End and Beginning

We set out on an adventure, Dad and I. Across the landlocked waters of Lyn Maelog, at Rhosneigr on the isle of Anglesey. Dad at the oars of Trog, our home built pram dinghy. I, agog in the stern sheets. We left the shelter of the reed beds and entered a magical world of wind ruffled open water. The beginning.

Years later, I'm at the helm of Missee Lee. Off to explore the West Country.

Our arrival, beneath Dartmouth's towering green valley sides - with their stacked pastel houses - signals not the end of a voyage but the beginning of an urge to wander. An awakening.

We cross The Channel to linger a while on Alderney. It has proved a long passage - about the limit of a single handed sail, at Missee Lee's cruising speed of 3.5 to 4 knots.

"We need a bigger boat." Missee Lee's 'end' marks Goblin's beginning. And the start of new adventures.

Goblin is commissioned and launched, with due ceremony, from a dusty dockside on the Cattewater in Plymouth . I anchor for the night at Dittisham, on our maiden voyage . Off the dry stone quay which serves Greenway House - Agatha Christie's former home. Birdsong rings out from the wooded shores and the strong Dart tide gurgles musically in the stillness.

Soon we have cruised the length of the North Breton coast, west to L'Aberwrac'h.

It is an enchantingly craggy, wave washed, corner. Gateway to South Brittany. An end and a beginning.

Stargazer, with her long legs and peerless build quality, is launched. She is truly born under a wandering star. We anchor, amid Granite Rose, off La Chambre on the Ile de Brehat...

......before beginning our passage south, through the Raz de Sein, into Biscay. A new chapter of adventures has begun.

We anchor in the bays of Belle Ile. Sheltering off sandy beaches, in coves carved from granite cliffs by mighty Atlantic rollers - travelled from the shores of America. 

We tarry amid the thronged conviviality of Vannes in summer.

And sample the shoal sandy ports of the Ile d'Oleron.

Soon a new voyage begins. Out, across the Celtic Sea, and around the Fastnet. 

To the misty mountains of Glengariff, at the head of Bantry Bay, on Ireland's Atlantic coast.

We sail from the craggy cleft, of the Castletownshend anchorage - all  mauves and greens - to....

....the silver sands and wave smoothed pebbles of The Isles of Scilly. The end of our Irish cruise has become the beginning of a Scillonian idyll.

Now, for five long weeks, coronavirus has roamed our land - unseen and merciless. At last death rates are falling and there is talk that the end of the lockdown could begin. Talk of constructing a New Normal . Of finding a way for us to leave the shelter of our homes. For Stargazer to round the bend in the river, and put to sea again.

My, long planned, early retirement date falls at the end May. The end of one life and the beginning of another - in a world at a turning point. 

End and Beginning.