My course is run and I am no longer a seaman. I am a landsman again. These two sides of living have always been apart, so while a seaman temporarily on land is still a seaman, a landsman, even one who is a stolid passenger on a ferry or cruise ship, is still a landsman. Making your way of life upon the sea is a dedication that changes your state from the one to the other. Making your way of life upon the land, as retired sailors must, changes you back again.

I had understood this long ago, when I first planted my oar so far from the sea that I had come near to it on the other side of the land. When I gave up the Merchant Service, I had like Gawayn, wandered into the wilderness of Wales, and I found a tiny university to perch in, a miniature Oxbridge college, set like a semi-precious stone in the unimpressive shaley country rock of central Wales. Where shall I wander now?

Before I answer that question in the best way that I can, I must first relate the happenings of my last week at sea, in which as it happened, I was the only trainee Coastal Skipper on board. This meant that I was able to act as skipper myself, mostly under the watchful eye of the instructor, for the whole week. I also had some responsibility to support and assist in the training of the only other trainee, a dependable young Canadian farmer on the Competent Crew course which I had completed myself six weeks earlier. Here he is receiving his certificate, at a full 6 foot 6 inches, dwarfing the instructor.

Bumps & Grinds

This was what the instructor called the harbour exercises he set me, but had I actually bumped his boat, or ground it against the quay, I can hardly believe that any skin at all would have been left on my back, for he had a voice more effective than the cat o’ nine tails.

An invaluable lesson he taught me at this time is to use nature to assist in moving from a quay. If wind is king – when the current is none or negligible – then move away from the quay to take advantage of its direction. That is to say, back off the quay if it blows forward of the beam. If tide is king – and if there is any it can easily take precedence over wind – then choose the tide’s direction to move in. In both cases vice versa for the other case –  i.e. go off forwards if governing wind or current is abaft the beam.

I found myself to be very confident in turning the boat under engine power within its own length. To do this it is first necessary to take account of ‘prop wash’. This is the tendency of a single propeller to turn the boat sideways and in most boats the bows turn to starboard. This means that it is much easier to turn to starboard than to port because the prop wash helps you to turn in that direction. With judicious use of forward and reverse drive it is possible to keep the boat gently turning, within its own length, indefinitely. This can be very useful if your crew needs some extra time to complete some evolution, such as setting out the fenders ready to go alongside.

Another operation which is slightly different in every boat, according to the shape of its side, is the approach to a quay under power. In the particular boat in which I had the temporary privilege of command it is necessary to line up the aspect from bows to beam parallel to the dock and drive straight towards it at harbour speed, that is just sufficient to provide steerage way, more than one knot and less than two. When the boat is frighteningly close to the dock it is necessary to turn the bows away and bleed off the remaining speed letting the boat come alongside and then be controlled to stay absolutely stationary.

To determine whether it is moving it is important to look at reference points in the surroundings, and not to rely, as I initially tended to do, on the speed instrument as this only displays the speed through the water, not the speed over the ground.

the Royal Phuket Marina (RPM) is located about half way down the east coast of Phuket island and access from the open sea is via a winding channel marked by posts and it is remarkably shallow. For a monohull sailing vessel with a keel there is only a short period of time either side of high water when there is sufficient water. When we had finished our bumps and grinds, we had reached the beginning of this time for the time and height of tide predicted. Depending on the height of tide at the time the period of grace for our vessel was just an hour either side of high water.

Before setting off we became aware that steam was being discharged from the engine instead of water, which indicated that circulation of cooling sea water was insufficient. No damage had yet been done, but the rising temperature from the exhaust indicated a probable intake blockage, and so it proved. There was an inspection cap in a tube vertically above the intake, below the waterline. When the cap is removed, therefore, sea water should gush out, but none came. By poking about we determined that a piece of rotting organic material from the harbour bottom had blocked the intake and we had to improvise a tool to clear it, by pushing it down from the inspection cap. This took us almost to the time of high water, dangerously close to the time when we must attempt the shallow passage outside the marina on a falling level of tide.

Pilotage

Control of the vessel between open water and harbour is known as ‘Pilotage’, and this part of the voyage out of RPM is pretty easy, as you just have to follow the long series of white posts, keeping them on the starboard hand about a boat’s length away.

This aspect of navigation is often supported by a wonderful book also known as a ‘Pilot’, which provides detailed information about almost every point of interest within the coastal waters which it covers. Not for the first time I thought of Chaucer’s Shipman

He knew alle the havenes, as they were,
Fro gootlond to the cape of fynystere,

Here is the chartlet of the approaches to RPM, containing the information of the type that the Shipman had to carry in his head.

This very useful view shows land and sea information. You can see the twisting course of the navigable channel, which the text in the Pilot book advises you is marked out by the white posts. The position of the start of the posts is also noted on the plan as you can see above (lat/long).

This channel is the place where my previous instructor had asked me to watch his stern for disturbed mud, in case he was ‘ploughing’, but then he was in command, and I could afford to sit back a bit and relax. Now it was I in command and I had been pretty nervous until the instructor advised me that if we did take the ground – which here is soft mud – then on a rising tide we could just have a cup of tea while the boat lifted off naturally with the increasing depth. With a gulp I realised that this safety margin was almost used up in the present case.

Here is a snapshot of that earlier inward passage.

You see the line of posts on the port hand, stretching away towards RPM under the conical hill in the distance.

Although the yacht in the picture above has 4 inches less draught than my later command, the tide level was nearer to ‘Springs’, the bi-monthly higher tides that occur with moon and sun pull in conjunction, so the level of high water was about a foot higher than on that inward passage.

We experienced no problems, and always saw a small value on the depth sounder set to keel depth. We reached the end of the channel without incident and set course for open water.

Voyage to Ao Nang

By the time we cleared the posts it was windless and almost dark, so the voyage to the mainland on the other side of the gulf of Krabi was not particularly inspiring. A glance at the map below will show that we just needed two legs, a southern and a northern to reach our destination.

We had to travel from just above the word ‘Phuket’ past the island whose southern tip is obscured by the ‘e’ in Phuket, to the bay to the left of Krabi, which is called Ao Nang.

A portion of the small scale chart of the area looks like this.

As we motored southwards the heavens opened and although I put on my light anorak (bought on the M25 motorway) and my bicycling trousers, I was soon wet through and shivering – yes shivering in the tropics! I was extremely relieved to call the instructor and his wife three hours later to do their watch, and doubly grateful when I discovered that they had not called us on arrival at the destination towards the end of their watch, so the anchorage at Ao Nang was blessedly done for me!

Krabi region

The next morning, after breakfast, we launched the dinghy which had been sitting upside down on the foredeck and motored into the beach so that we could do shopping in the little town. Already the land heaved when I went ashore! This strange feeling even happens after a voyage in a 45,000 liner, so I was not surprised.

Returning to the boat just after noon we set off still under engine power to a nearby island where there is the most beautiful coral reef I have ever seen. After a rather disconcerting GPS experience of apparently sailing directly over land, we found an anchorage off the reef, and clambered into the dinghy with flippers, snorkels, and masks.

Oh the profusion of underwater life, and the colours! Most impressive of all for me were giant clams camouflaged to look like reef, with patches of indigo, yellow, and red, but actually concealing powerful jaws that would close on any fish foolish enough to tempt the sensitive lips. Many multi-coloured fish darted clear of the jaws, acrobatic in their element.

Once we were back aboard, the sky darkened again as it so often has in an unseasonal way during my time in the Andaman sea. We were able to sail off the mooring in a re-creation of the conditions in which the other boat had gone aground. The instructor was at pains to describe exactly how it should be done, by waiting until the rythmic swinging of a boat at anchor comes onto the right tack, and then showing a bit of foresail (backed by hand if necessary) to ensure that you can sail off away from the direction of the reef.

Shortening sail to meet the squally conditions we proceeded to a nearby piece of the mainland which is only accessible from the sea, due to the mountainous terrain hereabouts. A complete village for backpackers has been built with everything brought in by boat. We had a memorable fish dinner in the end restaurant, right up against the sheer cliff that makes this piece of terrain inaccessible from the land side.

Pilotage to the Sea Gypsy Village

Another night of peaceful sleep was mine before I had to attempt the difficult pilotage right up to the apex of the gulf shown in the chart above, threading through the myriad islands to the Sea Gypsy village built on piles against an island too steep for human habitation. This pilotage was something of a feat of seamanship and I like to think I did not do too badly although I did make at least one serious mistake.

The key to safe navigation in these waters is island identification, and by God you have to have your wits about you. As was often the case in these voyages there seemed not to be enough time to take in all the details of the charts before starting, and so I experienced a constant need to go below so that I could reassure myself about where we actually were.

Having at length found what I believed was my proper channel, I headed for an island that I dubbed ‘Hovis’ due to its rounded loaf-like shape. As we came towards it I should have been alerted to the fact that it was much further away than it ought to have been if it was the island I was seeking as my next ‘Way Point’.

The instructor had earlier told me that a ‘massive system failure’ had caused a malfunction in the GPS, so this avenue of navigation was firmly closed to me, and its lid fixed on top. Unable to relinquish identification of Hovis as my Way Point, I proceeded towards it, giving myself the spurious explanation that the tide had pushed us back to account for its comparatively great distance from us.

Alas, we had passed the real island, which if I had been awake, I would have seen lurking next to the last headland, both in reality and on the chart. The instructor put me right with some acid words and difficult questions like

“Why are you off course?”

to which the only answer was

“Stupidity, sir, sheer stupidity.”

I have a feeling this rather 18th century language (mis-quoting Sam Johnson again) may have been irritating.

With very great patience the instructor told me to mark our ‘Dead Reckoning’ position on the chart. This means drawing a line in the direction of the course steered from the last known position at which the ‘log’ of distance travelled through the water was noted. The length of the line – i.e. the distance – is calculated by the well-known formula of speed over time. I found the ‘DR’ position  – marked by drawing a short line across the course – was further ahead than I had thought, but I did not believe it!

Instead I foolishly continued to believe in my incorrect identification of ‘Hovis’ despite having two clear indications to the contrary! What a fool! It was a valuable lesson.

After some anxious minutes while we regained our proper track and the rest of the pilotage passed without much incident, but with a great deal of sweat and fear of danger. I should have been spending 95% of my time on deck and 5% below at the Chart Table, whereas my actual proportions where the reverse, said the instructor.

We arrived at the anchorage for the Sea Gypsy Village – shown in the Pilot book at point ‘A’ – as the sky darkened again. This time there was a thunder storm apparently overhead. The brightness of the flashes was blinding and the apparently simultaneous thunder was louder than I have ever heard before. It was beyond terrifying. While the boat’s owners sheltered behind the canvas dodger, the young Canadian farmer and I were on deck when the mainmast took a glancing blow from what was probably a slight leak out of a massive forked bolt that struck the sea or the land somewhere very close. The cockpit display of the values detected by the wind instrument mounted on this mast went blank at this point.

Another soaking! but how good the dinner tasted after getting warm and dry again.

The Pilot book had said to anchor at point ‘A’ in 4-5 metres of water, and the place I found had 4.8 metres at the current tide level, so I thought this good, but did not have time, due to the storm, to work out what the level would be at low and high water. That night I awoke suddenly at 0300, just after the time of low water, and looked at my watch with my torch which I always kept beside it, and I noted the time with a sickening realisation until I reasoned that although my awakening was a little late, we were not aground.

I later learned that the instructor had a better body clock which roused him from sleep before low water, and that he had got up to witness that the least depth of water below the keel for that tide was in fact 0.7 metres, a reasonable if slim safety margin.

In the morning the storm was only a distant memory. Here is a shot of the village itself.

Return to Phuket

I quickly returned to blessed sleep in preparation for the continuation of my pilotage, now threading back towards the south of Phuket again.

“Have you ever fired a rifle?” I was asked.

“Yes”, I replied.

The instructor used this experience to show how you could use one island behind the passage between two others like the foresight and backsight on a rifle, and keep them equally spaced as the boat proceeds down a track between dangers on either side.

If the gap between the distant island and the starboard island starts to close, you steer to starboard, or to port if closing to port. This is an excellent tip which can be used where a course based on such an alignment is the one you need to follow. Bearings taken on objects which you pass can be used to determine whether particular dangers, rocks, wrecks, reefs, sand bars and the like, have been passed.

All day we passed through narrow channels set in extraordinary seascapes. This is the area of ‘James Bond’s Island’ and here are three photos showing what the limestone terrain is like in the region.

The day was completed by landfall south of Ao Chalong, the southernmost port on Phuket. We anchored again, this time off a very exclusive hotel where we were welcomed for happy hour before taking another memorable sea food meal on the nearby beach.

Here is a photo of the boat at anchor, taken from the shore.

Harbour evolutions

The next morning I navigated my first complete passage through a buoyage system in daylight, from the safe water mark to the last channel marker. We went into the half-built marina set at the end of a half-mile long pier at Ao Chalong to have a look, and came out again to do more harbour evolutions.

One exercise which both my aspiring ‘Competent Crew’ and I took was to sail a figure of eight course around two buoys in both directions, thus passing through several tacks and gybes with the intention of passing each buoy within a boat’s length.

Then we returned to the marina under sail and entered. Then we started the engine and hovered head to wind to get the mains’l down. I then drove up to the mooring position on the dock indicated by the instructor and gently brought the boat to rest beside the pontoon  on which we finally moored at the end of my course.

It then only remained to re-do the chartwork examination in which I had performed so poorly during my classroom course two weeks before. This seemed to take up a lot of the remaining time before dinner ashore when I said goodbye to old shipmates including Mr Brash and the other two instructors.

Sea change

The next morning I left the ship and was awarded my certificate. I became a landsman again, so now it is time to explain whether this experience has been life-changing.

On a practical level I now possess the qualifications that enable me to charter a boat and I have the experience needed to sail it safely within 60 miles of the shore, by day and night, in tidal waters. That is potentially life-changing because it opens an opportunity to spend time at sea which beforehand did not exist for me. However, although this is important, it is not really the main story, which is more closely interwoven with my inner man.

This man has been balanced by the whole experience of the six weeks at sea, under intense instruction. I first felt this and described it when considering how my new appreciation of the tidal changes in the sea were mirrored in my spirit, or soul. It is that strange sense of being with Phlebas again, the tall, handsome, drowned Phoenician sailor who has accompanied me on all my voyages and who has been given up by the sea to my view as at the end of days she will give up her dead, and perhaps we shall all proceed to judgement.

Another change, but one for which I cannot account is the overwhelming desire I now feel to cast aside all doubts and hesitations and write the story which I shall be calling ‘Old Enough’ so as to make clear some incontrovertible truths and to publish them.

If i were forced to give an explanation of this I would say that the life that sailors lead is on average simpler and more honest than that of the landsman. For the sailor living by skill and permission on an alien element, depends on interpretation of the broad sweep of the horizon, and on his reading of the clouds, and his partial prediction of the mysterious movement of the restless waters. Relying on these interactions is humbling because the forces to which he he is exposed are so powerful and so dangerous. Instead of jostling his fellows for slight advantage of position or money, he deals with the clean and perilous giants whose domains he must pass to reach his harbour.

This may mean that a seaman is a simpler man than a landsman, more humble because more in touch with creation, less able to shut out nature, for although the seas can be damaged, they cannot yet be fully harnessed, but we must bend to them, not they to us.

To summarise then, I feel more in touch with the realities of the planet, and this is not a momentary or passing thing, but is a like the presence of a friend always with me. That is why, perhaps, that I think so much about Phlebas, a fictional character in a poem written in the early twentieth century.

Lifting a yacht weighing seven and a half tonnes needs a special crane. The one at the Royal Phuket Marina can accommodate a vessel of up to sixty. It has a wheeled rectangular frame and is driven by a powerful diesel engine that can raise the vessel from a dock on slings. Once the keel is clear of the ground, the whole assembly can be driven to a suitable place on the hard standing, where the vessel is chocked up and released from the crane.

Here is the skipper reversing into the crane dock.

When you are reversing it makes sense to steer from in front of the wheel, for then you can turn the wheel in the direction you want to go, whereas if you stay in the default position, behind the wheel, you would have to reverse the movements and look over your shoulder. These little wrinkles which you might never think out on your own, are now almost second nature to me.

The tough fabric slings on which the boat is lifted are lying in the dock, and when you go in you can adjust the position of the boat with mooring lines to ensure the best possible distribution of slings to support the hull but to avoid contact with the projections – keel, propeller, and rudder.

The big diesels lift the boat on the slings until the keel clears the edge of the hard standing.   In the following snapshot we are approaching this stage.

Finally, the offending part is available for inspection. Here are the propeller blades.

In the snapshot above the bright bronze edge of one of the blades is clearly shown. This was caused by the polishing effect of the rock against which it was ground. Clearly the profile of this blade is different from the others as some of the obdurate manganese bronze of which it is made has been worn away. But this is not enough, I think, to account for the vibration. A careful inspection suggested that the pitch of one blade was different from the other two, and it is this that is more likely to have caused the problem.

Given the right equipment, truing up the propeller, which I understand is done on a lathe, is not a particularly complicated matter. However, like everything else to do with marine matters, a bit of a meal is made of it by those who possess the know-how, and they charge accordingly. In reality the process is not so very different from balancing a motor car wheel, but oh the sucking of teeth, the reliance on unique knowledge that accompanies the process of truing up the propeller – it scarcely merits belief!

“Iceberg dead ahead!” is not one of the harbingers of disaster in the Andaman Sea. But with a grating sound a new untethered 5hp outboard slipped over the back of Sadé the third of the School’s boats in which I have made my home. Before it was completely immersed the instructor, an ex-shepherd and dairy farmer, grabbed it and hauled it into the dinghy where he had been waiting for me to pass it to him so that we could go ashore for dinner at a wild Thai beach full of music and frying fish. Like all the instructors in this school he is a first rate seaman, ready for any unforeseen circumstance to arise and willing to take the necessary prompt and effective action to counteract it.

We eventually emerged from Telaga Harbour on Lankawi rather later than expected at the start of our voyage into Thai waters. The harbour master had taken an unexpected extra day’s holiday so that a visit to the main town of Kuah was necessary to obtain our clearance papers from Malaysia.

Here is the sunset on that glorious day, complete with fishing vessel, taken a short time before the first landfall in this new country, that I had not visited since 1959.

We nonetheless arrived in time for dinner at Ko Lipei, a beach development for hippies with restaurants cooking freshly-caught fish crammed side by side and backed by sandy paths leading to a zone with public lighting but still no made-up roads. The vigour, noise, chaos, and youthful European inhabitants (gap year students and professional bums) was indescribable. Here is a bar made from a retired fishing boat, which somehow summed up the experience.

By this time in the evening the incident with the outboard was long forgotten, especially after coughing and wheezing a bit, the Yamaha started and ran steadily! Excellent engineering – I have had to strip down my old Tomas when it was dunked in salt water.

During the night the anchor dragged. The instructor awoke as he felt a change in ship’s motion. The temporary trainee skipper, my colleague Eric awoke because he had heard the GPS anchor alarm beeping. It had move 0.004 nautical miles, it said. I awoke when they started the engine to operate the capstan to raise the anchor as we set off on another leg of our voyage, this time to a tiny native village where coconuts were being cultivated and where the enterprising owner of the largest house had started a restaurant on the bare  earth and built a few cabins for passing hippies. We moored to a government buoy – marked on the chart – and made the short journey ashore using the RIB and the surviving engine, which now worked again after a bit of white smoke protest and grumbling.

As I stepped ashore on this scrap of land called Ko Kra Dan I noticed a hippy working hard at pulling a cord to rock himself in a hammock set up between the two most seaward trees that grew, or were planted along that wild strand behind which the simple huts were crouched. This is the view from my seat next to the cold box from which you had to help yourself to beers, showing the tin to the smiling proprietor.

Here is a neat native house which contains all that is needed by its inhabitants for life and death.

And here is a coconut waiting to be planted to make a new source of food, ropes, building materials, clothing, etc.

We prepared to set off from this idyllic spot on a perfect morning on which very light sea breeze was just picking up after the calm at the end of the night. This was onshore at angle of about 45 degrees.  The sea was very quiet, just gently rocking, and this was fortunate for it saved the ship from more serious damage.

The instructor decided that one of the aspiring Coastal Skipper trainees should sail off the moorings. There was a good depth of water under the keel, 11 metres, I think. However to take a benefit from the onshore aspect of the breeze, it would be necessary to set the sails smartly, otherwise we would just tend to drift back from the moorings onto the shore at a slanting angle, and this is what we did in fact do when I smartly obeyed the order to release the bridle from the mooring loop. There were a couple of minutes during which the trainee could have saved the situation, but alas we were standing into greater danger than the instructor foresaw, as the boat gently grounded on bomis, horrible cauliflower-like rocks which poke up just downwind and inshore of the mooring, to catch the unwary.

The sound of going aground, hollow and grating, definite and harsh, strikes through the spinal chord, affects the heart, stops the liver in its function, and encourages the kidneys to an overtime rate as sudden as it is unwanted.

“God Christ, we’re aground!” I blasphemed unnecessarily. God Christ I wish I could keep my bloody mouth shut. Gift of the gab? I should have been born a dour and wordless Scot. But, by the blood of Christ, it was not a time for him to listen to me, and he was shocked out of his normal calm into invoking not God, not his suffering son, but the act of generation itself, in the fine old anglo-saxon mode.

“F F F F” he groaned, moaned, and ejaculated (as used to be said before the word raised a snigger, as perhaps it does now). The worst things we do are of course those we do to to ourselves. He jumped to the throttle and set the gear into reverse, full throttle, securely grounding the propeller against the innocent round head of the bomi (I understand this to be an Australian term for a coral head). The shattering grind of this second assault was more than flesh could bear.

He leaped into the dinghy, and tried to push us off, but the bows and stern just turned against one another, as the tide fell and she bedded in gently grinding away at the heavy iron keel and the stout fibreglass of the rudder.

“Stream out an anchor?” I roared, but he had already anticipated this, and with icy calm ordered us to release the anchor into the rubber dinghy, its chain following down between his legs. Taking as much chain as his little boat would carry, powered by that faithful Yamaha (which we had so nearly lost), he streamed out the anchor as far as he could. On the way he began to think about recovering the mooring, so he turned towards it, thinking, I suppose, that the best way to get us off was to retrace our course over the rocks. When he had reached the most outward point that the dinghy could transport the weight of anchor and chain he dropped it to the bottom and I winched it in on the powered capstan. The bows turned back half to face the moorings we had left such a short time before. But we did not come off, that terrible grinding enough to frail Macbeth as when his eyes saw Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane.

Our doughty skipper was of the same mould although far less murderous. At least he would die, thought I, with harness on his back. With a stuttering groan the capstan slowed and halted, its strong electric motor overloaded. The bows had turned but we were still fast aground. Out intrepid skipper now had us join two mooring warps together with bowline loops and mounting one end in the main sheet winch, he raced back to the mooring with the other end and secured it to the loop we had left in safety a few minutes before. Now we tried to wind in the warp, through the bow fairlead. We gained a bit, then stuck again. We tried again and this time, grudgingly and with a last shattering grind, she came off and I was able to raise the anchor and we were able to recover the mooring, after passing the join in the the warps through the fairlead.

Once we were back on the mooring I volunteered to swim under the boat to inspect the damage. Through misting goggles I could clearly see the unchanged bulk of the keel, the striations in the rudder and that all three propeller blades were still attached. I woggled the rudder to check that it was still attached to the wheel and it felt firm and strong. i returned breathless to the surface and clambered back onboard.

Now we set off again, slipping the moorings a second time. This time we relied on engine power and soon cleared the land. As we increased the revs it was Mr Brash who first drew our attention to a strong vibration although I daresay the skipper felt it also. Above 3.5 knots the prop was vibrating and the vibration increased alarmingly as the revs were increased. The whole binnacle assembly with its integrated wheel and the stern of the boat were shaking as a dog shakes a rat.

Saying goodbye to our island of nature but bad fortune, we continued on our way towards Ko Kra Dan where we had been due to anchor and to swim into the Emerald Cave before the tourists arrived in their bus-like motor boats.

Emerald Cave is a karst formation, a landscape shaped by the varied solubility of limestone in rain water. Such landscapes can typically generate circular holes which, for example, in Slovenia are called ‘Collapse Dolinas’. In this case such a tall chimney had been formed close to the sea and a cave had broken in from the bottom into the sea, creating a low dark cave through which, at all points of the tide, it is possible to swim.

It is somewhat unnatural to swim under the sharp barnacle-covered roof into the darkness. Echoing and muffling our voices, and assaulting our ears with sudden changes of pressure, we swam into inky blackness filled with the lowing and bellowing of great herds of tourists which of course, due to our earlier adventures, we had not missed.

After ten minutes of dark swimming, pushing away people moving in the opposite direction, we arrived near to the other end and the faint light from a beach inside the rock grew stronger until we arrived at the bottom of the hole hundreds of feet below the top of the island. Inside there are rare plants, as a notice in Thai and English informed us, and Mr Brash pointed out clear signs of human planting, for as he told us, nature does not plant in straight lines. Extremely tall tree trunks bare to the crown strived upwards from their perch on the vertical sides of the cylinder. After half an hour we swam back to be picked up by the instructor in the dinghy. He had used the respite to dive under the boat and to confirm what we had already reported.

We now had 57 nautical miles to travel to Phuket, where we had to register with immigration and customs, and where the boat might be repaired. At 3 to 4 knots the passage in calm seas would be a long one, but as evening came on and we approached a cumulus cloud bank with prodromal cirrus, a brisk breeze developed from the ENE – blowing not far from the direction it should in the North East monsoon. We started watch-keeping at 20:00 and I was asked by the temporary skipper to take the helm. We were already beginning a corkscrew motion as the waves rolled in under the port quarter. The instructor criticised my excessive helm movements as I tried to treat the 7.5 tonne boat as I would a dinghy, and rectify the yaw to starboard. He demonstrated with one hand on the wheel, standing casually to one side and I saw that the starboard movement of the bows was followed naturally by an almost equal yaw to port as the corkscrew roll was completed. It is counter-productive to correct that, only a small movement of the rudder is needed to keep the vessel on course.

I benefited from this demonstration, and soon obtained a better control of this sensitive boat. The corkscrew effect increased with the wind and I soon decided to take a reef. The instructor came on deck after we had de-powered the main and I had asked for the kicking strap to be released before tightening the topping lift. The latter part of the operation is particularly important on this boat, as great tension is needed in the luff to set the sail correctly. The temporary skipper did not agree and I was calmly explaining that the topping lift and kicker act in opposition to one another when the real skipper supported me, for in this instance I was right.

After a bit of a dressing down the day before, I now had the sequence of actions to take a reef in good order in my mind and the evolution was completed without further incident. That is to say I steered upwind to reduce the pressure on the main, then the halyard could be released under control and the sail flaked until the first reef cringle could be attached to the hook at the goose neck. Then the halyard could be wound up again, and the ‘Reef 1’ rope, in its patent brake running through pulleys neatly arranged on the coach roof could be tightened to complete the setting of the sail.

Then after trimming I resumed the course and found that the yacht was still creaming along at 7.2 knots, which is the speed of a fast running jogger, but seems more like an express train. The wind continued slowly to rise and now the swooping and yawing of the bows needed a considerable rapid turn of the wheel to prevent a broach or a run downwind to a disastrous gybe. I began to put out all my sailing skill, learned over the years in dinghies. I was no longer afraid, I now believed that what honest man might do, I might also do, and I felt confident that we would easily weather this slight blow of force 4 to 5 on the Beaufort scale. But not so the others on my watch. Lacking experience of strong breezes, they could not measure the danger and so had no point of reference. 

I had to take command, and I did so without hesitation. As I danced to the tune of Sade in the strengthening wind I began to sing the hymn:

Eternal Father, strong to save
Whose arm doth guide the restless wave
O hear us when we cry to thee
For those in peril in the sea.

The temporary skipper’s wife, a delicate and beautiful woman of sharp wit and smartness, whispered to her husband:

“We are in the power of a ‘mad sallee'”

This is the pidgin expression used by the Malays of Malacca to describe the drunken Portuguese sailors released to an unfamiliar shore after 5 months out of Lisbon without sight of land. She was terrified yet felt protected all at the same time, and I believe that for her, and also for her husband, the effect was profound. As it was on me, for what am I doing here? I am finding myself, and here I am.

I am now into the middle of the second day of blessed rest after the gruelling classroom stint in which advanced navigation theory, safety and seamanship was poured into us day after day, with homework of several hours eating away at sleep, until I felt that when I leave school I couldn’t possibly have ‘knowed no more’. I quote from an overheard train conversation about a rise in the school leaving age. What of course this is telling you is that the depths of my ignorance were partially revealed to me, and I regret to say that I over-reacted a bit, again.

Here I am in the background of a typical classroom scene. Mr Brash is in the foreground, his work a wonder to behold!

Although I account myself to be a professional learner, and start from the premise that any man may learn anything ‘if he set himself doggedly to it’ (thanks again Sam), I find a rapid increase in the number of steps needed to produce an answer difficult to absorb. I thrive on a small number of steps but there is a critical limit after which I tend to lose my way. I think I began to learn about this quality of my mind last week, and the best diagnostic clue was that I continually made stupid scaling errors reading the minutes portion of latitudes and longitudes on the scales at the margins of charts. Instead of building on the smaller number of steps we learned in our first classroom  week, I tried to stand back and treat the more advanced topics without the same level of detail, with disastrous consequences for me in the final chartwork examination, in which I performed more poorly than at any other time during this arduous training.

Here is a self-portrait of an over-confidant man.

I was still able to obtain my certificate, but I felt that the examiner was having to draw upon his own previous knowledge of my effective navigation on the sea itself, and possibly to make allowances for my good or extremely good appreciation and performance on other crucial topics of the week, including collision regulations, weather understanding, Beaufort scale, passage planning, and pilotage.

Here is the proof that at last i have learned how to adjust navigational dividers with one hand. You can squeeze between index finger and thumb to close the dividers, and squeeze between lower fingers and upper thumb joint to open them again, using the cross-over ‘bulb’. Cunning eh?

The list of five items above represents only a small proportion of the 44 odd topics listed in the full curriculum shown in the RYA training publication handbook on which the course is based. From this you will see that this part of the training calls for far more than a ‘Noddy’ appreciation of the business of learning to be a Yachtmaster. And so it should, for a Yachtmaster, or Coastal Skipper as I am aspiring to be, is in charge of the lives that share the salty unforgiving element on which they temporarily dwell, and the lives of other sailors in other vessels that on a dark night of fog in a rising gale they may meet on a converging course.

Here is a photo of some actual tide calculations, made during my navigation stint on the Raja Muda.

I am glad that my experiences on this course have again had the effect of cutting down my monstrous ego to size, as like Mr Bennett in Pride and Prejudice, when faced with incontrovertible proof of his errors and misjudgements, I ‘ought to feel it’.

But of course, a short period of rest upon the land, in the luxury of an air-conditioned hotel, has allowed any fugitive feelings that I should withdraw from the course due to incompetence to pass, such that I am ready for last two weeks of this great adventure, which shall be spent in waters quite unknown to me, within that portion of the Andaman Sea claimed by the Kingdom of Thailand.

In response to my ‘High Water Mark’ entry, Alex commented

THIS IS NOT OK [her caps]

This was her response to the following passage in the blog which she quoted in full

“I am beginning, just beginning to accept a part of the rhythm of the sea into my life. It is a Zen moment. Self is far less important than the current undersea picking my bones in whispers.”

As she has commented publicly (see blog) I now wish to dedicate my next entry to her and as you will see, I direct my remarks directly to her in person, so here I begin:

First of all I congratulate you for being able to read many of the words behind the parent without cringing. I think your exceeding tolerance is due in part to the fact that you are already an accomplished writer and you understand well the separation between author and text. You are able to fill a column, complete an inch or two, and I understand that you have some pretensions towards the comic, although I have not so far been privy to that wonderful feature of your amazing sparkling mind.

Is human writing inspired like the production of the wolf that howls by instinct and wakes the hibernating moles roused from sleep by the sheer terror and utter closeness of the hungry jaws that will not be denied? Is it an inchoate expression of an inner hunger that will not be satisfied, but ever gnaws the vitals of the howler until expression grants a temporary relief?

I do not know the answers to these questions, but what I can say is that writing for me is the most important need after the basic bodily essentials have been quelled. I can live utterly without it, and I have done so, for like you I am a contrary being with a degree of self-hatred, but in that experiment the curse remained, and life was two-dimensional, like some sort of pre-death purgatory.

As you know I have kept the wolf from the door by writing commercially, which I know you hope to do (and of course you know that I will expend a major part of my treasure to help you to do this). Well we know all this, but our readers may not, so that is why I state it.

But what is the wolf of the preceding paragraph? It has a dual significance. On the one hand I have been lucky and skillful enough to make a good living out of writing, and that has in part kept the wolf from the door in our family – notwithstanding the outstanding contribution and husbandry of resources of your mother.

On the other hand my commercial writing has quelled the inner schweinhund that dictates that for me mere money-grubbing is not enough, for with the talents I have been given I must add to the wisdom of the tribe or else I shall die embittered and unhappy, and like most men and women simply have been, in the parlance of Leonardo, a shit-producer.

So the big question now, having put aside my ‘oaten reeds’ at the diesel factory is how to ‘blazon broad among your learned throng’ and find a way such that ‘Fierce warres and faithful loves shall moralize my song’

These references are to Spenser Faerie Queene, prologue. And this flight into literature is a key. To me, ‘before the fall’, literature furnished the materials of our trade and so its study was the study that could help you to find your own unique voice.

Christ did no less, for on the cross he quoted scripture – ‘Eloi, eloi, eloi aramai?’ (My God, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me) – if I remember my 1st century Hebrew correctly.

And so we approach the high water mark. In T.S. Eliot’s Waste Land there is a whole section which was originally many hundreds of lines, but which Ezra Pound reduced to the following which I quote from memory.

“Phlebas the Phoenician
A fortnight dead,
Forgot the cry of gulls
and the deep sea swell
and the profit and loss.
As he rose and fell
He passed the stages
Of his age and youth
A current undersea
Picked his bones
In whispers
Entering the whirlpool

Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel
And look to windward
Consider Phlebas
Who was once
Tall and handsome
As you.”

Now this is a fragment of the greatest poem of the 20th century which in my opinion stands in line as the last damp squib of the epic tradition – holding the line: Homer-Virgil-Beowulf poet-Chaucer-Spenser-Milton.

This great poem has been my companion since I was a little younger than you are now, when in contrast to your situation in which access to literature is your mundane obligation, I was at sea as a mere rating (i.e. not an officer) in the merchant service, aspiring to the almost impossible ambition of going to university, a stage of life in which I had formerly failed. So when I speak of a literary ‘companion’ it is like the third person that two disciples were aware of walking between them.

As I descended at the age of twenty-two to the edge of the sea across the green sward of the Botanic Gardens in Sydney, with the grand blinding white segments of the Opera House ahead, and the ‘Bridge to Heaven’ (as I called the Harbour bridge) behind, those words quoted above rose unbidden into my consciousness, and I declared them aloud. Since then Phlebas has always been with me if I was prepared to listen to him, and particularly on the night on which I wrote the ‘High Water Mark’.

Now I may have been guilty of the misdeed that your mum frequently (and justly) accuses me of. That is, I was commenting on my own inner feelings directly rather than carrying the reader across from their morning toast to my ‘deathless prose’. But I have been trying to experiment with ‘elision’ – that is the removal of unnecessary detail which for example Hemingway believed could and should be done to transform the mundane into art.

I hope what I have said above goes some way to explain why I decided to make the particular marks on the virtual page that were made that day.

I do not of course limit my reference to Eliot, other sources include

The Noachan continuum
Sea change – vide The Tempest
Odyssey passim
Norse myth – especially concerning the edge of the world
Beowulf
Crusoe
Much of Conrad
Bible alter Noah

That is all I have time for today, for I am now in the midst of another classroom course, and  am loaded with homework about tidal predictions, courses over the ground, and chart symbols. Symbols – now those are a powerful tool in our development of the individual style!

Please accept these remarks.

Approaching in a row boat armed to the teeth we come closer, ever closer to the darkened target ship as it looms no more than a darkened patch of sea from which no starlight is reflected. Many times the reckless attack has carried away the unsuspecting crew greater in number than their adversaries. Hacking through hawsers we have set the sails to the land breeze that flows outwards from land when land is warmer than sea, as is usual at night, for the land cools faster than the sea.

A little more prosaic was my own cutting out expedition in the last night of the Raja Muda regatta. Armed to the waist with scissors, a scrap of sail repair tape and a wad of dry kitchen paper I planned to deface a notice on a rival boat. My school colleague acted as lookout. She reported the coast as clear. I measured the lower half of a capital ‘R’ intending to change it into a ‘B”. This ‘R’ was the beginning of the word ‘RUM’ and it advertised this drink produced by a company sponsoring the regatta.

This minimalist approach was not my idea, but the brainchild of this man

I would need to cut out the lower loop from the tape and to stick it over the bar of the ‘R’. The kitchen paper – like the tinder taken on such expeditions in the age of sail – was essential to dry the fabric, for it was indeed a dark and stormy night.

“All clear” hissed my lookout, and I set to with the scissors, only to be arrested by a sharp challenge.

“What the hell are you doing?” demanded a voice. I replied with as nonchalant an air as I could muster:

“Just doing a spot of sail repair, don’t cha know, old chap”.

“Right you bugger, let’s be having a look at you! Now what are you about?”

“Ok, it’s a fair cop” I replied, abandoning my innocent stance as utterly untenable for I was caught red-handed, hard up by his notice with scissors and tape in hand.

“I was just going to change your ‘R’ to a ‘B’ and you’ve caught me red-handed.”

“I like your style, young fellah, come aboard and have a rum” was his generous response.

And that is how I made the acquaintance of yet another crafty sailor. Amongst other things he explained how he had passed by an island when apparently becalmed, as indeed we had seen him be. We had gone wide to avoid the wind shadow, whereas he had stood in, bearing the wind shadow for he expected the island to part the tidal current and acting like an aerofoil on its long side, for their to be a strong current in which he would be pulled around, as indeed had been found to be the case on the day. He did not care about wind if he could use the current, and he could.

In the best spirit, after considerable flow of the spirits with which I was so liberally plied, they allowed me to complete my cutting out expedition with this result:

These rather boyish pranks broke the tension of nine long sailing sessions of day or night in which we have battled and raced. Although we did not win our class of ‘Classics’ (defined as more than 30 years old), we did gain second prize and several thirds. In our class there was also a graceful old pilot cutter on which I had the privilege of visiting in Penang.

Back to the classroom nest week after this gruelling effort as the navigator. No more sailing for seven days!

Time and tide waiteth for no man, the good book says, but it is a fact that the restless currents of that large part of the sea that is affected by tides does have, twice a day, a brief time of stasis. It must be so for the flow of water reverses after the outflowing tide has reached its lower limit, and again when the inflow reaches its upper limit.

Seated at dusk on a high deck of the Royal Lankawi Yacht Club, after a hard day of harbour racing, I have just experienced such a moment, in the inward tidal flow which mirrors, reflects, and refracts the outer world. Like all days, this day of mine has been preceded by other days. Immediately before there had been a night passage from Penang, some 60 nautical miles to the south, and that was preceded by a daylight voayage from Pankor, an island farther south, and that in turn was preceded by the race from Port Klang.

During the whole of these passages, which now are logged by the ship’s instruments as more that 500 Nautical Miles, I have acted as the Navigator, while my colleague at the Day Skipper stage has acted as Chief Mate in charge of the deck.

The constant use of charts and the tools for processing them, the buffeting of shrewd questions by the instructor, the sheer amount of repetition, has entered my soul more effectively, more insinuatingly that the wood of my desk in the diesel factory where I laboured faithfully for the ten years before joining this course. I am well on the way to being able to identify myself as a person learning to sail rather than by using my erstwhile cloak of calling myself a tchnical author.

Something else is happening to me, I suspect as a result of the intensity of this experience. It is that instead of being my usual old bundle of nerves, I am beginning, just beginning to accept a part of the rhythm of the sea into my life. It is a Zen moment. Self is far less importatnt than the current undersea picking my bones in whispers.

Yes, I can feel it. I am surrendering myself for a moment to the element by which and on which I am currently living. My own continuation becomes of microscopic unimportance. Instread, for a moment i have regained a wonderful balance, as I rise and fall, entering the whirlpool. I have not yet forgot the cry of gulls and the deep sea swell. But I am passing the stages of my age and youth as I turn the wheel and look to windward.

But what is this? A new current is emerging. The high water mark has been passed and using the rule of twelfths we can roughly calculate the strength of the flow down to low water, where another period of stasis will inevitably occur.

This is as long as the moon continues to rotate above the earth, and so as far as my little life is concened, I am touching eternity here. It is making me a better person for the present, one who is less inclined to compromise to lies, one that is more inclined to publish and be damned.

Here I am in a snap taken at Straits Quay in Penang, a place visited now so often as to make it almost a home port.

Enduring a typhoon even in a full-powered steamship can be life-changing, but in my case I regret to admit, it inspired one of the more boastful claims I have made about seasickness these last forty years and more.

First I would explain how the bows of ss Canberra were light because the arrangement of the engines was aft to maximise passenger space. As she was the first large liner with this design, the naval architects had been forced to remove some weighty features from the after end including a circular marble staircase. When I had sufficiently impressed my audience with the extent of my arcane knowledge I would, in leisurely fashion, describe the typhoon which raged forty years back in the Cook Strait and northern Tasman sea. The deck dept had made an unsuccessful attempt to steer round the monster, but in had veered unpredictably, like a Texan steer, as is the way with typhoons.

Showing a surprising (and quite unjustified) satisfaction with my story-telling capacity, I would go on to say that after working for eighteen hours without rest I had taken a brief nap in my bunk which happened to be the uppermost in a tier of two. Being at the time a CPO, as ‘otherr ranks’, or as we say more properly within the naval context, as a ‘rating’, I was berthed in the forepeak, where the light bows would rear and shudder very much like the maddened cow I mentioned. Waking suddenly and consulting my watch, I found I was in danger of being late ‘turning to’, as we say. Mistiming my leap from the bunk, my feet met the deck more quickly than I expected. The sudden strain on my legs from the rising ship was that of a much heavier man than I then was (though perhaps not than I am now). On landing i tensed up and immediately felt seasick for a moment, the only moment, as I bragged, that such a thing had ever happened to me. That is, until now.

This new occasion was not far off Port Klang. For the whole of the previous day I had lain in bed with a tummy bug or infection of the bowels serious enough for the doctor to prescribe anti-biotics. At one time I had felt so weak and feverish that my contnuation of the programme was briefly in doubt. Now I was recovering, though I was still almost as weak as a kitten. We now experienced the most confused and lumpy sea that I can remember, and Kay Sira’s motion was not happy. For some time I sat in the slatted seat in the open at the stern, trying to look at the horizon, and twice I tasted the horrible iron bile rising almost into my mouth, but not quite. I began to suffer and to consider the action of some guests I have heard of at Chinese feasts who eat their fill severel times over by deliberate digital voiding between sessions.

But no, it passed and my stomach settled. and here I am, a self-portrait in the cabin of an old pilot boat called Eveline, who is in our regatta.

I am fully recovered, I did not leave the ship. My navigation has been commended by the instructor who asked me to go up to the dais at the prize-giving presentations to collect the second prize of the day.

I am immensely proud. I have seen and suffered the sea. I have employed the tools of this trade – portland plotter and dividers, to mark the charts with the compass bearings of our planned course, and for many days those plans have been followed in and out of ports and anchorages until I have brought the ship nigh on 400 miles even unto the present day!

There is so much to say, but alas I cannot stay up longer to describe it now. I just hope I shall not forget what I have done and learned so that I can report it as soon as I have leisure in which to do it.

Meanwhile, like Gilbert & Sullivan’s Ruler of the Queen’s Navy, I can still claim never to have been sick at sea.

Not ever?

No, not ever.

Not never?

Well hardly ever….

Excitement builds as the Royal Malaysian Yacht Club prepares for its greatest annual event – the Raja Muda Regatta – in which we too take part! Races are held from here, the estuary of the Klang northwards to Pangkor, and then to Penang where we race around the harbour, finally to Lankawi, where we finish at the school’s home port.

I have been assigned to my duty and it is an exceptionally exacting one. Both the available Day Skippers – Richard (Mr Brash) and me will stay in Kay Sira, he to manage the deck, I to act as navigator – while Principal Instructor Barry serves as Captain.

Later today I hope to collect the Sailing Instructions for Kay Sira, which I must study with the greatest care. Then I must pore over charts and develop as comprehensive a knowledge of the waters in which we shall race as I possibly can. At all times I must be aware of the effect of the tide on our courses, and the effect of the wind direction and strength. I will also help Richard when required, but at other times I shall sit in solitary splendour on the poop, ready to answer questions posed by the skipper, and shall periodically disappear down the after companion way to work at the chart table.

During yesterday’s pilotage up the Klang I got a hint of how it might be. Kay Sira was the last of the three boats to enter the estuary, but arrived at the offing of the Yacht Club first. It was terribly exciting as we raced just outside the buoyed channel, allowing us to ignore the  big ships passing.

As we passed by the other two, I was able to exercise the giant telephoto lens I am always banging on about!

Here is an action shot.

This is Sadé, the third of the school’s boats.  And here is a shot of Aeolus, my old home for the week after the first classroom part of the course.

I expect the next phase to be full of these exercises of skill!

Passing with the grace and silence of a sailing boat, under the dome of the stars, is a prescription for humility and pride. Those lights seen by the ancients we now know are not lamps just out of our reach but indicators of an immense universe in which the part played by our entire species is infinitesimally small. Yet in this vastness every creature has her place. In that night passage these eyes look at light that started its journey far earlier than the first sedimentary rocks were laid down on our little planet. The same eyes see the ghostly lights of passing ships on every course, and sometimes pick out the crests of the wavelets.

Seeming to address the outer scene we also look inwards into a similar immensity that even in the most balanced individuals barely affords a small window that is under command. One of the products of this immense engine that runs in me and in earlier men, is the means of transporting ourselves safely across the inhospitable seas and oceans of this tiny world. They seem so immense when we are separated by a few thousand miles from our loved ones.

Chatting comfortably with my instructor, who was my watch mate on this leg, we had already discovered that we had briefly attended the same school, and we comfortably exchanged the small matters of memory and the events of the recent days. It was a moment out of time as we whiled away the watch, wearing our life jackets as is mandatory at night.

I was acting as the skipper during this 90 mile journey down the Malacca Straits from the island of Pangkor to the mouth of the river Klang. Thoughts of my neglected pilotage duties up that busy river were banished temporarily as Kay Sira ate the night. We set and shook out a reef when the night darkened with anger, but the storm passed us by without a drop of rain or a gust of wind.

I was send up to shake out the reef but I did not clip on. I knew that I would always have one hand for the ship and one for myself. I become more and more familiar with the ropes, winches and strong points, so all parts of the boat become extensions of my own body, in a delightful symbiosis.

My companion suggested that it would be impossible to capture that evening’s experience in words as the brimming seconds of the wonderful darkness expired as easily as each whispering eddy that momentarily rolled under the boat. Of course it is so, and all that I can do is seek a means of creating within you that symphony and song. The gentle movement of the boat stabilised by wind cannot be captured in words directly. The sense of its driving through the element powered by well-set sails is, I think, only available as a feeling in the hands and heart for some men, while for others, like John Milton’s sight, comfort from the source is quite shut out.

The deep delight of the night passage is soon put to sleep on the surface of the main as dawn insinuates it earliest prodromal enlightenment of the highest clouds. If by my words you can see with inner eyes the peace, the calm, the vastness, and the small things of comfort such as a fleece worn against the unexpected chill of the tropical night, then I will not have striven in vain.

In the morning I turned on my computer to read a shocking communication from a dear friend. I will quote it verbatim.

Hi Austen

We had some dreadful news. Hany had just returned from a sailing trip around turkey, he then bought a small sailing boat and sailed out of Poole harbour on the way to Hayling island. The boat was later found engine running, beached. Hany was found 4 days later, he had drowned, no lifebelt.

I just remember the time you and he spent time on a Saturday trying to help my business, and realise so much that time is precious… let us know how you are getting on. Wear a life jacket

Love Michael

Of course I know how easily the safe and snug ballroom of the stars that we had enjoyed could become the scene of accident and death. All that we can do, as inheritors of the long-held skills, practices, and rituals of the sea, is to take all the precautions that we can, but never to give up that precarious life between wind and water, distorted by the rythym of  the tides.