The Brendan Voyage (11 page)

There was one other item on the slipway in Brandon Creek that would have surprised a yachtsman but not a medieval monk. Alongside the boat lay a soggy heap of sheepskins, looking grubby and smelling strongly. I had read that polar explorers had found sheepskins excellent insulation when sleeping on the ice; and as they were a typical
material from Saint Brendan’s day I thought it worth trying them as sleeping mats inside the boat. As it turned out, the smell of sheepskin was to become the third member of our triumvirate of grease and leather and wool which was to pervade our lives for the entire voyage.

For our clothing I had selected modern sailing suits. Each member of the crew was color-coded so that our garments did not get muddled. George wore orange; I had yellow; and as befitted our most Irish crew member, Arthur Magan had chosen green. Arthur already had a nickname for the voyage—Boots—because on the day he first joined the project, he showed up wearing a pair of size 12 boots that would have done credit to an oversized cowboy. In fact, nearly everything about Arthur came in the larger sizes. He was burly and stood over six feet, with a shock of yellow hair that stuck out at all angles. He exuded a genial air of crumpled untidiness that somehow gave him the impression of a friendly young bear just emerged from hibernation. At twenty-three he was the youngest member of the crew—but also the strongest. When anything was jammed, a mast needed lifting, or a mooring warp had to be hauled right, it was Boots who was called on for the job. When he heard about
Brendan,
he had written me a letter which was a model of brevity:

So I had invited him to come to Cork, and two days later he clumped into the boatyard in his size 12s, glanced briefly around the boat, mumbled his name, took off a battered tweed jacket that was a kaleidoscope of patches and mends, and began working alongside us.

Like his letter, Boots’s sentences were brief. Bit by bit, I learned that his family lived near Dublin, that he had spent much of his childhood
in Valentia near the Dingle, and could “sail a boat a bit.” Later I would also discover that he was a magnet for the girls. Young ladies could not resist the challenge of trying to feed him, tidy him up, and generally take care of him. Boots, it seemed, was an ideal feminine project, but a hopeless one too. At landfall after landfall on the voyage he would be returned to
Brendan
by his latest girlfriend, despair mingling with sadness in her expression, as before her very eyes he began to dissolve into his usual chaotic state the moment he stepped aboard. And as likely as not, we later discovered that he had left some of his clothing behind, and these would be sent ahead to be at our next port of call. Arthur himself took such matters in his stride. He never offered any information unasked; and he hadn’t even told his family that he had been selected for the
Brendan
crew until one morning his father read in the newspaper that a certain “Boots” Magan was going on the voyage. “Do you know anyone called Boots?” he asked over the breakfast table. “Yes, me,” was his son’s brief reply.

That rainy morning in Brandon Creek Arthur’s crumpled green sailingsuit was topped off with—of all things—a battered Sherlock Holmes stalking cap, its ear flaps lustily blowing in the wind. “Hello, wearing your Deputy Dawg outfit today?” the inevitable wisecrack came from Peter Mullett,
Brendan’s
photographer, dressed in a bright red sailing suit that made him look more like a cardinal than the London sparrow he was. Born and reared in London, Peter had been a successful magazine photographer before he had become exasperated with city life, thrown up his job, and moved with Jill, his glamorous ex-model wife, and his son Joey to the west of Ireland. There he had bought a plot of land, built a small cottage with his own hands and to his own design, and settled down to live as simply as possible. Then he too had heard about
Brendan,
and impressed me by arriving at the boatyard with a large suitcase. “Have you brought your cameras with you?” I asked him. “Yes,” he replied, and opened the case. It was divided down the middle by a partition. On one side a complete professional’s array of camera bodies, lenses, and sundry equipment lay neatly cradled in foam padding. But what caught my eye was the opposite half of the case. There was a comprehensive and well-used carpentry kit—complete with saws, draw knives, spoke shaves, drills, planers, and all the tools of a professional woodworker.
Brendan,
I thought to myself, was not just getting a photographer but, equally valuable, a man who could mend her wooden frame en route.

Rolf Hansen in his Norwegian blue sailing suit was the fifth and last member of the crew to join. He had come from Norway to volunteer, and was an old-boat fanatic. His hobby was interviewing retired fishermen in remote Norwegian coastal villages to collect their reminiscences about the days of sail. Short, barrel-chested, and bespectacled, Rolf was second only to Boots in physical strength; and like the Irishman, he was a man of few words, partly because he spoke only a smattering of English, but also because Rolf regarded seafaring as a serious business. When someone ventured to ask him if he was married, Rolf answered very seriously, “I am married to the sea.”

So an Irishman, a Cockney, a Norwegian, and an Englishman had joined
Brendan,
and I wondered how well we would get along together during the days that undoubtedly lay ahead. We were attempting a voyage which differed in two important respects from many previous voyages in reconstructed historic vessels. First, we were embarking in a true boat, not a raft.
Brendan
was not simply a platform on which the winds and currents might carry us to our destination if we were lucky. She would have to be sailed properly if she were to survive, and there was little margin for error. A single mistake—a rope jammed around a cleat in a squall, or a sail suddenly blown hard against the mast—could capsize her with disastrous results. Second, and more important, we were about to venture into cold waters where few modern yachts cared to go. This was not to be a sun-drenched cruise in bathing suits. We were about to take a very small, open boat into sub-Arctic conditions, where we would have to be muffled in heavy clothing for weeks on end, frequently soaked by rain and spray, and according to the Royal Navy survival experts who had drilled us in safety procedures, if anyone fell overboard incorrectly dressed, he would be dead within five minutes.

Fortunately, the bad weather on Saint Brendan’s day had not discouraged our friends. Many of those who had helped us came to the Dingle Peninsula to see us off, and held a farewell party at the nearby hotel with a conviviality that only the Irish could manage. Whiskey and stout were consumed in vast amounts; lively conversation culminated with an Irish public relations man, sent to calm proceedings, offering to fight all our critics; and at the right moment the roof of the bar sprung a massive leak under the weight of collected rainwater and deluged the guests.

“Why do you want to go on this voyage?” a reporter asked each crew member in turn.

“Because I enjoy sailing and want to learn how to handle this type of boat,” answered George.

“It’s a challenge,” said Peter.

“Because I love the sea,” was Rolf’s answer.

“For the crack. For the fun of it,” grunted Arthur, taking a long pull at his pint of stout.

“What about your wives? What do they think of your going off into the Atlantic like this?”

Jill Mullett looked at her husband. “You can’t stop Peter from doing what he wants to do,” she said. “Besides, it’s time he had another project to occupy him.”

Judith, George’s wife, agreed. “I think George ought to do what he wants to do. Besides, I hope to be seeing him when
Brendan
gets to Iceland.”

My wife managed to pass off the question. “Tim’s always doing this sort of project,” she told the journalist with a smile, “and after all, I’m a medievalist, and so I approve of anything that is good for medieval studies.”

Then came the inevitable question. “Aren’t you worried?” The three wives looked at one another. “No,” they replied firmly.

May 17 dawned fine, with high clouds chasing across the sky and thunderheads lurking on the horizon. The swell left by the gale was heaving into the Creek as I went up to one of the two cottages at the top of the road to consult Tom Leahy who lived there and kept a curragh in the Creek. Tom was another of the breed of craggy raw-boned Dingle men, tall and soft-spoken. “You go back to the hotel and get some rest,” he had told me the previous evening. “You’ll be needing it. Don’t worry about the boat. I and my son will keep an eye on her for you, and see that she is all right. No one can come past us without our hearing them.” And he had been as good as his word. In the small hours of the morning, when I had come down to check that all was well on
Brendan,
I found the silent figure of Tom Leahy, leaning like a black shadow against the wall that rimmed the Creek, gazing out over the boat. I thanked him for his help. “There were some children scrambling down there this evening,” he told me. “But they’re local lads and they
wouldn’t take anything.” Indeed, the honesty of the country children was such that although they had explored inside and out of the
Brendan,
and fingered its child’s treasure-trove of torches, knives, bars of chocolate and other delectables, not one single item had been filched.

Now, looking at the tide sucking past the mouth of the Creek, I asked Tom for his advice.

“Would you say that we could sail today?”

He looked at me steadily. “Wait till the tide turns,” he advised. “You should have a few hours, two or three at the most, in which to get clear. And I wouldn’t leave it any longer.”

“Why not, Tom?”

“I don’t like the look of the weather. We’re in for some rain and wind, and if the wind swings round to the northwest it’ll bring a heavy sea into the Creek. You’ll be trapped there, and I wouldn’t answer for the safety of your boat. The surge could break her to pieces.”

“All right, Tom. Then we’ll leave when the tide floats
Brendan
off the slipway. Will you be escorting us out?”

“Of course, and the prayers of my family and I will go with you,” he said.

It was Tom’s curragh that I had first seen at Brandon Creek so many months ago when I originally visited the area, and I remembered that Tom was the last man regularly working a curragh out of Brandon Creek. Somehow I thought it fitting that the last descendant of a tradition that stretched back for a millennium should see us on our way.

All that morning the local people began to filter down to the Creek. Farmers arrived with their families clinging to muddy tractors. Holidaymakers—for the Dingle is a favorite holiday area—came in cars. Students arrived on foot, and there were many who came on bicycles. A pair of local policemen drove up looking very self-conscious in a smart blue patrol car. Officially they were there to control the crowd, but they were far more interested in peering into
Brendan
with the other sightseers. A small group of priests settled themselves comfortably on the upper wall, and called out their blessings. Down on the quay, an old woman pushed forward from the crowd and thrust a small bottle of holy water into my hand. “God bless you all, and bring you safe to America,” she said. “We’ll pray for you each day,” chorused some nuns. I tucked the bottle of holy water safely inside the double gunwale in exactly the same place where every Dingle curragh, however
small, still carries its phial of holy water. John O’Connell had given each of us a small religious motif to carry with us. He was looking strained with worry and tension. So too were the wives and families. “Look after our son,” said Arthur’s father to me. Rolf stepped ashore from Tom Leahy’s curragh. He hadn’t been able to resist a chance to go for a spin in this rare breed of boat. It was high time we were gone.

“Come on!” I called to the crowd. “Give us a hand to push her off the slip.” There was a confused blur of faces, of hands and shoulders pushing at the brown leather hull, and with a soft slithering groan
Brendan
floated off the slipway and rode to an anchor in the middle of the narrow cleft.

“Goodybye, Daddy.” I heard Ida’s small voice clearly across the water. Fortunately, she and Joey Mullett were having such a good time together that they regarded the departure as a game.

“Time to put up the flags,” I called to George, and he hoisted them to the mainmast. They flew in the order of the countries we intended to visit: the tricolor of Ireland, the Union flag for Northern Ireland; Saint Andrew’s Cross for Scotland; the flag of Faroes; the flag of Iceland; the Danish flag for Greenland; then the Canadian Maple Leaf; and finally the Stars and Stripes. At the peak, on its own, flew the twin-tailed Brendan Banner, red cross on white.