Farewell Mr Puffin

by Paul Heiney

  ‘How far to the Faroes?’ he asked, with hope in his voice that it might be a small number.

  I stabbed a button. ‘Two hundred and twenty-one miles.’

  ‘Not far, then,’ he replied with deep sarcasm.

  ‘Great place for puffins, the Faroes,’ I enthused. ‘Said to be more puffins there than people.’

  ‘More what?’

  I judged it not the right moment for my enthusiastic lecture on the joys of puffins.

  Eynhallow is a narrow passage that leads to the open Atlantic, with an island in the middle past which the tides accelerate as they pour over the Reef of Burgar. I shouted this news down to him.

  ‘Reef of Bugger!’ he replied.

  Retch.

  The wind and tides and the shallows beneath create spiky lumps of water in a fight between tide and land mass that results in repeated blows of cold, wet sea water being chucked against you as you try to make progress. At times, a wall of water seems to appear from nowhere and before you know where you are your boat feels as though it is standing on its head.

  ‘Bloody roosts!’ came the cry from below. Followed by a retch so deep I feared his internal workings might never recover.

  This particular roost is famous for being the butt of a children’s rhyme hereabouts:

  ‘Eynhallow fair, Eynhallow Free

  Eynhallow stands in the middle of the sea

  With a roaring roost on either side

  Eynhallow stands in the middle of the tide.’

  There is a belief that Orkney had two more islands, which are not seen these days, other than in exceptional circumstances. One was called Hildaland, the home of the Finfolk, the other Hether Blether. Should these two islands appear, tradition dictates that on seeing them they must be rowed towards with a sword in the hand. Having no armoury to hand, would a flat-head screwdriver do? I didn’t bother Malcolme with this, judging him not to be up for romantic folklore.

  ‘Are we through that rooster yet?’ he asked, pleading in his voice.

  Actually, there was no roost that day. For the tumult to form, it needs a stronger wind from the north-west than we were experiencing, and running directly against the tide. Today, although the wind was from that direction, it remained light. This promised a slow passage to the Faroes.

  Then Malcolme was reduced to poetry, or was possibly hallucinating. Grabbing the bucket, just before retching once again, he blurted,

  ‘The sea goes up,

  The sea goes down.

  The food goes down,

  The food comes up.’

  Poor sod. We’ve all been seasick and no blame ever attaches to it, nor much sympathy either. We all know that eventually you come through and there are sunny uplands on the far side. At this stage in the voyage, though, poor old Malcolme was still in the foothills, with a steep climb before he recovered his stomach. He remained in his bunk like a fallen giant, the sick bucket never far from his fingertips. He swore he was wearing a magic anti-seasickness patch; it looks like a corn plaster, and you press it on to your skin just below your ear to allow a drug to infuse slowly into your body. Despite appearances, they do work, and I have held on to my stomach on many occasions when I would otherwise have been reduced to helplessness. But it didn’t seem to be working in Malcolme’s case.

  Sometimes, short passages take more out of you than long ones. If you know you have a thousand miles to go you don’t even bother counting down to the finish, but on a short hop it is all too easy to fixate on the little bit of the navigation screen that tells you the precise time when you will arrive, and that breeds impatience. The kindest thing those software engineers could do is to disinvent it. Malcolme steadfastly stood his watches, dragging himself from his bunk, fighting every inch of his limbs into oilskins, eyes never far from the bucket, and still shunning food. I struggled with a ham sandwich and some soup.

  The 200 miles to the Faroes was joyless and flat in every sense. The sea was as calm as this patch of grey North Atlantic ever gets, the uniformly grey sky not helping to lift the spirits. The wind blew mostly from the north-east and with reasonable force, so to complain about that would have been churlish. Nevertheless, I felt a great urge to simply get there. And very soon we did.

  So massively high are the 18 major islands that make up the Faroes that we were still 40 miles away when we saw the vague outline of the first island, no more than a dark grey smudge against a lighter grey sky, grey upon grey. It was the southernmost island, Suðuroy. It was late afternoon and with ten or so hours of sailing still to go, it would mean a night-time arrival, although night-time darkness at these latitudes at this time of year would be described as twilight anywhere else. At 40 miles it was impossible to discern any detail, but even at a distance I doubted there could be any hospitality in this forbidding landscape. These are islands that rise steeply from the seabed to form mountain peaks sharp and jagged, like the worn heads of battle axes, and dreaded Viking ones at that.

  Nevertheless, however gloomy and distant they seemed, the sight of them gave me confidence that things would improve and I was prompted to delve into the fridge, where I found lurking at the bottom a packet, bought in Kirkwall, that proclaimed itself as a ‘Scottish Breakfast for One’. Should I share this news with Malcolme? I stared at the fat sausage, the broad streaks of bacon, the chunks of white pudding and black, and thought that for two people this would be feast enough, and one person attempting this alone would have to engage in an Olympic struggle of digestion. I looked across at a pale and chilly Malcolme, who had only just managed to swill down some tea, and decided to let it quietly drop to the bottom of the fridge again. I had bland toast instead.

  I had no real idea where we were heading, other than to a mark on the chart, or what this place would look like when we got there. Just on the basis of chance I had selected this harbour called Tvøroyri, which to this day I have been unable to pronounce, despite making considerable effort. Whatever it was called, it was the nearest safe harbour to Orkney and that propelled it up the wish list. Malcolme had a go at pronouncing it, but said the tongue-twisting made him feel sick again. According to the chart, the town was set on the north shore of a lengthy bay and the shelter looked good from all weathers, which was a prime requirement, but it was difficult to know whether we were arriving at a majestic fjord or something more understated, like a river estuary. Was I to expect a symphonic landscape, or a more muted little ditty of a place? A lighthouse eventually showed itself, blinking feebly, but since lighthouses are only generally lit between dusk and dawn, this one was on very short hours indeed and clearly didn’t think itself of much importance.

  It was now two in the morning and not a good time of day to be stumbling around an unfamiliar harbour, so I asked Malcolme to get ready the anchor and we would stop as soon as we could. The pilot book, which gives navigational directions and warns of dangers, advises the use of a wooden jetty some way up the fjord, but I thought we might not spot it in the gloom, where every jetty looks like any other. So we dropped the anchor into sand on the south side of the fjord at a place called Tjaldavík, which offered shelter behind a low-rise island, protecting us from any east in the wind. We turned in, slept deeply and untroubled, and rose again with a raging appetite for breakfast, resulting in the Scottish Breakfast for One coming into its own. Anchor up, we chugged towards the town, not more than a mile away. It turned out to be surrounded by a gentle landscape of grazing sheep, green pastures dotted with red or white houses under turf roofs, and looking in good order, certainly no dereliction, which would have been excusable in a place where Atlantic storms batter it from all directions. There were rolling hills, not mountains, on either side of the water and nothing that spoke of threat. Peaceful.

  But for which wooden jetty were we bound? There were several to choose from, although most had a commercial or industrial air about them, and one thing I have learned is that wherever you are in the world it is never a good idea to get in the way of a fishing boat in a hurry. Then we
spotted another yacht’s mast and headed over there. The jetty at which we arrived was some way beyond the town and we moored alongside a fat tub of an old boat, once a fishing boat I guessed, but looking as though it had been converted to sail training, and usefully rigged as a gaff ketch with tan sails, the colour of which matched that of many of the shoreside houses. We crept up to it and Malcolme leaped across with the lines and made us secure.

  On arrival in a foreign country, it is usual to stay aboard your boat till you have been visited by the authorities, and these might come in the form of a policeman or customs officer. In fact, the harbourmaster was the first to arrive and he impressed Malcolme with his detailed knowledge of English football, which he spread before us in near perfect English. He was elated to hear that Malcolme did not live far from Sunderland, a team he admired, and was thankful that neither of us lived near Manchester, for both their teams were ‘shit’.

  His paperwork done, he departed, telling us the customs officer would be along soon to check our passports. While waiting I turned on the radio, tuned it, and fell upon a station playing non-stop hymns on a weekday morning. Although the words were sung in Faroese, it was easy to recognise ‘Abide with Me’ and ‘The Lord is My Shepherd’, and I mumbled along with them while chopping onions and carrots for a stew. After two hours the hymns had run out, and my patience, so I lost interest in the customs officer and set off for town, leaving Malcolme to fend him off if there was any problem. There wasn’t. Malcolme reported that he didn’t care very much whether we were here or not.

  ***

  That evening we took a lengthy stroll into town and found a bar with a Viking pulling the pints. Yes, a real Viking of the kind a child would draw. If Disney had wanted to create everyone’s image of a Viking they could not have done better than sketch this lad. I was going to have to get used to the frequent sight of the bearded, heavy-jawed, square faces that looked as if they had stepped straight out of the sagas. And they were everywhere, behind the bar, in the corner downing a pint, at the supermarket checkout. They betray their ancestry as easily as a Scotsman in a kilt. The barman was young, but youth provides no escape from that Viking look. His hands were huge and could probably strangle an ox and not notice.

  The bar was dark, with little light creeping through the small windows into the bare and smoky pine interior. The Scandinavians have always been keen on their feasting halls, which for centuries have served as political centres, home for kings and nobles, or simply party venues. They feature in Norse mythology; the one in Beowulf is called Heorot, a massive edifice that once produced so much party noise that the fearsome Grendel broke in and murdered the troublemakers, proving nuisance neighbours are no modern phenomenon. Tolkien wrote a Golden Hall into Middle-earth and they are also to be found in Hollywood’s Shrek. This place was as close as they got to having a feasting hall in Tvøroyri, although to feast on the beer here requires considerable wealth; we calculated the ale was coming out of the pump at roughly a tenner a pint.

  The Viking didn’t speak much. He asked me which beer I wanted. I asked him which was good. Straight-faced, he came back at me: ‘If it was not good I would not be selling it.’ OK! Lesson learned. No small talk with a Viking.

  The next time I glanced in his direction he had a gun in his hand, waving it in the air. Malcolme and I looked at each other. Do we get under the table? Then he reached up to the ceiling and grabbed another. ‘Guns from World War One,’ he shouted with much glee, waving them around, sometimes in our direction. I was on the point of seriously wondering if we were going to escape with our lives when he put the guns down on the bar and told us a story. The words were broken, fired like bullets, some English, some Faroese. I nodded rapidly as if I knew what he was on about. If he thought I was ignoring him, I sensed he might teach me a lesson with both barrels. His tale took some time and by the end of it my neck ached, having nodded like a toy donkey non-stop for half an hour.

  One pint down and our pockets empty, we got up from the table and walked casually to the door. Once through it, we broke into a sprint and got as far away from the place as we could.

  I wasn’t in the mood for any more stress that night, but we made the long, slow walk back to the boat and I was forced to confront one of the scariest publications I have ever read in my life.

  8

  Sailing the dragon’s breath

  Malcolme remarked that I seemed very quiet.

  I always am when I’m making a plan for the next day. There’s always much figuring to do, tides to be worked out, navigational hazards to be thought through, rocks and sandbanks noted. Is there enough diesel in the tank, have we got enough drinking water, is there another packet of bacon or did we gorge on it when we arrived? All vital decisions, crucial to the safe navigation of the vessel.

  ‘I think we’ve had all the bacon,’ Malcolme mused. ‘What time are we leaving tomorrow?’

  ‘We’ve eaten it all?’

  ‘Aye, skipper,’ he said sheepishly.

  Skippers are always surprised by the rate at which food disappears and are inclined to look suspiciously at the crew.

  ‘And there’s not much bread either. And I was sick most of the way across, so it can’t be me.’

  I said nothing, but silently considered that lengthy period of time while I had been ashore and Malcolme had been waiting for the customs man. Hmm.

  I went back to my figuring to give my entire attention to a troubling document called Streymkort ftri Føroyar, which translates as Tidal Currents around the Faroe Islands; innocent enough words, but of profound significance.

  Exactly why the tides that swish through the Faroe Islands should be so fearsome I have not a clue, especially as the rise and fall – the difference between high and low water – is so tiny. If the whole place had to empty and refill every 12 hours I could understand it, but there’s no need for any water to go anywhere, so what’s the hurry? The tides and currents have the entire North Atlantic to play with, why choose here to throw a party? In our own Bristol Channel, the rise and fall of the tide is the second largest in the entire world, so you’d expect the water to get a move on as it ebbs and flows. But not in the Faroes. There is simply no up and down, or at least it’s a matter of an inch or two and almost impossible to measure with any accuracy.

  Anyway, there’s no point arguing about it; the tides here run at scary speeds and produce tide races like you have never seen, and make those roosts back in Orkney look like storms in teacups. Then you’ve got the wind, which hereabouts can be ferocious if the North Atlantic atmosphere is in a bad mood, and once they start to fight the tides, which run faster than galloping horses, you’ve got a battle on your hands. If your little boat happens to be in the middle of that conflict then God help you.

  Thankfully, I could discount the wind; nothing more than a decent breeze was forecast for the next day. The tides I could not so easily forget, especially as I wanted to make to the north, to Tórshavn, the capital, 50 miles away. I opened the booklet like someone about to start a horror novel and stared at the first page. It looked authoritative, although it was written in Faroese. Ah, in English over the page! Let the struggle commence.

  It said ‘Chart number 6 do show you [sic] the tidal circumstances around the Faroes when the current east of the midle [sic] of the southernnmost islands changing from south-going to north-going.’

  My head ached and I wanted to go home. In the good old British waters I know so well, the pattern of currents is simple and easy to read: you know the time of high water and low water and a convenient map shows you the way the currents run at every hour in between. The introduction to this booklet, however, ends with what it describes as an old proverb: ‘Do he (the general weatherman), know, that the wind will come from that or that direction, so the current there and there will go quite mad.’ That is clearly a rough translation, but if I may roughen it further I think it means that ‘anything that is claimed in this book can be completely buggered if the wind blows’. Somewhat
depressed, I turned to the next page.

  To add to the confusion, I was now told that the charts that followed were not based on high and low water, because there isn’t any, but instead on the time of the moon’s meridian passage. We are starting to get a bit mystical here, or perhaps loony, although it is the movement of the moon relative to the Earth that causes tides in the first place, so I suppose there is some sense to it.

  To be honest, I had been forewarned about this and had ordered, from the only Faroes bookshop, an almanac that included, among much other information, the precise time at which the moon would cross the longitude of the Faroes. This would be the time when it would appear at its greatest altitude above the horizon. The only snag was that the Almanac appeared to be written in Faroese and the online translation was no help. I later discovered that it was printed in Icelandic. Nice joke. I have no idea why.

  ‘I think we’ll just get up and bugger off,’ I suggested to Malcolme, such unprofessional sentiments being the default position of any navigator who is sick of thinking through his cruising plan. But before we decided on that course of extreme action, I passed the tidal atlas across the cabin table. It was open at a page that showed, in vivid red and in the style of a dragon’s breath, where the tides would be at their strongest. There was also a symbol drawn in red, looking like a short ladder and marked ‘special danger area’, and two parallel lines marked ‘slack water’. But it was the swathes of red ink denoting tide races that caught the attention, getting worse by the hour as you turned the pages till you arrived at two hours after the moon’s meridian passage and the entire ocean twixt the islands had the look of a very bloody accident.