The natural Navigation: The Right Course, Naturally

I was interviewed by Susan Gray on behalf of the Ramblers yesterday. We chatted over tea, blasts of icy December air and then some more tea. Did you know that the amount of tea walkers drink is inversely-proportional to the number of days we are from the winter solstice?

We only went for a short walk, it was more of an indoor interview than a walking one, but we were outdoors just long enough to appreciate the difference a couple of hundred feet of altitude can make. In the valleys it was far from balmy, but it was a pleasant temperature that did not draw attention to itself. On the tops of the South Downs, there was grimacing aplenty and the sandwiches we had planned to eat en route stayed in the rucksacks to be taken back down to the village of Houghton Bridge, whence they had come. The…

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Back from a short family camping trip to the Isle of Wight, where I stumbled across this wonderful sign on the side of an old lifeboat station house.

In case it is not legible in the picture, the words read as follows:

When full or new

You see the Moon,

The tides far out in the afternoon.

But when the Moon’s

At either quarter,

At tea the beach

Is underwater.

Six hours the water

ebbs away,

An hour later

Every day.

Get down to the beach

As soon as you can

Time and Tide

Wait for no man.

——

How divine is that?

I had hoped to sail to the Isle of Wight on Saturday with some old friends. We slipped Chichester marina at eight in the morning in my Contessa 32, fully aware that the forecast was a bit spicy. The sense of foreboding increased slightly when the Chichester marina lock-keeper called down to me, ‘Have you seen the forecast?’ I said ‘Yes. Force 6 gusting 9.’ He replied, ‘OK, well when the lock gates open you will need to gun the engine full throttle and hold your line otherwise you will be blown straight onto the piles.’ I thanked him and felt a small surge of adrenaline.

We made our way out into the harbour and at times it was hard to hear each other speaking as the wind whistled past our ears. After an hour I decided that we ought to swallow our pride and return to the marina…

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In this photo that I took ten days ago of Totland Bay Pier on the Isle of Wight, there is a lot of blue. We become used to thinking of the sky and sea as blue, but in this picture it is easy to see how varied the colours can be. There is gradual shift from blue to off-white in the sky. In the sea there are three quite distinct bands, dark blue of deeper water, green-blue of shallow water and then light brown as the beach itself becomes visible through the water. There are also two other darker shades, where the groyne can be seen underwater and the thin shadow of the pier itself and finally the thin white strips where the tiny waves are breaking.