{"id":1056,"date":"2010-04-04T20:39:02","date_gmt":"2010-04-04T20:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=1056"},"modified":"2010-04-04T21:07:33","modified_gmt":"2010-04-04T21:07:33","slug":"the-sea-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/?p=1056","title":{"rendered":"The Sea Road"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday a friend invited us to join him and some other friends on his yacht – Mouflon<\/em>. I have never sailed before, but I finished reading Margaret Elphinstone’s book, The Sea Road<\/em>, about a week ago and although I knew we wouldn’t be sailing anywhere near as far North as Gudrid<\/a>, I was inspired by all the sailing prose to jump at this generous invitation. Also, with the yacht being called Mouflon<\/a><\/em>, all the omens looked good.<\/p>\n

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I arrived in Eastbourne to meet the rest of the crew on Friday evening, and Mark and I settled into a cosy sleep in our cabin listening to the gentle tinks of steel ropes trailing over masts as boats bobbed gently in the water around Mouflon<\/em>. Rain fell gently on the outside of the boat above us and an evening of looking at charts had set a suitably maritime mood for the next day’s trip. Yesterday morning we got up, breakfasted heartily and sailed out of the harbour bound Eastwards, for Dover.<\/p>\n

Above are the lock gates at Eastbourne Marina closing behind us at 8am yesterday morning. I must point out that I was feeling absolutely marvellous at this point; filled with anticipation and delighted to be so close to the sea.<\/p>\n

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As the land dwindled to a slim strip of detail on the horizon behind us, we switched off the yacht’s motor in and sorted out our sails so we could proceed on wind-power alone. According to The Shipping Forecast for the 3rd of April<\/a>, conditions in Dover & Wight were South veering Northwest, 5 or 6 but cyclonic for a time, rain or showers, moderate or good<\/em>. I think most of the journey out towards the headland at Dungeness was conducted in ‘moderate’ conditions, which to my untrained senses and belly meant that I quickly began to feel as if I were being churned about in one of those bread-dough mixers.<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

The hearty breakfast was soon lost into the sea, along with most of my dignity. However what I gained was the certain knowledge that I do not<\/em> have Gudrid’s sea legs.<\/p>\n

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This was a view during the afternoon when the sea was calm and the sun was out and I had puked up everything that I possibly could, and could therefore appreciate the lovely blue vistas without worrying that I was going to be sick (again.) I did enjoy singing some songs at this point, bantering with the rest of the crew and trying in vain to learn the elusive secrets of the clove hitch<\/a>. I think we enjoyed ‘good’ conditions for the last couple of hours, but our final arrival at Dover harbour was greeted by 3 knots* of tide and Mark and I could still feel ‘the waves’ when we crawled into our beds to sleep at midnight! <\/p>\n

This experience has not<\/em> put me off future sea-travel. It was very inspiring to be so close to the water and amazing to be moved so far and so fast by the wind<\/em> alone. Plus, I have the lure of the ultimate wool-inspired Northwards sailing journey as an incentive to get over my fears! Imagine… Harris<\/a> and Lewis<\/a>, the Orkney<\/a> Islands<\/a>, the Shetland<\/a> Islands, the Faroe<\/a> Islands, Iceland<\/a> (Icelandic knitting article here<\/a>), Greenland and finally, Newfoundland<\/a>… but I am getting well ahead of myself.<\/p>\n

Everyone was very kind to me considering that I spent much time whimpering and failing to contribute to the general sailing-related activities. <\/p>\n

I shall stock up on masses of anti-emetics and anti travel-sickness drugs beforehand if I go sailing again! And maybe I’ll make sure to have a smaller breakfast.<\/p>\n

*proper maritime speak for ‘a lot of choppy waves churning the boat around.’<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday a friend invited us to join him and some other friends on his yacht – Mouflon. I have never sailed before, but I finished reading Margaret Elphinstone’s book, The Sea Road, about a week ago and although I knew we wouldn’t be sailing anywhere near as far North as Gudrid, I was inspired by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[640],"tags":[2361,2359,2360],"class_list":["post-1056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-random","tag-breakfast-overboard","tag-dover","tag-wight"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pmise-h2","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1056"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1063,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1056\/revisions\/1063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thedomesticsoundscape.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}