Bird of Passage

Working on Briongloid's foredeck on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I was in the perfect position to watch the arrival of a sleek low double-ended boat I didn't recognise, coming in the from the open sea with only a singly scrap of sail still flying. At her tiller sat a man in full foul-weather gear who waved a salute as he sailed by up-river. As I worked, I saw the red hull work a few hundred metres up-stream, well clear of the moorings, and drop anchor.

The Ness Yawl "Rat" anchored in the Belgooly river

A little later, I saw a white shape appear above the hull: through binoculars, I saw that an awning had been rigged, using the main mast as a ridgepole. A cruiser then... I hopped in the dinghy, and put-putted over to say hello.

The sleek red shape I'ld been admiring turned out to be a Ness Yawl, a two-masted open boat of about 22ft LOA designed in the double-ended style of a Norwegian Faering by Iain Oughtred, a boat architect from the Isle of Skye. This beautifully-finished example of its type had been built by its owner, Robin, an allegedly amateur boat builder. A slightly stretched version of the original plans, the good boat "Rat" had just been sailed from the vicinity of Fishguard across the Irish Sea to Tramore, and hence, propelled by an easterly gale, to Oysterhaven, in the course of a few hours of particularly intense sailing - lively going, in an open boat. At least, with such a wind, her lack of an engine was no hindrance...

Robin turned out to be a returning visitor to these waters, having cruised these bays several times before, both for pleasure in his own 27ft wooden yacht, and as skipper of a 90ft super yacht - also of traditional design. Robin is well-supplied with good sailing stories, having previously cruised his own engine-less yacht to New Zealand and back (out across the Atlantic, through the Panama canal, across the South Pacific to New Zealand, and home around Cape Horn). This summer, he is taking the diminutive Rat on a cruise of indefinite duration, to waters undecided.

Talking to Robin gave me an even worse case of Sea Fever than I already had. Lucky, then, that I'm due to catch the ebb-tide this coming Friday for a voyage to points westward...

Death Trap

Late one evening, I went to the garden to fetch our resident assassin's food bowl. It being after sunset, I saw no more than the silvery outline of the steel bowl as I reached to pick it up - so the soft squishy/slimeyness that met my fingers beneath the rim came as quite a surprise. An inspection in better light revealed a solid mass of slugs on the walls of the bowl, drawn by the rich odor of the protein the bowl had contained. The numbers were really incredible - an infestation of almost biblical proportions.

Dying for a drink?

Revenge for this outrage was swift. Having terminated several dozen of the intruders with extreme prejudice, I deployed my secret weapon near the food bowl's usual spot. A jam jar one third filled with beer, dug in so that the lip is at ground level makes a simple and convenient death trap: it might even be humane. Just a day or two later, the trap had claimed the lives of dozens of drunken slugs.

Pipistrellus pipistrellus?

Another surprise outside the door this morning - mouse shaped. On closer inspection, this particular mouse had one sad little wing furled up beside it. Our resident assassin had subtracted a third or so from the whole, but the small snout, reddish-brown back and grey underbelly suggest that I am looking at Europe's most common bat, Pipistrellus pipistrellus, described by Schreber in 1774, with a home range from Ireland to Iraq.

Pipistrellus?

Opening the tiny jaws, I found an array of sharp white teeth. Clearly a regular brusher. This mouth means business though - a night's hunting can account for 3,500 insects. The hunter is also the hunted, pursued by kestrels, owls - and particularly agile cats.

Sources: (i) A fresh corpse (ii) Exploring Irish Mammals, Tom Hayden and Rory Harrington

Weightless

Our jeep rattles through the dilapidated centre of a struggling town, and on into similarly struggling suburbia. Our driver stops outside what seems to be a small cafe: outside, old men of un-defined function - not patrons, but not apparently employees either - are talking in the shade. A guide takes us down a leafy path, and into the dark mouth of a large cavern.

The rock around us is weirdly ice-like: I see dozens of formations that look exactly like "beards" of icicles. Here and there, great pillars have come to stand from floor to ceiling. The stone looks motionless - but ever so slowly, millenia on patient millenia, it is reclaiming the void.

At the bottom of the chamber we see the agent of change: a pool running the full width of the chamber. The water is a magical blue, and so clear that the twenty or so feet of its depth does nothing to obscure the bottom. I'm so entranced by the water that I barely spare a glance for the beauty around me before donning mask, snorkel, fins, and giant-striding into the depths.

The pool is lovely, dark and deep

The water is immensely refreshing without being cold, and perfectly still. Below the surface, the sculpture garden continues, and with my torch I begin to probe ledges and hollows around the edge of the pool. Those magically clear depths, however, are what really hold my interest, and soon I swim to the centre of the pool, turn head-down and fin slowly into the depths.

When I feel the time has come to return to the air, I stop my finning, and angle my body towards the silvery sheet high above me, and wait for physics to take over. To my immense surprise, nothing happens - by now, the buoyancy of the air in my lungs should be rushing me to the surface. I understand immediately what is happening: I have swum so deep that the press of the water above me has compressed my chest, and with it my lung volume, until the density of my body matches perfectly with that of the water surrounding it. Now, my body at rest neither floats nor sinks. For long seconds, I hang motionless in that deep and wonderful place, suspended without weight, without effort, in the quiet blue coolness. It is an inexpressibly beautiful moment.

I fin slowly back to the surface, and soon we are back in the sun, rattling onwards; but I think a little piece of that cave came with me.

On the Beach, Part II - The Rescue

After several days in a resort where sailing boats were far too valuable to lent to mere guests, I was champing at the bit. Every day, a perfect breeze blew over the blue, blue waters of the Caribbean, and every day, I was without a boat, while Hobie Cats tacked in and out under my very nose. My wife was under the necessity of keeping me under a very close watch, lest I attempt a "cutting out" expedition. Eventually, a close perusal of the binder describing the hotel's facilities let me to a kind of garage at the back of the water sports centre, where the staff kept a cache of windsurfing gear (something they had omitted to mention during any of my previous visits). As pleased as if I'ld discovered a pirate treasure chest, I picked out a very wide (stable) board and a sail (one size only - small). A few minutes later, I was doing my first independent sailing of the holiday.

The Caribbean swallows another unwary sailor (me)

A day or two later, I was back for another sail. This time, the wind was obliquely offshore, slanting out to sea from my launch point (at the centre of the sandy beach). So... sailing through the open channel and out to sea was easy - but returning was not. Two or three hours of beating to windward ensued; every now and then, I would take advantage of a particularly strong gust, and bear off onto a reach - and even my big fat board got up on a plane, skittering across the swell.

Slowly, hours of hard sailing under an tropical sun began to wear me down. Try as I might, I could make no ground to windward. Eventually, I tried to make progress into the wind by paddling my board and sail. Spray from the swell made seeing my way almost impossibly, as the salt stung my eyes to copious tears, and tired shoulder muscles protested at every stroke. I made ground, but modestly.

A Hobie Cat from our hotel approached and picked me up. However, my rig's windage now made it impossible for the instructor to tack the Hobie in - so back I went, into the sea. A second attempt was made a little late, with two boats - one Hobie for the board, one for the sail. Just then, I spotted a two-man open canoe approaching (this 400M from shore, well outside the shelter of the reef, top and centre of this map). This turned out to be my almost-seven-months-pregnant wife; not by any means a keen sailor, with very limited experience of boats and the sea, and far from comfortable in deep water, she nevertheless took it upon herself to bring me in, and did not turn a hair as she paddled past surf breaking on barely-awash coral and out into the Atlantic swell. She turned her little boat head to wind and waiting calmly as I struggled in over the stern, then handed me a spare paddle; we even beat one Hobie Cat back to the beach.

I should point out to any anxious readers that, even in the absence of outside help, I was not very likely to lose the number of my mess: I could have attempted to cross the westerly reef on which surf is breaking in the above link. Although this would not have done the rig much good, my chances of getting ashore would have been excellent. Alternatively, I could have jettisoned the sail, and paddled back on the board. In the event, I was very pleased to be rescued - and deeply, deeply impressed by the coolness and courage of my very-pregnant wife.

On the Beach, Part 1

Nearly ten hours in the air took me across my local ocean to a middling-large island, and into an entirely different season. A couple of days of excessively easy living later, I stood on coral sands beneath a dark but starry sky and looked out to sea, past the gleam of surf on the reef, to where the stars met the water. Above and to the north, Polaris gleamed low in the sky... back in the tropics at last.

Wading into black waters, I'm soon at swimming depth, finning out towards the reef. My torch sends a thin cone of light down through the water column to search the sea-grass meadow below me. The winds and waves have generated a strong long-shore current, and keeping course is hard work. The first fish I find is hand-sized and very confused by my torch, which I hold at arms-length to my left: the little fish is fascinated by it and does not see the camera in my right hand, which comes too close to focus - within a foot.

That is the last fish I find for some time, though, and I've searched acres of shallow and empty meadow when a huge shape flaps out of the gloom only a few feet away, very nearly causing me to swallow my snorkel. The Ray twists and turns in the torchlight: I don't think it is pleased. Is it better to keep it lit up - but irritated - and know its position, or to let it go? After what feels like an eternity - perhaps 5 seconds - the ray makes my decision for me, and I'm alone again in the darkness. My only other find of the night is a porcupine fish, which appears untroubled by my light, secure within its formidable defenses.

New Worlds

We arrived home a few hours after sunset, and I commenced unloading luggage and tools. Glancing upwards - now a fixed habit - I found the sky pretty clear, even with waxing moon grown near to full. The constellation Leo was pretty high in the sky, well clear of our garden wall, and Saturn blazed a few degrees below the Lion's head. Exactly the opportunity I've been awaiting for two whole months... bags and boxes were dropped on the spot, and my shiny new reflecting telescope (focal length 500mm, aperture 150mm) deployed.

A sketch of Saturn as I first saw it

After one or two false starts, I got my finder lined up nicely, placed my right pupil carefully before the main eyepiece, and gasped. Even with the lowest-power eyepiece inserted, both the disc of the great gas giant and its magnificent rings were clearly visible; I even thought that I saw a faint band in its atmosphere. Close observation revealed a faint point of light quite close to the planet - confirmed, after a quick glance at my star atlas, as Saturn's moon, Titan!

Further observation did nothing to diminish the wonder of seeing clearly this solar system in miniature, at a distance of nearly 1 billion kilometres. I am convinced now that rings are really almost an essential accessory for any planet wishing to attract my attention - those, and large, fast-orbiting moons. And what a moon Titan is! Half as big again as Earth's companion, it has a nice thick atmosphere and plenty of water (ice). The mind boggles at the view any inhabitants would have of the giant they orbit... how cosmically unfortunate, then, that on Titan, the freezing clouds never clear. I can sympathize.