Mal de debarquement

When the skipper was in his early 20s and in the army, he was ordered to build a small shack and, as many might do, set about building it as quickly and carelessly as possible so he could bunk off early and have a cigarette. "No we're not going to do it like that," said the sergeant. "We're going to do it the best we can, just for the satisfaction of it."

And so they did, and the skipper, had found a role model and a new way of living. Now in retirement, a cantankerous, bearded old seadog with a fetish for sailing naked, he still follows it, still likes to do things right, "just for the satisfaction of it". There are rules on board his good boat Styria. Endless rules. You have to make a pot of tea when you get up. You have to carve every single scrap of meat out of a crab. You have to refill the pot of tea when it's empty. You have to sing sea shanties like you were born in a squall.

This makes life difficult for me. If I tell you that my boyfriend describes me as "not house trained", and that my 11-year-old friend recently, on finding me stewing apples in the kitchen, asked, "What? Are you trying to improve your domestic skills?" you'll perhaps get some measure of my slovenliness. Like a snail, I leave in my wake a clutter of devastation, a crime to be forensically constructed. I don't wear a watch. I don't keep a diary. I chop onions a different way every time. A person like me doesn't belong on a boat as ship- shape as the skipper's. A person like that, perhaps, is a liability on any boat. But, as the skipper is my partner's father, we two are thrust together. I have just returned from crewing for a week. I have learned a few things about doing things "just right".

"We should have booked for longer," my boyfriend said as we got on the plane to Brittany.

"A week is enough," I muttered. "And anyway, I still think we should have gone on holiday together."

"We are going on holiday together."

"No we're not, I'm going on holiday with your father and your father's son."

The first three days I grumbled silently. The sailing was slow, uneventful, nothing to do except drink tea and stare at the distant, alien spikes of land. I couldn't even read. Plagued by a seasickness, that was only eased when I took the helm, I remained glued to the wheel for most of the passage. It didn't take long before I got myself in trouble with the skipper.

Thinking that a carton of salt was unopened, I punched an extra hole in it, only to leave it uncloseable for the duration of the trip. Then, a fender disappeared in the middle of the night and it seemed a bad knot must be to blame. Even during a short stopover on land, I blundered into some minor mutiny over the ordering of a "cafe creme".

"Cafe anglais," corrected the skipper, shaking his head. My chaos- styled system for life wasn't working at sea, where the key is to keep everything in its place, where all revolves around that emergency moment, when suddenly ropes are flying all over the place, and the skipper is bawling, "Not like that, you muppet! Like that! Hold that end! Put it down! No, the other end! Have you tied it off?"

This, after all, was a different world. It was the skipper's world - with all its systems, its home-made gadgets, its idiosyncrasies like its plastic duck, Sir Francis Chichester, which bobbed along behind attached by a small rope. Almost all boats are like little dictatorships. Partly I think that's why people do it - they are either looking to get away from the big world, or to create an alternative. "You read the news," said the skipper, "and you get all wound up by problems you can't fix it. Here, mostly, if there's a problem you can fix it. And fix it well."

Halfway through the week, as we headed towards a Gale-force wind, "Securite! Securite! Beaufort 8," chanting over the radio, I realised that if both my boyfriend and his dad were for some freak reason swept overboard or knocked unconscious, I wouldn't have a clue how to even do a Mayday. Mutiny now seemed pointless. I surrendered to the rules. Besides, I was starting to enjoy it. The rhythm of the days and the slow, creaking rock of the boat, had worked its way into me. The helm was no longer a cure for my nausea, but a means with which to feel the kick of the wind and the lick of the waves. I started to understand why one skipper had told us he couldn't sleep on land.

The minor dramas too, became amusing. During dinner on our last night, anchored in the river Odet, we felt the dull bounce of the keel hitting the river bed. The boat had drifted on its anchor and we were aground, and starting to lean over. An hour and a half later, we were pitched at a 30 degree angle to the horizontal, and hanging from the grip bars along the back of the seats like chimps, watching a DVD on the skipper's laptop.

Now, as I write this column, it's the land that seems strange. The room sways, my computer screen looming up to me, then easing away, the verticals and horizontals playing tricks on my sea-craved mind. I have what they call mal de debarquement, landsicknesss. The ground shifts. I feel it would have been safer to remain at sea. Perhaps we should have booked for more than a week. Perhaps I could have learned to do a few more things "just right" - even if it was just refilling the pot of tea.

Copyright 2003 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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