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.