On Crossing Biscay

48deg24’N, 8deg4W is where I am beginning to write this post. Finisterre is 333 nautical miles astern (bearing SxW), Baltimore 192 nm ahead, the Ile de Sein 119 nm somewhat south of East, the nearest land being the Scilly Isles, 112 nm to the North-east. This day has been extremely peachy, with the sea calming down, the Anna M pottering along beautifully at 4 or 5 knots, with a gentle easterly breeze and kindly, warm sunshine. For once we have left the bad weather off the Iberian coast.

Yesterday, in nearly calm conditions with a very light SE wind and an unpleasant swell, our progress was not so good at all. Sailing at one or two knots, we had also been forced to sail to the north-east in order to catch what breeze there was, filling the sails and minimising their exasperating slatting. Apart from needing to conserve diesel, I didn’t use the engine because it would have simply killed what wind there was for us. Besides, while we had a better angle on the waves heading NE, we were not wishing to find ourselves in Brittany this time!

The day before there had been more wind but also an even worse sea-state. Looking to the East, we could see the swells coming down Biscay, while looking South-west, there were even bigger ones coming in from the Atlantic. We were like children sat on a blanket which some malevolent sea-gods were violently shaking up and down as they fought. So that was what AEMET had meant by forecasting a mar gruesa (rough sea), though with a maximum wind of only force 5 or 6 for a short while!

It always intrigued me that La Agencia Estatal de Meteorología*  present their charts for mar total before those for viento y mar del viento. In most cases the sea-state is a more vital consideration than the wind, in these days of engines and especially off that North-West coast of Spain. In a sailing boat one can shake sails and rig to pieces, and I was lucky to get away with only popping the odd slide off the mainsail. We literally had to head NE to survive, with the over- reefed mainsail pinned forward with a preventer as well as downwards….

Bow-riders

As we clawed our way up towards Brittany, the sea gradually settled, and after a very calm day a sweet easterly breeze sprang up. I was able to write this far, as we settled into a couple of days of perfect sailing, that took us to within 40 miles of Baltimore before the wind died out. Still we had a pleasant motor-sail in against a very light NE air, through the night and early morning, accompanied by many dolphins and also spying four basking sharks.We came to Baltimore in the midst of its Wooden Boat Festival, and then to Sherkin to find it settling into a most magnificent spell of weather.

Wooden Boat Festival with Sherkin Island +

It is hard to adapt to life ashore again, with its diverse preoccupations; an overgrown garden, even that strange EU referendum coming up in Blighty. In the long watches at sea, I found myself considering the long and frequently difficult relationship between England, Spain and Ireland. Where did it all go wrong? I suppose one starts with Henry VIII’s divorce of Catherine of Aragon, which horrified right-thinking English people like Sir Thomas Moore. The Spaniards must have been horrified at every level, in sentiment, honour and religion.

No doubt simple resentment of the old established Spanish Empire by the young upstart British one was going to cause trouble, but surely it was not really necessary for things to come to the pass they did. The British Empire kicked off in Ireland, sending an army of 18,000 soldiers in the massive effort to subjugate this country, replete with appalling policies of scorched earth and destruction, that led to the deaths of an estimated 100,000 Irish civilians, mostly by famine. When I think of that Bay of Biscay, compared to the Irish Sea, I cannot really think that fear of Spaniards being established here could have warranted that kind of response. After all they only managed to send 3,000 troops to the Battle of Kinsale.

Much propaganda was made about the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and their cruelty in America. Happily there is a much more general willingness to admit these days that the treatment of native populations in the British Empire, including the Irish and North American Indians, was as bad if not worse than what happened in South America, and what with the butchering of Catholic priests that went on in the market squares of England, the Elizabethans were certainly not to be outdone in the line of sadistic torture. I also used to hear talk in England about ‘dirty, lazy Spaniards’, and pretty much had to find out for myself how untrue that line of talk is. Besides being hard workers, they generally seem obsessed with cleanliness.

Such narrow-minded nationalism, and worse, has thankfully been in retreat in Europe for a good while - since the Second World War in fact, when the European Community project commenced. I am profoundly grateful for being spared the horrors of war in my lifetime. Of course one cannot put all this simply down to the EU, but much work has gone into it and it has at least been a massive help. Now Mr Boris Johnson and his friends are apparently willing to bring it to an end; for indeed, it would not be the same without Britain.

In a speech likening the EU to the efforts of Napoleon and Hitler, he said that ‘fundamentally what is lacking is the eternal problem, which is that there is no underlying loyalty to the idea of Europe. There is no single authority that anybody respects or understands. That is causing this massive democratic void.’ I find this a strange statement. Does he not realise that this is precisely the essential problem of any democracy, which his Napoleons and Hitlers were trying to remedy by providing a ‘single authority’? Does he really think that this great exercise in democracy, the referendum, is going to bring people together? Even his Tory Party?

But things are not so very hopeless. Mr Johnson might not like to recognise it, but the ultimate answer to his ‘eternal problem’ is religious in nature rather than political; and fundamentally Europe is not quite so badly off as he makes out. Many of the founding fathers of the EU, such as Adenauer, Monnet and Schuman, one might include de Gaulle, were indeed practising Catholics, but I am not expecting the likes of Johnson to suddenly become one.  What I would argue is that Catholicism remains the bedrock of European culture, yes, in England and Ireland too, and if Mr Johnson really wants a single authority to fill the democratic void, that is where he may easily find it!

It is a big thesis, too big to tease out here, but quite apart from the many explicitly Catholic writers of England as well as the rest of Europe, let us just consider William Shakespeare a little. Take King Lear. The old king eschewed the responsibility of governing, divided the kingdom, and went mad. Are we to suppose that Shakespeare did not have his own times in mind when he wrote it, around 1605? Queen Elizabeth I had died, and the terrible war in Ireland dragged to a conclusion of sorts, two years previously. The ‘truth party’, Cordelia, Kent, Edgar, suffered and were largely defeated, like the Irish Earls. The values upheld are thoroughly catholic, and bear no traces of xenophobia…. Says Kent:

‘To plainness honour's bound,

When majesty stoops to folly.

Fare thee well, king: sith thus thou wilt appear,

Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.’

One more literary illusion, from the twentieth century, and I shall have to rest my case, that the Catholic tradition of Europe transcends in a sense the Roman Catholic Church, although the latter is indeed essential to it. This quotation from The Dry Salvages by T.S.Eliot does have the advantage, from my point of view, of chiming with my other great source of universal values, the sea and seafaring; but if it does not refer to the Catholic Church, then I don’t understand it aright:-

And the ragged rock in the restless waters,

Waves wash over it, fogs conceal it;

On a halcyon day it is merely a monument,

In navigable weather it is always a seamark

To lay a course by: but in the sombre season

Or the sudden fury, is what it always was.

Islas Cies

The sooner Mr Boris Johnson, not to mention the great British electorate, realise this, the better! I pray that they may not be pitching themselves and us all into another sombre season or sudden fury! But I do admit it, I am getting a little spoilt in my old age. I will close with a few photos both of the fabulous Galicia we left behind, and the equally fabulous island we have come back to.....

What a wonderful place Europe is!

Abe swimming in the pools of Pobra

Anna M with Ros Alither at the Islas Cies

Different company in Horseshoe Harbour!

*http://www.aemet.es/

+ to see all my photos of the Baltimore Wooden Boat Festival, click here: 
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B3zin5QGbLMeVGxSclo0RVMwcUk

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North to Galicia.

The south wind came and blasted us up past the Ilhas Berlengas, off which we were thoroughly drenched and blew out the working jib. We went into Nazare for a night's rest and a bit of a dry out, where the marina very kindly declined to charge me 'just for a night's rest', almost unprecedented these days I should think!
Off again in the morning with a fine breeze and a clearing sky, the Anna M in her glory tramping along with deep reefed mainsail and storm jib.

Waves by Joe

Gannet by Abe

There were plenty of gannets playing over the waves, but mostly on their own, which is unusual. One feels their quiet exaltation, and indeed very privileged to share in it in our inadequate way! Still it was good to gain quiet water again, and a good night's rest in Bayona, which we left in company with the Ros Alither. 

Ros Alither in the Ria de Vigo.

She had spent the winter in the Canaries, after we met her in the Guadiana last October, and had carried the south-west wind most of the way up. I wonder does this often happen in May? Never had such a passage north before myself, but I wasn't particularly expecting or looking out for such an opportunity before.

We landed into the Marina Davila at the entrance to Bouzas harbour, right beside Vigo. Big activity going on, with a bank holiday coming next week and the weather forecast to improve; the manager spluttered when I said I wanted to haul out and careen before the end of the week. 'But I have a queue of boats for the lift and the washer is broken right now.' 'That's fine, we'll clean her by hand - better for an old wooden boat anyway!' So we jumped the queue, and very glad I was of Abe's help. There was a mighty crop of barnacles on her, worse than last year for some reason.

The guy that worked the lift was spectacular, and altogether the staff were great, very friendly, competent and out-going. I thought Bouzas would be a practical kind of place and I wasn't disappointed, and delighted with the excellent menu del dia up in the town too; a good three course meal plus wine for eur8. There is an excellent chandlery there too. The marina even provide bikes for one to whistle up past the docks. 

Bouzas and the Marina Davila, right centre. 

Anna M tied up astern of the big 3 master.

We were back in the water on Friday, job done in spite of some rain, and the best of it is that this time I really have slowed down the leaks, mainly because of sealing a beastly anode that is very hard to get to see from the inside. So today being Saturday went to have a peak round Vigo. It's a bit run down, its days as Spain's gateway to North America long gone and the fishing depressed, but there are signs of vitality too; trying to buck up the pleasant old town for instance.

Where Vigo began.

I've left Abe there; he's gone to see if he can share Barcelona's glory in winning the League!

Abe in front of the Castle.

La Romaria

The sky was an unblemished blue, the hills still green, as we let go the mooring where the Anna M had turned peacefully to the tide for the last six months.The nightingales were still singing away, though perhaps with a tad less urgency. Their singing would soon be giving way to the hard work of rearing young, while the sun, becoming fierce, will burn up the sweet green grasses and those so touching, delicate flowers.

The people of Sanlucar were doing some singing too. It was the weekend of the Romeria, when after Mass each family piles heaps of chairs and tables and goodies onto decorated carts, and dressed in their gorgeous flamenco gear, the fellas on their horses, they set off for a field half way to El Ganado, the next village up the road, to have a hooley with the folk from there.

Abe's photo, and he was too shy to get a good photo of the girls!

English Protestants are inclined to be snooty about the way these Catholics muddle up sex with religion, though D.H. Lawrence, no less, commented somewhere that ‘the Pope knows more about sex than an army of sex therapists’! That ‘old celibate in the Vatican’ scores because he sees sex in its spiritual context, or if you must merely think of it so, in its psycho-social context, instead of just focussing on individuals. The nightingales have no need of sex therapists!

Staying on the psycho-social level, as I recall from Somerset there would be ructions and fights when lads from Holcombe or Leigh-on-Mendip came ‘poaching our girls’ in Stoke St Michael. The Andalucians, aware of the danger of in-breeding in a small community, seem to take the opposite approach. As for the Pope, there is a feast of wisdom available on such matters in his Apostolic Exhortation Amoris Laetitia - The Joy of Love. My top quote (on this wave-length) is ‘Communication is an art learned in moments of peace in order to be practised in moments of difficulty.’

Yet it remains the spiritual context that gives such statements their force. 'The family is the image of God, who is a communion of persons’, says the Pope, and it is the risen Christ who sustains our joy. Meanwhile the stretching of life to the dimensions of God is our difficult and never-ending project. Whatever about one village and another, I’m still working on this Gannetsway from the Guadiana to Sherkin Island….

The beginning of May is a good time to head north, with the days getting long and even warm there, and before that Nortada gets too established on the west coast of the Iberian peninsula. Right now a Levanter was forecast - the hasky easterly blasting through the Straights. Soon enough my crew, Abraham, a nephew by Fiona’s brother Anthony, would have his sea-legs tested. The east wind sprang up as we lay at anchor in Tavira, after a first cushy day sailing down the river. Abe’s sea-legs proved good as we had two lively day sails, to Culatra and then on to Portimao, where we went up-river to the pontoons just below the bridge. It is an excellent place for supplies, the cost of berthing is very reasonable, diesel is available and Pingo Doce and many shops nearby.

Going ashore in Culatra....

Abe swimming,

and a peaceful night.

Alongside in Portimao.

On the evening of its third day we still carried the easterly on round the Cabo de Sao Vicente, and headed north with that rare luxury, a gentle easterly breeze. It took us as far as Cabo Espichel before it finally expired, then a light northwesterly sprang up and we were just able to lay Cascais, where I’m writing this. Now the north-west wind is fresh, but it’s supposed to go south-west tomorrow, and we’ll be on our way again first thing in the morning. This anchorage will be untenable with the south or south-east gale that's forecast, but let's see how far it will take us!

Good job Fiona is off grannying!

Between Crickets and Nightingales....

A whole host of gremlins got into the Anna M's electrics over the winter, and the new fridge finally arrived, so there was much to be done, involving burrowing in awkward corners, while I myself was full of aches and coughs. I think I caught something from an old boy coughing all over the bus that brought us up from Vila Real, and was generally feeling ineffectual. Meanwhile the locals were delighted on account of some rain. In the circumstances there was nothing to be done but tie up to the pontoon in Sanlucar and see what the bit of extra convenience and human company might do.

Julian coming along the pontoon with Lily.

The sun was soon getting strong, I was feeling a lot better, and blow me if the Lord did not (after my smart remarks last week) send a wonderful Englishman to sort me out. With his Irish wife Martina and their second daughter Katy, they live on Carina of Devon*, to be seen in the left of the photo. With Julian's help those gremlins are on the run.

Rogan Wolf whom we visited in Clifton gave us a poem -‘A dotted line/ is like a prison window;/ between the bars infinity beckons.’ ‘... if I chanced/ upon infinity,/  would I ride it/ or just fall?’ Certainly not 'just fall', Rogan, but I'm not sure if 'riding' it is quite the right word for the alternative. And how does infinity beckon? When the sun comes out after the rain, the swallows are full of joy, the hills a riot of flowers, the nights a competition of crickets' song and nightingales', well, all this is a good start. Yet it is easy to miss.

Tom Jackson in his book on Darwin, subtitled The Poet Who Died, recounts how as the young man of the Beagle Journal ('surely to be numbered among the greatest travel writings in English') the great man was full of poetry and passion, 'unutterably thrilled by his wonderful experiences'; yet by his own account, in middle age all this deserted him. 'The state of mind which grand scenes formerly excited in me, and which was intimately connected with a belief in God, did not essentially differ from that which is often called the sense of sublimity.' Well, whatever it was, he lost it!

Our loving Creator works especially by way of the gaps, and uses them to gain access to us. But while He is indeed God of the gaps, the world does its best to ignore them. Poor old Darwin and his many followers want to stay on the solid ground of ‘science’, and Tom shows how he covered over the gaps with a lot of half-baked ideology about 'Natural Selection' and so on. Happily nowadays one gets the impression that even science is being forced to recognise the gaps.

 

Julian and Martina are scientists too, yet evidently seeking those 'gaps' here on the river. If perhaps not 'ride', what then shall we say, Rogan? 'Go with the flow'? Swim, sail, fly.... Here is Martina out walking the riverside path:

and here is Fiona on the same walk:

and here are more flowers along the way:

*see Martina's blog, just discovered and highly recommended  - https://carinaofdevon.wordpress.com/

On the River

Cistus, flower of Guadianaland.

Fiona and I came away from that mad day indulging dreams at the London Boat Show with one item purchased - a fridge, which precisely fitted the corner where I want to install it. It was supposed to be waiting for us here at Alcoutim when we came back, but it was stranded in a depot in Vilamoura. Having been chased up, it was actually brought as far as the bridge over the little tributary here at the top of town, maybe 300m from the waterfront on the Guadiana and the office there of Fun River where I had arranged for it to be delivered.

It was last thing Friday evening and raining. I got the driver on the phone as he returned to Vilamoura; a Brit. He said he could not find the Fun River office! But it is sign-posted, the town is very small and the Guadiana on the big side…. Could he not have asked the way? ‘I don’t speak Portuguese. I’m English’!!

Ay, probably hasn’t even learnt fas favor, onde esta, obrigado…., surely the basics one should learn wherever one goes. Will this kind of Brit ever learn community building? One is so used to wincing as they give off about the Portuguese, the French, the Irish  etc. Yet the same people come and throw themselves all over these countries! And now they hold this silly referendum!

Stop the world, I want to get off! I can only see it as a matter of nostalgia for another age, of a mythic time when Britain was indeed Great, wogs began at Calais, if God wanted something done, he sent for an Englishman while one could rob the world, glory in the buccaneer spirit yet generally convince oneself one was doing the world a favour.

That attitude may be largely discredited now, but how is one to account for the fact that (according to the London Independent) in a vote in the European Parliament on 25/3/16, all the Tory (14 of them), UKIP and DUP MEPs who casted a vote on the plan to ‘crack down on corporate tax dodging’  did so against it? Presumably all in the name of British sovereignty! One might be tempted to describe it as sinister.

I am currently on a second reading of Tom Jackson’s book Darwin and the Tragedy of the ‘Origin of Species’. In it he painstakingly evokes the great man’s state of mind and the philosophical, social and political context of his thought. While celebrating his insights especially as a young man, Tom goes on to a ruthless exposee (sorry you can insert all sorts of symbols on this machine but no sign of acute accents) of the way in which his insights were conscripted as a foundation myth for the great Victorian industrial and imperial project.

I consider that we are now witnessing the last stand of those whose main project, in their world of fierce and violent competition, remains that of ensuring that they will be among the fit who survive - but it has to be said this project remains deeply entrenched and persistent. Tom hardly surprisingly could not find a publisher for his book, though it is brilliant and very apposite. He published it himself and it is available on Amazon.com.

Tom Jackson signing his book.

I quote a key passage:- ‘Every society defines its understanding of itself and its relation to the natural world in a creation myth. The Victorians had embarked on bringing about the greatest change in mankind’s relationship with nature since the agricultural revolution, perhaps indeed since the appearance of self-consciousness, and it was for that reason that they already had problems about their own received myth of creation. For the first time in human history nature was being seen not primarily as a wonder to be contemplated but as a resource to be used and exploited. Genesis was no longer of any use, in fact it was worse, it had become a skeleton at the feast, a deep source of guilt and anxiety. The problem was that Genesis did not recommend getting rich at nature’s expense but, as God did, loving the natural things he had made. Genesis was therefore now a problem, even more for Christians than for secularists, but most of all for clergymen, for almost to a man the clergy were enthusiastic supporters of the middle-class project to become rich and then richer still.’ (pp156/7)

This project, essential to the life of a place like Downside, was seriously threatened from within in the 1960s and ‘70s. With some help from Teilhard de Chardin, some of us reckoned we had the makings of a new paradigm. We were no doubt somewhat naive, and we had no great triumphs in our undertakings. The gap between one paradigm and another is dangerous territory, as Dom Luke Suart, a leading protagonist at Downside, demonstrated dramatically with his nervous collapse and suicide. The other monks involved all left the community and were scattered.

Tom Jackson is one of the survivors. Well, God’s ways are not man’s. The work has been going on in so many ways and different places and people. The world is gradually learning, although frequently in perverse and misguided ways, to be kind - to nature, to ourselves, and to each other.

Acacia blossom

Acacia trees, Fiona at Sanlucar

And by the way, this old ‘drop-out’ couple here claims to have survived without major compromise, whatever about the yacht on the Algarve and the fridge, and there are quite a few of us here in Guadianaland who would say the same! Well we have at least learned por favor, fas favor, gracias, obrigado…. And with a bit of luck the Brits will vote to stay in, and we might all get on with a more courageous and effective approach to tax-dodging, refugees, climate change!

Azure-winged magpie.