Believe it or not, the boat I was a guest on is in this picture, about four boats back, directly behind the stern of the Hermione. It has a little blue awning at the rear.
For landlubbers such as myself, the thrill
of the sea, being on the sea, takes us by surprise. It is not usually the electricity of physical
excitement or even geological difference (although those are important); rather,
it is psychological, involving the removal of all responsibility other than
that of the present moment, or the moments very shortly to come. You leave the land behind. It is rather like being in a happy gaol,
where there are no gaolers, and if there were they’d be protecting you rather
than warding. You can’t simply get out
of a boat. Instead of barbed wire and
floodlight, there is deep water and jellyfish.
That being said, there is a special delight in swimming from a boat. I think it has to with depth of water, shared
pleasure or perhaps simply being looked at.
So there is the freedom that restricted liberty brings; but there is
also the bigness of the sky and the straightness of the horizon, and a sense of
the world suddenly opened up. And when
the sky is cloudless and the sea nearly as smooth as a starched sheet, as it
was on the Atlantic Coast of France between La Rochelle and Fouras on 7
September 2014, the possibility of life being near-as-dammit perfect, also opens up.
On
that day, I had the very good fortune to be invited to join John and Deb
Gittins on their rather plush motor boat (it has a loo – I think we nautical
types call it a “head” - but it isn’t a gin palace) as they motored out from La
Rochelle, around Fort Boyard, anchored off the Ile d’Aix for a spot of lunch,
before making our way towards the mouth of the Charente to witness the maiden
sea voyage of the Hermione Lafayette, a French late eighteenth century warship
lovingly restored to its original glory over a period of some 15 years.
The
river police quite rightly prevented us from reaching too far up river, and so
we anchored, gradually joined by hundreds, perhaps thousands of other craft as
the day approached tea-time and the expected arrival of the great ship.
Very
slowly she came. First, in the distance,
a suggestion of masts, thin verticals, complicated by horizontals. Then, ever nearer, she hove into proper view,
trailing an ever growing flotilla.
Helicopters buzzed. The banks of
the estuary were lined with sightseers.
As
she moved past, stately and beautiful, we joined the throng. There were sailing dinghies and rubber
dinghies and canoes and jet skis and yachts and gin palaces and oyster boats
and catamarans and speed boats and excursion ferries. The honking of horns and the blaring of
klaxons was continuous, joyous.
“Give
it some horn,” insisted the glowing, lovely Deb.
John,
grinning at the wheel, gave it some horn.
The
other guests, Aldo and Sue and Scott, sat beneath the awning and watched and
enjoyed. John navigated, not without
difficulty, in between these other craft, sometimes passing with a jolt of acceleration,
sometimes being passed. The sea itself
was confused, lumpy with conflicting bow
waves.
Eventually
we peeled off, keen to get back to la Rochelle before sunset and the crowds
likely to follow. John opened the
throttle like the boy racer he still has inside him, and we bounced back
through the ruffling sea, sunned and salted and sated.
|
Friday, 3 October 2014
HERMIONE LAFAYETTE
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