Free Three Ways to Capsize a Boat: An Optimist Afloat by Chris Stewart Page B

smoke, and the occasional squall of rain would come tearing across the Saronic Gulf and lash the island for an hour or so. All the summer visitors had gone, and we began to make preparations to close the house up for the winter. Finally came the morning on which I helped carry Bob and Jane’s baggage down to the town.
    I laid their bags on the dock, among the usual milling crowd of Spetsiots who waited, with their trolleys and heaps of mysterious boxes and parcels tied with string, for the midmorning hydrofoil.
    “My dear,” said Jane, as the craft came into view, “I can’t pretend to know what next year will bring. At our age we’re happy just to enjoy the present. But as long as we keep my lovely Crabber you must come and sail her. There’ll always be a place for you here.”
    I hugged her warmly.
    “Good-bye, skipper,” said Bob, extending his hand. “It has been a great pleasure. Please come and visit with us in London.”
    I saw them climb aboard, and stood on the dock and waved until I could see them no more. Then I turned and walked along the jetty to the town, where I had a coffee and a honey bun, before strolling along to the boatyard to make arrangements for taking the Crabber out of the water.

PART III
Cutting Up Rough

Vinland Voyage
    I N THE WINTER, AFTER I had come back from Greece, Tom Cunliffe rang. The nights were drawing in by now, the trees were bare, and there was ice on the puddles in the yard. Ana and I spent the long evenings as close as we could get to the pathetic excuse for a stove that was all our wretched farm hovel offered in the way of heating. I was working again with the sheep, this time as a contract shepherd on a nearby Sussex farm. In contrast to my elysian summer, I spent my days out on the hills, up to my knees in mud and driving rain, sorting lambs, foot-rotting sheep, moving electric fences. I enjoyed the work and was decently paid for it, but was troubled by a restlessness, a feeling that the chapter I had opened on the sea had come to a close before I’d had a chance to prove myself. I daydreamed that instead of grappling day after day with sodden sheep, I might have been better employed at the helmof some graceful craft, plowing across the oceans of the world.
    Tom, as you may recall, had been my teacher on the Competent Crew course, and the man who had first instilled in me a love of the sea and its boats, as well as its language and literature.
    “We’ve just about finished work on
Hirta
, Chris,” Tom announced, “and she’s looking magnificent. Tight as a nut, and she goes like a rocket.”
    I could well believe it.
Hirta
was his boat, a vintage Bristol Channel Pilot Cutter that he and his wife, Ros, had been restoring. I had seen her when I’d gone to visit Tom for the weekend, at the end of our Isle of Wight sailing course, and had been bewitched by her classic beauty. She looked not unlike a Crabber, only much bigger and more solid and with a long graceful sheer.
    “I’m getting a crew together,” Tom continued. “We’re going to sail her up to Norway and across the North Atlantic to Iceland, and eventually to Newfoundland—you know, in the footsteps of Leif Eriksson.”
    “Hell, Tom … that sounds fantastic.”
    “I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” he went on. “It’s going to be a beast of a journey: five months, at least. And even in summer it’ll be bloody cold. There’ll be icebergs up there, and bound to be a storm or two. I can’t promise you plain sailing, but you’re right—it’ll be fun, and you’ll learn a hell of a lot more than you did puddling around in the Med on that little tub of yours.”
    “You mean … you mean … ?” I spluttered. I wasn’t sure I had heard right.
    To say I was excited would be an understatement. Iwas staggered. This was an adventure like I’d grown up imagining an adventure to be. Tom went on to say that our voyage north would be the most unpleasant and dangerous experience I would ever be