Happy New Year, Blue Planet!

It's that time of year again when Fiona and I tend to flit around among the divers members of our scattered tribe. The actual Christmas holiday we have spent with my sister and her husband near Poole in Dorset. Yesterday, Boxing Day in England, St Steven's Day in Ireland, despite the lowering grey sky and spells of chilly drizzle, we crossed the harbour entrance on the chain ferry, thus making the startling and abrupt transition from the urban sprawl on the north side to the wild Hardyesque country to the south.

   The 'Isle' of Purbeck has featured in my mother's family for generations, and my father also loved it more than any other place. With the threatening sky keeping the usual holiday hordes at bay, we walked along the shore of Studland Bay, admiring the Ballard Down that Dad loved to walk along and the fine trees standing tall and stark against the chasing clouds, all so evocative of England at its poignant best. There also is the bunker where King George VI, Churchill, Eisenhower and Montgomery came early one morning in 1943 to watch the lads training for D-day. We had lunch in a wooden hut, the Middle Beach Cafe, which very likely started off as a Nissan hut to accommodate the crew of the nearby gun emplacement. We had delicious crab-cakes with a pleasant bottle of wine, served on simple formica tables with wooden benches,  and enjoying the view across to Old Harry and the Isle of Wight, the great white cliff of Freshwater Bay behind the Needles coming and going in the rain showers.

Lunch in the Middle Beach Cafe.

   
   Actually the Middle Beach Cafe is threatened with demolition, on the supposed grounds that it is in danger of falling into the sea. My brother-in-law Martin, a specialist in such matters who has known the area for many years, reckons there is no fear of it for many more years to come. I suspect that maybe there is some other agenda at work, and this is the kind of affair that gives concern about rising sea levels a bad name. Incidentally, Martin reckons the handiest way of measuring such things is to track what is happening to the bottom of storm beaches, where the stones meet the underlying sand.

   That whole area of Studland was laced with barbed wire and mines, when in 1941 my Dad in his officer's uniform was fortunately able to be at hand to drive my mother through the road-blocks from Swanage to hospital in Bournemouth for my sister's birth. They called her Joy. 

   So, I understand how deeply the world wars shaped  imagination of the older generation in England, and how difficult it is for them to accept the prospect of being caught up in any dynamic pan-European project, especially one led by Germany. I believe it to be the case that the Germans themselves are nervous of such a role. A good New Year's resolution for us Europeans is to keep on trying to let the Brits know that we need them, precisely for their historical role as a counter-weight to any Bismarkian or Napoleonic tendencies on the Continent!

   Television time over the holiday has been spent watching the BBC's Blue Planet series, with its stunning photography of marine life. It promises a whole new awareness of the sea, of its wondrous life and the threats it faces; and with that awareness, raises the hope that we will find ways of responding adequately, and indeed joyously. This will require unity of purpose; but who could look at those images and not respond? We have to at last rise beyond fighting the battles of the last century, and bring the same grit and determination to combating the present threats we face!

   In the spirit of a humble and joyous 

contribution to that same revolution in awareness, I would like the 'Anna M' to continue to take people sailing with dolphins and whales, as she has been doing for this last 20 years.  There is no quieter, more natural and less intrusive way to do it than in a wooden sailing boat! So allow me to recommend our Fundit campaign, to help pay for her current renovation. Here is the link, and do please send it on:-

https://fundit.ie/project/restore-the-anna-m-1

                    

'Horseman, pass by', or better, get off that horse!

Just a couple of weeks ago, with the end of the hull-work around the engine compartment in sight as well as my own return to Ireland for the Christmas season, Alec and Stephan turned their attention to the forward half of the hull. The actual bows were virtually rebuilt in 2002, and do not present a problem, so the detectives' main area of investigation was in the cabin area. The pair of terriers mercilessly tore out our nice double bunk and the water tank underneath it. Horrors! There was a whole row of fractured ribs there, along with quite a few cracked ones in other parts. Alec had me attach the mainstays on the foremast to large blocks of concrete on the ground and slacken the other stays, so that he can squeeze those planks together again before putting in new laminated ribs.

Fractured ribs by the water tank.

  These cracks in the moulded oak frames must have developed through multiple shocks over time, but the most severe damage is in the area where 'Anna M' was rammed in Foxy's Wooden Boat Regatta in 2003, at Jost Van Dyke Island in the BVI. I was roaring off to a good start, slightly ahead of other boats to port and starboard, when a big American yacht tacked to go behind us but somehow got her boom caught up in a running backstay, could not therefore pay off, and headed to t-bone us. There was nothing I could do and I thought she would surely sink us, but a wave just lifted her big bowsprit enough to scrape above our deck. It wrecked the rail and life-lines, but while it broke itself, it also broke the blow, and turned the two boats side by side.

  The American was suitably apologetic, and took us into St Thomas to get us fixed up. I should have inspected the timbers then, but not being insured either for racing or for the hurricane season in that part of the world, I was very anxious to get away, and didn't even think of tearing out the panelling and bunk to do so. It was late July and late for heading home, so I headed south to Chaguarramas in Trinidad and the Orinoco River in Venezuela, but that's another story.

Heading up the Orinoco.

  Even if the usual pressures had put me off being too inquisitive this time, the Two Terriers would not have let me get away with it. Having put their names to the job, they are determined the old boat is going to be sea-worthy when she hits the water again. I am very fortunate to have fallen into their hands. We are all agreed that one more Biscay gale would most likely have sent her to the bottom.

  I have come to the point of very much identifying with the gentleman who so nearly chased his desire over the cliff at Nazaré, but was saved by the

intervention of Our Lady. Anyway it was quite fortuitous that I decided to put the 'Anna M' on the concrete there, and secondly that I thereby fell into the hands of Alec and Stephan. The whole affair is falling into the age-old pattern whereby a crisis, if faced up to and properly responded to, can lead to new relationships and possibilities, and generally strengthen our faith. Even a foolish and self-inflicted crisis like Brexit could do it! Anyway this Advent Season points the way, as the dire winter paves the way for spring, just as Our Lady's crisis pregnancy and deliverance in the stable at Bethlehem did for the coming of Our Saviour.

Meanwhile, it's darn cold, wet and windy here in Sherkin, where I am preparing a 'fundit' campaign to see if we can pay for this job! Watch out, it's coming shortly. It will offer limited opportunities to go sailing on the 'Anna M' once she is in commission again, and very good value they will be!

'Anna M' off Ferragudo.

A Visit to Batalha.

My autumn campaign on the ‘Anna M’ is drawing to a close, along with the Church year on this feast of Christ the King. If I can get together the necessary readies over the winter to finish the job, the boat will be in good shape come the Spring.  

Yesterday, Saturday, we took the bus to Batalha, to have a peek at the famous ‘monastery’ there. It’s an impressive Gothic complex, ‘built to thank the Virgin Mary for the Portuguese victory over the Castilians in the Battle of Aljubarrota in 1385’ as Wikipedia has it. I suppose it is just about conceivable that her sympathy would lie with the native and underdog in the battle (6,600 Portuguese heavily outnumbered by the invading Castilian host of 31,000), and indeed it would seem quite reasonable that some Spaniards were disposed to blame their own sins of pride for the defeat*.

The heavily outnumbered Portuguese, drawn up in their defensive position on a hill, probably were inclined to be praying for divine assistance, as two thousand heavy knights charged into the attack. The Castilian and French knights, in arrogance and anger, their foot soldiers however tired after a long day’s march in the hot sun, had closed their ears to a few wise voices among them who counselled delay. It was a classic case of ‘pride comes before a fall’!

However, as the monastery stands today, it appears to be more of a monument to the new Portuguese dynasty which the battle established than anything else. The concepts of a divine king and that of a humble Saviour bringing universal peace and brotherhood always sat somewhat uneasily together. Our King only smiles at human efforts to bolster his glory with our own attempts. Is not creation itself rather grander? Still I think there is one part of the buildings where prayerfulness lingers; in the humbler cloister, presumably used by the friars, beyond the very grand 'royal' one.

By the time Napoleonic troops had sacked the monastery in 1810, and Portuguese anti-clericalism had finished off the job in the 1830s, any aspirations to maintain a real prayer life there were finished. The Dominicans were gone. Nowadays the place mostly has the atmosphere of a museum. One is left pondering the relationship between patriotism and religion, and the differing strands of human pride and the nature of true kingship and humility and prayer.

If the Catholic Church is to recover her credibility as the Church of Christ, she was due a spell in the desert to rid herself of the smell of temporal power. But our European nations were nonetheless built up with some footing in her truth. Pride, the deadliest of the deadly sins, was duly noted, seen to be punished and occasionally repented of. As they became more and more obsessed with their own power, they lost what sure footing they once had in humility and prayer.

These nations will have to recover such a footing, along with that vocation to universal brotherhood, if their future is not to become more and more dire, as they continue on the path of pride and disintegration, trusting for their security in their own power. and their weapons of mass destruction for their security. But anyone should be able to figure out that it is 'soft' power that will triumph in the end.

*http://deremilitari.org/2014/05/the-punishment-of-pride-castilian-reactions-to-the-battle-of-aljubarrota/

Getting Rid of the Rot.

The Autumn sunshine caressing those sweet mahogany planks, for the first time in the 50 years since they were cut and shaped, picks out the stunning underwater profile of the 'Anna M', in the photo above. It also picks out the sharp turn to the bilge, behind the ladder  and in the vicinity of the engine. Whatever strains were built into the steamed oak frames, combined with the heat and the vibration and thrust of the engine, are what has caused them to fracture, which is the main problem we have been addressing.

It was a dirty job, removing all that paint, but I am already applying red lead paint again, heavily thinned with white spirit (aguarras). I don't want those planks exposed for long! Like any boat-owner, especially of an old wooden boat, I put her on the concrete in the first place with the greatest reluctance and trepidation. Besides losing a sailing season, one knows in advance that the time and expense involved will be something of a nightmare. How far does one go? Do I have to remove all the paint? And all the caulking? The paint yes, but only the caulking that is rotten, is the answer I've settled for. 

In the main it turns out that I am enjoying the whole business. It takes me back to working on my Dad's boats down at Harry Phillips' in Rye in Sussex. Harry and his son Derek used to make the clinker-built fishing boats, with their wonderfully buoyant elliptic sterns, that worked from the beach at Hastings, where we lived. I could see the boats coming and going from my bedroom window, and used to go down and mess about the beach and see what the fishermen were up to. What it all led to!

Sixty years later, wooden boats are even more precious and continue to exercise their special fascination. What a crazy business, one might think, to try to fashion such craft, and enable them to withstand the battering of the waves, out of all those bits of wood! But with care and skill, the shape actually comes out of the wood, and withstand the waves they will, like all the wooden ships that went before. While the likes of me will never be a craftsman, most of the skills involved are pretty basic, and we are able to do our share to keep them sea-worthy. They may remain so as long as long as someone puts that effort in. I offer a parallel from my personal take on life: truth is to be coaxed out of words, and cared for in the midst of the batterings it gets, in a similar way.

Working on the 'Anna M' makes me realise just how precious she is. She speaks all the languages; Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, German, they all understand. And what fun it is to work with the different nationalities, and find the words to communicate the same old problems! Here is the latest recruit to the job, Stefan, who is German. 

It is so sad that the Brexiters of this world don't seem to understand what opportunities for all of us the EU has opened up. It is also an awful failure of leadership. For all the talk of the advantages of the single market and the necessity of pooling sovereignty in Europe if we are to respond effectively to the threats and challenges that we face, how about trying to tell them of the fun to be had in a united and peaceful Europe? Yet there is something else to be said; no matter how beautiful something may be, rot will set in. It must be faced up to and got rid of, and that hard and dirty process is what brings the beauty out and establishes genuine solidarity. I leave the reader to deduce what I conceive of as the rot that must be tackled in the British ship of state! It won't be easy, but the longer it is left, the worse it gets.

Above the fog, and where N.S. de Nazare was discovered, in cave beneath chapel at left.

Paradise on Earth.

George Orwell famously said that ‘the first victim of war is truth’. I would go a good deal further and say that war is the final offspring of lies. A statesman is someone with a good grasp of reality who manages to get his followers to accept inconvenient truths, and to blow away the smoke screen of lies and even sink a few of the ships that they conceal. Not even the Boris could expect anyone to see the Duckie in such a light, indeed he has such a tenuous relationship with truth himself that he might not even grasp such a notion; so how does he describe the Duckie when he wants to put him in a positive light? ‘A great huge global brand’!!! (on Fox News, 9th November).

So the question is, what is it that is being sold, not to mention being hidden (generally the flip side of selling things), and by whom? What is being sold is a dream of paradise. As it happens, we were provided with yet another whacking mountain of information about this just lately in the form of the Paradise Papers. Behind the golden gates like the ones in Trump Tower is a paradise inhabited by the billionaires, the celebrities, the sport, film and rock stars, the royals etc. Even education is enthralled, the prize offered being access to the 'elite', its leading institutions already enmeshed. Fantasies of this wonderful world apparently keep an awful lot of people going. It is all so very much more interesting than addressing the intractable problems of day to day living. This is why we continue to prioritise keeping the paradise in existence over the potholes and the health service.

This is not what our leaders profess, but it is what they generally do. Of course, those billionaires have their little ways of keeping the politicians on side. Dear Mrs May seems a well-intentioned person, but she let herself be drawn into selling a big bundle of lies that she did not even believe in herself to begin with. The likes of me watches aghast as the country of my birth hurtles towards its coming encounter with reality. I am in no position to influence it, except in one little matter. It’s not actually ‘the economy, stupid!’ that really drives people; it’s more like their dreams. Personally, I derive some encouragement from seeing this fact laid bare.

It happens that yachts figure prominently in the Paradise fantasies. Well, Paradise does exist, there are intimations of it even in this poor abused planet, and we do need a relationship with it, and yes, sailing boats do promise some little participation in it. But there are two radically different alternatives on this road to Paradise; the high road of super yachts costing millions and registered 'offshore', and the low road of struggling to get to sea with a low budget, the work of one’s hands, and the support and participation of one’s fellows. Let us not try to destroy the dream of Paradise, but reclaim it from those dodgy ‘stars’ and bring down to Earth!

Short Days.

There is a Madonna in a big square glass box beside the altar in the Sanctuario de N. Senhora de Nazaré, from which the priest took a delightful idea when preaching on All Saints’ Day. To paraphrase, he said that we all tend to live in glass boxes, and to see everything through an image of ourselves. He was saying we are all called to be saints, but this does not mean we have to be perfect; the important thing about the saints is that they let the divine light flood their box and drown out the image of self, which generally so preoccupies us and prevents us from seeing the other.

November came in with a couple of rainy days and a substantial fall in temperature, but it will recover as the sun comes out and the chilly north wind settles down. Anyway it’s just as well; I can do without too much heat as I strip the paint off Anna M’s planking and prepare to caulk it, now that Alec has pretty much finished the new ribs. The mild, dry weather is perfect; it’s hard to imagine a better climate for this kind of work.

Dave and Hazel in the Ros Alither, with their children Katey and Ruben, on their way south back to the Guadiana, have got a bit delayed here because their v-drive packed up; a brute of a heavy shaft fractured, but Alec got a replacement machined locally within two days. Sounds to me as if their prop was made for trawling, and they could do with a lighter one. Anyway their delay made for some very pleasant socializing, as did the presence for a couple of nights of Denis Dunne from Dublin, also heading for the Guadiana for the winter. Ah well, I shall hope to be able to spin down there for a while in the Spring! Meanwhile, Fiona is due here on Tuesday, so I'm looking forward to that.

Dave is an exception to most of the passing sailors in their grp or steel boats, who look at me struggling away and think I'm a barmy romantic. He lent me some lovely caulking irons, which was very kind indeed. Actually I'm enjoying the work on the whole, in a way I neither could nor would with those sensible modern materials. To go sea-faring with natural materials worked by your own hands, and in the tradition of the great men who sailed off to discover this world in wooden ships, is very special! Anna M will be 50 years old next year, and it is thrilling to be getting her into good shape again for that occasion. A long way to go yet, though, with the days getting short, and the sun setting just to the southward of the Ilhas Farilhões, though not the Berlengas. Their almost mystical presence in the West at sunset is most impressive!

Sorry there are no photos; some bug has got into my set-up that won't let me upload them.

Anchored with Blockchains?

Late October!

Here we are at the end of October in Nazaré, and I am wandering around in shorts and t-shirt, with temperatures getting above 30 degrees in the afternoon. The sea has settled and I've just had a gorgeous swim; it seems to me the weather is better than it was in the summer. However this reprieve from winter comes with something of a vengeance, in the form of fires up the country and the threat of serious drought. It may be great for working away at a wooden boat in the open air, though maybe just a bit too good for working at all, and also it’s a pity my boss Alec has been knocked off course, firstly by his farm being burnt, and then by having his hand nastily cut by a falling chisel when he did land back into the boat. Not that I haven’t plenty to do, in the tedious and dirty form of removing all the paint from Anna M’s underwater planking. However just now I’m taking a long weekend off to enjoy the weather and also to practise my other hobby, if that is the right word; reflecting on what’s going on around me with a spot of writing.

It was good to have a visit from a friend on her way home to Ireland from the goat farm where she has been woofing for the past month, and interesting to talk to both her and Alec about what is happening in rural Portugal. As life in the dysfunctional post-industrial parts of Europe, and particularly England, becomes more and more difficult and unsatisfying, both Ireland and Portugal have been getting a fair share of ‘refugees’. Indeed Fiona and myself could be counted among them; but when we came to Ireland in 1973, we deliberately did not head for West Cork because we did not want to merely join a community of ‘expats’, but wanted to try to integrate with the local community.

We sent the children to school in Glencolmcille in this spirit, despite serious reservations about so doing. Crucially, we got around to going to Sunday Mass again. ‘A mere social ritual’ is how a lot of people see it. The fact is, it refers our lives to a single central and coherent reality, mysterious indeed, but which has stood the test of time and actually continues to work for those who choose to go along with it/Him/Her, as anyone who wants to may find out for themselves. With such reference points everywhere apparently in decline, the disintegration of our societies proceeds apace.

The English Crusties that a friend encountered in recent years in rural Ireland had no such desire to integrate with the local community, she said, setting up their own school and if possible replacing the money economy with barter systems. In Portugal of course with the language barrier this situation is even more extreme. Then there may be a further dimension of mutual disesteem when it comes to the matter of sexual mores. Though of course in politically correct circles one is not supposed to admit it, even arty, liberated types, have been known to be shocked by the antics of some of the blowins.

Now that Ireland has thrown off 'the dreadful weight of Catholic repression', our young Taoiseach has famously stated with reference to homosexual marriage, ‘It does seem a bit strange at first, but you get used to it’! Yes, I suppose for that matter that you can get used to just about anything, and people do so, blowing each other to bits as in Belfast in the ‘70s for instance, or, well, the list could be endless. The solution to such problems recommended by some is to adopt the enlightened attitude, that’s life, get used to it! And so on, down to Professor Veronica O’Keane of Trinity College informing the Government Committee on abortion lately that "We need a real-life solution to the real life problem of unwanted pregnancy and not a moral, ethical, metaphysical, philosophical discussion about abortion.”

Who, let alone a university professor, would need to be bothered with all that boring stuff? Well then, if we don’t, but on the other hand are too sophisticated for settling for such simple formulae as ‘Thou shalt not kill’, not to mention more positive aspirations to, say, protect the innocent and vulnerable and also the dignity of women, how are we to constitute society and establish that essential basic trust, the absence of which is something all of us must hope, however dimly, we do not have to endure?

My country, right or wrong! was the cry in the heyday of the nation state, and one was supposed to believe that the nation's interests constituted an adequate basis for our conduct, but that is a very tattered notion at this stage, irremediably so indeed, and good riddance to it! Meanwhile, we all of us must come back eventually to the imperative to address such little matters as just what is right or wrong. As Dostoevsky had his Elder Zossima say:-

"To consider freedom as directly dependent on the number of man’s requirements and the extent of their immediate satisfaction shows a twisted understanding of human nature, for such an interpretation only breeds in men a multitude of senseless, stupid desires and habits and endless preposterous inventions."

Is this business of ‘independence’ for Catalonia, like 'choice', a matter of ‘senseless, stupid desire’ or not? It does seem to me to have a good deal in common with Brexit; indeed some strange bedfellows emerge these days. When one considers them as related to the depth of disillusionment that now exists with what until recently tended to be considered exemplars of civilisation and democracy, such as the USA and both the UK and the EU, maybe they also have common ground with those communities of Crusties.

The bedfellows I have in mind tend to relate to utopian hopes that surround the internet. The Brexiters appear to think that technology will somehow enable a borderless border in Ireland. Catalonian independistas believe that they can bypass much of the cumbersome machinery of the old nation state, not to mention the likes of the banks, and thus, with the help of the blockchain technology that underpins bitcoins, create a parallel economy, based on what is called ‘digital trust’.* Is this a visionary leap into the future or just another ‘preposterous invention’?

Trust is trust and unity is unity, and without them there is only war and destruction. That is what we all must focus on, while the things we make, be they of wood, gold or bits, cannot stand in the end by themselves, nor substitute for those intangible goods. Which is far from denying that we must keep ourselves and our societies anchored in physical truth; curiously this is a condition for justly appreciating metaphysical reality. No amount of blockchain would keep the old Anna M from being blown on the rocks in a gale, and I would have very small hopes of it keeping human society in safety either. That Committee declined to watch a film of an abortion being carried out, and do the warmongers of this world really understand the physical effects of their weapons?

As my waiter, while serving me delicious sardinhas assadas, commented on the news from Spain on the tv: ‘ha que fallar’.  Yes indeed,  hay que hablar, il faut parler, cal parlar, they must talk! Anyone who worships the Word made Flesh can only agree. As their society dissolves in chaos, I reckon that even those enthusiasts for blockchains will have in the end to listen to such words as these from the prophet Isaiah in today’s Liturgy of the Word:-

Announce it – come, ponder it together –

 who was saying this from the beginning, who foretold this from the start?

Am I not the Lord?

 Is there any other God but me?

 Do you seek a just God who will save you? There is no other.

Turn to me and you will be saved, all you ends of the earth;

 for I am God, there is no other.

Nossa Senhora da Nazaré.

So get off your high horses, Castellanos and Catalans alike, and look about you for the only way forward, that strangely enough has been right under your long noses all along! There is no other way, and the Paddies would do well to remember it as well.

*https://cat.elpais.com/cat/2017/10/26/espana/1509027957_904688.html

Waves, Fire and Salmon (FFFXXIII).

The waves have finally got serious here in Nazaré, but I've little time for taking photographs. The work on the Anna M goes on steadily, though Alec is rather distracted just now on account of his farm up the country being burnt out. All his olive and fruit trees and vines destroyed, along with his machinery there. At least his house survived.

The scale of the fire disaster in Portugal is horrendous. There is much anger at the Government and the Interior Minister resigned. It is claimed that some of the fires were started deliberately. However the facts remain that the country was tinder dry after weeks of drought and a very hot summer, while the evidence piles up that such events are what we must expect from global warming. The hot southerly breeze generated by Hurricane Ophelia as it headed for Ireland was incredible for October even here on the Portuguese coast.

Alec knew a man who could not outrun the fire on a road in a tractor at over 40 km/hr; he was very lucky to find a safe place to turn into. The death toll from the latest fires stands at 46. Many of his neighbours have lost everything, including their houses. At this stage the main priority is burying dead animals. Many of the animals that survived will have to be destroyed because there is nothing left in the country to feed them. Hay of course is one of the first things to burn.

One wonders how the countryside can recover, when surely one element in the tragedy is already the decline in the rural population. A traditional fire break was to cultivate and irrigate vegetables around houses. What happens when there is nobody left to do this work?

Enough of this, I'm going to take a trip down memory lane, though there too we encounter rural decline....

FFF XXIII, The Fish of Knowledge.

In Donegal in the 1970s, myself and Fiona were privileged to witness the last days of an ancient way of life. Paddy’s Day (the Feast of St Patrick on the 17th March) marked the beginning of the serious Spring work. The days were getting longer, and with luck drier, though the weather could still have a vicious sting to it, which goes to show how right T.S.Eliot was in his assertion that ‘April is the cruellest month’. Reserves are low and, if Spring lets one down in the line of weather, it is difficult indeed to get on with the work of cutting turf and sowing spuds. But if that fine dry spell came, it was great to be up in the fragrant air of the bogs, slicing out heaps of the dark squishy sods, laying them out to dry and gazing out over the ocean as we took our tea-break, before those darn midges come to make life there Hell!

By the middle of May, salmon fever would be gripping the coasts of Ireland. Soon it would be time to spend the short summer nights down there on the waves, with the hills now rearing up above us, to be unforgettably etched against the early morning light…. There would be a looking out of nets, repairing them and mounting new ones. This was the chance to break out of the straightjacket of subsistence living, maybe to buy a better boat, a decent car or even to build a house. The main craze at that time was the drift-net fishery, which was what my double-ended half-decker, An Cnoc Mor, had actually been built for; this fishery was in its heyday at the time, but first I must describe a very ancient and beautiful way of fishing the salmon that was still practised in Teelin Bay: dulling with a draft or ring net.

In a punt a crew waited quietly with their oars at the ready and net ready to shoot, with another man tending one end of the net ashore at one of several special spots around the bay. Sometimes they had to wait for long hours, but alert all the while for the least sign of a school of fish. Once it came, they were off in a flash, trying to encircle the fish with the net, with the man ashore throwing stones to try to scare the fish into it. The dull complete, both ends of the net would be gathered into the boat, with a great splashing of oars to deter the fish from escaping beneath it. Maybe one or two or maybe a hundred of the gorgeous great fish were taken, as the bag of the net was hauled aboard. Once a boat had shot their net, there would be a general change of station, each boat moving on to take the place of the next one. Of course it was hard to get a licence for it and it was a bit of a closed shop. It was also in danger of being made obsolete by the scarcity of fish, for which drift-netting was particularly blamed, since the fish had to evade one barrier of net after another all the way round the coast.

The conditions of this drift-net fishery were on the mad and dangerous side. The only legal nets for it were made of yarn rather than monofilament gut, and only 30 meshes deep. This meant they only worked in the dark, or the fish would see them, and indeed the darker the night and the rougher the sea, the better! John Maguire was a good fisherman, but he had a neighbour, Jerry McNern, who I suppose we have to say was an even better one. Certainly he was the right man for that game, and pursued it with great passion! He hailed from Dunkineely, the other side of Killybegs, and was of a different temperament altogether to the gentle men of Glencolmcille; he was very wired and sharp. He was a successful mid-water trawling skipper, but did not like the tedious summer trawling for whitefish. Indeed there were trawlers of 65ft at the salmon with 20 miles of net when the thing was at its height, but besides being totally illegal, this was not going to work for long, as we shall see! Anyway John prevailed on Jerry to join us.

Now Jerry was not one to cut much slack for this hippy bloke with ‘the BBC accent’! I have to say he sharpened me up no end; not a second’s lack of concentration went without rebuke; and it was just as well. As far as Jerry was concerned, there were basically three places to be: back of Rathlin (O’Byrne) Island, Malin Mor or Glen Head, and if necessary there was another stand in the mouth of the Glenbay. One had to be on the ball to get a good one, and that meant a clatter down from Teelin which was soon testing the workmanship of the man that built the Cnoc Mor. It requires great skill to put exactly the right shape on a clinker-built boat; it is all in the cut and twist of the planks, which must not be forced into shape. Anyway my boards were just a bit too flat under the bow, just where the boat hit those waves coming up past Slieve League as we bashed westward from Carrigan Head. By the second season, lift the cuddy floor and we could watch the water squirting up between the planks every time she hit a wave.

We would tie a tyre onto one end of the drift and shoot away our nets, something over half a mile long; normally we shot in towards the land, and of course having no radar or plotter, it took fine judgement to finish up the right distance off. Generally, the closer the better, but it was getting dark by now. Over went the winkie on the end of the net, and we would settle down for a bit of grub and a mug of tea,  while keeping a good eye on that winkie. One never quite new what the drift would do. Sometimes it would keep straight and behave itself, sometimes not. The tea taken, off we would go with a searchlight, made from an old headlight’s sealed beam. The net could be all bunched up any which way, zig-zagging here and there. That was ok too, it was fishy enough if it wasn’t too bunched up, but it also made it pretty good at catching fishing boats!

Now and again I got it on the prop, which would elicit a string of oaths from Jerry. It would have to be cut off with the scythe blade mounted on a shovel shaft that we carried for the purpose. At least you could more or less get at the prop on those double-enders. Once it also got caught around the bottom of the rudder, and as I pulled it to try to pull it off, I lifted the rudder clear off its lower pintle. So there we were with the net caught around the prop and the rudder swinging by the top pintle, half a mile or less from the rocks. Take it easy, get the net off and tie it forward, then I could go over the side hanging on to a couple of tyres, and while being dunked up to the chest in the sea with the lads stopping the rudder from dashing around too much, with a foot on the prop-shaft, I managed to get a spare rowlock in the place of that (now bent) pintle.

On another memorable occasion, when we went to check the drift, we found it had done a complete somersault in the short time while we had our tea; the outside end had come right around and was nearly on the rocks. We went to haul it like mad. It looked as if we would have to cut and leave some of it to do so, but it would have been a serious blow to lose half the nets at that stage. I kept going, but will never forget that big wall of black rock with the water gushing down it, that seemed so close I could nearly touch it; but I had to concentrate totally on hauling those nets, and kept going, half expecting a horrible crunch. Next moment we were clear of the rocks, safe and with the nets aboard, thank God!

The biggest problem however was getting worse all the time. Jerry referred to the seals alternatively as ‘Whiskers’ and ‘Wallace’. In previous less enlightened times, they had been mercilessly culled. One received a handsome bounty if one presented a seal’s snout at the Guarda barracks, having most likely clubbed the seal to death on some remote shore where they were hauled out to breed. I would not commend that method, but in those times one only had to shoot the drift in the evening and haul it, fish and all, in the morning. Now if you did that, with the seals getting much bolder, chances are you would only get the odd fish that had struck lately, some heads, and observe some more holes in the net with a few scales beside them. Jerry had us travelling the net all night and taking any fish we saw gleaming in our light out of it straight away. That was even more fun than hauling the blessed nets! Sometimes we actually scared fish into the net. But if we left them there, chances were they would be gone in the morning. Wallace was on the job!

Sometimes in the early light we would see the seals working the nets ahead of us. They really liked their salmon, were getting better and better at helping themselves to our nets and were just about impossible to shake off. I bought a .22 rifle, but it was very difficult to shoot them. Anyway they would see the moment you took it up, and take more care. Lucky Jerry didn’t shoot himself in the foot one night, or make a little fountain in the bottom of the boat, when he discharged it by mistake in the cuddy one night. Fortunately the bullet lodged in one of the oak timbers. We were more careful about the safety catch after that!

Gradually we started to get ahead, but it was all a bit too much for the poor Croc Mor. Into the second season, when I left her on her mooring for the daytime and came back in the evening, it was touch and go whether the bilge water would be into the gear box. So to the sad business of depending on automatic electric pumps! GRP seemed to be the answer, much as I have always loved wooden boats. I managed to get a new 36ft Ocean Tramp built in Wicklow after this, and called her Screig n’Iolar. It was just one of those things, there had happened to be Cnoc Mor (Big Hill) up behind our house in Braide, and there was a Screig n’Iolar (Eagle’s Crag) beside it.

As far as I remember we had another couple of seasons salmon fishing with Screig n’Iolar, and she was indeed more fit for it, but as is so often the way of things, by the time you get properly organised for something, the best of it is gone. My most vivid memory of salmon fishing in Screig n’Iolar was when the engine gave some serious trouble. We limped into Malin Beg Uig, where there was a little quay but it was open to the south. I was moored off but got ashore in our little dinghy and eventually got a friendly mechanic to help. Meanwhile the wind went to the southward and a right jopple came into the Uig. Seamus the mechanic was so relieved to get back to the concrete that as he jumped out of the dinghy I was thrown in the water. John was all excited concern, while Jerry just laughed. ‘Do ye think we’ll get rid o’ the f***** that easily?’

What finally knocked our salmon fishing on the head was the fact that I caught a virulent dose of jaundice from some South African visitors, which left me very weak for months. Meanwhile the summer was actually fine, but that was not good for that lark. More and more fishermen were surviving by using illegal deep nets made of monofilament (gut). The salmon fishery descended into a state of war, with shots actually being fired at fishermen by the Navy. Between that and the fact that seals were taking more fish than were being landed, the game was up as far as I was concerned. After a few more years the driftnet fishery was banned altogether.

This was another big nail in the coffin of that way of life. The once teeming salmon, the king of fishes, the fish of knowledge, was in danger of being wiped out. What a category of miseries! The clear, swifting-running rivers where he renewed his tribe were polluted, his feeding grounds were robbed for fish-meal, and yes, man’s ingenuity and his greed were too much, not to mention sentimentality about seals. While it is taken for granted that deer, for instance, must be culled, not so for seals.

Big companies with buckets of oil money think fit to speculate on salmon farms, trusting people to continue to enjoy their salmon despite their being reared somewhat like battery hens. Occupying many a beautiful stretch of sea, they put those noble fish in big cages. At least Whiskers and storms effect the odd escape, with what effects on the remaining wild stock we do not know. The sea-lice thrive in them anyway, and infect wild fish. The salmon must be laced with chemicals. They are suffocated in hundreds of thousands by jelly fish*. The firms will eventually go bust, leaving desolation where there should be wild and pristine coasts. The few jobs minding the farms are no substitute for the fishermen’s livelihoods. Is there any way ahead for our grandchildren’s generation?

The Fish of Knowledge, that expired thrashing their tails on the deck of my boats, their glorious multi-hued skin gradually turning dull, gave me a little advice as they did so: ‘You have a choice!’ I pass it on from them. We too will expire in huge cages unless we have a massive change of heart and mind. Our salvation does not lie in ever more ambitious applications of technology, but in a spiritual and moral revolution.

All forms of greed and pollution will have to be expunged.  If we would live, we will finally have no choice but to become socially and environmentally responsible. For the salmon’s sake, and that is as close as dammit for all our sakes, both the rivers and the high seas must be conscientiously husbanded. The salmon stocks could be nursed back to health. It is hard to think of a better touchstone than our success in doing so, for the earnestness with which we desire a worthwhile future for our grandchildren! Probably the only methods of cropping the salmon that should be tolerated at sea will be such as that of the Teelin draft-nets.

Rigging a net in Nazaré.