Trinidad

22nd to 29th February

Track Antigua to Trinidad

The last post said I’d go north. I’ve come south. Why? (Apart from this being “…The unreliable journal of a sailing boat…”)
Ah well, the reason ‘why’ could become a fairly long story,but, briefly, the fact is that after hours of failed attempts to submit an online US Visa Application, stubborn perseverence paid off and I finally succeeded. (Magic trick was to submit a passport type photo from my camera, not the iphone ‘selfie’ that I’d started off with [US Homeland Security clearly rejects the iphone ‘selfie’]….better method: rig up Henrietta’s saloon as photo studio, subdue lighting, white bed sheet for portrait backdrop; set off camera shutter with 10 second timer; dash round saloon table; sit and smile…oops, DON’T smile…this is a USA visa photo…) Edit photo…Find wifi hotspot. Try submitting again. Done! It worked; success!
….Alas! that’s just the first stage. Payment, interview, approval (or not) comes next. Furthermore, I was in Grenada at photo shoot stage, where none of the next stages were possible. In East Caribbean, if you want a US visa, there’s the choice of Barbados or Trinidad for next bits, ie. to pay the fee and attend interview. Futher hurdles to jump: Barbados was about 130 miles east and straight into wind, waves and current; Trinidad about 80 miles south, more favourable winds but with recent yacht bordings by Venezuelan robbers a concern. (I researched this robber trouble a bit and find all will be ok if I send ‘float plan’ to Trinidad Coastguard, choose a course well east and away from Venezuela and choose a fairly rough windy night – pirate types apparently don’t like choppy seas.) In a bit of a rush then, and as forecast was promising, I quickly exited Grenada customs/immigration, sent email to Trinidad coastguard, upped anchor and was off….delightful overnight sail, albeit a hard beat for the first 40 miles or so, out and round a brightly lit gas field…..(I always feel a thrill heading off-shore, out into the open wave-swept spaces and away from the workaday bothersomeness of life on land). As promised and before dawn, Trinidad Coastguard called me on VHF – checking all ok.
A few hours later on a clear bright morning, Tobago-Trinidad high speed ferry growled/roared past (memories of the Condor craft entering Poole Harbour – you hear them from miles away!).. … we head on and arrive at Chaguaramas, in the north of Trinidad. It’s the yachting mecca of Trinidad, if not the Caribbean – at least for maintenance work. Being far enough south to be out of main hurricane belt it’s a popular place for fixing, storing, and living on boats while hurricanes threaten more northerly islands. (Not sure how long this historic popularity will last given more competition from Grenada, plus some strange unfriendly immigration folk, and appalling arrival dock, and higher prices! But for now there are around a thousand spaces on land and every conceivable yacht skill on offer.)

Henrietta is out of the water, as, waiting for local US Embassy interview, I’ll work on her. On land in a giant boat yard I have a waterside spot . There’s a medium length list of chores and checks before relaunching, including anti-fouling, anodes, radio, rigging, solar panels, deck, ………… Oh! The 16 year old and heavily stained and beholed genoa finally had to go (delaminating) and a pristine new white one is up at last. We’d brought it all the way from England.

With time ashore to meet people and see more (and despite my negative views of immigration service), I come
to like Trinidad more and more. Totally different from other Caribbean islands (did you know it is relatively wealthy with oil/gas, half population is of Indian extraction, around one and a half million people live here, and the local English comes with a pronounced Welsh accent?) It has a high murder rate too -per capita, I’m told, more than Jamaica – but not a problem if troubled gangland spots in Port of Spain, the capital, are avoided. There are many boats and yachtie folk in the yard and anchored off, so social life is as full as you like. Most of us work on boats much of the day or take trips to Trinidad’s interior (more about that another time). It’s not really a touristy sort of place though; there seems a more businesslike and serious-minded approach to life. (The Carnival, earlier in February, with its liberal dose of music, sensuality and all-round hedonism, being an exception to the general way of life.)

Ashore in Trinidad

Port-of-Spain is a traffic-plagued, overheated and bustling city, with gems of Colonial architecture and an occasional cruise ship, and good shops and exceptional market. I’ve visited twice so far. Traffic congestion thankfully keeps mini-buses (locally called ‘maxi-taxis’) to a less terrifying pace than elsewhere in the Caribbean!

St Lucia to Grenada
11th February to 21st February

(With Henrietta having given up writing for the time being and my son, Johnny back in London, I’ll have to scribble this myself.)
What to say?….After more than a month with crew, plus too many hot sunny days (plus some rum and beer), it’s all been a bit of a blur. I guess we’ve visited a dozen or so islands. But, like a cruise ship passenger who sees a new port each day and finds it hard to distinguish between one duty free ‘bargain’ and the next, or between one sweaty market-place and the next, I’ve ceased to appreciate clearly the distinction between one rather busy anchorage and the next, between one shimmering beach and another, between one terrifying mini-bus journey and another. (On the subject of mini-buses, it always troubles me to see windsreen labels like, “In God We Trust” when it isn’t actually God who’s doing the driving! Does everyone change gear only when engine screams and the tachometer is well into the red?)

(Not having absorbed as much Caribbean as I might have liked, I’ll digress: I’d say that one of the merits of travelling alone is that you observe, note and think more than when in company. And you make more effort to meet and talk to others. It’s often harder and occasionally lonesome to be single-handed, but there are many compensations and it can be rewarding. And to avoid further doubt, I’ll add that I have greatly enjoyed the company of my crew mates and family, and stress that sailing with a compatible lover is any man’s dream – of course!)

Back to the story…The Windward Islands stretch south from the Leeward Islands and cover about 200 miles. Big ones include St Lucia, St Vincent and here, Grenada (and Martinique, which is part of France). Smaller ones include Mustique, Carriacou, Union Island and Bequia; and there are lots more much smaller than them. My temperament is better suited to the less developed, gentler and emptier places. Going north from here in a few days (which is my current plan), I’ll spend much more time in Carriacou and the Grenadines. (I’m cross with myself for not taking more note of what has happened … turtles; mooring buoy that drifted off just before bedtime with us on it; generous help restocking from Johnny and Adrian; first shower since before Christmas; re-meeting friends last seen in Canaries and Cape Verde; sweaty rambles up a few hills; et al)
Overall, I have to ask the unthinkable question, “Is sailing in the Caribbean grossly overrated?”. Or, is it just the case that we hear and read so much about how wonderful it is, expectations are driven sky high (fuelled too by the hyperbole of Lonely Planet, Doyle and others). We are bound to be somewhat underwhelmed with the reality when we arrive? Perhaps I’ve just experienced the Caribbean equivalent of St Mark’s Square in Venice (impressive ok but also a touristy tacky rip-off), I need to wander more in the Caribbean equivalent of Venice’s charming back alleyways. For now, I’ll say that the winds and weather are generally magical (where else will you sail clear blue waters, on endless close and broad reaches, in hot sunshine?), but the islands are expensive, there are ‘security concerns’ that mean locking up your boat and bits, and many anchorages are far too busy. There is hassle too, which can quickly dampen my enthusiasm. All this is of course countered by the laid-back friendliness (bordering on careless indifference) of most good-natured folk.
I shan’t go on with these initial views of these tropical isles. The balance pans have not yet settled. I need to head north slowly reviewing the initial blur.

Plans? A month ago, I considered Panama, Pacific etc. A week ago it was USA. Now, I think Azores and Europe. Neither Henrietta nor I are ready for prolonged spell away from Europe; we both need treatments of one sort or another…and I’d like a vote on 23rd June. The US visa application process (ie. my inability to complete online application form and reluctance to sail to Barbados or Trinidad for interview, plus luke-warm feelings about a nation that takes Mr Trump seriously) deters me (N.B. if you might sail to USA, do get a visa before leaving home!) For one year, I think this Atlantic round-trip will be a good start and taster of an open floating future.

Antigua to St Lucia

27th January to 10th February

(by Johnny, unedited by his father – who thinks this post may show lots of imagination, and is happily unfettered by too many facts)

M (Dad) has kindly/lazily invited me to pen his next blog post. So… to the delight of my lungs, I had finally organised two weeks of escape from the grey particulate rich atmosphere of dreary London and had decided to have a couple of weeks onboard Henrietta. My flight out to Antigua was full of heady anticipation and a little trepidation as I’m a nervous flyer. I aussaged my terror with as many complimentary tiny wines as I could get my little hands on and found myself spending a pleasantly tipsy hour and a half queuing through immigration. I managed not to accidentally tick the ‘Yes’ box on the declaration asking if I had any ammunition or illegal drugs on me: a tip for any aspiring drug or arms smugglers (doutless the wiley people at Antigua’s Customs office catch hundereds of villains a year using this foolproof method of inquiry). I was united with Dad and Anna and we got a taxi back to the boat.

Now most of my knowledge of the Caribbean comes from ‘The Pirates of the Caribbean’ franchise and poorly recollected memories of watching ‘Roots’ for Year 9 history lessons. Thusly I imagined a great sweeping archipelago of small idyllic islands inhabited by primitive but peaceful tribes slowly being exterminated through susceptibility to Western disease. I imagined great tall masted ships riding the trade winds, full of drunk people many of whom didn’t want to be there. Diverse and richly historied towns with names like Tortuga and English Harbour, where you could find every petty crook and criminal this side of Saigon. Sailors carrying guns to fend off pirates, navy types using words like ‘tosh’ to describe things like nonsense and of course lots and lots of rum. It was exactly as I had imagined.
The first of the so called leeward islands in my short tour was Antigua. It takes its name from the word ‘antique’ meaning ‘someone else’s old crap that you were gullible enough to buy’. Don’t be put off by the name, it’s actually alright, though like many developing economies it seems like a lot of people have been left out. Next to the relative affluence of the marina at Jolly Harbour, with its luxury yachts and well-heeled leisure class, the austerity of the surrounding villages is abrupt. It seems the Antiguan government has chosen to focus on attracting a smaller number of the exceptionally wealthy rather than the mere holidaying middleclasses. As such, there are almost no high-rise pack-em-in apartment complexes, but plenty of rustic looking thatched beachfront huts that can be yours for a mere $2000 US a night.

We began my stay with a sail out to ‘Great Bird Island’ about two miles off the coast of the Antiguan mainland. It’s totally uninhabited save for a mother and daughter who arrive each morning to sell fruit and beer to the occasional visitors. I am intrigued by how places get their names, but I also can’t really be bothered to find out. This leaves me with only pure fabrication to satiate my thirst for answers. I imagine Great Bird Island gets its name because it was once home to vast numbers of birds, millions I would suspect. Now however the name seems a little insincere. ‘Some Birds Occasionally Island’ would lack the draw for tourists though. We do spot a few birds, Frigatebirds, tropicbirds, a seahawk skims by briefly and a friendly turtle pops up for breath. According to a sign on the beach the BBC sponsors the island. It’s good to see our colonial influence is still strong. We hike up onto the whale-spine back of the island, facing out east across 3000 miles or so of unbroken Atlantic ocean and feeling the strength of the trade winds. I watch a Frigatebird balanced perfectly on the updraft where the wind hits the cliff. I watch it playing the air like a skilled pianist and I think a bit about evolution and how amazing it is and then I see that someone has dumped a load of old beer cans and taken a crap and I feel a bit sad.
We get a bit hemmed in at Bird Island due to the weather; entering and exiting the area requires navigating between dozens of coral reefs and atolls. With most of the chart data having been surveyed well over a hundered years ago using lead weighted lines by men with names like Forester and Barnaby who probably had scurvy, it becomes critically important to be able to see into the water. After a couple of false starts and an extra night there, we finally exit and head on to Falmouth Harbour.
Entering Falmouth Harbour we cut across some sort of mega-yacht race. 120 foot long pleasure palaces sizzle past. Crewed by dozens of smartly uniformed young shiny people scurrying about raising sails and pulling halliards by day and raising champagne and pulling each other by night. Falmouth Harbour is the first port of call for many boats coming from Europe and seems to attract the most outrageously ostentatious yachts in the world. These are the kinds of yachts that have smaller yachts inside and room for helicopters to land and have sauna rooms and swimming pools and gyms inside. Their owners, inbetween the hard work of gagging down pound upon pound of air freighted fresh caviar flown in by private jet, like to go diamond shopping and invent and then participate in sports that get them ‘back in touch with nature’. Examples include paddling around on long boards like Hawaiean fishermen and using water powered jet packs so they can feel like Bond villains. In short they’ve managed to design lifestyles that cannot be satirized because they’re just too absurd already.

It’s to the point where if you found out some of the local volcanoes had been hollowed out to make room for a super laser so they could evaporate the moon to celebrate one of their childrens ‘sweet-sixteens’ your brain would probably just go ‘yeah, that sounds about right’.
I’m being a bit unfair, undoubtedly the leisured classes create jobs and return much of their wealth to the economies of places. Without them we couldn’t have jobs like ‘dog massage therapist’ or ‘food-wine matcher’ or people who pretend to be celebrities at parties. And what would we do with all the vol-aux-vins?

At this point you’re probably thinking I’m a bit down on the Caribbean, and in some respects you’re right. Fortunately the next port of call is Guadeloupe. Guadeloupe has remained a part of France and it seems to have had a significant impact. Independence sounds like a lovely romantic idea- relinquishing the shackles of imperialism and so forth, but the reality seems to be more complex. Without a doubt Guadeloupe has benefitted enormously from remaining a French department. We land in Deshaies on the north west of the island and are immediately struck by how civilised everything seems. The great municipal charm of France is alive and well- Boule courts and a public library, a clean little school, a relative absence of obvious christianity and even a Spar! There is Heineken and proper cheese and the old women have that shrivelled walnutty sort of beauty that comes from an elegant refusal to relinquish their youth and get fat. The postcards have plenty of nudity but it’s in a sort of rennaisance-sideboob tasteful way. They drive on the right and smoke like it’s going out of fashion (which it is). There seems to be far less of the extreme wealth divide of Antigua and you could well be in a little town in Southern France.
On the second day, I visit the amazing Jardin Boutanique a twenty minute walk up a nearby hill. Speaking no french I quickly realise I have failed to note the correct direction to walk around the gardens, but press on inspite. Vive le contraflow! There are preserved an amazing array of flora and fauna from throughout the tropics. From enormous cacti and the almost artificial looking travellers palm with its perfectly symmetrical fronds to several species of hummingbird that zip around precisely on their nectar vectors. There is a small aviary where you can watch people feeding Parakeets and getting shat on. They provide you with an I-pad that gives you a virtual tour, but I accidentally hibernate mine, try a few different pin numbers and get locked out. I spend much of my time sitting and watching people; young lovers pretending to have an interest in botany and old lovers pretending to still have an interest in each other. A coach load of wrinklies appears and off they totter. Everyone has to have a picture under the boughs of a magnificent Banyan tree that looks out across the bay and I have a think about how many hundereds of thousands of the same photo there are. A different smiling face under the gentle shadow of that big old celebritree. I get that funny warm feeling about how we’re all just swanning about doing a bunch of stuff until we die. Which is nice.

To be honest the best part of this trip for me has been the chance to just spend time with my Dad, we don’t see much of each other these days, but I think we get on better than ever. No pressure to talk but the conversation spins out into the evenings easily enough. During the days there’s a quiet uncluttered sort of busyness. Constant checks, little repairs here and there, returning things to their place. Making ready to sail, not to mention the sailing itself. There are the little dramas that add some spice- a snarled anchor or a moderate gale. Little puzzles to be solved and a general sort of confidence that comes from being self reliant. I think he’s really onto something with this trip. Once you realise you just can’t even begin to visit everywhere in a human life, you become more peaceful about the whole thing and let go of always wanting to be somewhere else.

(Johnny left from St Lucia yesterday, Anna having left a week earlier. With time running out before his flight home, we’d had a 24-hour sail south from Les Saintes – an invigourating/tiring trip with winds between islands of over 30 knots, and all over the place downwind of Dominica and Martinique. I’m in Rodney Bay marina, my first marina this side of the Atlantic – first shower too – but such places need a bigger budget than mine – and different temperament too, so once Adrian arrives later today, we’ll be off.)

Antigua, Guadeloupe, Iles des Saintes
6th January to 26th January

Anchored near some of the world’s grandest mega-yachts in English Harbour, Antigua (early January), I felt a bit out of my league. So I moved round to Falmouth Harbour. Alas! There seemed to be even more and even grander mega-yachts there, but many normal yachts too.
I’ve met some lovely folk on normal yachts. Indeed even the crew I’ve met from said mega-yachts have been delightful: mostly young, highly competent, hard-working, friendly and, of course beautiful – exceedingly beautiful. (Incidentally I gather you can charter some of these yachts from around 150,000 dollars a week – though Paul Getty’s isn’t for rent).

The picture above, which features in many tourist brochures, shows English and Falmouth Harbours. We’ve walked up to Shirley Heights a couple of times; it’s where you take the photo from and there’s a stream of cruise ship passengers who visit to take the same shot.

Before Anna arrived I was invited to a couple of gatherings of the Royal Naval Tot Club. This may sound like a joke. It isn’t. The club was apparently started by a couple of ex Royal Navy seamen when the Navy’s rum tots were stopped. Every evening its members meet. There’s a tot of rum and toast to the Queen as well as a different daily toast for other worthy causes (including the traditional “To wives and sweet hearts….may they never meet!”), plus reading from naval history from duty ‘rum bosun’. Seems to be a charming blend of traditional charitable virtue and harmless sociable fun, and though by inclination I am rather anti-establishment, I found this gathering of sailors and interest to be delightful. I am grateful to the welcoming Cornish couple who took me along. Click here for a bit more about the club.

After a week on Antigua and with Anna aboard, we sailed 45 miles south to the island of Guadeloupe . It’s a wonderful island: from a distance, just high mountains cloaked in green trees; once ashore, a well organised French department in the tropics, complete with boulangerie, Bordeaux wine and the euro…and about 300,000 French citizens. From Guadeloupe on south to Les Saintes and its delightful anchorage at Pain de Sucre. Then, a few days ago, back north to Antigua.

Highlights for us? Lots and lots:
– swimming/snorkelling anywhere, in clear and turquoise sea (at least till sea stirred up by current high winds/swell);
– coral (finger, staghorn, common brain and sea fan), fish and green turtles (Johnny has kindly brought out a book so we’ll learn more)
– birds (we knew the frigate, pelican, green heron, humming birds but, with book, will learn more)
– bus trips (St John’s and Pointe a Pitre) and walking ashore (Doyle’s guide led us on an especially taxing riverbed boulder walk  – “…readers have complained this hike is difficult…”(but not us!) at Deshaies. Doyle being the favoured local sailor’s guide to these islands, is best taken diluted with a good pinch of sceptical salt, we find)
– meeting delightful and knowledgable fellow sailors
– markets, music, other nationalites, unusual food….
Now, with Anna and Johnny aboard, we swing at anchor 150 metres off a very smart beach resort which has such good wi-fi that I can quickly update the blog.

Atlantic Crossing
21st December to 5th January 2016

We’ve arrived at English Harbour, Antigua and I’m anchored next to mangroves in Tank Bay near Nelson’s Dockyard. There’a host of fabulous, exquisite and shining mega-yachts up the road.

Since leaving Mindelo in Cape Verde, it’s been me, Henrietta, doing the real work – that’s over 2,100 miles of rolling ocean. Seems to me, M has been doing a lot of sitting about contemplating the nature of the universe, reading books, singing, day-dreaming or peeling onions, or whatever humans do when they don’t have a proper job. In fact this will be the last blog post I’ll write myself, at least for a while, as I’ve decided M can write it himself from here on. He needs something constructive to do.

First though, and before I sign off, I’ll tell you about crossing the Atlantic. (Don’t you dare call it “The Pond” ever again. It’s a very long way and it’s not clever to call ‘Oceans’ ‘Ponds’ – just silly. Even in an aeroplane, it’s hardly a ‘Pond’). For me, if you want to know, it was 2,116 rolling miles in 15 days and 4 hours. My engine was on for two hours – mainly while M faffed about trying to find a place to anchor when we got here.
Most of the time, I have sailed downwind on a beautiful bustling blue sparkling sea. That’s how M would see it anyway. But for me, without a human’s appreciation of the finer artistic points and emotional nature of sailing, I should say I have rolled and lurched and twisted my way along with a rather awkward two or three metre swell up my backside most of the time, and with salty spray and baking hot sun on my deck by day – as well as flying fish that come aboard, crash landing on my deck at night. The wind has been fairly steady astern or on my starboard quarter, around 20 knots – just an occasional 30-35 knot squall to keep me from complacency. People call this the Northeast Trades, even though it’s been from the east most of the time. Ever since people have sailed across the Atlantic, they’ve rolled along this same road. It’s quite inspiring to think of the great sailors, explorers and ships that have followed this route through past centuries; and give a thought too to the horrors of slave ships that came the same way.

For the first three days I only wore my genoa and a scrap of mainsail, managing around 6 knots. For Christmas Day, it was calmer; then good breeze again all the way. It’s been unfailingly sunny by day and moonlit for much of the night. At dawn, there are dead flying fish scattered on my deck – at least there were in the first week – and one of M’s first jobs is clearing them before they get stinky. (One got stuck in a drain and wasn’t spotted till pretty poofy a few days later!) It does of course test a boat to be forever sailing; my bits chafe and wear and creak and squeak. Ropes and wires have to be checked; shackles watched; course forever noted and Hydrovane tweaked; sails trimmed, added, reefed, furled or dropped. We haven’t seen many other boats. In fact, apart from the first and last days, near land, we saw only one fishing boat and one tanker the whole way (there’s a picture somewhere). There’s not a lot of peace though; and Henrietta is one boat that did not have a Christmas or New Year holiday! (Mind you, it’s a lot better than freezing my bilges off in a Devon boatyard I suppose.)

And, as M will testify, I have performed perfectly: nothing has broken, been damaged or lost, and I’m as beautiful as ever (just need to get some of this salt off.) M has I think enjoyed himself, but I never quite know what he thinks. Humans are so contradictory. He seems to find it easier to deal with me than some human beings (which is pretty troublesome if you happen to be human). I think other humans love their dogs and pets for the same reason. Us boats and animals respond happily when we’re treated well and appreciated. Human beings need to sort themselves out.
M can add a few comments now, and, as I’ve said, he can write this blog himself from now on – I’m going to rest at anchor for a day or two…..
Despite Henrietta’s suggestion that I’ve just been sitting about doing next to nothing, I assure you I have been busy and am now pretty tired. The days’ chores are endless and, with never more than an hour or two of sleep, you become a bit frazzled and sore-eyed. (I cannot imagine how those professional sailors manage when they race round the world alone for months on end.) Those Atlantic rowers, I told you about, are coming to this same place too, but I think they still have three or four or more weeks rowing ahead of them. What a way to spend the winter!
The 15 days have passed extraordinarily quickly. What do I do? A typical day? (I’m interested in this myself since I find it hard to account for the time! It’s gone so fast.): at dawn, check boat and gear, clear fish on deck, pot of tea, wash self, do log book…through the day…learn a bit more of hf radio, chartplotter, sextant (sensible sailors know all this stuff before they leave!)…frequently adjust sail trim/change sails/course/Hydrovane….check for rotten stores, clean cabin, decide what to eat, cook, clear up, siesta, clip toenails, whip a rope or two, read novels, tune in SSB radio, charge up electronic gadgets…and, finally, Henrietta’s right, quite a bit of day-dreaming, watching the ocean and contemplating infinity…you wouldn’t be interested in all the ideas and wisdom, and peace and calm, that come to the solitary sailor – at least until you get a bit too tired. Life is honed to pure simplicity; eat, sleep, wash and think. If you’ve done it yourself, or (I expect) climbed remote mountains or tramped empty deserts or polar wilderness alone, you’ll maybe know. Trouble is that as you grow more tired, it becomes harder to think and use the brain coherently…and I soon abandoned grandiose schemes like learning the tropical night sky and advanced meteorology, and instead, in moments of leisure, just read some of the many cruising books on board or enjoyed straightforward novels.
Remember too that, given the incessant rolling and occasional unheralded lurch, everything is done very slowly. A ten minute task can take an hour. Preparing a meal can take ages. Sailing tasks too: one day, for example, with a force 5/6 from behind and heavy rolling, it took over an hour simply to rig the spinnaker pole for genoa and gybe the much reduced mainsail. I then needed a break to wipe away the sweat before hanking on and hoisting the staysail in lieu of main. Then taking it down again and securing it to wave-sprayed foredeck before nightfall. (Those racing sailors must be amazingly organised, better balanced and much stronger than me! But then they don’t have Bus Passes do they?.)

I’m now enjoying the novel joy of a calm anchorage and stable walks ashore, and meeting other people. I note I have owned Henrietta for six months now; she’s been a delight and after 6,000 miles I begin to see how she works!
Finally, Henrietta’s first and last stab at feeling like a human:-
Right now, …..I’m Rolling West
Rolling West o’r broad bold untamed sea, awed by scale and power and might,
Rolling West ‘neath milk blue sky, warmed by sun and soothed by breeze,
Rolling West, the sounds of hush and rush and shush, of flapping sail, of gurgle, splosh and rattle,
Rolling West, there really is no chance of rest!
[Subsequent bits remain unpublished]