Compressing and expanding our experience of time by effort of will cannot be guaranteed because ‘the mind is in its own place’. Your inbuilt Lord High Admiral can order his fleet to sea, but cannot entirely command his meanest deck hand, who like the subtle nerves at the finger ends, blindly transmits sensations that can unseat admirals and knock them into a cocked hat.

Certainly my own time experience over the last two days has overloaded my critical functions close to whiteout. Viewed by the almighty, our small meanderings around the south eastern side of many-cliffed Lankawi would seem like small beer indeed. but from the lowly vantage point of the sailor under command our evolutions were strenuous, overwhelming, and had the unexpected effect of a team-building spirit in which each shipmate looks out for the next and relies on her or him.

Like a planet our bark slept each night in a different port and this is the second place where we have laid our weary heads. The first is already lost to the fanatic accuracy of my internal clerk, though a wrack of photos have been left behind as incontrovertible evidence of things that took place too long ago to be directly re-created for you in your armchairs.

There is also some scrawling in my ‘Where’s Wally?’ notebook a gift from a dear friend who knows my love of stationery. On these I will rely to research the temps perdue of the last two days.

In the meantime I can offer you a portrait of the author as an old sea dog, taken during my spell at the wheel by a thoughtful shipmate.

Note: Thanks to those readers who reported the absence of the above. Your vigilance is appreciated. The omission was due to rotten phone reception in the bowels of the berth. Belatedly I have been advised that the reception is a lot better a few 100 metres away in the Royal Lankawi Yacht Club in which I am for the nones a squatting member. I am sitting now in their grand lounge at 0836 in the morning and feeling a lot more satisfied with the prospects for publishing more pictures as one old friend has demanded.