Christian Beamish The Voyage of the Cormorant

“The wind still hurled us down the coast, the occasional tendril of kelp wrapping the rudder blade like a tentacle and then breaking free with the inexorable force of our momentum. Though my hands, arms, and shoulders were knotted with fatigue, I was prevailing in the fight to keep the boat steering in line with the waves. I even got the hang of riding out the bigger ones, and actually hooted once with the fun of linking one wave with a second and then a third steep swell for a shooshing toboggan slide of more than 100 yards.

I recognized that Cormorant was handling herself and that her pointed stern split the waves like cordwood, allowing them to roll off to either side. I had only to maintain my course, and if I managed to avoid running up on a reef, I would eventually make the sheltering cliffs of Punta Colonet. It was an absurd situation nonetheless – the roaring wind and desolate shore, this long winter night and the ghostly moonglow illuminating the whitecaps off into the distance – completely alone in my open boat, 250 miles down the coast.

Then I sang. For the ridiculous peril I faced, for my folly, for grace, and for a prayer. I sang the old Anglican hymn “Praise for Creation,” and the wind became almost funny at that point – the absolute opposite, the utter rejection of morning and calm. The fact that no one in the world had a clue as to my predicament, or even, precisely where I was and, even more so, that I had put myself here struck me somehow as humorous. “Blackbird has spo-ken,” I belted out in the rage, “like the first bhir-hi-hi-hirrrd!” I had come in close now, spray blowing back off the crashing surf just a few hundred yards in, and the high cliffs of Colonet loomed ahead. As I had hoped, when I sailed to the base of the sheer walls, the wind passed overhead, 300 feet off the mesa, and left the water calm and strangely still, even as the ocean went ragged not 100 yards outside.

I could have scrambled up the boulders to kiss that old cliff face for the shelter it provided.

I set anchor and then put booties over my wet wool socks, slaked my thirst with deep draughts of fresh water, and mashed handfuls of trail mix into my mouth. My body shook with fear, exaltation, and relief. I wrapped myself in the mainsail, too exhausted to arrange the boat tent and sleeping bag.

The moon and stars had burned into my irises, and light patterns swirled hypnotically behind my lids. With these strange points of light in my vision, I wondered if this was what dying might be like.”

From Voyage of The Cormorant: A Memoir of a Changeable Sea by Christian Beamish.

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