Style

 One of the joys of sailing is the subtle sounds of passing through wind and water and the feeling that you are travelling lightly on the planet following a longstanding tradition and immersed in nature. So, motor sailing in faint breezes for seven hours to get to Stonehaven today seems like rather poor style. Not only is it a kind of cheating, if you claim to be ‘sailing’ round the UK, it also increases your carbon footprint and annoyingly involves the constant running of a rather loud 18 horse power diesel engine. The boat is too small, you cannot escape the noise and vibration, although on this lovely warm day with an almost flat calm sea I did visit the front deck for a while to gain a slight respite from being 20 rather than 3 feet away from the growling beast that is maintaining our steady progress at 5 knots. We are at least motor sailing, so we have the mainsail up and it is catching the slight south-easterly wind so that, more in hope than physics, we might gain a little advantage from it. 

Many sailors may have chosen to stay an extra day or even two kicking around in Arbroath, waiting for some useable wind. But Mark and I feel we are on a journey and do not hold ourselves to any kind of purist rule of getting round the UK purely by wind power. Although it is frustrating to use the motor, we are still enjoying the day, which thank heaven is warmer than it has been and has been mostly dry with sunny intervals. Many people who sail round the UK use their engines around 50% of the time, although others use it strictly to enter and leave harbours and a few may travel without an engine. Peter, who is skipper of our sister ship, Tami Nori, tried at least for a few hours to sail in the slight breeze without his engine on and so fell perhaps 8 miles behind us. A brave effort. Last year, when we chose to cut through the Caledonian Canal rather than go round Cape Wrath, we felt we were cheating. But we consoled ourselves by quoting Buzz Lightyear from the movie Toy Story when Woody points out that assisted by a large firework Buzz was flying, as he had always claimed was within his powers. Buzz wisely replied ‘This ain’t flying, its falling with style’. So we consider using the engine to be failing with style. And we kind of focus on the journey and just hope to get some great sailing in lively winds along the way.

I guess using the motor when cruising is comparable to ‘cheats’ on other kinds of adventures, but really it is about making up your own rules. I have done some of the classic treks in Nepal and looking back we did make use of some comparable ‘cheats’. Thirty-five years ago I did the Annapurna base camp trek with a friend. We jumped on a jeep to do the first leg along a gravel track and were dropped off at the foot of a steeply ascending footpath into the foothills of the Himalayas. A young lad approached us and in almost perfect English said ‘Good afternoon gentlemen, I hope you are well. Am I right to assume that you are aiming to trek to Annapurna base camp?’ He was soon employed as our ‘guide’ and carried one of our rucksacks as a bonus. He brought some school homework with him, I asked if it was holiday time but if I am honest was not completely convinced about that. However, his companionship gave us much more insight into local life than we would otherwise have gained. Thirty years later I repeated this trek with my family and in this case we employed a professional guide Krishna who again carried some weight but also enhanced our trip massively by sharing his knowledge of the natural environment, local culture and mountaineering history. So maybe using a guide is cheating, but maybe it is trekking with style. On another classic trek in Nepal, to Everest Base Camp, my mate and I decided to catch the plane to the infamous precarious runway at Lukla. The flight through the mountains is either exhilarating or terrifying, depending on your lack of imagination. The steeply dropping landing approach to the airstrip, there was no pilot cabin so you could see through the windscreen, is like a computer game – in fact I called out ‘left a bit, right a bit’ and got a good laugh from the nervous passengers. This flight cuts about ten days from the trek through the foothills and so is undoubtedly a cheat. After completing the trek to base camp and climbing a couple of trekking peaks we descended and stood at the sign saying ‘Lukla Airport 3Km’. We had the luxury of all the time in the world and so decided to do the trek out rather than cheat again. Eight days of cold and rain later, with steep climbs every day due to the way the route crosses from one valley to the next, and only poor accommodation and food available, we reached the road end. The mild but sustained suffering of that trek out was only slightly compensated by a feeling of satisfaction, at least we had not ‘cheated’.

It has been a quiet kind of day sail, with nothing much to report, no Puffins, no dolphins, no whales. Just a constant throbbing of the cheating engine and a wide flat desert of North Sea to our starboard side (the right) and a green patchwork of gentle hills on the coastline to our port side (the left). We passed the town of Montrose at about the halfway point of this thirty-five mile passage.  To allow Tami Nori to catch up we eventually switched off the engine and drifted at two or three knots of speed. The quiet is very welcome and it only needs a kind of switch into meditative contemplation of the setting to overcome the frustration of moving so very slowly on our journey.

Stonehaven harbour is undergoing some work at present to we have limited space to berth. The harbour master has kindly agreed for us to raft up alongside a fishing boat, Harvester, that is not due to set sail until Wednesday morning. This arrangement is useful for us because the fishing boat acts as a kind of pontoon, rising and falling with the tide so that we do not have to regularly manage our mooring lines. It was great by chance to meet the owner of Harvester, he wandered down to fetch something from his boat. After giving me some advice about our mooring lines he told me a few stories, including that he had never worn a lifejacket in his life but had been sunk twice and survived. One time was back in 1964 when he was coming into the harbour on a 38-foot cowl in a big swell. He must have been just a young lad. A wave had picked them up at the harbour entrance and smashed them straight onto the rocky beach opposite. He said he learned to swim that day! He jumped off the back of the boat into the harbour and floundered about until a rope was thrown to him and hauled him out. I think he was just about to retire because he said he was selling Harvester and would be setting off on Wednesday with the buyer and heading to Wick. From there the buyer was planning to take it round Cape Wrath and using it to fish from Kinlochbervie. Its not an easy life being a fisherman but this guy seemed healthy, wealthy and wise well into his seventies. I think he probably deserves a long and happy retirement. He seems to have fished with style.