HARRY NEW YEAR

Flapper - Christmas wreath & chestnut glow

The festive glow of Christmas warms me as we lie on the still water waiting for Poole Bridge to open and let us out. Out to banish the housebound, slightly over fed and cooped up feeling that I have. Out to let Stargazer spread her wings in the crisp winter air. The sun is low. It brings no warmth to my hands and face that peep out from the protection of woolly hat and waterproofs. It warms the view though; brings out a deep chestnut glow from the varnished hull of Flapper as she lies alongside with a festive wreath hoisted up her foremast to salute the season. It colours the water a warm indigo blue. A light westerly breeze wrinkles the surface of the water to give it the gnarled texture of a weather beaten face.

An unseen hand raises the bridge and Stargazer glides between its pale blue arms. Arms raised as if to wave us bon voyage. On the Quay the fairy lights and the dog walkers already seem part of another world. Ahead lies the harbour, Brownsea Island and the limitless promise of the sea. There’s a chill, chill wind today though so today I’ll just taste a sip from the sea’s cup of limitless promise. I know that I can take a deeper quaff of the intoxicating liquor if I choose. I choose though to save that deeper quaff for the long days of the summer. Today’s sip will revive my summer dream and sustain it alive through the winter. What could be more fitting than to take that sip on New Year’s Eve?

White cliffs echo the lapping of the blue waves

I hoist full mainsail and genoa off the Quay and we reach down past Brownsea. The ebb is just starting to make, invisibly lifting us down the deserted harbour. Out past Brownsea Castle; the white washed walls repainted magnolia by the winter sun, a dark green, almost black, Christmas tree loafing  outside the walls on the foreshore, winking at us with coloured lights. Out past the chain ferry clanking back and forth laden down with cyclists, busses, cars, shore-side cares. We’re out in the Swash Channel now. Harry, Old Harry the chalk stack, beckons us on out. Studland Bay opens to starboard. The sun lights the cliffs enticingly, gives the beach and the pastel huts huddling on it an alluring appeal. We glide in silently, preserving the tranquility of the deserted anchorage to drop anchor under sail. I sit in the cockpit and absorb the atmosphere; drink in the sounds of the bay as I warm myself with hot soup spooned straight from a steaming pan. We’re tucked into The Yards, the classic Studland anchoring spot: snugly sheltered from the wind, an intimate view of Old Harry and not too far to row ashore. The white cliffs echo the rhythmic lapping of the blue waves at their feet and the soft melodies of the songbirds hidden in the dark woods above them. From astern, behind Harry, come the raucous, hard edged, cries of gulls and the occasional solid crump of a wave as the reef uncovers.

we sailed into the mystic

The evening sun plunges rapidly behind the village as if eager to welcome the night, the New Year. I climb below to warm my bones, write up the log, read, eat, daydream a little and listen to music. Van Morrison fits my mood: Into the Mystic from Moondance.

“We were born before the wind,

Also younger than the sun,

Ere the bonnie boat was won we sailed into the mystic,

Hark, now hear the sailors cry,

Smell the sea and feel the sky,

Let your soul and spirit fly into the mystic.”

The limitless promise of the sea kept alive through the winter, ready for a New Year, new cruises.  

Harry New Year !

As I climb back into the cockpit just before midnight a sickle moon has risen and Jupiter is just setting. There’s a sparkle of frost from Stargazer’s decks to answer the sparkle of the stars in the deep, dark velvet of the night sky. I toast the New Year stood on the bow; toast a new season’s cruising.