nearly so, just day-glow in the north like streaky bacon within a orange glow – no moon but stars.
Stars, deep in the southern region – one disappears, then more, swamped by a swell. The boat lifts, the stars come returning, the boat slides back down into a trough, the dayglow is obscured by the glossy glassy greatness of Atlantic swell. The boat moves on. I should be sailing but there is no wind. I try to build no noise, keep the engine running slow.
But then I find I’ m not alone, a movement in the dark ahead. The surface sprinkled with sparks with phosphorescence. Dark shapes against the dark. Dolphins, curving from the sea, drawing comet tails of stardust from the deep. He has give back, with others, to attract, to play, to adventure me with there life. I know he’ s amongst them, they’ re rejoicing in the touching that was our bait. They’ re there – diving neath the bows in pairs, from side to help side crossing underneath, to rise and roll and spray the night time with fountains of gemstones – for ten minutes or an hour, I cannot say.
I think – they’ re nurturing this, they’ re doing this for me, they’ re giving me this happiness – but why? Entranced I watch, kneeling by the pulpit I can nearly touch but do not try – oh, how to tell them – what can I give?
The dayglow variations round. The lighthouses for Ardnamurchan and Cairns with Coll tell me I’ m north of Mull.
The dayglow brightens. Now colour comes to the land. Dark cliffs towering in the east. Sunart Sunrise – beyond the Loch the mountains are golden, pink pebbles, a fire in this sky – yesterday, not dead just dozing, wakes again, the glory of this highlands – and the fleeting memory of someone at a train---- Tobermory 6am, a hundred sleeping yachts, a womb for occupants who spent a different night.
Unseemly noise, the anchor’ s down, the rattle of the chain like a tearing of the fabric of the dawn. A heron fishing on the shore, disturbed, takes flight journey and croaks a notice.
And so to bed, but dolphins, how I wish I should have repay the joy, but all I do is tear the fabric within the morning.
I have been needed for boats at some degree since childhood and obtained my first boat as i was 45. When I was 53 I acquired a 32ft Macwester ketch and lived on her on the west seaside of Scotland for eight years before buying a cottage ashore. My important winter occupation is making laminated wooden tillers plus I also build little dinghies and canoes. I spend as much of the summer as they can cruising.
Please see my website http: //www. boatsntillers. co. uk
