shore, and the experience of it in a small boat, makes relentless demands on people and is unforgiving in its exposure of them. Every man emerges naked from the sea and I think, in some ways, what went wrong between George and me was the result of that exposure. It took a long time for that to become clear and the extraordinary climax and resolution of this difficulty didn’t finally come until we were in Orkney. When it did, I could scarcely have been more surprised.
We had already been through a great deal together. The first long crossing to Ireland; meeting Herve and absorbing his example; the incident on the Pembrokeshire coast; our long talks together about the relationship between boat and home, sea and shore, us out here, Sarah and Kathy back in England. Insulating layers had been stripped away and in some ways now the wires lay bare between us.
The day on Skellig, for me like ten hours spent in a glowing crucible, had been followed by a bad night in the Blaskets. George had been unable to leave the
Auk
at the Skelligs. All day he had put up with the difficult combination of anxiety and tedium, sitting alone on the boat, wondering if its anchor was going to hold, knowing that the rest of us were on the island drinking in its every element, while he could only watch from the side. Demand without stimulus, accommodating the necessary and ever-present watchfulness, needing to check at every turn that the boat was continuing to cling to its tiny underwater shelf with its toothpick of an anchor, ten or twelve fathoms below. He was, as a result, exhausted, even before we arrived late, at one in the morning, at the frankly unsatisfactory shelter we had chosen.
The anchorage in the lee of Inishvickillaun had scarcely been sheltered from the westerlies and the swell had poured through the gap to the north of the island. The
Auk
had been unsettled all night. None of us had tightened the mizzen sheet, and so its jaws were twisting and grinding against the mast all night. In the broken water that came round the top end of the island, halyards and their blocks were slapping against the mainmast. The anchor chain was continually grinding against its fairlead in the bow, a low rumbling.
All night long, George was up and down, more aware than the rest of us of the possibility that the anchor might not hold. He was clearly angry. On one occasion as he went past my bunk to the companion-way steps, the boat tipped so severely that the kettle fell off the cooker and veered all over the floor. I lay where I was and said, ‘Can I do anything to help?’
‘That’s what’s called a BSR,’ he said.
‘A BSR?’
‘A Bum Slightly Raised.’ And none of you need bother with the fucking kettle.’
Then, sharply, and at other times more subtly, my hopelessness and lack of responsibility was twinnedwith his anger. It became something of an underlying theme. George of course knew a great deal more about the psychology of the sea than I did. He had watched it at work on people, including himself, for too long not to be familiar with the dynamics of crews and with the way that adequacies and inadequacies overlapped at sea. He had often talked about the way the sea draws people who do not feel entirely whole on land. Even my presence here this year was a symptom of the belief that a boat could solve your problems. A boat, for all its complexity, is in fact a version of simplicity, but of a satisfyingly complex kind. Get to know the hundreds of ways in which a boat-at-sea works and you become its master and commander. A boat provides control in what looks like uncontrollable circumstances. It is the mirror image of the realities of life on land, which look easier but are, psychologically, far more difficult, more subtle, less visible, and less predictable. The boat, in other words, is the haven from the storms at home. And because a boat’s workings are a mystery, in the old sense that it is an arcane art, with its own equipment and
We had already been through a great deal together. The first long crossing to Ireland; meeting Herve and absorbing his example; the incident on the Pembrokeshire coast; our long talks together about the relationship between boat and home, sea and shore, us out here, Sarah and Kathy back in England. Insulating layers had been stripped away and in some ways now the wires lay bare between us.
The day on Skellig, for me like ten hours spent in a glowing crucible, had been followed by a bad night in the Blaskets. George had been unable to leave the
Auk
at the Skelligs. All day he had put up with the difficult combination of anxiety and tedium, sitting alone on the boat, wondering if its anchor was going to hold, knowing that the rest of us were on the island drinking in its every element, while he could only watch from the side. Demand without stimulus, accommodating the necessary and ever-present watchfulness, needing to check at every turn that the boat was continuing to cling to its tiny underwater shelf with its toothpick of an anchor, ten or twelve fathoms below. He was, as a result, exhausted, even before we arrived late, at one in the morning, at the frankly unsatisfactory shelter we had chosen.
The anchorage in the lee of Inishvickillaun had scarcely been sheltered from the westerlies and the swell had poured through the gap to the north of the island. The
Auk
had been unsettled all night. None of us had tightened the mizzen sheet, and so its jaws were twisting and grinding against the mast all night. In the broken water that came round the top end of the island, halyards and their blocks were slapping against the mainmast. The anchor chain was continually grinding against its fairlead in the bow, a low rumbling.
All night long, George was up and down, more aware than the rest of us of the possibility that the anchor might not hold. He was clearly angry. On one occasion as he went past my bunk to the companion-way steps, the boat tipped so severely that the kettle fell off the cooker and veered all over the floor. I lay where I was and said, ‘Can I do anything to help?’
‘That’s what’s called a BSR,’ he said.
‘A BSR?’
‘A Bum Slightly Raised.’ And none of you need bother with the fucking kettle.’
Then, sharply, and at other times more subtly, my hopelessness and lack of responsibility was twinnedwith his anger. It became something of an underlying theme. George of course knew a great deal more about the psychology of the sea than I did. He had watched it at work on people, including himself, for too long not to be familiar with the dynamics of crews and with the way that adequacies and inadequacies overlapped at sea. He had often talked about the way the sea draws people who do not feel entirely whole on land. Even my presence here this year was a symptom of the belief that a boat could solve your problems. A boat, for all its complexity, is in fact a version of simplicity, but of a satisfyingly complex kind. Get to know the hundreds of ways in which a boat-at-sea works and you become its master and commander. A boat provides control in what looks like uncontrollable circumstances. It is the mirror image of the realities of life on land, which look easier but are, psychologically, far more difficult, more subtle, less visible, and less predictable. The boat, in other words, is the haven from the storms at home. And because a boat’s workings are a mystery, in the old sense that it is an arcane art, with its own equipment and
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