That 'Bold New Role'.

Here I am on St Stephen’s (Boxing) Day in the county of Flintsire, Wales, just over the border from England, having at last detached Mother Claus from her responsibilities. We have spent Christmas at the home of one of her brothers, Anthony, and with two of our daughters.... It is interesting to be (nearly) back in England for Christmas.

Crossing the Irish Sea for Christmas.

I see that the Prime Minister of this United Kingdom issued a Christmas message in which she said ‘As we leave the European Union we must seize an historic opportunity to forge a bold new role for ourselves in the world and to unite our country as we move forward into the future.’ Unfortunately, as is her way, she gave no indication of what the ‘bold new role’ might actually be, or on what basis she proposes to ‘unite our country’.

One knows that ‘divide and conquer’ is the Devil’s maxim; divided loyalties are very painful and cause all sorts of difficulties. I wonder if Mrs May spares a thought for all those, such as myself, who though profoundly affected by the Brexit affair, were not accorded a vote in the famous referendum? Ireland has at last been settling into a modus vivendi that has enabled the reconciliation of both Irish and British identities and interests. The EU is an essential pillar of it.

For one thing, given the facts of history, and not merely remote history at that, it is impossible for Irish people, at least those of the culturally Catholic majority, to finally trust the British Government to put justice and truth ahead of what it perceives as their national interest. Alright, it is impossible to be confident that any state will do so. That there exists an ultimate legal authority above any one nation state is a source of comfort to many people like myself, and to many cultural minorities throughout Europe.

So here I am, while accepting that the referendum showed up severe problems that need to be addressed, in no way impressed with its result when it actually comes to charting the way ahead. Anyway, the notion that it should do so is alien to the British constitution and tradition, which allow for government by a Sovereign whose authority is vested in Parliament. The people exercise their democratic rights by electing representatives to that Parliament, on the basis that these will act on the basis of the principles which they professed when they stood for election, in accordance with their own consciences.

This Mrs May is not doing. Instead she is off on trip that neither she nor anyone else has actually laid out in the six months since the referendum. Will this ‘bold new role’ be a matter, perhaps, of being President Trump’s stooge, in the manner of Mr Nigel Farage? Will it be a matter of playing the court jester, in the manner of the Foreign Secretary who has been described by the Prime Minister as ‘not representing the views of the British Government’! Will it be a field day for racists and nationalists, who wish all those bloody foreigners would go to Hell? Or rather a field day for the billionaires who have financed the said racists, leaving them at liberty to make yet more billions free of all those financial, social and environmental constraints that the beastly Europeans have been frustrating them with?

Besides Mr Trump, this situation is no doubt a source of glee to that other president, Mr Putin. He has realised exceptionally good returns on the few millions which he has invested in far right parties, in terms of confusing, dividing and ultimately impoverishing Western Europe.

The only good that may come of it all, as far as I can see, is that when contemplating the real alternatives, Europe will realise how precious and important are her faltering steps to move beyond nationalism, and develop political institutions capable of addressing the profound and critical challenges of the 21st century. These challenges must be addressed by the nations working together, or they will not be addressed at all, to not just the most serious detriment, but very possibly the extinction also, of most life on Earth.

Clare coast by Luke.

Happy New Year to you all!

Gasping for Truth.

Fiona and I landed back to a beautiful spell of weather on Sherkin; sunshine worthy of Guadianaland, apart from the fact that the sun only achieves about half the height here, and half the heat! It really feels like being on the roof of the world! Unfortunately Fiona promptly came down with a chest infection, and is having to get by on my somewhat inadequate ministrations (they got worse as I went down, but fortunately Fiona was coming round and able to take up the slack).

Meanwhile I see that Pope Francis has been addressing the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, including Stephen Hawking, in some very strong terms, couched though they are in diplomatic language. Decrying the way countries are still “distracted” or delayed in applying international agreements on the environment, he said ‘“It has now become essential to create, with your cooperation, a normative system that includes inviolable limits and ensures the protection of ecosystems, before the new forms of power deriving from the techno-economic model cause irreversible harm not only to the environment, but also to our societies, to democracy, to justice and freedom.”

I wonder who he could have in mind? What could these ‘new forms of power’ possibly be? One might have thought that the Popes have seen it all, but I suppose that the internet and social media have added a whole new twist to populism. But that stuff we’re suddenly hearing again is all too familiar to anyone with a passing knowledge of history, concerning ‘Traitors’, ‘Enemies of the People’, ‘The Will of the People’ and the Bright Future that is anything but apparent, but which nonetheless is there for them if only their will, as embodied by the speaker, prevails against the sinister army of liberals, experts, elites, and intellectuals!

I see that old hypocrite Mr Boris Johnson is busy trying to throw people off the scent, accusing the likes of me of “bad motives, with too many people too quick to draw comparisons (of Brexit) with populist movements across the world.” I have a single question for him: would he be where he is today but for Mr Farage and the years of scurrilous campaigning against the EU by the popular press? And who might be your aIly across the Channel? If the cap fits, Boris old boy, you may as well wear it. At least Mr Trump wears his!

Mr Johnson chunters on about how Britain will be a ‘global player and champion of free trade’.   As Will Blake pointed out, the General Good was ever the cry of the hypocrite; there can be no such thing as completely ‘free’ trade; and the only people who might profit by it anyway are the global elite of the super rich, no doubt to be ably championed by Mr Trump.

Meanwhile, do such people not realise that the only way through the world’s desperate and multi-layered, interconnected crises is much deeper and authentic collaboration? One must start with particulars, with one’s neighbours, and respecting what has gone before. The only thing in favour of such horrible distractions as Brexit is that in the end they raise consciousness; but time is not on our side.

I’ll be off to Blighty soon enough, and no doubt will soon find myself rebuked by some for failing to ‘respect the democratic will’.  I’ve been dismissed as both a liberal and a fascist in  my time, and best of all as an ‘idealist’. I like that epithet actually, and it’s quite hard to figure out how it becomes a term of abuse; presumably it is assumed that one is not prepared to be ‘realistic’. But how one sets about being ‘realistic’ when everything said by anyone who might remotely have some claim to know what they are talking about has been ipso facto dismissed as an ‘expert’.

If democracy is to work, it must obviously operate on the basis of informed and rational debate, with reference to those who do know something at least of what they are talking about. This involves listening with respect to them, as well as to all stake-holders, to everyone who will be affected by a decision. It is plain undemocratic to assume that a simple majority in a single vote can overturn decades of patient work by democrats, sitting down together as equals and  struggling away to achieve consensus.

Anyway I for one was not consulted about this Brexit lark, yet with the rest of Irish people I will be severely impacted by it, along with all those folk such as the Poles whom Mrs May likes to refer to as ‘our European partners’. There are any amount of rational reasons why Brexit is a bad idea, but what does one do when rational discourse and the give-and-take of compromise breaks down? One is touching on territory where democracy and indeed civilisation itself break down.

They cannot survive if there is no respect for truth. Sure, people will lie; but if a politician gets caught out telling a whopper, can we allow him to merely shrug it off? What does one do with someone who simply says whatever sounds good at the time, without any sense that he needs to be consistent, or indeed that there is such a thing as truth?

I blame the liberals just as much as the populists. How often have we heard them say that there is no such thing as ‘the truth’, only ‘your truth and my truth’? What do they expect to happen, if for instance they think they can suddenly decide to redefine the most fundamental of human institutions, in defiance of physical fact and the view of umpteen generations past?

It was my privilege to spend many many hours listening to the endless chat of Donegal fishermen, and I can tell you they could chat. Everything was discussed in minute detail, from how much fish Jimmy Padraig caught yesterday and where, and ditto this time last year, and how much he was paid for it, to what was going on between Biddie and Sean, to whether Donegal would be better off in ‘the North’ or whether there was life after death….  Running through it all was the leitmotiv, true or false? That was where the fun was, the drama, and they relished it!

Lies were ok, perhaps an inevitable part of life, but still lies. ‘Tell ‘em plenty of lies’ was my old neighbour’s advice when it came to dealing with officialdom. Testing a person’s credulity with lies was great sport. But what was generally not in doubt was the importance of truth and the necessity of struggling to distinguish it from lies.

The sea is a wonderful school of truth, which unfortunately is more than can be said of modern education. The sense of truth goes out the window when there is no viable principle of cohesion, and education with all knowledge is compartmentalised and over-specialised. ‘The falcon cannot hear the falconer’

This indeed is where ‘experts’ can let us down. One is educated to suck up one’s subject like a sponge, with no attempt to integrate it with one’s conscience, with one’s own personal consciousness, at its extreme of absurdity when one swots up literature in order to write four essays in a three-hour exam. Not alone does this sort of thing not foster the ‘sense of truth’, but it actively subverts it. That’s how an elite education produces the likes of Mr Boris Johnson.                            

It is not surprising that, after seeing so many ideals reduced to dust and ashes in the last century, people gave up on the very notion of ideals. Indeed these inevitably fall far short of ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’, as embodied by Jesus; but after all, he asks us to become ‘perfect’; a high ideal indeed, hardly to be achieved in this life; we are now witnessing however that there is quite simply no future at all for mankind if we give up on the attempt! Yet the notion of being 'a good pagan' has indeed fallen apart.

In the face of what had happened, it was hard for the post-war generation to go preaching the ideals of European Civilisation as they attempted to pick up the pieces. Now a full generation has passed with politicians mainly working on the basis of ‘enlightened self-interest’ and ‘realism’. The end of that road has now been reached.

We will have to revisit the ideals of European Civilisation, or forget it. But after all, the Roman Empire, lurking in the background, crucified Christ; yet it also enabled the spreading of the good news of his resurrection. The blood of the Apostles Peter and Paul, along with that of all the martyrs, soaking into the soil of Rome, made of it the seed-bed of the Church.

So also with the imperial phase of Europe. It became the seed-bed of the modern world, so help us God. For all its faults, this continued that work of Rome; it also developed the technology that all the world has adopted, and in the main produced the very terms with which they address life’s conundrums. Where else, we may ask, will the world find the leadership it so desperately requires?

So sorry Boris, we need team players, not people going off on solo runs. There can be little doubt that a stronger and better European Union is in the interests of the whole world, while a return to competing nationalisms is badly regressive and fraught with danger. Terrible as the cataclysm was that propelled Europe beyond nationalism, it might be even worse if we fall back into it today. Now the rest of Europe needs Great Britain in, apart from any other reason, frankly as a counterweight to Germany. I don’t think that even the Germans themselves relish the prospect of finding themselves in the role of hegemon.

I’m on my way to Blighty next month, I only wish I could tell ‘em! I’m hoping the New Year will see a real heave to put a stop to the madness; mind you, Mr Farage is right in one respect; it will involve a recasting of the political order  there…. If the heave is to succeed, it will call for a great deal of effort, and everyone should see what they can do!

In the noon-tide of our strength, the presence of the Lord is only a heap of cloud. It is important to try to stay with it; otherwise one might miss the flame that shines out at night-fall. A spot of sickness serves to remind one of this fact. Our sanity depends on it….

The Golden Gates and the Ragged Rock; the World's Strange Reversal of Truth.

St Martin’s Day was being celebrated with wine and chestnuts on the landing at Alcoutim. So down we went, and had our share from the flagons of wine and loads of chestnuts being roasted on two barbecues. It was very pleasant, just making me wish I could speak Portuguese properly, as boat-people and travellers mingled with the locals. I asked who to thank, and was answered with a shrug, and a gesture indicating a communal effort.

Chestnuts and wine

No money-making, not even any advertising! This is positively subversive, I said to myself, but the couple of cops present in uniform with their guns were just joining in the fun. Just relaxed human beings trying to reach out to each other in peace! And so the weekend went on, sitting around chatting, eating and drinking with both friends and strangers. Some of them hold views very different to mine, but it did not matter. What mattered was people trying to communicate, and enjoy themselves, relaxed and at peace.

Meanwhile, from another world that really is perhaps in irrevocable opposition to all this, the photo came out of the two boyos, Messrs Trump and Farrage, extremely pleased with themselves, posing in front of a pair of very ostentatious - and closed - golden gates in the Trump Tower. All it lacks is Mme Le Pen, Messrs Putin and Assad, a whole host of other would-be tzars, and Mr Boris Johnson trying (unsuccessfully) to put a civilized face on it all….

My shipmate Anna went off, complete with her (from my point of view) barmy baggage of arty, 'progressive' Ireland, in spite of which we had got on fine together. What does it take? I suppose we know that, in a confrontation with the Keepers of the Golden Gates, we would be on the same side; but we start from the acceptance that there are reasons why people feel and think the way they do; these must be attended to; nobody has got everything right. Respect is the key, with a basic sense that nobody is trying to take the other for a ride!

It is easier however when the sun is shining, the sky a perfect blue by day, with the huge moon smiling down at night; the wine and the food are cheap and plentiful. What a blessed place this bit of Europe is! But must such ‘freedom zones’ always be privileged exceptions, in constant danger of subversion and eradication, or is it possible that they might consolidate and grow?

Such must be the deep aspiration of every sane person, yet what a mess we tend to make of expressing it! It is all very fine chuntering on about seeing the other point of view, but it takes something more to actually establish ‘freedom zones’. The cry of those who favour Brexit etc is that they are reclaiming their freedom, while the European Union also was set up as a freedom zone of peace and prosperity.

Those who established the EU had in the main Christian values, but chose to concentrate on no-brainers like peace and prosperity, without asking hard questions about what they depend on. We know that it would not be much fun to come back from the wine and chestnuts to find the boat had been robbed. Oh yes, thou shalt not steal might seem pretty obvious,  until you get down to issues like tax dodging, and thou shalt not kill turns out to be less straightforward than one might think. As for that Jesus man with his Sermon on the Mount..... The trouble now is that the soft approach, saying as little as possible of substance, like the Irish politicians who sold the idea of Europe on the simple basis that it was going to make everyone rich, has lost credibility now - and anyway we've got our fancy roads out of it, thank you very much!

With the new regimes in the UK and the USA, it has become questionable whether Ireland’s place in the EU will remain viable for long, If Mme Le Pen becomes President of France next year, this EU will be pretty much finished anyway. Can this crisis possibly be turned into a great opportunity?

A most important, though downplayed, card is handed to the likes of Mr Trump and Mme Le Pen when they are left holding the ‘Christian’ constituency. In my own little excursion into politics, back in the 90's when I stood for the Irish Parliament as a Christian Solidarity Party candidate, my worst obstacle was sadly other pro-life people in the National Party, an outfit we shall likely see more of again these days. They put up a candidate competing with me for that constituency, which dished both of us; but there was the further problem that the CSP itself was divided about the EU..

For my part, I consider it a kind of blasphemy to identify Christ or God with any particular nation. God of His nature transcends all earthly set-ups. As for Mr Trump and his friend Mr Farrage, if they believe in anything beyond their ego-trips, it appears to boil down to good old crony capitalism, in which interest they are quite happy to exploit the fears and the baser instincts of humanity. On the other hand it is strange that ‘the Left’ manages to dress up in positive clothes the killing of millions of helpless and innocent human beings, or the trashing of marriage. Does the likes of myself really have to remain in the political desert amidst such contradictions? Such matters must be revisited and rethought if the rush to the Gadarene cliff is to be halted.

Meanwhile so many people are suffering personal and family breakdown that these are fundamental to the current malaise. Since in Christian understanding, the family based on the marriage of a man and a woman is the basic unit of society, it is connected with the idea of subsidiarity. It is not the state’s business to define marriage, only to ensure that this basic unit is respected.

There are plenty of areas where liberal as well as authoritarian governments, and the EU too, have at once usurped power and failed to uphold due structures of responsibility. I return to the case of commercial fishing. In the state of naked capitalism, big trawlers will move into an area, clean it out, and move on, leaving the seabed and the indigenous fishing community devastated. Big business generally finds it possible to at once dress itself up as progress and suborn the powers that be. Anyway it is all about ‘the survival of the fittest’, don’t you know? It's just a pity that the Common Fisheries Policy was a flawed and largely ineffective attempt to do something about this situation. Certain imperialistic instincts do die hard.

If you believe of course that life is indeed a matter of the survival of the fittest, there is not much to be done but to try to make sure that one is in there with them. What indeed is truth? Manipulation is the name of the game; to fan the flames of resentment and discontent is easy, direct them at those faltering and inadequate attempts to find a better way which hinder the rich and powerful, and try to pretend we can go back to the situation before the explosion of technology rendered the buccaneering approach impossibly destructive.

The same explosion of technology might empower another way, which needs to be adopted and promoted by the EU big-time, if it is to survive and prosper. It is known as subsidiarity, and so far has been paid more lip-service than anything else. It is a matter of empowering, for instance, the stakeholders in a given resource, the people who live by it, to themselves take on the responsibility of managing it in a just and sustainable manner.

The best way to destroy democracy is to make nonsense of it; Americans voting for Trumpland, English for their own brave sovereign Brittania, Irish for homosexual marriage are all living in what has been called the 'post-truth' world. It is conditioned by the view on their own little screens, which may be wonderful but are ordered to in-built priorities and preconceptions. Actually even the AIS is an example of this (see A Biscay Waltz). It's just tough for the little boat in your way that is not on your screen!

I think of the Anna M, my leaky little ol' boat, as my antidote to all this, my truth-capsule. She at once shakes me up, opens new perspectives and wondrous horizons, then constantly brings me back sharply to immediate physical reality; and she brings me to both trouble, peace and some downright bliss.

Heigh-ho, it's the Spaniards' turn to throw a party this weekend, when the people of Sanlucar will be tasting the new wine. What fun it is to freely circulate where the old castles on their opposing hills glare at each, with people cooperating in friendship instead of shooting at each other! Is this real progress, indeed what life's about, or is it not? Hereabouts, I say, is the Ragged Rock of human solidarity, waves washing over it, fogs concealing it, but where the bedrock of our lives is to be found. (see On Crossing Biscay.)

Photos by Fiona.

An Addendum to the Universe.

Cape St Vincent

The trip down the Portuguese coast was calm, until we rounded Cape St Vincent into an easterly breeze. We spent some pleasant days in Portimão and around Olhão, where Fiona rejoined us. Now Anna M is swinging to her mooring in the Guadiana again, an addendum to this amazing universe, responding to the pull of the sun and the moon, with the bright stars shining down on her. Mostly in the day-time the sun shines warm and dry, but a chilly blast of air from the north reminds us that winter is closing in; early snow has come there, and we have dodged the North Atlantic just in time!

One of the Wilos below Sanlucar.

The mooring had a bit of a branch tangled in it, but otherwise is fine. Wilo Paul from Galway, who couldn’t be called Irish Paul because there already is one of those on the river, came aboard for dinner yesterday evening. He is back on his mooring nearby, having come down from Ireland in July, straight from Kinvara to Sagres in two weeks; good going, showing that the old wilo, big lump of steel that she is, can shift very nicely with the right breeze!

So we are soon catching up on the comings and goings of this little community, if one can call it that! Interesting times, especially perhaps for we who have more or less moved on from nationalism, and count ourselves to some degree Europeans. How does it feel for the ones from our neighbouring island up there in the northern mists? I shall be trying to find out with interest, but I don’t imagine it is good. Admittedly there are an awful lot of Brits in Spain, and they are hardly going to be chased out of it; but maybe they will be here more on sufferance rather than by right.

You may say that that is only to the good! Indeed as for the ones who look down on the locals, and don’t even try to learn the basics of their languages, you may have a point. But for those of us who enjoy the interplay of cultures and languages, and see the different tribes of humanity as complementary rather than threatening, it cannot be nice to find oneself suddenly in danger of being regarded as a non-person!

I was lucky enough to get to Mass for All Saints day in Portimão; it was a high, sung Mass, and the singing was beautiful, with the packed congregation joining in with an excellent choir. Rarely did the Communion of Saints seem so close to me; one could really feel the possibility of that mysterious and ecstatic fulfillment of humanity ‘from every nation, race, tribe and language’, as St John put it so long ago.

At least the Catholic Church cannot be accused of hypocrisy in this respect, for in her churches, there they are, all caught up in the same simple yet profound emotions and thoughts. As we contemplate the disintegration of the liberal consensus of recent decades, I believe we shall have no choice but to revisit such little matters as Heaven and Hell, and discover what they really mean for us!

Evening at Alcoutim.

All Quiet

Finally all is quiet, dry and in order. Anna M is berthed once again in a very peaceful Pobra do Caramiñal, resting in warm autumn sunshine, in a different mood to the place we visited in September last year.* It is a small port, not unlike Sada where we made our landfall, all with an amazing variety of marine activity.

How’s this for a variety of craft:-

Sada

Sada was very good to us; the jib halyard was sorted and the rigging tuned thanks to Paco and Carlos of Nauticayons, the radar made to work again, and above all the leaks more or less fixed, all at reasonable expense.

Here is José Manuel Gómez Porto of the Carpintería Lorbé doing the caulking.

Just the neat little wooden chest with his caulking hammer and collection of irons would give you confidence in the man, before you watch him go unerringly to the right spot and the hammer bouncing in his hands!

It was very peaceful as we motored out of the Ría de Betanzos, covered with its fleet of tiny fishing boats with old boys jigging, I think, for squid. Ay, those delicious chipirones! I went out with one of them once. We didn't catch a thing, but my friend was happy. 'Aquí hay paciencia y tranquilidad!'

Ría de Betanzos,

Cabo Villano

Once out past the Torre de Hercules we found a breeze; it became such a fine fresh north-easterly that we were glad to find the shelter of Cabo Villano and a good anchorage at Camariñas. First attempt however at the head of the bay was in vain; the anchor dragged, choked in weed. Off the harbour there was less shelter from the wind, but the anchor bit into mud and didn't stir an inch.

Out passed Mugia's church of the Virgen de la Barca, dramatic in the morning sunlight, and on with a fair north-easterly, and the shelter getting better all the time. So we came at last south of Cape Finisterre, finding warm sunshine indeed, but hardly any wind.

We motor-sailed across to Cabo Corrubedo, and through the rocks into the Ría de Arosa in the company of trawlers sorting their catch to the wild excitement of many gulls. That passage passed the Piedras del Sargo looks a bit hairy on the chart, but has a good new port-hand mark on the north side and is straight-forward enough.

Isla Sagres

Piedras del Sargo

In A Pobra we are tied up beside a Spanish lady called Maribel. She and her husband have sailed twice round the world, taking thirty years; now they are feeling like settling, and are going to get a wee country place to live. They will keep the boat though. I say that sailing the Gannetsway is pretty good.  Yes, but rather too hardy, she reckons. She believes in 'butter sailing'; the butter must be soft enough to use, but not too hard! And who can argue with that?

* http://gannetswaysailing.blogspot.ie/2015/09/o-nazareno_21.html

A Biscay Waltz

It was as difficult as ever to get organised for departure from Horseshoe Cottage. However, in the run-up I managed to get the tough-book computer from Anto in Killruddery, who had very kindly offered it to me since he was not using it any more, complete with the Open CPN chart and navigator set-up installed on Ubuntu (Linux). My Guardian Angel also prompted me to get John O’Mahony from Belco Marine Electronics to instal the passive receiver for the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which he kindly did on the morning before we left. Here is a photo of the set-up, showing the Anna M moored once more here in the harbour at Sada, on the Ría de Betanzos behind La Coruña. The little arrow-icons can also be seen, which represent ships anchored in the Ría.

‘We’ were myself and Anna Legge, a sister-in-law of Anto’s, who had done some sailing on the Asgard, but was not that experienced and very brave to set out with this old geezer across Biscay. We had been getting very good forecasts, but as I had a last look at Predictwind.com before departure, I noticed that their own model (which they display along with the GFS from NOAA which most weather sites use and they themselves start from) was suddenly throwing up a gale on our third day out. Well, at least NOAA were not giving it and they were not giving a major storm, and anyway it was predominantly easterly and was only going to last 24 hours or so…. The first couple of days were perfect; just couldn’t bear to cancel, with all preparations made and Anna come!

It does mean a lot to get a good start, and we had a perfect beam reach down to about the latitude of Belle Isle. However, right enough on the second evening out the wind was freshening and the glass falling. As I changed jib down to the working one, some pilot whales came to check us out; the photo shows one of them spyhopping - sticking its head up to get a better look at us.

The Anna M and I have a little understanding, which I think my crew-mate Anna approves of, that if I take it easy on her, she will look after me; so in the morning with the wind still rising, the working jib was replaced with the storm jib, and we were down to the third reef. The wind had also veered SE, and then SSE. I was not going to thrash to windward; the old bilge pump had more and more work to do as it was. Neither did I fancy running back to Ireland, and Brittany was about a hundred miles to the east, close on the wind anyway. The time had come at last to try that sea anchor, a fancy Para Tech  American job that I had splashed out on back in my fishing days.

Drying the sea-anchor.

It seemed a good idea, but in fact it never came out of its bag since. In the fishing boat, it was easier just to dodge to windward at night on the autopilot, when one had a chance for some kip, which was the main thing I had in mind at the time, emergencies apart. Anyway, out it came, and deployed beautifully, stopping the old girl in her tracks, head on to the waves. The problem was obviously going to be the rode, for this sea anchor was a bit too strong for the Anna M. Rope was not going to last the proverbial pissing time at the bow; it would not stay snug in the roller at all, let alone allow a bit of plastic hose to stay in place. I shackled the loop on the end of the stout nylon rope into the regular anchor chain.

It’s not easy to describe the motion in a small boat in a gale. The normal businesses of living become hugely difficult. The water that one might try to put in a bowl to do a bit of washing-up, for instance, promptly leaps out. One is constantly being thrown around, liable at any moment to be hurled violently across the cabin. One soon gets bruised and it is lucky if one can avoid sustaining injury. So it was a comparative relief to lie at the sea anchor.  I was reckoning there would not be any traffic out there in the middle of the Bay of Biscay. The AIS however was working away, though the mouse was very difficult to use.

After a while, a boat shows up, and sure enough she seems to be heading straight for us. I even get her name, Le Ressac, a fine French fishing boat evidently heading for Spain. I call her up, several times, in French, in Spanish, in English. Pas de réponse.  I start the engine and think, would I cut the sea anchor adrift or try to retrieve it? She appears through the murk, less than a mile away. Suddenly the VHF comes to life and she veers away, within a couple of cables. ‘Je ne vous voyais pas, ni sur le radar ni sur le AIS’. ‘Mais je vous voyais bien sur le AIS, moi, et je vous ai rappelé plusieurs fois….’ That stopped his gallop, but I must replace that useless radar reflector and try to get the active AIS….

Phew! But now two more boats have shown up, on the same route. I managed to get through to them, but they all seem pretty aghast at the idea of a sailing boat suddenly appearing, lying in their path. Next thing, a whole fleet of little arrows are coming at us, about thirty of them altogether! It must be the tuna fleet on its way from the Irish fishing grounds. This is a fine kind of video game….. Well, the wind is at least backing somewhat. I was just making up my mind to retrieve the anchor when, bang, the rope parted where it was shackled into the chain. However, we retrieved it without difficulty. A great job, but I will have to figure out something better for that rode!

We were able to set out SW now, under storm jib and trysail, with the engine ticking over as well. I wanted it anyway to keep the volts up through the long, pitch dark night, with the bilge pump now on pretty continuously. A great little Jabsco job, that I originally bought for the shower, but which has been faithfully pumping away at my poor old raft for nearly two years now; it was lucky that it could keep ahead of the leaks.

The only other trouble was that the strop at the top of the foremast that holds the pulley for the fore halyard parted, and the jib came down about three feet, where it stuck. I shortened the luff with a life-line and it worked away. We were now doing around 4 knots, gradually coming more to the south as the wind veered east and very slowly moderated. It finished up in the north-east and we were able to swing in towards La Coruña; indeed this was better than trying to run on before the wind for Cape Finisterre. Oh and there was the bit of a knob on the Hydrovane that broke off, so that it couldn't stay engaged, but I cobbled it fairly well with a couple of bolts - and the handle that lost its bucket.

We had to keep on under that rig because the storm jib would not come down. This got to be annoying as we ended up with a head wind coming into the Ria; good job it was no longer strong. I wound the jib round the fore-stay and wrapped it up with the spinnaker halyard as best I could. If that strop had broken at the beginning of the storm with a big jib up, the consequences do not bear thinking about; it goes to show the value of changing sails in good time! We found a quiet anchorage early in the morning just above the big quays at the mouth of El Ferrol, outside a couple of fishing boats in the Ensenada de Cariño. Later on, in bright sunshine, we steamed up to Sada, and Paco and his mate came and sorted out the jib.

The offending strop (with the handle that lost its bucket).

Anna landing, (and the storm jib still up).

It’s great to be back in Spain. Now all’s in order, and actually the damage was very slight, though we’ve a bit more work to do on the rig on Monday morning. I’ve had loads of sleep and a shower; the wind is SW and quite strong, it’s good writing weather! After Tuesday, the wind is supposed to be NE again, but with high pressure and sunshine. Let’s hope it is! But though the leaks have slowed down, we’ll have to take it handy going south, and it looks as though the Anna M will have to end up on the land rather than that mooring, and I’ll have to see if  I can manage a proper job on the hull.

As for the rest of it, Anna was brilliant, she would put many fellas to shame, and so is the AIS; thanks again to Anto and to John who got me fixed up with! To me, it pointed up a broader lesson. The world is no place for buccaneers any more, a static given back-drop where we can just go on doing our thing and to the Devil with the rest. Like those Brexiteers, we must realise that if we go on being buccaneers, we also go down the road of running over the weak, even bombing cities and aborting babies in order to ‘do our thing’. But there is a clear alternative, in which we are called upon to join the dance of dynamic interplay, difficult and trying as this may sometimes be; actually we may call it civilisation. It involves talking to the other guy, yes, those ghastly things like soft power and communication. It involves risk and giving some things away, the track of a good fishing tow for instance; it involves winning friends and getting the other guy to respond; but that actually is the famous Catholic Civilisation of Love, and the good news is, it’s fun!

Sunset after storm, off the Costa do Muerte.