'Dunkirk Without Ships'.

Denis O’Brien, ‘the leading Irish businessman’, described Brexit at Davos as ‘Dunkirk without the ships’. What truth is there in this arresting observation? Brexiteers themselves, particularly in the wake of the movie, are wont to invoke the ‘Dunkirk spirit’, as if it were the retreat from Europe in itself that ‘saved the Nation’s bacon’. They seem to have missed the fact that it was a disaster that only by good luck avoided being a catastrophe, and it was extremely fortunate that the British army was able to return four years later to participate in the real triumph.

What's more there is a clear continuity between that considerable section of the British establishment that had evinced sympathy for fascism in the 1930’s and the Brexiteers. Certain tabloids that supported both come to  mind. Some more pertinent facts are that Hitler established his authority by means of referenda and of exploiting popular fears and resentments of ‘others’, resentments that went with a sense of national humiliation*, and of establishing full employment on the back of borrowed if not merely stolen or printed money.

So yes, Brexit promises a massive and potentially catastrophic withdrawal from British involvement on the Continent that may be compared with Dunkirk, and what’s even worse, a degree of collusion with ‘the Enemy’ and an abrogation of responsibility; for we may compare the existential challenge to civilisation of the last century, as represented by totalitarianism, to that posed by the three-headed hydra of environmental disaster, chronic wealth disparity and warfare these days. This century again, those existential challenges clearly call for efforts in response that transcend merely national ones. Politically speaking, such response for us in Europe is invested primarily in the EU.

As for the ‘without ships’ bit, well the Duckie promises an American navy coming to the rescue, and that’s the man who far from combating the existential threats we face this time around, does his best to embody them.

Surely we are at last at a critical juncture where we have to get serious about our response. The science, the warnings, the evidence of galloping threats are all out there. But how can one in practice live with them and respond to them?   It is extremely tempting to fall back on saying that it won’t be too bad yet awhile, that we’ll manage something when we really have to, and meanwhile ‘sufficient to the day are the evils thereof’? From time immemorial, we may say, people have been subject to catastrophic threats, some real, some imaginary. We are all going to die anyway, and really fear of catastrophe is an inescapable part of the human condition.

It is clear that Christ did not mean us to merely take what was coming. While there is an unprecedented global totality about the threats that are now looming, there are also clear indications of how to combat them. I actually do hope for the best. For a start, with regard to Brexit, I have not given up hope of the whole sorry saga resulting in a much deeper and more authentic European Union, but if we have to get there by way of some kind of Dunkirk, where might we hope to see some ships showing up to take us off the beach?
 

Possibly this is to over-dramatise what is merely a good old English mess, but disaster is already a day to day reality for very many people, and apart from the imperative to help one another, I think it wise to construct our lives on the assumption that the world will become increasingly unstable and dangerous for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, if we face the threats rather than try to ignore them, we may even find that they have a positive side and that facing up to them generates well-being even right now. For example, if we think that the present industrial structure of food production and distribution will probably come to a bad end, then surely we should start now finding ways of producing organic food for ourselves. We just might find out that it’s also fun to produce and good to eat.

With young people locked into stressful city life and careers that involve moving here and there, while family and country life decays, we might try to recover the Irish tradition of keeping up with the family ‘back home’ in the country, Mum and the children spending the summer there, and so on. The trouble is, there is nowadays rarely a family farm back in the country, and if there is, the work is mechanised. It has been said that the human race’s worst enemy is boredom. Besides having nothing to do, it involves a sense of radical powerlessness, of inability to engage with life. Anxiety and fear have to be up there with it, and wealth may hide them but does not assuage them. How may we get from  the dull misery of awaiting doom to some place where we may respond effectively, engage, celebrate and enjoy life?

Fiona and I aspire to make our home here on Sherkin Island a place such as this; one of beauty, order and security, where memories and traditions are cherished, flowers and vegetables grown, and the simple old survival skills passed on. Such are the boats that might ‘take us off the beach’ these days! Damn it, if I can get the ‘Anna M’ going again, we might do so literally!  But time is running out for the Fundit scheme, do please take a look at the link** and see if you can find more people to participate!

*https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jul/26/dunkirk-brexit-retreat-europe-britain-eec

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

Sherkin Island

Coming In To Land.

A snug stove-warmed corner with a comfortable seat and a good book, and with a big strong window between oneself and the weather, whereby one can glimpse angry breakers through the vicious horizontal hail showers, all make for a particularly Irish species of bliss. Yes, in its way, I love it!

I was enjoying such delights  lately at the house of our John, in Co Clare, also known as 'The Loop Head Smart Engagement Centre'. Having trained in civil engineering and hydrology at Galway and London, he has travelled much before coming home to roost where he grew up, with his Romanian lady and their baby. Along the way, especially in Romania, he picked up serious skills in managing the relationship between development projects of one kind and another, and their host communities. Wherever and whatever the project, from mines to motorways, he found very similar problems, and he developed a methodology for addressing them.*

Our John.

Currently high on his agenda is the establishment of wind farms, in such a way that they constitute welcome assets rather than resented intrusions for the adjacent communities, integrated by agreement with leisure facilities such as woodland trails. I suppose most people agree that it is a great thing to harness all that wind energy, but when it comes to erecting wind turbines of course there are problems; it must be done sensitively and with respect for local residents. There will be plenty of Don Quijotes tilting at them, and by no means all for daft reasons!

I recall with pride the campaign that I was involved in myself, against a Loran C mast about 1000ft high being erected on Loop Head. It would have seriously impacted that wild and open landscape, which has only come to be much appreciated in the years since, mainly through the efforts of an active local committee. But what really got me going against The Mast were the downright deceptions practised by a patronising representative of Irish Lights, at a p.r. meeting they called.

He tried to ‘sell’ it as necessary for the safety of fishermen and other seafarers. Too bad that some of us were up to speed with the much superior GPS system that was coming out, and anyway we had been using Decca receivers with a lat/long readout for some years. It turned out that the people really behind Loran C were the French Government, who did not like to have to depend on the Americans to guide their nuclear submarines and force de frappe. The local community rallied, and we won!

However there is a class of people whose favourite sport is ‘tilting at windmills’, and it has to be said this can be very tiresome. The fact is we must have electricity, and those wind turbines are a huge improvement on big chimneys spewing pollution. But no matter how good any particular idea may be, there will be those who see in it nothing but a scam; they construct a whole identity out of being smart enough to do so. Then indeed there will be those who do in fact manage to make a scam out of anything, and the better that thing is, the more successful scamming it may be. The welfare state, the EU, the organic movement, even the Church all come to mind.

It is extraordinary, if you take the EU for instance, that over half the voters of Great Britain appear to see in it nothing but a dark and sinister plot to deprive them of their liberty. I was there lately myself. I find a tense and apprehensive atmosphere about it, rather like that in a plane trying to land in thick fog on a dark and stormy night.  Brexit took off bravely enough, but now it’s time to land; the plane is juddering and creaking, and they cannot see where they are going.

We must consider whether we can help them to get safely down to earth, for it will be a disaster for all of us if they crash. We must understand that an unacceptable gulf had indeed opened up between the elite who ‘get’ Europe and in fact make it, and those who, experiencing a radical disconnect between it and any version of politics which they may just about relate to, concluded that it is another scam.

It seemed to me at the time that the European elite were getting ahead of themselves when they changed the name European Community to European Union. The latter is reminiscent of the Soviet Union, while the term Community is much less threatening. Few people want a European superstate anyway. Merely changing the name back to Community would send a signal that might well help that wayward ‘plane to land safely! But perhaps we could have a Union within the Community, like a couple of Russian dolls, if some are determined to press on to a United States of Europe.

Europe as a whole in fact needs to sort out its ‘operating system’. Unfortunately, this raises spiritual and religious problems that our contemporary culture is very poorly equipped to deal with, and we would prefer not to have to do so. We must go very deep to get to grips with them. ‘If a man wishes to know the deepest ocean of divine understanding, let him first if he is able scan the visible sea’, said our Irish Saint Columbanus more than fourteen hundred years ago. He was described by Pope Benedict XVI as ‘one of the Fathers of Europe’.

The Gannets’ Way is all for that approach. However, unable to keep the sea all the time, we turn to those lands closest to it, Ireland and Portugal. They have a lot in common besides being on the western seaboard of Europe. Of course there is their size, and also being both republics of catholic culture that have quite recently ‘escaped’ into the delights of affluence and secularism, and are experiencing these days a resultant spiritual void. In asserting their independence, they both had to struggle with more powerful neighbours, and are relatively free of the temptation to throw their own weight around. It may be said that Portugal did have an empire, but it is notable that if so, it was mainly a trading one, more interested in establishing posts for that purpose than in colonialism.

The catholic bit is important in this context because it implies seeking one’s salvation by finding one’s place within a universal totality, albeit it a strange one, fully present in each particular manifestation; the Whole that catholics believe in is nothing less than the Body of Christ, with the strange property that it can be present in a piece of bread. For protestants this is all too much, something of a scam in fact which is presumably what they are protesting, for which I cannot blame them, but it does have the result that they tend to envisage salvation on a more individual or national basis.

So I hope for some useful synergy in the contribution of Ireland and Portugal to the urgent task of developing a rebooted ‘operating system’, so badly needed by not just ourselves and Britain and Europe, but for the whole world. I'm all for recognising that we are facing existential challenges, but let's remember that there’s a lot more to life than merely lurching from one crisis to the next, and these crises may be better appreciated as divine nudges, in the direction of our great but so dimly perceivable ultimate consummation. Which is all very well, and indeed on the way ‘saving the planet’ is very necessary and good, but let it be fun too! Actually it's a lot more likely to get done if only we can find out how to enjoy it.

So much for the ruminations of an old man, on a winter’s night in Ireland while the wind whistles in the chimney! Meanwhile, I must try to get back on that sea, on the Gannetsway. Soon it will be time to head for Portugal again. The Fundit scheme only has three weeks left to fly and will struggle to land! Beyond trying to fix the ‘Anna M’, this is an opportunity to involve more people actively in one little attempt to develop a beautiful and sustainable way of life. Please take a look at:

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

Clare Coast.

*astoneco.com

Getting Those Fisheries Back.

The cry ‘We’re going to get our fisheries back!’ is one of the jewels in the crown of the Brexiteers. In this blog, I want to lay out the reasons why I do not quite buy it.

Cleaning nets in Nazare.

For a start, let me say that the principal foes of the fish stocks, and therefore of the fishermen, have relatively little to do with competition from ‘foreign’ fisherman. I campaigned for a 50 mile exclusive Irish limit back in the '70s, but frankly I do not believe things would be any better today if we had one. I watched Donegal Bay and the north coast of Mayo being reduced from a very rich fishing ground to a virtual desert with little help from abroad.

The reasons for this disaster are deeply embedded in our whole cultural set-up, which has been orientated to the ruthless exploitation of nature within a regime of cut-throat competition and unbridled technology. Visible manifestations of this culture include global warming, ocean acidification and plastic pollution, and the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many.

Perhaps the most serious loss of all is that of the restraint which has been known to prevail in wiser and  more holistic cultures, born of the awareness that while there is sufficient in the world for everyone’s need, not so for their greed. Let us hope that the culture of exploitation has reached its apotheosis with the present incumbent of the White House. Whether the European Union is capable of rising to the challenge of developing an alternative remains to be seen, but the principal of competition, of having bigger and better ships than the other lot and so on, is built into that kind of nationalism.  ‘There is no luck in greed’ used to be said in Ireland, but to overcome it calls for humility and rationality and objectivity, all qualities that are vital in the building up of any community.

On a purely geographic level, what we are talking about in the case of our sea fisheries is the management of the continental shelf. This must be managed as a whole, if it is to be managed effectively - though to do so demands both of those foundational principles of the EU, solidarity and subsidiarity, and the latter in particular remains in many respects more aspirational than otherwise.

We may however recall that, given a supply of fish, the economic success of any fishing industry depends above all on the markets that are available to it, and in particular those of Britain and Ireland depend heavily on continental markets. Grimsby for instance functions on the European level as a hub for processing and distribution. One may easily imagine the damage that delays at ferry ports could do.

The astounding technology employed by even small boats is of course produced on a global scale, but even so, there are many advantages in distributing and supporting it, if not actually producing it, at a continental level. Allied to this is the whole matter of research. Again, the development of effective management very much depends on a great deal of research, better undertaken within a continental context; however, it also depends on a sense of stewardship and indeed ownership at the local level, and in this respect one may well question whether the EU has succeeded in living up to its own principle of subsidiarity.

Big industrial fishing companies tend to have a degree of political clout wholly lacking to coastal fishing communities; to counter such bias strong counter-measures are called for. Some fairly simple ground rules would go a long way to do this, such as not allowing vessels over 10m l.o.a. to fish within 6 miles of the coast, nor vessels over 20m within 12 miles of it. Also needed are strong coastal organisations, which involve local stakeholders in conservation measures such as the establishment and maintenance of marine reserves. The present situation, whereby artisanal coastal fishermen find themselves prevented from fishing even where foreign industrial trawlers are doing so, or compelled to dump certain species back into the sea, is intolerable and must be reversed.

 

Mounting a net in Nazare.

Such unjust competition fosters the mindset of nationalism, which has competitiveness built into it. We are at a point in history where it is absolutely imperative to replace competitive exploitation with shared stewardship. It is a whole new culture that we have to develop, and if we do succeed, there is no doubt that, not alone, our coastal communities will recover their vitality and health!

A handy craft!

Meanwhile, the Fundit campaign to restore the 'Anna M' (from which the above photo was taken) goes on, and urgently needs support. See:

​

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

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.