Racundra's First Cruise

by Arthur Ransome

  I went for a walk up the little hill to see the windmills, of the same form as those on Roogö Island. From the hill I could see down through a gap in the pinewoods to the shore on the other side of the promontory, where in the trees another schooner was building. Here, so I learnt, there is better anchorage, but the way into it is extremely dangerous for those who do not know the rocks. There is, of course, no detailed chart of the place.

  Coming down the hill again, I walked through the village of Spithamn, a village of stout log huts, with, as on Roogö, fine pigs walking about the narrow lanes, and everywhere fishing-nets drying. Some of the houses were rudely painted with ochre, but most were the natural colour of the weather-beaten wood, the ends of the logs dove-tailed across each other at the corners. One small but caught my eye from a long way off with the word “York” upon it in big white letters. I came near to it and found that I was looking at the carved name-board of a ship built into the house. There was the green painted scroll-work, and in the middle of it, carved deeply from the wood, those big white letters on which, no doubt, many waves had beat before the ship that carried them went ashore and was broken up, to the profit of the natives, on the rocks beyond the point. An English ship, or may be an American, and she must have been wrecked here a long time ago, as many others have been wrecked, for not Anders Ringberg nor anyone else could tell me anything about her.

  Down on the beach the men had stopped work for the night. The last of the boats which had been carrying firewood to the schooner came in and grounded. A wire rope was shackled to a ring on the waterline under her bows, and I lent a hand at winding her up over fir rollers by means of a primitive capstan deeply bedded in the beach. Two small men of Spithamn, aged about eight, I suppose, were early beginning their inevitable career, sailing against each other two beautiful models of their fathers’ broad-bowed schooners. They were wading in the water, and one of them brought his model ashore to show me. Every detail of the rigging was there, and the hull was built like the ships themselves, decked, with a hatch amidships, a small square, half-sunk deckhouse aft, the wheel behind that, the sails broad and not high, with large topsails, two jibs and a staysail.

  The skipper of the cutter had made several trips to the shore and back with things he had brought in his ship. He was now unloading his little boat for the last time. He had brought ashore sacks of coal for the winter, much other gear, and a heavy, iron-bound ancient trunk. He told me of the harbourage there is in Odensholm, and said he always left his cutter there for the winter, when ice makes sailing impossible. “There, no matter what may be, the ice can never touch her.” He himself spends the winter ashore here in Spithamn. He asked if we were not the boat that had come to Reval during the gale of a fortnight before, said he had been sheltering in Reval at the time, and paid Racundra almost as many compliments as that stout little ship deserved. With these compliments warming my heart, as compliments to Racundra always do warm it, I made my way back along the shore to the dinghy, where the Cook had already arrived with her parcels. We rowed back through smooth water, for the wind had fallen altogether, so that I was glad we were not drifting about on the other side of the point; and after we had had supper and decided that Anders Ringberg ought not to have mistaken his fish for fish caught yesterday, we smoked in the cockpit and looked towards the village. It was nine o’clock. There was not a light to be seen. Everyone in the place had gone to bed. The blinking light on Roogö showed far away, and the light on Odensholm, and we could just see another behind the trees on the point warning the “Yorks” of these days not to come to provide name-boards for the Spithamn houses. Schooner and cutter were in perfect darkness, so Racundra ran her riding light up the forestay to serve alike for herself and her big sisters, and we turned in and slept.

  OUR NEIGHBOUR AT SPITHAMN.

  TWO SMALL SAILORS, WITH A MODEL OF HER.

  After midnight I went on deck and found the wind easterly, the moon high, clouds overhead moving from the S., and the sea nearly calm.

  SPITHAMN TO RAMSHOLM

  SEPTEMBER 8th. Barometer 30. We had a fine night at our Spithamn anchorage. I went on deck two or three times, but those high clouds at midnight had been true prophets; the wind had changed to the S., Racundra swung with her nose to the land and at dawn the sea was scarcely rippled. Those six windmills on the skyline of the hill were now on our starboard bow, and we had a kindly little wind to take us out to sea again and round the point, after which it would be clean in our faces, for I had set my heart on going due S. and taking Racundra through the channel between Worms and the mainland, instead of back by the way we had come through the deeper, wider channel between Worms and Dagö. The Baltic Pilot says: “Hapsal [whither we were bound] can be approached from the northward by the channel between Wormsö and Nukke Peninsula, but it is so narrow and winding that the navigation is difficult even with local knowledge, assisted by the buoys.” There is no need to explain to any yachtsman the passionate desire of everyone on board to take Racundra through that way. I had had the chart on the wall of my room all winter, and was sure that, given a fair wind, there would be no difficulty about it. So we decided to make no change of plan, but to beat S., get into the shelter of the land as near the channel as we could, and, if the wind should change, why, then rejoice and run through to Hapsal.

  The wind did not change, and blew from the S., shifting in its most annoying manner, so that every time we went about we found ourselves pointing nothing like so well as we had hoped. We spent twelve tedious hours in making the dozen miles between Spithamn and the entrance to the channel, sailing, of course, a very much greater distance as we zigzagged against that fitful wind. As soon as we rounded Spithamn at about half-past seven in the morning we met three schooners racing northwards neck and neck; and after that throughout the day a long procession of sailing vessels with their booms wide out, schooners goose-winged, came rejoicing from the S., whither we were painfully beating. Sturdy Wormsö schooners, a few clean, smartly painted Finns, cutters running home to Reval, others bound for Kaspervik, more than twenty sail we counted, and we did not begin to count until many had already dropped hull-down to northward of us. Ship after ship made a fair and unforgivable picture. In a sailing vessel beating against the wind, meeting other sailing vessels running free, you know the whole bitterness of the poor man picking the crumbs from the floor at the rich man’s feast. And looking at the men on board the running vessels as they idly lean on their railings watching your slow progress as they flash by, it is hard not to believe that they are feeling all the selfish complaisance of the rich.

  It was smooth-water sailing, and the Cook made jam with the cranberries that had been Anders Ringberg’s conscience money in the matter of the salt fish. The Ancient was much interested in the jam-making, and, while I was steering, I could hear them in the galley discussing the far more valuable art of making marmalade, an art that we discovered for ourselves slowly and by means of accidents, as Charles Lamb’s Chinaman learnt the delights of roast pork through the burning of his house. The recipe for marmalade in Racundra is as follows: First buy your oranges; then eat your oranges, but do not throw the peel into the sea. Then boil the peel. Then – but here I must revert to our actual discovery, which was made on Kittiwake and not in Racundra, which is a far steadier boat. Then (in Kittiwake) make an inadvertent movement from one side of the boat to the other and upset the whole boiling into the bilge. Collect the orange peel from the bottom boards and stew once more with plenty of sugar, when the result will be indistinguishable from the best English marmalade. The important discovery, apart from the fact that by this process you can both eat your oranges and have your marmalade, was the upsetting. Until that event we had not known that the water of the first boiling should be poured off, and the final stewing done with fresh water, and this last is the whole secret of marmalade. Having once discovered it, we never troubled again to rock the boat, and can make just as good marmalade in Racundra as in the diminutive and unstable Kittiwake.<
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  Jam-making was in full steam when at eleven I got a good fix of our position, with Telness beacons in line on the mainland to the E. of us and Saxbiness lighthouse far away on the island of Worms, bearing S.W. by W. After that we took turns in keeping a pretty careful look-out, for many outlying rocks and shoals explain the unwillingness of the Baltic Pilot to give any directions for this passage except the advice not to try it. By 2.45 we were about two hundred yards from the Savinova spar-buoy. We went about and, with a slight change of wind, pointed on the starboard tack S.E. towards the mainland, going about again when we came near the rocks awash north of Telness Point. It had long been clear that we could not hope to get through that day, and I began to search the chart for a possible anchorage and decided to leave the fairway close to the entrance to the channel and to anchor between two shoals north of Ramsholm. Accordingly, after passing close by the buoys that mark the Sgibneva bank, we steered S.E., keeping the lead going; and at 6.30 while it was still light enough to see that we had a sandy bottom, let go in two fathoms of water, lowering our sails but not taking the halyards off or putting the covers on, so as to be able to clear out at a moment’s notice. Just as we had everything snug, I saw a cutter, the last of that long procession, coming with a fair wind from the S. out from between the mainland and Worms, through the channel I wanted to enter in the morning. With the longdistance glasses I saw her pass between stakes, and was able to take a bearing of them and identify them on the chart. If need should be and the wind should come from the N., we should be able at least to get so far in the direction of shelter.

  However, the wind did not change, but rather strengthened from the S. We had warm jam “to our supper”, as we say in Yorkshire, and lay very snug and quiet in a place rather beastly from a sailor’s point of view (because it gave us so little elbow-room in case of change of wind), but very fine to look at. Away to the S.W. was the wooded island of Worms. S. of us was the desolate point of Ramsholm, and far away eastward was the low-lying mainland. As dark closed in upon us there was not a single light to be seen. The Worms Lighthouse at Saxbiness was at the other side of the island and hidden from us. Odensholm had sunk below the horizon to the N. There was no light on shore in cottage or farm. Racundra tasted all the isolation of Noah’s Ark, alone as the flood receded and showed the peaks and uplands of a depopulated earth. She was, however, aground upon no Ararat, but swung gently to her anchor in a little natural harbour, every mole and breakwater of which was hidden under water.

  RAMSHOLM TO HAPSAL THROUGH THE

  NUKKE CHANNEL

  I had left the lead overboard as a means of telling whether our anchor held, and three or four times in the night I went on deck to have a look at the lead-line. Once, when the wind had shifted and we had swung a quarter of a circle, the line stretching far out on our beam gave me a bit of a fright, but I went forward and found I could easily hold the boat by one hand on the chain. I took in the lead and dropped it again, and satisfied myself that we were not moving, and finally turned in so thoroughly reassured that I slept until six and was very unwilling to get up even then. However, the wind began to make a rowdy hullabaloo overhead, and at half-past six I turned out sleepily to find that it was blowing hard from the S.E. dead against us.

  I had been told that the channel was impossible for a sailing vessel against the wind and that the local sailors never attempt it, but wait at the entrance till the wind will take them through, this being the reason why yesterday we had met such a number of sail all together. Still, we had made our present anchorage against this same wind, and I decided to try to get through, making up my mind beforehand that there should be no false squeamishness about dropping back in case we should find ourselves engaged on a hopeless bit of work.

  One can always find a good enough reason for doing anything that one has made up one’s mind to do. In this case I had a perfect one, quite apart from the fact that we did not like staying where we were, and that the jam had been so good that we had eaten all the bread and could get no more till we should come to Hapsal. There was a reason pro and a reason contra – everything, in fact, that the human mind requires when it is putting up a pretence of being logical. The wind looked like continuing, but, so far as I could see through the long-distance glasses, there was not yet much current about the spar-buoys, which, however, were standing very high out of the water, tatters of seaweed clinging to them far above the waterline showing their more normal depth. I was sure of two things: the first, that a strong current would be setting against us out of the Sound within a very few hours, and the second, that I should have to deal with depths abnormally low. The first outweighed the second, and at seven in the morning our anchor was up and hanging at our bows, ready to drop at any moment in case of need, and we were off warily back to the fairway, the lead going all the time in two fathoms of water. Then we beat up towards the two spar-buoys that mark the entrance to the passage.

  The men on a cutter whirling out of the channel with the wind behind them looked at us as if they thought we were mad and shrugged their shoulders with expression. But, though Racundra is not good at beating as compared with racing yachts, she is better against the wind than any of the local cutters and schooners, and, when we set her at it this morning, she seemed to know she was expected to do her best, and did it. There was a toughish wind, too, and that always suits her. With less wind we should not have tried it. At the same time, we left nothing to chance and took no risks of her missing stays, which, in this narrow way between rocks and sharply shoaling banks, would have meant almost inevitable disaster. I had sweated over the chart till I knew it pretty well by heart, and indeed only looked at it twice, and that when we were already through the actual channel and were out again in more or less open water, looking for the buoys and beacons that show the way into Hapsal Bay. I therefore set the Ancient at the tiller and went forward myself with the lead-line handy, though as a matter of fact there was never time to use it and it would have been useless, because there is no gradual shoaling. You are either in the channel with three fathoms of water or out of the channel with a fathom or less, or on a rock with no more than a couple of feet. My real business forward was to deal with the staysail in getting her quickly about and to con the little ship in without, if I could help it, communicating to the Ancient any of the doubts with which I was myself beset.

  HAPSAL JETTY (SHOWING LEADING BEACONS).

  DRYING OUT.

  I kept my eyes on the sticks which here serve as spar-buoys, on the colour of the water and on the bottom, often only too visible, and shouted “Ready about” in a tone as near as possible that in which those words are spoken when we are at sea and have the whole Baltic to make mistakes in. At first the Ancient was just a little bit petulant at the frequency of our tacks, but we touched once with the centreboard from hanging on an extra second, once only, and from that moment he was perfect and everything worked in the delirious, exciting manner of tight-rope walking. He knew then that we really were on a tight-rope, and that this was not an example of my ridiculous preference for imagining, when navigating, that Racundra has the draught of a big ship. We swung round as the words were out of my mouth; I had the staysail aback till the mainsail filled, and we were off again, rushing from side to side of the channel, making a bit every time, creeping up in hurried zigzags, a dozen or so between each buoy. The chart that I had read so often in the winter took visible solid shape as we moved. There was Mereholm; there those rocks awash; there two windmills on Nukke; there, at last, the buoy with a ball and two brooms, bases apart, on the top. The brooms are not there, but that must be the buoy none the less.

  It is hard enough to give an idea of how things looked. At first, of course, there was the open sea behind us, and we were pushing our way in between the wooded island of Worms and the low, grass-patched and rocky mainland. The two were always a good distance apart, but outcrops from both of them were close to us either above or under water, and at times it was difficult to preserve one’s faith
in chart knowledge and to sail so near those brown rocks with such a space of open water on the other side. How much simpler to sail boldly up the middle. And then, on the other tack, just a few score yards, often less, and there were more rocks under the water, or pale green shallows splashed with dark, and we were thankfully about again and scuttling back towards the brown lumps that at least were out of water and less secretive in their villainy. And yet, what a stretch of water! and round Racundra would go again, the wavelets foaming under her bows, and so on, to and fro, to and fro, each time gaining a little southwards against the wind, through gusts of which I had to yell to be heard by the Ancient at the tiller.

  I had enjoyed following the intricate Moon Sound channel from Paternoster through by the Erik Stone and Harry Island to the open sea, but there big ships could go, and we had a margin of yards and sometimes far more, in case we left it for a moment. Here there was no margin at all. We were ourselves drawing with centreboard down (as we had to have it down for beating against the wind) more than most of the small coasters who alone use this channel. It was incredibly exciting, the more so that as we proceeded, and time went on and the wind still blew, there was visibly growing current against us from the S. through the channel. It became a race between us and the current and the wind. Could we get through to the open and round into the bay of Hapsal before the wind had made the current so great that we could not hold against it?1 Each spar-buoy left astern was a separate triumph, and I would hardly let myself believe that we had left the worst of the channel behind us until the view before us had already widened, and we could see far into the broad Sound, where hull-down were three goose-winged schooners hurrying from the S. before the wind that for them was a friendly ally, the same wind that Racundra, sailing from the N., had had to meet and conquer. Now, after just four hours of frenzied beating, we were making longer tacks, keeping our eyes on two tall beacons on the mainland on the southern side of Hapsal Bay, already within the mouth of the inlet, and watching to bring two other beacons in line under Hapsal town with its church and ruined castle. Those two beacons, one on shore and one on a bit of a rock almost awash, would lead us safely between the shallows towards the little Hapsal harbour, on the quay of which again are two other beacons, which, taken in line, help little ships through the last few hundred yards of their passage. We shifted from the line of the first pair to the line of the second, found the spar-buoys that supplement these land signs, and then, sailing E. with the wind free, fairly foamed from buoy to buoy until at noon we rounded up and anchored beside two small trading cutters about a cable’s length from Hapsal pierhead.