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Our sailing is the maiden voyage of Scillonian III. Pier, dock, town, then the hills beyond, each in its turn drops from sight until we are surrounded entirely by choppy waves. An interviewer from Radio Cornwall holds out a fuzzy microphone, into which I speak with enthusiasm.

Pegging out washing
my neighbour hears me broadcast
from the Atlantic.

Spring tides reveal at low ebb a unique view of that submerged country between ‘islands’ which are really the hills and carns of a drowned landscape, its valleys and meadows now become sea-bed. As we cross the bar through white sand and marram grass, the danger of being marooned gives an edge to perception, sharpens colours and smells: gold gorse, bright pebbles, the reek and shift of wet brown kelp in glistening piles. Exploring moorland pocked and humped with burial mounds and hollows guarded by pointed stones, we discover the whole slope underfoot is a bronze age graveyard.

A grassy bowl -
above me endless sky,
below, ancestors’ bones.

I climb alone to high ground and enter an isolated world of barren rock, sky, sea, its air ringing with the cries of birds.

Evening brings full moon, high tide. The small bay brims. Young people, shouting, pull their gigs up the beach, toast the stars in beer. With others I walk along the pale strand, marvel at beauty. Feelings of slight sadness linger in memories of the afternoon’s solitude.

In the holiday throng
listening for echoes
of silence.

Our return journey is through stormy seas. Where six currents meet, grey mountainous waves heave against blurred portholes, and people lurch on deck to mix vomit with brine. Only when Land’s End comes into view, does the ocean stabilize.

When crossed waters smooth
weak tea revives; weak laughter.
Our boat comes safe home.