An English Summer 81

 

I awake to a silence which is tangible. Sunlight streams through the, half open, hatch above my bunk . The smell of seashore, mingled with that of woodland, hangs in the still air, of Blood Alley.

Yesterday morning, Stargazer beat her way up the Little Russel, bound north .The sluicing Channel Island tide beneath her. Two reefs in the main, swooping through a steep wind-over-tide swell. Leaving Castle Cornet, on the St Peter Port waterfront, basking in the morning sun.

I revise our routing. We carry one long tack, from the northern tip of Guernsey, out, west of Alderney, past the Casquets. If the Little Russel is, water-over-the-decks bouncy, the Alderney Race, our planned route, would have made for a very uncomfortable ride indeed. 

Stargazer slaloms across the shipping lanes. Shaking the reefs out, one by one. Slacking off the rig tension, to power up the sails, as the breeze steadily drops. Twenty knots, fifteen, ten, eight, six . Progress slows. But, in compensation, the wind veers, from north east, to north west. Better for our course. We tack. Now pointing at Poole, rather than Exmouth. The spring tide turns west. Progress slows further. Two knots, one point eight, over the ground. For six hours, whilst the tide runs its course.

By nightfall Stargazer has a fair tide beneath her, once more, and the wind begins to build. An orange eyed gibbous moon, rises from the rim of the sea. Tiger striped, as it climbs though whisps of cloud, then our bright white beacon. Lighting our way. Set high, amid the shimmering celestial firmament of stars. (Apologies for picture quality: moving boats and long exposures are not good bedfellows!)

 Stargazer feels her way in, toward Poole: past the blink of the Anvil Point lighthouse; the staccato fiery flashes, of the Peveril Ledge buoy; the glowing chalk, luminous in the moonlight, of Old Harry rocks; into the forest of occulting red and green channel markers, punctuated with the white flashes of the cardinals, confused by car headlights, street and house lighting, on the shore. The power of memory is a wondrous mystery. Remembered images, of a myriad daylight entries, float before my mind's eye. Guide us into the stillness, of our anchorage, beneath a wooded bluff, on the southern shore of Brownsea Island. 

From her vantage point, Stargazer enjoys the sylvan views, of South Deep, to one side and the man made monument, of Brownsea Castle, to the other.