VI A REFLECTION
For many years Mike Richey wrote an occasional column for Yachting Monthly
under the title ‘On Reflection’ and now, almost 40 years later, he again reflects
on his first singlehanded voyage:
‘And he woke up and rebuked the wind and said to the sea:
“Quiet now. Be calm”. And the wind dropped, and there followed
a great calm.
This passage (St Mark from the Jerusalem Bible) reminds me of
an incident long ago in Faial in the
first ocean passage alone in Jester. In those days the islands
were still remote, wholly maritime, by and large untouched by
air travel and the tourist trade. There were no marinas and, in
Horta at any rate, no hotel or what one might call a restaurant.
Neither were there normally other yachts in the harbour, just the
fishing fleet and one or two tenders. The great whaleships were
a thing of the past but the industry thrived and the graceful little
whaleboats would lie at their stations until rockets fired by coastal
lookouts alerted the crews to a whale blow and the crews, like
lifeboat men, would drop what they were doing and double to the
boat slips. Launches towed the whaleboats out to where the whales
had been sighted, sometimes, I was told, as far as 30 miles off.
Four great Sperm whales were towed in during my stay.
Jester lay alongside the stone quay to long mooring lines and
interested onlookers would stroll by and sometimes wonder that
you had come all this way alone; occasionally they would thank
you for coming to see them. On the evening in question I noticed
an arresting figure, bearded with long uncut hair and unusual
attire who clearly wished to make contact. His rig had something
of the Sikh about it and by way of breaking the ice I asked if he
was Sikh. He misunderstood and said he was quite fit. We passed
to other matters and soon it became clear that the purpose of his
call was roughly speaking evangelical. In passable English and a
civilised conversational tone he explained to me the meaning of
the gospels and the significance of the Deity, which he referred
to, quaintly but reverentially, as Sir God. I found myself beguiled
by the homely way he talked about the Lord and the disciples, as
though he knew them all personally – as in his way I suppose he
did. He told me of the phenomenon of
crater on the neighbouring island which was dedicated to Mary
Magdalene, and how sometimes on her feast-day a cloud in the
shape of a cross would form over the peak. He passed me a
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photograph of the phenomenon, an obvious fake, although clearly
not to him.
It started to blow a bit and I asked one or two of those standing
about to give me a hand warping Jester to a quieter berth. But
the prophet would have none of it. Why are you so fearful, he
asked; have you no faith? He would ask Sir God to calm the
waters, which indeed he did and in due course (once the squall
was through) the wind dropped and, as in the gospel, there
followed a great calm. Jester stayed where she was. The prophet,
like any tradesman who had accomplished his task, prepared to
leave but before doing so he offered thanks. In all the
circumstances I thought it would seem churlish for me not to join
in. The holy man then went on his way, leaving his new disciple
behind. I suppose to the casual onlooker
seemed rather like that.
I think of the guru of Horta from time to time with both affection
and amusement. But what strikes me now looking back is how
lame the purely scientific or reductionist explanation of such
matters sounds. That the whole thing can be explained by
coincidence is obvious, but coincidence is no more easily proved
than the miraculous, and further neither possibility necessarily
precludes the other. This somewhat shaky line of thought leads
me to ponder the way people personalise their boats. Like pets
they are named, and are often credited with powers beyond those
inherent in their design and construction; like people, they are
credited with a will of their own. ‘I am so glad’, wrote Blondie
Hasler some forty years ago when I had just bought Jester, ‘that
you now have my little boat that has always looked after me so
well’. ‘They tell me’, wrote Belloc many years before, I suppose
thinking along similar lines, ‘... that a ship has no being at all,
that a boat is not a person, but is only a congeries of planks and
timbers and spars and things of that sort’. He clearly thought
quite otherwise but concludes, not very helpfully, that this is simply
to open up the debate between realism and nominalism (which
holds that it is all in the mind anyway).
That Jester had looked after me over the years seemed to me
fairly obvious, never more I suppose than during the ultimate
storm we went through on the way back from
1986 when she was rolled over and dismasted, the fore-hatch
sucked out and so on. But there was nothing personal about
that, nothing I would thank the boat rather than her designer
and builder for. Quite different, however, was a less sensational
occasion when in 1993, sailing back from
boat exercised to the full her magical powers to prevent us getting
run down. We were well off the shipping routes, the conditions
entirely favourable with perfect visibility and a force 3 well out
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on the quarter so that the wind-vane gear could have no difficulty
holding the course. I turned in, as was my habit whenever possible
so that at any rate fatigue would not contribute to my vulnerability.
I awoke quite suddenly after an hour or so to find the boat hove-
to, the sheet slack and the fully battened sail weather-cocking.
We were quite still. About half a mile to port the steaming lights
of a ship could be seen and indicated a safe passing. But it was
equally clear that had we carried on and not mysteriously have
taken all way off by heaving to, a collision situation would have
resulted. On this occasion I thanked the boat, as it clearly behove
me’.
The first Club Rally,
entertains aboard Griffin III. Other Club members include
David Nichol (second from left) and Mike Taylor-Jones (top right)
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