Time and Tides

Position: 48°50’08.4″N 3°05’05.6″W

I’m late this week. I’m often late putting fingers to keyboard ahead of this blog’s self-imposed deadline. I almost said ‘capricious’ deadline, but the deadline serves a purpose. After all, one must have some discipline, however crapulous. Like holystoning the deck during the forenoon watch on Sundays or taking your rum with lime and water. Which is why I’ve developed a habit of capturing snippets of thoughts and saving them as draft posts, with the idea that perhaps someday they will find their way out of the vaults and onto the front page.

Sometimes I look at my notes and have no idea what I was thinking. At other times I rediscover something that is almost fully formed, but was sidelined by events. This post is one of the latter. It is a set of memories and observations brought on by the energetic nature of sailing Brittany’s furiously kinetic waters. Itself offset by the coastline’s green, pastoral beauty and the passion local foodmongers have for their trade, and the care they show for your enjoyment of their ingredients.

France

I am sitting in our cockpit after a yummy salad and a fresh French artichoke prepared by my first mate, Carol (for those of you new to these pages – ed.). It is after 11PM, but twilight wrestles darkness fiercely in this part of the world. Especially around June 21, the summer solstice. The wind dropped a couple of hours ago and those ripples in the water are the tide running out. Aleta is head to current and the water is moving fast enough that there’s even a small bow wave.

The volume of water running past us is immense. I can feel the tide. As I stow the last of the dishes it is thrumming through my feet. I felt it a couple of nights ago for the first time. I thought it might have been a ferry leaving the dock. But there was no ferry. Only a few gulls and gannets. Nothing large enough to vibrate Aleta’s hull like this. The frequency rises as the arc of the tide’s rush increases. The ebb and flow reaches more than 20 feet of depth here. That’s a lot of ocean. We must set our anchor chain as though the depth is always at high tide. Our chosen spot is 61′ deep, thus we have over 200′ of chain deployed in the fast-moving water.

The forecast calls for very little wind, so we only have current to consider. At the change of tide, we will drift backwards 300′ with a scope of 5:1. All being well the anchor will turn gently and maintain its set. Then the quiescent slack water will accede to the inrushing tide and we will rise again. At which point we’ll be awake and ready to haul up the chain and head towards Normandy.

England

This slowly fading light reminds me of summers in Oxford, England, when I was in my late teens and early 20s. More specifically, memories of an occasional impromptu house party spun up after the pubs closed their doors. Someone would bring a few tins of beer, a bottle of bad wine or more boldly a bottle of rum. Music by Status Quo or Rod Stewart or Chris Rea would play just loud enough not to bother the neighbours. By midnight darkness had won its wrestling match with twilight, but for only four or five hours.

My girlfriend and I would give up on the party long before it was done and sneak off for a place to cuddle and, if we were lucky, fall asleep. Somehow there was always a place. Hours before morning, first light would tussle with the darkness as slowly as twilight had. A cool draught drifted through the little angular window propped open on its lever. Naked and spooning in an invariably tiny bed, we’d stir momentarily. Murmurs were exchanged. We both knew it was too damn early to do anything but reposition arms and legs in anticipation of lovemaking and a warm cup of tea in a couple of hours. The birds in the trees and hedges, dawn’s chorus, sang us back to sleep.

Embrace

Now, 43 years later, it is that same kind of light here in France. It reminded me that no matter how much digital silliness we humans confuse ourselves with, Nature stands alongside us with our emotional anchors in her hands. She is ready to embrace us and remind us of how simple life can be if we only remember to keep time with the tides.