Sam Llewellyn
Flotsam and jetsam
That certain something round the corner
Sam Llewellyn writes nautical thrillers, edits The Marine Quarterly, and is perpetually patching up a 30ft ketch: samllewellyn.com
The weather has cheered up slightly, and the sheets are coming off the boats in the yard, and their owners, lightly coated in spilt varnish, have begun to talk to each other.
The conversation has strayed from its beginning –where will you be going this year and for how long, shocking thing the cost of diesel, bloody trawlers–to specifics; and landed up, as so often, with Headlands I have Rounded.
Someone from the south mentioned Portland Bill. Nasty thing, the Bill, they said. Portland stone is great stuff, St Paul’s Cathedral made of it, and the lighthouse is unusually pretty, but the race. I mean the race. Up and down and up and down and God knows when it will all end. Terrible account of someone’s Corribee filling and sinking, pierced one of those waves instead of bouncing over it. Of course, you can dodge it by going a few miles offshore but who can be bothered to...?
Nah, said someone else. Portland? Children can do it in their little waterwings. If you want a good one you need the Mull of Kintyre. Ten knots of tide and if you get the wind over it, well, I hope you have lit plenty of candles in St Kieran’s in Campbeltown. Plus any minute now they will be putting in tidal turbines or so I read, dirty great propeller things that will chew you up boat and all...
Nah, said someone. There’s the inshore passage, easy peasy, or the Crinan Canal to bypass it altogether, most agreeable experience, plenty of exercise in the locks, never more than a couple of miles from a pint. If you are talking about real headlands you should think about the Lizard. Bit of a thing, the Lizard. Ebb thundering out of the Channel, good big westerly blowing against it, sorts out the men from the boys and the, er, girls from the girls...
Nah, said someone. The Lizard? Five miles offshore and you’re laughing. No problems of any kind except for a touch of swell that, all right, has come all the way from New York. Ardnamurchan, now. That’s what you call a headland. Westernmost point of mainland Britain, seabed full of lumps and bumps like the Montana badlands, nasty cold black waves rumbling in with white teeth on top of them and a sort of timewarp that makes minutes seem like hours and hours seem like lifetimes. Oh, yes. Ardnamurchan is what you call a real headland...
