EILEAN’S ATLANTIC CROSSING
EILEAN
DESIGNED William Fife
BUILT
1936 (Wm Fife, Fairlie)
RESTORED 2009
LENGTH OVERALL 72ft 6in (22.2m)
LENGTH WATERLINE 50ft 9in (15.5m)
BEAM
15ft 3in (4.7m) DRAUGHT
10ft 6in (3.2m)
Above top: Yoichi and Stefano Valente Above: the Simrad chartplotter in the doghouse Above right: Catching our supper – most of this 1.4m mahi mahi went in the freezer
We hit a routine and while it’s easterlies rather than the hoped-for northeasterlies which would allow us to reach west, it’s a happy ship. Andy and Jessie get out some leather hides and begin the task of making leather covers for the bottle screws and blocks. We make monkey’s fist easy-release grommets for the lines along the booms and splice and whip new lines and ties. Sails are spread out and repaired. Afternoons become like an arts and crafts club.
NIGHT SAILING
Ocean sailing takes night sailing into a new dimension. You get used to being awake at night quite quickly so that it also feels like the natural state. There are little jobs to do, you trim sails for a while when you come on watch, fill in the log, make tea, but the main task, given that we have an autohelm, is being on watch. And so, you watch. After a few days you’re noticing star patterns that are shifting in their place compared to the same time the night before; you anticipate moonrise and you gradually watch her wax or wane as the nights pass.
Starlight this far from land – in a world which is doing its best to mirror the heavens with its own populous pattern of urban lights against the dark land masses – seems stupendous. With a 180° light-loom-free horizon you can see more of the constellations as they wheel slowly across the sky, sliding into the western rim of our dark-shaded world.
16 CLASSIC BOAT APRIL 2012
Nature, it seems, is showing off her geometry set. We see every type of isosceles triangle – even some close to equilateral, a slightly squashed pentagon, the kite-shaped Southern Cross, rhomboids; the great constellations… Day suddenly seems a poor, one-dimensional substitute, the burned-out sunny blue so harsh compared to the soft undulating blues and purples of our starlit nights. So we look forward to the night watches where we do what man is meant to do and stare into the all-enveloping beauty of nature’s night face while trying to read and follow her stories.
Night, we decide, is lost on most landed folk. And we are the lucky sailors gliding quietly through the interstellar void… lying on deck getting a moon-tan by the pool of the Multi-Star Hotel... night after night. And so it almost seems a shame to be nearing land, after a good 3,000 sea miles. Despite the sometimes frustrating lack of northerly winds which have kept us at sea about five days more than planned – plus the two for detouring via the Cape Verdes – I feel like carrying on; I’m actually starting to feel fit in the way sailing, with its constant movement makes you almost unconciously fit. On our last day at sea we cross the continental shelf, going from depths of 5,000m to 30-odd in a mile or so. We have polished the brass and the sand has gone. I get in the tender to photograph the moment: Eilean has come home again, to the isles of the west.
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