Cowes story-gathering

The sail across the Solent to the Isle of Wight was thrilling. After another careful navigation of Chichester Harbour and the bustling water activity, we came out into the East Solent, main sail and headsail hoisted. The sea state was even more wild than on our way in, Ailish dipping down into the bottom of waves, and coming back up, hull in the air, spray reaching us in the cockpit, and then down again, over and over as we rocked our way out to sea.

‘That’s a big lump of copper’ said a bearded man in a bright cap, rigger boots, crumpled clothes and surely looking set to do some boat diy. ‘Did we find it or make it?’, he asked in an American accent. I was sitting outside a cafe with Dolly, the story gathering sculpture sitting on the table between us, glinting in the sun. We had been wondering how best to coax people into conversation and were starting to write ‘What is your favourite marine creature?’ on a ripped out page of notebook. Perhaps this fun question might encourage a response, but now the shining sculpture had done the work for us. We gathered a lot of stories from the Captain, from the challenges of getting a boat ready to sail around the world, from choosing the right crew to do this with, and the complex emotions of killing a fish to eat. He had grown up dingy sailing on the Atlantic coast as a child, pushing the limits of where the dingy could sail, always looking out to sea, knowing that the only way to go further was with a bigger boat. Here he was, decades later, and he spoke of the divide that he felt when making the big boat dream happen. In his experience, there are those that can only let themselves dream, who resent those that worked to make it a reality. His cap said Antigua and Belize, places he hadn’t been but he said he believed in the power of manifestation. He sounded stuck in Cowes, so we wished him good luck for getting out onto the seas as soon as possible.

Later in the day Atom#1 joined us in the pub, where again we didn’t need to ask anyone to talk with us, as the table next to us asked with curiosity about the sculpture. The story gathering sculpture is taking on a life of its own, a magnet for conversation. This group of men had all met in Cowes 8 years ago on this day, undertaking a marine training course, and only seeing each other every fews years when they are brought back together from different directions of the sea. Through my questions I have been trying to determine if sailing, and working at sea, heightens a sense of care for marine life. I asked this question directly to our group of strangers, all of them connected to the sea in different ways, from officer on a super yacht, to chief on a sailing boat. The instant response was in relation to plastic pollution, and rubbish out on the ocean. One spoke of witnessing the horror of bags of rubbish being tossed off the sides of boats in Bali, for the ocean to deal with. I spoke to a different lady, there with her young son. She spends 6 months of the year on the Isle of White, and the other 6 in the Caribbean, and said that there is a much stricter regime of care in the Caribbean. She thought that there is more incentive to deal with the marine pollution there because the sea is much clearer.

I threw out the the fun marine creature question, and gained a more profound answer from the man next to me than I was expecting. He said he loved the seals in the Galapagos, and that there, where they have succeeded in protecting the rights of nature at such a high level, it is evident from all the different animals’ behaviours that they feel an ownership over their territory. Seals, pelicans, fish, they are all boss of the humans, none of the usual hierarchy of humans over non-humans we blindly live throughout most of the world. I was compelled by the imagination of such a paradise; a place in which a bird doesn’t walk out of your way if it doesn’t want to!

I climb into the forepeak after a day of gathering unplanned stories. So many people with all different connections to the sea. Does getting out on the water make you care more about the health of the oceans? I am not sure. Today would suggest it certainly makes you more aware of visible plastic pollution. And marine life sightings always seems to hold a certain magic from the way people talk about their wildlife encounters. Getting out onto the ocean is also about challenge, adventure, the elements. You are brought into observing and noticing in a way that you can’t achieve from watching the waves on a screen. You have to be alert to stay alive, and many people are out there in dangerous conditions to earn a living or rescue others. And then there are those on pleasure cruises, how connected do they feel to the ocean below such huge vessels. So many more people to interview…