Sailor

It is months since I wrote anything in my blog.

As a result of final work on the Dutch manuscript of my newest book CONTESTED LAND which is set in the Middle East in 1973, for months I kept track of the depressing news about the slaughter in Gaza and the injustices perpetrated on the occupied West Bank.

I still read the news, but I try to avoid it grabbing me by the throat, and probably the last thing you’re waiting for is another analysis about the injustices of the world. Those are common enough in the media and the talkshows. 

Writing is supposed to be fun, so let me share with you a short story which I wrote some time ago. It is about a sailor who found his way as a crew member on my sailboat. The story is fictional, because I don’t live aboard an old yacht, nor can I afford a resident crew, but let’s pretend for a while. 

 

Sailor is inspired by Boris, a wonderful cat we got from an animal refuge long ago. He was much loved and was part of the family until his death three years ago.

SAILOR

My best friend is an undocumented asylum seeker, or a stowaway if you like, a fat lazy black and white male cat answering to the appropriate name of Sailor. He accidentally came aboard, and I’ll tell you how it came to pass.

Due to circumstances best left unsaid, I live aboard an old sailboat, summer and winter, berthed in the harbour of one of the islands to the north. Even though I only live on a small income without a great deal to spend, funnily that doesn’t bother me. You might call me a tramp, but I live with nature and the tides, the islanders know me and I know them, in short I am alone but not lonely. My boat has worn sails that I patch myself, and I use old-fashioned paper charts and a hand-held GPS because I cannot afford expensive electronic equipment. Each year I try to save up for a summer cruise, and thus I crossed to the UK a few years ago.

 

Calais

 

I had been coast-hopping down to Scheveningen, Flushing and Ostend to arrive at Calais. There the wind shifted into the wrong quarter, and only after several days I managed to escape, crossing the shallows on the early morning flood and continuing to Chatham in one stretch. It was a long trip, crossing the shipping lanes before passing inside the Goodwin Sands to Ramsgate, around the corner at North Foreland and into the Thames.

 

Crossing the shipping lanes

You need to take care with the tidal height over the shallows - there is a bar off Herne Bay, but I managed to scrape across before catching the flood tide into the Medway, past the forts that Michiel de Ruyter captured from the English in 1667. At high water that evening I entered the Chatham marina in an old Navy basin near the Dockyard museum.

 

One of the Medway forts

That summer’s weather was atrocious - it was cold and wet, and one day I had walked through the rain to the Dockyard to gape at all that had been accumulated in the old construction sheds - ship’s boilers, steam locomotives and lifeboats. In the dry docks beyond them are a few museum ships, and further on there is the largest rope walk still working in Europe - it is half a mile in length.

Returning along the river to the marina, I encountered a scrawny cat. He had the face of a rogue, one of his ears had apparently been chewed in a fight, and he sat looking dejectedly over the water. When I called him, he ran towards me and rubbed himself against my leg. He had no collar and, as I found later wasn’t chipped, so he was a tramp just like myself, and he was ravenous. He followed me on to the jetty, so later I gave him the left-overs of the fish I had for dinner. Promptly, he sat waiting for his breakfast the next morning, under my sprayhood.

As I slid open the companionway hatch and looked at the streaming rain, next to me I heard a deafening purr as he pushed a wet head against my ear. Such exhortation cannot be ignored, so I let him inside, where he found a warm spot near the heater under the table, on a folded old towel I had put down for him.

Ever since, Sailor and I have been inseparable. He eats with me at the table, has acquired sea legs and put on weight, does his duty in a tray of sand at the back of the cockpit, takes shore leave  in every port like a seasoned sailor, and always returns in time for our departure. Except once when we missed the tide because he overstayed his leave. I couldn’t bear leaving him behind, so I waited patiently till he finally turned up, his tail in the air like a flag. We had to sail against the tide - it took an hour or so longer than I had planned, but Sailor and I returned home without further mishap.

So if you ever visit our island and see an old sailboat berthed in the harbour, and a lazy black and white cat asleep contentedly in the sun on deck, then you’ll know it is him.