Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Warm blooded mammals

Late at night, open ocean. Fourteen nautical miles off the Aran Islands. Pitch dark, heavy mist. Salt and damp in the hair. Cold drops falling from the main. Energy low. Creaking from the cleated spinnaker sheets. Middle of a four-hour reaching run, boat speed 9.4 knots. Hull slapping off the waves from the northwest. Rolling, pitching. Fucking yawing makes me sick. Don’t notice the rolling and pitching but the fucking yawing. Lying third, maybe second, maybe last. No sighting of another boat for the past four hours. Fuck ‘em, that they all may be astray out in the Atlantic someplace. Lights off in the distance, ship or fishing boat probably. Small red light to the East, Inisheer maybe. Isn't there a red light out there where the Lybian dynamite ship ran up on the rocks years ago. Don't know. Only ever sailed past the Islands in daytime going in to Galway. Never landed there. Did you? Yea, in a plane years ago. Mad fucker flying it. Don't know that it's deep enough in by the pier. You don't want to be in the lee of an Island with all those bloody rocks and you not having a clue where the fuckers are. You could get a puff out from the Connemara side that would have you in a minute. Was that landing on grass? Yea. Bloody cold. Go below again if I start shivering. Wishing I were at home with smallfella snuggled up to me. Who volunteers for this shit. Waves spitting at us. Shoes wet from hanging out earlier. Must buy the proper wellies next time I'm in Cork. Bits flying off the tops of the waves. Fuck off. What are ye doing out here anyway. Fuck off, pathetic airbreathers. Ye left this place ten million years ago and good riddance.

Six torpedos off the aft quarter. White lines of phosphorescence, about a metre under the waves. Closing. Fast and steady. Bearing 195 and steady.

Weaving. Red Arrows, eat your hearts out. Synchronised swimming in 3D.

Jumping abeam. Glistening bodies. Intelligent eyes. Hearts lifting. Primeval encounter.

Next business. Peel off at thirty degrees and accelerate away on afterburners.

Torpedos away.

Back to not thinking about the yawing.

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