BOOK EXCERPTS
From DOLPHINS UNDER MY BED
Lying between a triangle of hills, Lisbon is built on two levels: the Baixa, Pombol’s city-centre grid; and above it (as viewed from the river) to the left the Bairro Alto and to the right the Alfama district. Both survived the 1755 earthquake and retain the jumbled houses, narrow alleyways and winding steps of their Moorish and medieval past. One of the ways to get up to the Bairro Alto is by Eiffel’s elevator, a wonderfully eccentric structure with design echoes of Paris’s Eiffel tower. Alfama, on the other side, produced not only da Gama’s sailors but also the lament for lost sailors - also lost hope, grief and despair - known as fado, a word meaning fate. Once heard only in local bars and cafes, Portuguese singers now perform it around the world.
Up a street only slightly less perpendicular than Eiffel’s elevator is Lisbon’s cathedral, or Sé.It is not somewhere for the halt or the lame to attempt on foot; they would never make it up the hill. As we climb a pavement with the type of incline that in other places you’d consider using crampons, a young boy on a bicycle sails past holding onto the rear of an ancient yellow wooden tram.
The cathedral was founded in 1150 to commemorate the city’s re-conquest from the Moors. It is built like a fortress, and its organ pipes jut horizontally across the chancel like two brace of canon ready to do battle on behalf of the Church Militant. A marble knight at rest on his tomb has a smug-looking dog at his feet; while his wife opposite, prim as a nun, has a nasty-looking gargoyle under hers, chomping its way through a chicken’s head.
The cloisters are being excavated but visitors are still allowed in. We navigate our way between stone sarcophagi shaped inside to give a snug fit to the head and shoulders. And teeter across planks balanced over trenches which reveal the odd human bone sticking out of the soil and medieval drains. A row of burly men sit on the steps of the private chapels, hunched over buckets of water, scrubbing small finds from the dig, with a kitchen glove on one hand and a toothbrush in the other, gossiping like fishwives. Real fishwives, stately, black and silent, also with buckets at their feet, stand outside in the square, selling the day’s catch.
On the way back to the railway station we take a detour into a dark, cluttered shop that seems to sell every foodstuff and drink you can imagine. Shelves of groceries rise from floor to ceiling, counters are piled high with cheeses while cooked hams hang from hooks in the rafters. Edging sideways past trays of salted fish, we make our way to the rear of the shop and enter the grotto where the port is secreted.
It takes us a while to decide, among a wide range of prices and vintages going back to the 1920s. The owner materializes silently a couple of times behind us, two gringos with a backpack in his cellar of expensive port, but too polite to tell us to leave it outside. We keep it with us because it has our own valuables inside it – not least our ship’s papers and passports - but we have no way of explaining that.
At the cramped little till he hovers at a discreet distance. While David pays, I studiously empty our camera and telephoto lens from the backpack and put the two bottles of port into its obviously empty insides. Then I put the camera and lens on top. The watchful man relaxes and wanders off. Only Christmas will tell us if this is a good buy.
It is at the railway station that we discover Portugal is one hour behind Spain. It says something about the pace of our life nowadays that it has taken us four days to notice.
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From TURTLES IN OUR WAKE
After Alicante, our intended destination is Torreviejo but we have travelled only eight miles when the sea becomes so bumpy and uncomfortable that we decide to anchor in the shelter of a tiny fortified island, the Isle de Tabarca, and see if it settles overnight. This is the island we had passed one Saturday afternoon last year on our way east. At that time it had been bristling with visiting fishermen, hemmed in by rows of pleasure boats and swarming with visitors constantly arriving by ferry. None of them is here now so, early next morning, we go ashore.
Several centuries ago this island was a base for pirates. After they were finally driven out, a small fortified village was built and garrisoned to prevent further occupation. Its defensive walls, small fort and surprisingly large church dedicated to St Peter, are crumbling now, but made picturesque by palm and pine trees and red bougainvillea. The villagers live frugally from fishing, as they have always done, and quite isolated from the material abundance of mainland Spain just three short miles away.
Touchingly, as you pass through the gateway in the great stone defensive wall there is a rough street plan to guide you, although there are only a handful of tiny streets. They are unsealed, but there are no vehicles anyway. The village square is only differentiated from the roads around it by a neat line of carefully-laid stones and terracotta pots with little palms in them.
The terraced houses are small and neat with lace curtains at the windows and, despite the earliness of the hour, the women are already out sweeping the tiled pavements in front of their homes and the dirt roads beyond them. Heaven knows what it must be like for dust here when the wind really blows, but it is noticeable at the tiny café where we have our breakfast that the cash register is wrapped in cling film. Flags are out in the streets and a bier, the sort on which four men carry a saint’s statue through the streets, lies on the ground outside the church as if a festival has recently taken place.
The people that you pass meet your eyes, consider you briefly and then greet you courteously; impressive in a place that spends much of its time deluged in gawping visitors. The cats are wary, but the dogs have no interest in strangers at all and hurry about their business. They all resemble each other, with curly fur and amiable faces, as if long ago an Airedale had fraternized with something smaller and more cheerful. Below the walls the fishermen who have spent the night out on the rocks are wading back to the village with their bedrolls balanced on their heads. We leave the island and return to the boat with a sense of having stepped back in time.
An earlier edition of this book was published under the title Something Of The Turtle.
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From A THOUSAND MILES FROM ANYWHERE
Some while later we spot water spouts directly ahead of us and go forward, David grabbing a camera. One thing we learned about whales on the southern coast of Spain was: change course to get a look at them and they will vanish; but keep your course and they will gravitate to a point directly ahead of you and wait for you to arrive so that they can have a look at you. Because whales are as interested by something suddenly appearing in their world as we are in ours. When you do get close to them, they begin to sink so that you pass over them. They will then pop up again a safe distance behind your stern. In this way they have observed your boat from four angles – from the side, in front, below and behind.
As we get closer, one-by-one they begin to sink as usual. All except the one lying exactly where our bows are headed. We get closer and closer until we can positively identify it. It is a sperm whale and around 60ft long. Its name comes from the spermaceti oil contained in cavities in its huge head which accounts for roughly a third of its overall length. Spermaceti was used to make candles, soap, cosmetics and machine oil until replaced by petroleum.
It was to obtain this valuable oil, along with other products, that these animals were slaughtered in vast numbers. Although thanks to its size and massive jaws the sperm whale could sometimes defend itself against whalers. In the most famous examples, a sperm whale attacked and sank the American whaling ship Essex in 1820; and thirty years later the Ann Alexander. The sinking of the Essex, and the killing of an albino sperm whale known as Mocha Dick which had fought off whalers for several decades, inspired Herman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick.
It is thought that the whale uses its spermaceti as a buoyancy aid as well as to execute rapid dives as deep as 3km, or nearly 10,000 feet. Water at this depth is extremely cold, and spermaceti oil remains the only lubricant capable of keeping equipment functioning in the freezing conditions of space exploration.
We are now a couple of boat lengths away and on the verge of an incredible photograph. David aims the camera. I begin to panic. Why isn’t it sinking? Is it sick? Dead? Asleep?
One boat’s length from it my nerve cracks and I bolt for the controls. David’s camera jams and we never do get a picture. To add insult to injury, the moment I wrench the wheel violently to port to avoid impact with this great monster, it drops like a stone and all that is left on the surface are two huge, flat circles of spinning water where it had lain only moments before.
The wretched creature has been playing chicken with us.
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From OSPREY SUMMER
Florida's Intracoastal Waterway has a dredged channel through it wherever its water is particularly shallow, and this channel has markers on either side of it. They consist of a sturdy wooden pile with either two red triangles or two green squares attached to it so that these port and starboard symbols can be easily seen from boats sailing in either direction.
Leisure boaters are not allowed to navigate the ICW during the hours of darkness but commercial vessels can, so at regular intervals along its length one of the markers is illuminated at night. This is achieved by fixing a small platform onto the top of the wooden pile just big enough to hold a battery and a light bulb in between the two marker panels.
Also stuffed between many of these double sets of port or starboard marker panels is a straggly nest although, built by what, we have no idea. However, by mid afternoon, in a very narrow stretch of channel, our starboard beam is only a foot or so away from one of these disreputable-looking nests and we finally get to see what inhabits them.
Osprey. A bird so endangered in the British Isles that for as long as I can remember the few surviving nesting sites, in very tall trees in the Scottish Highlands, have been protected by barbed wire and guarded by volunteers in a bid to foil egg collectors and prevent the species from dying out in Britain altogether. Imagine the delight, then, of looking down onto the back of a nesting osprey!
Although quite large in beak and claw, as well as body, the osprey proves to be a timid bird and this one flies off the nest; although circling and returning only moments after our boat has drifted on. And so we learn to be quiet as we approach these nests-on-stilts because it is not the boat or its closeness that bothers the birds but people moving and talking and waving their arms and cameras about, so we stay very still and quiet as we pass each nest and are soon rewarded by something we really never did expect to see.
Osprey, we quickly discover, are devoted parents, the males tirelessly supporting the females and chicks, and the next inhabited nest we pass has both parents standing on facing green marker boards and looking down at their fluffy bundle of joy. Except the little wretch clearly feels deprived in some way and is throwing an epic tantrum. It puts to shame the sort you sometimes see in the supermarket where a two-year-old turns on a full heel-drumming, back-arching, guilt-inducing performance in pursuit of something sweet and sticky.
This tiny starter kit of bone and feathers is furious, shrieking its head off, jumping up and down and waving its stubby little wings at two devastated adults who, in the moments that it takes our boat to pass them, look up at us with an expression that can only be described as utter dismay. Then they look briefly into each other’s bewildered eyes and back down helplessly at the angry, leaping, scrawny-necked little creature that they have so recently and so lovingly ushered into the world. From their obvious distress, one can only assume that they are first-time parents.
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From ISLANDS IN A CIRCLE SEA
We are not planning to go far today, just 14 miles and then anchor off a tiny uninhabited scrap called Gun Cay. We arrive about 11am. The holding isn’t brilliant and on our first attempt we drag a bit. Nor is there any real shelter here either. But the forecast is north-east and only ten knots so there shouldn’t be a problem, although being so exposed it is a bit bouncy. However, timing is the important thing now and these few miles will shorten the distance enough for us to get across the Great Bahama Bank in daylight. Tomorrow also appears to be the only good weather window in what threatens to be a continuing pattern of turbulence. Another cold front is expected in two days’ time, with high winds and rough seas, so we need to be tucked up somewhere secure by then.
For now, however, we enjoy a delightful afternoon on deck. Perfect temperature, no insects, a light breeze and the awning up. I love days like this. At sunset we sit in splendour, under a glowing red mackerel sky.
We want to make the earliest start possible and set off next morning with just enough light to see by. An apricot-coloured sun begins rising half an hour later. There is little wind, most of the time just a gentle breeze.
Last year, en route for the Berry Islands, we had travelled around the top of this enormous, vaguely U-shaped bank. On that occasion we had sought the deep water, off the northern top of it, for a safe night passage. This time we not only relish the experience of sailing across the Bank itself but, given the approaching bad weather, it makes for a shorter journey. Just 61 miles, whereas going around the northern edge would be twice as long.
The Great Bahama Bank bears the geological name of ‘a carbonate platform’ - a build-up of sediment that includes limestone, coral, the tiny skeletons of long-extinct marine creatures, microbes, fossils and seashells. But it still wouldn’t have happened without the right conditions including temperature, turbulence, light and the salt density of the water. It may have begun forming sixty-six million years ago or perhaps even earlier, during the Jurassic period when dinosaurs walked the earth. It is part of the seabed and the islands we visit merely its surface projections.
It is a green and blue world out here today: the sea jade green, the sky powder blue. Shading us from the sun’s brightness we have one of our side awnings down, turning the cockpit into a cool blue grotto.
One of us is at the helm at all times, keeping a careful watch on the depth gauge, while the other one settles among the cockpit cushions and reads aloud - Claudius the God, Robert Graves’ sequel to I Claudius – in between serving regular cold drinks, snacks, meals and cups of coffee.
The need for caution during this day-long journey is because there is often as little as 18 inches, or less than half a metre, of water under our keel. It is a strange experience. There you are the whole day, miles from anywhere, out of sight of land in any direction, yet in places the water is so shallow you could get out and walk. Your boat would also be aground, of course, so despite what the chart might say, you need to keep a constant eye on the depth gauge.
We also need to complete the journey in daylight so that, when we get to the navigation markers that will lead us safely off the Bank and into deep water, we shall be able to see them. This is no small matter given that the water at the edge of the Bank is only a foot deep in places (0.3m) and it would be easy to run aground within sight of the deep water to which you are heading. Our chart says that the navigation markers’ lights are unreliable, which is why sailing after dark is not an option.
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FROM ABEL SEAMAN
Suddenly Able was startled by a whooshing noise beside the boat, followed by a fountain of water. He rushed to look over the side.
A young whale looked back up at him. ‘Hello,’ said the little whale mournfully.
Abel stared at it. Had it really said, ‘Hello’? Or was that just the noise a whale made after it had sent gallons of water rushing through the blow hole on the top of its head, that just sounded like ‘Hello’?
Abel wasn’t left in doubt for long.
‘I don’t suppose you’ve seen any whales this morning, have you?’ asked the visitor. ‘Apart from me, I mean?’
‘Er, no,’ said Abel. ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t.’
‘I’ve lost my Mom,’ sighed the whale. ‘She’ll be furious when she finds me.’
‘I’m trying to find my Dad,’ sighed Abel. ‘But the wind has died away and I’m never going to catch up with him at this rate.’
‘I’d pull you,’ said the whale, ‘but I’ve got this awful pain in my mouth.’
‘Toothache?’ asked Abel.
‘No,’ said the whale. ‘It’s not near my teeth.’ It winced as another surge of pain swept through its mouth. ‘I don’t suppose you’d have a look for me, would you?’
‘Of course,’ said Abel. ‘Open wide.’
The whale obliged. A third of its entire length was taken up by its head, and Abel leaned into a huge dark cavern of a mouth.
‘There’s something white and shiny at the back here,’ he said, his voice echoing oddly in his own ears. ‘Near your throat.’
‘’Ull it out, ‘ill you?’ said the whale, finding it hard to talk with its mouth open.
‘Are you sure?’ echoed Abel.
‘'Ositive,’ said the whale.
Abel grasped the white object firmly and gave a sharp pull. It came away more easily than he had expected and he fell backwards into Rufus's cockpit with his arm still outstretched.
'How on earth did that get there,' said Abel, staring at the white plastic fork between his thumb and forefinger.
'Oh, those things are everywhere; said the whale. 'I must have scooped that one up with my breakfast.'
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