SWALLOWING THE ANCHOR

P F Middleton

It really does make sense to give up. I can no longer afford the yard bills, and the overnight charges in marinas -- even anchorages -- make my hair (what's left of it) stand on end. Most of my favourite anchorages are saturated with plastic buoys, while `Anchor clear of the moorings' is a pilot book joke. And now that electronic nav systems can be linked to autopilots, so that the vessel proceeds unaided to a waypoint and even rings a bell when you get there, I begin to wonder why we go to sea at all. Take the ferry and meet up at the other end.

So now, when the winter gales beat on the windows I can sit at home without worrying too much about the boat blowing away. No more head down in the engine compartment changing fuel filters, draining the water from seized drain taps, adjusting the delicate machinations of the single-lever control -- that's all in the past. No more antifouling. Insurance? No thank you. Life raft service? Not today, thank you, or any other day. Someone else's problems now.

For I've sold my boat, my lovely, ancient, faithful Raider. And I'm not buying another. After forty years of cruising I've given up, swallowed the anchor. I'm a seventy-two year old ex-sailor and I'd better get used to it.

So why am I in my workshop, leafing idly through the half-empty boat-box? Most of the contents has gone, but I can't chuck out three bronze thimbles, a greasy packet of fifty ex-Admiralty sail needles, a tangled mess of tarred string, a Portuguese courtesy flag. And why browse aimlessly through last year's Macmillan & Silk? I've still got the Tide Tables for 1993. And all those charts. Look, this one shows our track across Biscay in the Rustler, and there's the fix I got on the wrong side of Roches Douvres last year!

So why, if I'm not buying another boat, am I scanning the broker's pages in Yachting Monthly? Is it what they call withdrawal symptoms, or am I looking for my old loves?

From the shore at Hurst Castle I watch a few peaceful cruising boats taking the fair tide and turning to port past the Needles. `Track 210magnetic, and a broad reach to Alderney, ETA 12 hours. Settle down chaps, and put the kettle on'.

Sometimes, in my bed at night, thirty miles from the coast, I can hear the anchor chain rolling over the bottom as the tide turns. Remember the long lift of the tradewind swells and the patient gannets weaving in the wake? Somebody read the Walker log please. Or has it stopped?