HORATIO, FRANCIS, AND ME

 

Humorous they want it to be. Impossible when we write of boats and the sea,

For we think of Drake, and Nelson, Frobisher, Cook and others in their mould

Heroes, every one. People who fought and voyaged, travelled and explored,

to the far corners of our world. Nothing to laugh at there.

The humour, of course, is really  me, brought up on these heroes, 

nurtured into adult life  - Hornblower, much later - Jack Aubrey,

The boy, now man, round the horn with Anson, sailed the main with Drake

and across the oceans  with Slocum. An envious boy and man, year after year.

It started with dad’s half cabin – you know half cabins. They’re the wooden boats

with a cough-cough engine…..ones that will never start…with a big flywheel,

A few still scattered around the back bays of this town. But it is an impossible task

to learn to sail in a boat  running on a cough-cough engine.

And then a job with constant travel confined the seven seas and the world of sail,

to views  from 30, 000 feet and late night reads in many hotel rooms

But at last came the time, the dream - courted, joined, and honeymooned

on Acapulco Bay. And on the beach was a man who rented a boat to sail.

Now I don’t know how Nelson learned his ropes,

or how Drake crossed the Spanish Main

But it wasn’t in their dad’s half cabin. Nor in a rented sailboat.

For you know that the wind provides the power, but you are far from sure just how,

So after you sail across the bay, and turn to go back again,

You find that a sail boat does what cough- coughs would never do,

Years later and familiar with the wind in its many varied ways,

 still you cannot remember how you tipped it   upside down

All you remember is struggling on an upturned boat, drifting slowly out to sea,

Nor had you learned, nor did need to learn, how to get right way up again.

The newly beloved is fast asleep, and the open sea is closing fast.

But the rental man comes out, although not before your hour is up.

And as he slowly tows you back, still astride the upturned boat, you see the hundreds watching you from the shore, agreeing that you are not a Nelson yet.

Sailing school on San Francisco Bay. Not the part all you see, but down the bay,

smelly and mud-flatted, but enough to start the adventures galore,

Rivers, and bays, lakes and channels, and hopefully one day at sea.

From the Jumna off the Ganges, the poisonous Potomac to blue Pacific atolls.

And never one of them was ever sailed astride an upturned boat.

The navigational feats without number: Franklin in the North West Passage

Magellan first round the Horn, Bligh 4000 miles of open boat

But I regret that I have to tell you, they cannot compare

with the feats in my years of sail

  

The channel at night is dark and rough,

With all of us a-heaving. Me the navigator

Dead reckoning, correcting the sweep of tides.

France on the horizon in dim light finally.

Which way Deauville? he asks Port I reply; quite sure that I

had  be at least half right. And in any case, Nelson, Drake,

all must have made some guesses.

Even Franklin up by the Pole. Although we at least came back

We sailed the remainder of the night, but finally had to turn about

That afternoon into port, exhausted, tripping face first over the mooring line,

Waking next day to a French thermometer. Horatio never had to face France that way.

And I began to realise my adventures were not of the Nelson kind.

But at last came the first of seven seas - the Tasman, a wicked sea

Chichester around the world capsized only in this sea.

We tried last year, Dave and me, along with Dave’s delight at that time

But she got sick not far from shore. That day was not to be for us.

Tried once more again last month, cautious of Chichester’s sea

Forecast after forecast, but came finally the day

that was smooth and  safe for Dave and me.

So safe in fact that wind it died. We motored the first of our seas.

But now the boat up there is waiting until they forecast winds back our way

And in the meantime we sit and dream.

Of Anson round the Horn. Francis Drake on the Spanish Main.

Or me on my second sea.

In BoatingOZ.com.au