HOPPING SIDEWAYS
STORIES FROM BEFOREHAND 10
The skipper is worried that other people will be worried. We should have arrived ages ago and our attempt to find Madeira and berth there for repairs and provisions failed completely, not a hint of a peak appeared on the horizon when he said it would do.
One day, one day when we have started eating the smallest of small meals once a day and nothing else and feel hungry all the time; when I have started munching on cloves for want of anything else to do in the late hours of a watch at night; we see a freighter in the late afternoon.
The skipper decides he wants to speak with it and so we begin a strange pattern of sailing towards it, then heading into wind before regaining the wind to repeat over and over. A sort of hop scotch across the ocean. Apparently this is a message you can make to show you need to speak with the other boat.
It stops and we ask it to report our position and also to tell us where we are, something we have been unsure of for many, many, days. To our alarm we find out we are some way to the south of Biscay rather than nearing England as the skipper had thought we were. It is at this point that I decide to do my own navigating as best I can without navigation instruments. But we do have a compass and we do roughly know what speed we are making and we now know more or less where we are.
It comforts me a little, marking our possible position on the chart after every watch.
A few days later we come across another yacht, our first of the trip. They have a line astern and are hauling in dozens of mackerel. I am so jealous, so much food!!
We steer nearer them and to our delight catch one mackerel. I am so sad that it was only the one but we are both very happy indeed. The skipper tells me to make soup with it and so I do, there is not much I can do but we have some spices and dried herbs.
In a moment of too much anxiety, I worry that we have too little water left and use seawater as well as fresh water in the soup. I think it is lovely.
The skipper takes one sip and throws his full bowl the length of the cabin. He is very angry yet again. I mop up the mess, wash the bowl and pour the remains of the soup in the pot into my bowl. It is still delicious. All the more for me I think!
INSPIRED BY THE JEAN’S BOTHY STORYTELLING WORKSHOP IN THE SCOTTISH MENTAL HEALTH AND ARTS FESTIVAL.
This is a new series to complement my mental health and family posts – I am having to borrow photos – sorry about that.
For more of my writing and my world do have a look for START and Blackbird Singing published by Geilston Press – best to go to Amazon just now.
Really enjoying these pieces 'from before'. A thought: no need to apologise that you have to borrow photographs. You're actually giving a photographer a chance for their work to be seen, and that's a good thing.