A very bright, imaginative friend in London asks me genuinely what the attraction is, crossing an ocean on a small sailing boat. ‘I can’t think of anything worse’, she says - ‘just so vulnerable and terrifying’. 

I reply that her view represents a misunderstanding. When you have familiarity with sailing and understand what you are undertaking, it becomes something very positive. As a wilderness experience, it is a wonderful opportunity to be almost entirely outside of the human programme, with everything that entails. A giant reset. A chance to de-fragment and re-format. And it’s not an empty place, a void, by any means. You have to see it in its own terms; this is the beauty of the experience.

In the several thousand metres of water under the boat’s keel, we wonder what life exists. A sense of vertigo accompanies the possibilities. But knowing that humankind is the most dangerous species on earth by a long shot, our curiosity grows. 

After a few days in the open sea the eye very keenly craves detail. An escape from the tyranny of the two-tone, the horizon-meets-sky. A new run of clouds delights. Star constellations. Anything to look at. The mind quickly invents allegories and symbols to suit.

Cargo ships plying the routes west of Africa occasionally pass on the horizon. They offer solace and a suggestion of humanity, but they also convey a sense of distance and loss. The mind wanders over the captain and crew, the faces, the lives, passing by, out of reach. 

A dark silhouette catches the eye on the surface between swells. Binoculars are grabbed. The imagination runs wild. What living thing? What relic? This time, an old fishing float. Another time an enormous inflatable pink dolphin, snatched by a gust of wind from a tourist beach. 

We hope to meet the locals out here. The ocean is a wilderness only to the uninitiated. At face value you have the surface. But under this an entire ecosystem is minding its own business. And since our route crosses close to the seamount Conception Bank, we very much hope to be enlightened.

Morning, day four, a hundred meters off the port beam, the limpid ooze of the surface explodes in our direction with arcing silhouettes. Soon they are alongside with their muscular pulsing tails, then at the bow interweaving a mesmerising formation, pushing off the surge. One turns sideways underwater to stare a beady eye at mine, speckled brown and grey neoprene-like body, dorsals very raked. 

I always wonder what dolphins make of us in these encounters: we hysterical figures, leaning out from the bow, shrieking and flailing, desperately signalling. I like to imagine they think we need something, but wisely they also see in us a liability, unhinged and unpredictable. 

Northern gannets pass a number of times. They resemble 1950s Italian traffic police, the kind that orchestrate a huge road junction dressed in full white including gloves. The pale ochre head resembles a pith helmet, the black wing tips the polished boots. The darker plumage around their eyes suggests a challenging hang-over. They steer a course close to us but keep their speed up in a straight line, passing silently with slow beats of powerful wings.

I feel gratitude for the company of shearwaters. Uninterested in us as they seem to be, they have sought us out. They fly close and their proximity offers some kind of connection which is welcome in these bare circumstances. They tell us that we still exist out here, in infinity.

They circle the boat, showing off their acrobatics. Medium-sized, brown-topped, cream beneath, they dive towards the waves before turning to the side millimetres from the surface, riding the trough then twisting sideways to skim a wing tip along the following peak, and twitching over the peak into the next valley.

The following day as we pass nearest to the seamount, an underwater spire rising from two and a half thousand to one hundred and thirty metres, some splashing begins regularly to port. It is calm and we are motoring, cutting the endless silk, so that the surface disturbance lingers as a radiating ring on the smooth surface. With polarising glasses I walk the deck to stare down through the glare of the surface. I find six large fish snaking in formation alongside, sometimes a few metres off the hull, other times further.

They are stout, barrel-bodied with large black eyes, about 80 centimetres long, either Atlantic Bonito or Skipjack Tuna. Behind their second dorsal run a few diagonal iridescent blue stripes. They pulse with their tail fin, and their small side fins act as stabilisers, tuning their depth in the water column. They break the surface occasionally, as if to snack. I throw a peanut onto the surface ahead of them, and one takes it with ease in passing.

It is calm enough to climb the mast ladder to see the bigger picture. A little extra height opens up the scale of the ocean horizon magnificently. I can suddenly see the extended pattern of the incoming swells, the product of storms thousands of miles away in the north Atlantic, these gentle hills of water that rise and fall regardless of local conditions. 

The snaking troupe of silver torpedoes stand to port just outside the sweep of Czarina Blue’s bow wave, the two cutting through the deep blue glass. What attracts them? Are we some kind of mothership? Or just pure curiosity and diversion? 

After several hours we lose our friends when we stop the boat completely to just savour the absolute silence and glassiness of a dead calm day in the east Atlantic. We discuss the possibility of swimming on the surface of thousands of metres of water. We float there surreally on this oozing mirror. We say, ’Far out!’

Our final encounter is with a small bird, a soft green chiffchaff likely on his way to Africa for the winter. He flutters around the boat a couple of times before landing on the bow. Often these tiny birds take to a boat to break their thousand-mile journeys. Once, crossing Biscay, a sedge warbler joined us for twenty four hours and after food and rest became trusting, and would settle (and relieve itself) on our hand or shoulder.

Chaffy soon accepts some seeds and water on the foredeck and nights under the upturned wooden dinghy. That night the weather turns and as we approach landfall in the small hours, lightning storms begin to sprout up on either side. Rain falls and it becomes blustery. I take down the mainsail and reduce the genoa in anticipation of worse to come. 

When the lightning comes really close, I steer away and trim the sails accordingly. Chaffy is woken by the loss of his shelter position, and flutters out looking for some lee from the gusts. With the wind now behind the vessel, the outside of the cockpit windscreen gives him some shelter. Unfortunately the only place to cling on with his reedy claws is a scant bit of horizontal rubber trim where glass meets aluminium. He struggles to maintain a hold and his composure. 

My lingering memory is this tiny fluffy bird, only a few feet away from my face but, for him, safely the other side of the glass, scrabbling to get purchase on the rubber trim, as his feathers ruffle and fly in all directions from the back eddies of powerful gusts. In the regular flashes of lightning we observe each other through the glass. He keeps his tiny beady eye on me, the only thing not moving in his wind-battered body. We are in the same boat.

Story published in Sea Maven magazine

Moonlight! We had the gift of moonlight, with a full moon mid-voyage. Night sailing is perhaps the greatest pleasure of the sailor, and a moon is the cream of night sailing. It is a time when the body is out of kilter, forced to stay awake in an unfamiliar zone. The darkness wakes the physical senses, the ear becomes hypersensitive to sounds. Our experience of those hours is very internalised; we become existential creatures journeying across a great surface, travelling in high allegory. Much colour is stripped away, leaving line and tone, the minimalist vector of the ocean horizon, the cut of the sails. 

The bright moon makes some of the stars less visible, and hides the glow of the phosphorescence. But the advantage is the horizon, a feeling of spaciousness, a ghostly beauty in the soft yet defined light, the fall of shadows, and the revelation of textures in the ocean’s surface. Being able to see takes away some of the oppressiveness of night, and when calm it presents a sea of tranquility.

Without a moon, helming in an ocean swell can be very difficult. One struggles to make out the horizon: where the stars stop and a total blackness begins. The person on helm must fall back on their inner ear and sense of balance, steering as if with eyes closed, desperately deciphering a sense of horizontal. 

One night on my previous crossing, a black hole appeared in the starry heavens above the boat. It must be the outline of a small cloud. That night it was moonless and so dark that one could barely make out the line of the horizon. We steered through inky blackness, and the only clue to the whereabouts of the water surface or horizontal plane was the V of phosphorescent electric green foam running either side of the boat’s bow. 

In its passing, the cloud brought a ten minute squall which overcame the boat, pressing the sails as the the wind doubled. For ten minutes the boat lurched dangerously, trying to turn sideways, and it took all my concentration to counter these effects, almost blind. I felt I was steering a racing chariot through a black Hades with green fire sparking off the wheels, terrible, exciting and surreal. Afterwards I collapsed into sleep.

On this passage, most nights that were moonlit were tranquil nights, the lack of cloud signifying fair weather. They were nights of half-sleepy contemplation, where the mind went out to infinity and then back to the mundane, the need for a snack, or a pee. 

Not all nights were moonlit. One cloudy night the wind picked up steadily over an hour, and the boat began to speed to 7 or 8 knots, barrelling and lurching, a fantastic bow wave flying. I wondered how much sleep Alan was getting in the sofa berth. As I clipped on and climbed onto the foredeck to reef the main sail, rain fell in sheets, driven by strong gusts of wind. It was a surreal experience to be blown and blasted whilst working the ropes by the mast in the light of a small head torch. But I felt safe in the middle of the boat, I knew the ropes. And it was a relief to get the boat under control again. Moments later the wind died away and soon the whole process had to be repeated in reverse.

We swapped shifts every night for variety so that we could experience the different three-hour slots. We agreed on the kindest regime: sleep 9-12pm, on deck 12-3am, sleep 3-6am, finally wake for the beauty of sunrise at 0730. But sometimes the conditions made for interesting sailing so I was loathe to go to sleep. Other times I was counting the minutes to waking Alan. 

Coming on deck in the middle of the night after a sleep, the crew about to go off-watch hands over with a little briefing of what’s been going on, what to look out for. For the person coming on watch, the incredible sleepiness of the outgoing person is almost comical. Words are few and half-baked, the need for rest is apparent.

It is the textures of the ocean’s surface that you really remember after moonlight. You can be straight-cutting a thousand miles of shining silk, or other times lurching and barreling through a disturbed surface of wind-blown animal hide, rising and falling, flying white meringues the foam tops of certain peaks. It is a sensual experience and the mind wanders through the not quite repeating patterns.

Two things were different about this particular voyage. One was that I was now skipper of my own vessel. The second was that I had one crew, my fellow sailor, Alan, a 20-years friend who had sailed with his family many years ago but was rusty, he said. These things added a new layer of meaning and responsibility to this voyage.

Whilst single-handing the boat to Gibraltar I had gradually eliminated inefficiencies in the running rigging, the rope systems. By improving leads and the use of clutches I had effectively given myself an extra pair of hands and eliminated nearly all chafe on lines. In Gibraltar I now renewed some sheets and blocks and kept the old ones for spares, in order to be lessen the likelihood of failures of any kind, and to know I had backups, and ideally backups of backups. The sails were all new or serviced very recently and in top repair. 

But everything had to be questioned, in the quest for self-sufficiency. What would happen if the water pump failed? How would we get at the 600 litres of drinking water in the tanks? We had spare electric pumps, hand pumps, spare hand pumps. In terms electrical power if the alternator or the engine failed we had wind and solar energy, and if the entire 12v battery system failed ( almost impossible within 6 days), then we had a fold out solar panel for charging the ipads for navigation, the sat phone, and the handheld VHF. We only had the one auto helm but it was hugely strong and if that failed we had our own bare hands.

We had enough diesel for a range encompassing the entire trip by motor, though we expected to sail at least half of it. We had fresh fruit and veg for ten days but expected the trip to last six. We had many jars, tins, dried pulses, rices, pastas, sauces, onions, potatoes and, since Alan ate vegan, we had a very large amount of soya protein, in the form of sausages and tofu. We had enough food for three weeks, I estimated. That could get us to the Caribbean if necessary! We had trolling lines with lures that we preferred not to use, for emergency fish protein.

We had grab bags with everything you might need for a week in a liferaft, satellite beacons for the search and rescue to find us. We had every conceivable safety equipment and we briefly discussed all of it, which must have been a lot for Alan to take in. We discussed Man Over Board strategies (start the engine and full steam ahead, we laughed), the importance of always hanging on with one hand, dealing with rigging failures, fire control, use of the life raft, safety harnesses, sending a Mayday, storm techniques, use of the engine, the toilet and cooker. I felt sure Alan cannot have taken it all in, which worried me, but he seemed to have it under control. 

Having a crew member feels a big responsibility. You are in charge of his life more than he may know. He might save your life, but he may also be a liability to you, and to the vessel. As it turned out Alan was helming well immediately and clearly had plenty of sailing experience, and apart from two days of getting his sea legs he turned out to be the perfect crew. He took a keen interest in every aspect of the boat and and understood things immediately. Being a photographer he was highly observant which was useful.

It was interesting to see how Alan, coming directly from inner-city London, would find the experience of six days ‘in the desert’ on the open ocean. More of a contrast cannot be imagined. From ultra modernity and ‘connectedness’ in the modern sense, to the very fabric of timelessness; a very different kind of connection. It would be an awakening, for sure. 

I was very much in the groove of sailing after the last month’s experiences, so it was interesting to follow the reactions of someone in a different mental state. Then again it was sometimes work to manage the psychological space of someone else on a small vessel and that could sometimes feel like an interruption in the sailing groove, the direct communing with nature, the vessel, the elements. It made me reflect on what had been so rewarding about single-handing.

The sat phone’s internet connection was still problematic when we left port, despite four days of dealing with the specialists, but I knew we had SMS and telephone capability so the basics were covered. In the event my dear father sent daily weather updates by SMS for our sea area as we progressed southwest towards the Canaries. 

We left at a particular time of the tide, around midday, which worked in our favour against the east-going current resulting from the higher Atlantic sea level pouring into the lower Mediterranean within the Gibraltar Straits. This tide window had to be combined with favourable winds to blow you out of the gap. After many days it all came together and that was our time to leave. A handful of other yachts were evidently doing the same. It was a grey day with some drizzle, but we set off excited, myself apprehensive about crossing the fast ferries and the shipping lanes that run east west through the straits, before we could turn south west into open ocean and the freedom of the seas. 

About apprehension. Some might think it a sign of inexperience in a skipper. However, in reading Joseph Conrad’s The Mirror of the Sea, an account of his maritime experiences, I found some very interesting words about apprehension. Conrad was a professional seaman for many years before starting his writing career on land. He sailed on Cutty Sark-type clippers in the late 1800s, and it gave him a fountain of stories for this later novels. 

Conrad makes the observation that before he became a captain himself, as crew he learned to only really trust the captains who showed significant signs of apprehension at every stage of the voyaging process, especially at departure and arrival. This state of worry or preoccupation produced the finest seamanship, and avoided complacency, a danger in such a changeable and potentially hostile environment.

My apprehension meant that I hardly gave a thought to the passing of the narrowest gap between two great continents, the misty proximity of Morocco, a country so contrasting with my last two years of Mediterranean liveaboard life. In the event the shipping lanes were easily demystified by observing the AIS signals coming from the ships on our chart plotter, and timing our crossing to a gap in the traffic, which for us occurred around dusk.

Soon we were entering the realms of offshore, the ship traffic died out, and we could relax somewhat and prepare for our first night at sea. The light of a solitary sailing yacht twinkled a few miles ahead, and occasional star patches appeared though the dispersing clouds. 

When you travel an ocean you pass into a zone. It is a place without time. You are mixing with the most potent currents of memories, the lives of ancestors, of creatures, the capturing of stellar light, the absorption of CO2, its motion reflections of the energy patterns of global weather systems. Even the scientists in Germany now say that water has a ‘memory’ of light particles of everything that passes through it, so this is some electric soup you are moving through.

When you pass out of sight of land into this zone, you willingly enter a haunted house of pure perfection and neutrality. It is a place which does not accept the human any more than it denies it. It just is. It is deeply humbling to be in such a place. It is actually a privilege. And not something one forgets in a hurry.

I had said, previously, 16 years ago, that my experience of voyaging across the Atlantic was unique in that I saw things there, particularly at night, when the body becomes ultra sensitised, that made me state that I had seen beauty in a different league to anything that went before. The curve of the starlit heavens that confronts the helmsman in his tiny cockpit, the varying textures of moon on water and the heaving swell of the bosom of this vast watery tract enter one’s consciousness and utterly dwell within one’s soul, for a time. 

Afterwards, it is very difficult to say what happened, what passed there. But something changed within you. There was an understanding of something, a connection with something, that changed your soul forever. You somehow saw into the mind’s eye of the planet, the solar system, the very essence of the elements, Nature, the Universe, call it what you will. You are then forever changed. You are a traveller of oceans, and when you meet another sailor who says, ‘After three weeks crossing to Tahiti, I just wanted to carry on’, you do not question such a statement. You become complicit in the darkest secrets of the world. You have seen the giant cogs turning, and considered how impossibly small you are within its context.

And the strangest thing is the feeling this instills in you. Not terror, not fear, not a state of vulnerability, but the purest sense of peace, connection and bliss. People talk of returning to the womb, and I can only think they mean in order to achieve this sense of harmony and connectedness with something much greater than oneself. 

We were enlightened, mid-voyage in 2002, with the big news from the sailing rally’s daily radio report from Cowes, that allied forces had begun bombing Afghanistan. We stood amazed at this news. Firstly it could have no effect on us whatsoever, in our current state of geography, but mainly in our current state of mind. As we attempted to process this fact, staring out over the glassy waves sculpted by early evening sun, at this endless horizon of space and light, it made us realise how far we had gone in, into this zone, this Afterworld of peace and light. How far we had come, on this voyage.

And of course it isn’t just you that is voyaging. It is thousands of years of humans before you. In dugouts blown offshore, in reed rafts, in early clinker-built ships, in rowing boats beyond their range, in spherical coracles tossed towards the horizon. Never mind the radar scanner, the AIS vessel identification system, the satellite phone, the self-furling genoa sail, the refrigerator powered by solar panels. What you see with your eyes is what they saw. What you feel in your little heart is what they felt. That cannot be taken away. And this is my fascination with the open sea, the ocean environment. It is like a secret amongst ocean sailors: ‘Hey, come listen to the heartbeat of the world.”

I cannot recall a single detail about that first eleven hour journey to Garrucha, despite it being my entry into the world of single-handing. This is because what happened on the next fifteen hour journey rounding Cabo de Gata was so intense that some kind of amnesiac trauma used up all my mental capacity including the part which stored the first journey. Clearly I am now into working soldier territory.

The forecast was good for the second journey in terms of wind. Strongish following winds to blow me where I wanted to go, some sea state but, moving along in the waves’ direction, hardly a concern. However, less ideal, I was to sail through the centre of of a low pressure system, with associated unsettled weather :rain, thunderstorms, our old friend lightning, gust fronts, squalls. Overall, I figured it would be a good way to get to know how safe Czarina Blue would make me feel when the shit hit the fan, before I got into bigger projects. 

After a few hours sleep I left Garrucha at 0245 hours, the wind that had been pinning the boat to the quay when I arrived had now switched direction so that when I untied my lines the boat drifted off without bother, worth a whole crowd of boat crew and marine staff to a single-hander.

It was dark, but the heavy rain of the previous evening had stopped and the wind was moderate so the atmosphere was not intimidating. In the darkness beyond the marina wall, the invisible swell tossed the boat around as I fully reefed the mainsail in preparation for probable squalls later, and part reefed the foresail, the little mizzen sail fully out. 

I made good progress down the coast on a broad reach, the wind gradually increasing to about 20 knots. The boat was creaming along at up to 7.5 knots, its hull speed. There was visible fork lightening in two patches, but they were off to the south east, not in my direction of travel.

That was when it happened. I was about a mile off of some industrial and fishing ports when I picked up a radio report on channel 16, on which I was keeping a listening watch. Cabo de Gata radio gave a Pan Pan report (ship’s security update). ‘We have big seas tonight.’ That was all she said. 

Cabo de Gata radio exists to control and monitor the TSS or shipping lanes that are positioned on the corner of south east Spain. Small vessels like mine must avoid this shipping motorway by navigating the Inshore Traffic Zone. But we travel immediately adjacent to the ships. And if a radio operator that deals with the interests of enormous cargo ships is mentioning “big seas”, one can only presume they mean seas of interest to vessels of half a million tonnes, as opposed to my own vessel, about 12. Visions of thirty or forty foot waves came to mind.

As did something the pilot book had warned about: when strong E or NE winds blow against the prevailing east-going current (the Atlantic pours into the Med at Gibraltar and flows east), at Cabo de Gata (the corner) disturbed seas can build where the two forces meet. Could that be what the radio report referred to? 

This episode had a profound affect on me, which was immediately exacerbated by forked lightening flickering maybe 7 or 8 miles ahead, in my direction of travel. I immediately went below to consult my passage plan I had made the day before, a side of A4 with What the plan is, and What to do if the plan goes wrong. Under my list of Ports of Refuge, I found that there were two possibilities. The first was immediately adjacent, a choice of industrial ports ‘only in emergency’ and a busy fishing harbour with questionable depths where ‘sailors would have to take their chances tying alongside fishing vessels’. 

The only other port of refuge was right down on the corner of Cabo de Gata, too late to find that I was in over my head. Strangely I also now recalled my mother’s words of encouragement for my first single-handed voyage: ‘I hope it goes swimmingly’. 

Actually the expression ‘I want to call my Mummy’ literally crossed my mind. I grinned sardonically at the very idea of it. Because that’s the thing with single-handing, I now realised. You are on your own. My Dad, a great sailor, would have had a considered view on the matter, but he wasn’t here. It was up to me now. It felt like the beginning of some kind of powerful initiation.

I pondered the variables for several minutes, whilst the boat barrelled on seemingly towards the jaws of death. Then I made a decision. ‘Better safe than sorry’, ‘There are no old, bold sailors’, etc. I chickened out and decided to seek refuge now. I considered the industrial ports: plenty of room to manoeuvre, but did a sailor losing his nerve constitute an emergency? And how easily can one tie up to a 20 foot concrete quay designed for massive ships? 

I opted for the fishing harbour, and tacked in its direction. On approach I re-read the description and pondered the chances of grounding, and the potential damage caused to rigging whilst tied to a huge fishing boat. I decided that there was nothing for it but to back track north several hours to Garrucha, my point of departure. I would tie up again before daylight and the other sailors would have no idea about my cowardly outing.

I tacked again to start the process of zig zagging through the wind to claw my way north, and suddenly saw that whilst one tack gave me north-west, some forwards progress to Garrucha, the other tack took me exactly east out to sea, and I was now pounding in to the waves and wind that had seemed so fun on the way down. It would clearly take more than 6 hours to get back to Garrucha. 

So at that moment, I decided to run with it. I turned back in my original direction to the south, towards the flickering lightning, and decided that the jaws of death would just have to put up with me. Along the lines of, say, some necessary dental treatment.

My boat’s track had now created a neat triangle on the screen of the chart plotter, a symbolic triangle of indecision. With the triangle now complete, I took charge and we headed south. Czarina would just have to look after me, and that would be that. We were in this together, me and Czarina, we were facing this as a team. 

A strong feeling of elation and certainty overcame me. This was the initiation of the single-hander, I realised. You make the call, and you run with it. Never mind the lady on the radio with the sexy Pan Pan voice and the horrific cryptic phrasing.

One good thing about ‘walking the boards’ for an hour (something Captain Cook used to do a lot of, tacking back and forth in the same spot awaiting daylight for a safe approach to land), was that I was an hour nearer to daylight. And when you are feeling edgy, there is something incredibly uplifting about daylight. With daylight, even if the waves are huge, you can at least see them coming and react! As the twilight glow began at about 7am, I felt a sense of almost well-being.

The very grey low cloud remained, but the lightning moved off to the east. My only friend the autopilot had plenty of energy from the furiously spinning wind generator. However I regularly took the helm to enjoy the ride and make skilled use of the wind, now 25 knots, to surf the boat down waves, making at one point 10 knots and regularly into the eights and nines. I was having fun. 

The seas did build as we approached the headland of Cabo de Gata, but not unduly since we were running with them. The occasional rogue wave, a small part of which jumped into the cockpit with me, lent excitement to our high-energy journey. I made coffee and felt rather upbeat, as a short ray of sunshine struck the foredeck. 

The next radio report created a different atmosphere. ‘A small vessel which is believed to have left the African coast yesterday, 27 persons on board, is adrift and headed north in the direction of the Spanish coast. All vessels in the area please maintain watch and if sighted please report their position to the maritime authorities.’

I sighted no refugees, but on rounding the cape the seas calmed and the sun came out by late morning and I had a hot meal. As I gazed across at the thousands of acres of poly tunnels that provide most of north Europe’s food, a spring-shackle exploded when its C-clip pinged off, and another block did the same. Otherwise all was well on the boat until the last hour.

An enormous cumulo nimbus arrived from the northwest, blocking our approach to Almerimar. Below the cloud were not only clear hanging beads of rain but also an enormous churning grey brown mass of what looked like a dust storm, although it appeared to be over the water not the land. Anyway it spelt bad news, and I furled the genoa to Brazilian bikini size. I tried to tack away from it but the 35 knot gust front overcame us followed by the heaviest monsoon rainfall I have ever experienced. It actually made me laugh in its intensity. It washed the boat and sails very thoroughly and I was very glad of my hard roof and windscreen which I sheltered behind. 

We were soon in Almerimar marina surrounded by gruff mariners who had clearly had yet another normal day, and a man who called himself ‘Frankenstein’ (Francisco) who seemed to take more information about the boat then any other marina receptionist, whilst I struggled to stay awake in front of him. I tied up in my slot, showered and collapsed. Thus initiated. 

Captain Tom told me something which really brought home the enormous gap in understanding between users of sail and motor vessels.

We completed an eight hour sail that took us from Ciutadella, ancient town of west coast Menorca, to Puerto Pollenca on the east facing coast of the neighbouring island of Mallorca, a distance of some 35 miles. I will explain what such a voyage is like, then explain the chasm of understanding.

One prepares for such a voyage. Eight hours might not sound that much but when you sail you get physical and you must concentrate. As the wind and sea state changes, which they invariably do, you have to monitor and react. You are on deck, adjusting lines, tuning sails. 

For example things started well with a reasonable following wind. We had the mizzen sail at the back on the small mast and the mainsail in the middle on the main mast, and the genoa (foresail), all slackened off to be like walls or bags catching the wind from almost dead behind us. However after 30 minutes we reached the headland which marks the westerly-most point of Menorca. 

We saw what was coming, it was quite evident on the horizon. Curls of wave forms crossed from right to left, tangles of water rising up from a flat sea surface. It was the point where the land on our right ran out, along with the shelter it gave. It was the DMZ, the point where we became exposed to the full sea state, a strong residual swell resulting from a storm miles away in the Gulf of Lyon to the north that played out in the preceding days. This hit us on the starboard (right) side, diagonally, from behind, sending our boat into a kind of corkscrewing motion. 

As if this wasn’t enough, simultaneously the wind decided to die off. With a good wind (13 knots plus ) a boat like ours, heavily built and with a long underwater keel, will be pulled steadily through all this messy water. She will break the smaller waves and tension her way through the larger swell, creating an enviable stability against nature’s best. The sails drive her and create her own centre of gravity, like a gyroscope operating from the centre of the vessel. But without a good wind in the sails she becomes a sitting duck to the watery articulations around her. 

Inside the cabin the party begins. Well-lodged things start to fall off shelves, a whole pineapple thuds on the wooden cabin sole. The contents of locked cupboards start to chatter and mingle like at a good party, towels fall off rails, books slide off tables, the water in the toilet bowl may slop over the rim. Not good. Not highly relaxing, at all. 

Now that the wind had dropped to about 9 knots, and the boat was rolling around like a drunk, the sails we had up were joining the party. The two mast-rigged sails began to clang their metal pins as their booms swung left and right by the wave motion, the canvas flogging in sharp cracks, the wind insufficient to pin them in one position. The foresail was similarly disturbed and rubbing on the metal wires that holds up the mast. In a flat sea this little wind would have been something useful, but in this 1.5 metre swell the sails couldn’t cope. 

We decide to roll up the foresail and drop the mainsail, lashing the small mizzen sail in line with the boat to create some sideways stability. After all that, an intense five intense of activity, clipped on with harness on a deck that resembled a rodeo machine, we pulled out the cruising chute. This is a kind of large, lightweight bag of a sail that is used for lighter winds coming from behind. It is orange, very orange, and goes very well with a navy blue hull (from the passing seagull’s point of view, at least). It is so big and unruly that it comes wrapped in huge white condom. You hoist the tip of the condom up to the top of the mast, this entire 11 metres deflated white sausage hanging down to the deck. pocking out of the bottom of the condom are two sail corners. You tie the front corner to the deck at the bow, and the back sail corner to some control lines going back to the cockpit winches. Then you pull a thin line which controls the condom, pulling it up from the bottom edge. The condom wrinkles up and lifts to the top where it stays, revealing reams of orange sail, which as soon as it makes contact with wind, turns into the most beautiful orange curvaceous wind-catcher and pulls forward against its lines. 

Suddenly the boat has a tension capable of countering the rolling motion as we are pulled forward by this enormous orange half bra. Everything changes comfort-wise. There is a resemblance of order on the boat, the party quietens down, we can think again. Also the FastCAT ferry from Mallorca finally notices our huge oranges and changes course to our north, to our relief. We figured we could sail between its two hulls but we would lose the mast in the process.

For the next 5 hours or so we sailed forth, Menorca becoming smaller, lower, hazier, just as Mallorca’s hills became visible, taller, clearer. We managed to cook some tortellini eaten with olive oil and black pepper, some fruits, made some tea, all in a controlled but still rolling boat. Maia filmed the stove rolling left and right on its gimbals with the boats motion, the pasta pot swinging with it, steam swirling. 

As we approached the outer bay of Pollenca, the wind dropped a little more, changed direction from north east to south east which caused a confused sea state with the new southeast wind waves clashing with the northeast residual swell. It was an ugly mess. Our orange busty half bra started to fold in on itself and make explosive cracks as the canvas flexed tight, testing the seams. What’s more, I noticed that one of the lines controlling it was chafing on the stainless steel pulpit. I had set it up wrong perhaps, or needed a higher fixing point than was available. It was time to get the sail down.

As Maia loosened the line holding the back of the sail, the sail flew out in a glorious wrinkled  twisting drape and simultaneously I, wobbling by the mast on a rolling deck, pulled the thin line that brings down the condom over this orange madness to restore order and drop the sail. That was the plan anyway. Instead the wind piped up just as the the condom stuck half way down due to a prior twist that I had not seen, and half an orange bra was flailing around, occasionally catching wind and trying to hoist me into the sea. I shouted at Maia to clip on and get on deck, I needed to drop this entire mess lower onto the deck, and her to sit on the bottom of the sail to stop it going in the sea. At that point the rope holding the sail up developed a twist of its own and I expounded every last drop off energy bruising against the mast and heaving against this unwelcome friction to get the sail down onto the deck. 

Not wanting to go into too much detail, but the point is, that when you sail for eight hours, you have an experience. You don’t know what is next. The present moment is ever-changing, and you are compulsorily caught in it. There is no escape, no stepping off to dry land for a coffee and a re-think. An so you are in the moment, this eight hour moment, and when you reconsider your journey from Menorca to Mallorca, even months or years later, you have all these memories flooding back, these mini trials and tribulations, and your heart beats with the heart of nature, its elements, its rhythms, the wind and the sea. You can say you have evidently travelled, you have voyaged between two places.

Which brings me back to my original premise concerning the gratuitous. 

Captain Tom lives on a sail boat himself but his employment is to skipper one or two large motor yachts, the kind that might be called ‘gin-palaces’ or ‘stinkers’ on account of the smell they make when motoring along. Typically around 80 to 120 feet long, they have enormous engines which enable this huge bulk to move quickly from A to B. Tom told me that when such a vessel makes the afore-mentioned journey, which took our 38 foot yacht eight hours, they complete it in just under an hour. They need the sea to be quite flat as they have no steadying sails, but when all is well, they can cane it at 30 plus knots and get there in a flash. He and his deck hand do the navigation and mooring stuff and the owners sits back with their buddies and their gin, presumably, and stare at the passing yachts, and then they are there. 

The mild catch is that the journey costs €2000 in diesel!! It cost us perhaps €8, or 5 litres of fuel, from the brief motoring at either end of the voyage when mooring. It’s not only the money, it’s the idea that for an hour of gratuitous speed you can burn that much fuel. Quick calculations suggest a use of around 1,500 litres of fuel. And just so that they can feel a brief thrill simultaneous with the over-arching drone of a many thousand horsepower engine and the repeated explosions of the bow as it shatters waves, causing disarray to other craft and worse to any passing turtles, as they check their iPhones for developments. And then they arrive in time for the next restaurant reservation, presumably. 

Such a form of travel shows a poor awareness or respect for the state of our crowded under-resourced world. The word gratuitous comes to mind. Possibly philistine, as well. Then they brilliantly miss out on the experience of making a journey, it becomes inconsequential, a by-product of the need for speed. It is like any other of their journeys, it is all about them, the boat, the superimposition of power and force over what is around them. Other than the questionable acquisition of status, I cannot see the attraction of such a pursuit. You lose on all fronts! 

Determination, busyness, self-absorption: the defining characteristics of the urban dweller moving through public space. And none more so than these men-at-work, whose concentration is palpable. This material shot in Mumbai follows on from my London Pedestrian series where the light bathes the subject in their own psychological aura, caught in their own hermetic world. 

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