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there?
    ‘Come on then,’ I said, ‘why don’t you come? Come now. We’ve got waterproofs for you, and plenty of food. We’re going to Ireland. We should do it in about forty hours with a wind like this. You could be back by the weekend.’
    He hesitated. ‘Come on,’ I said, and stretched my hand out over the gap between the boat and the pontoon. He hung there for a moment, like a diver on the lip, or a fledgling on the verge of leaving the nest, a millimetre difference between staying and going, but then, a flicker of the needle, he held back. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I’ve got too much on here. I can’t. I can’t. I will, one day. I’m going sailing this summer. Good luck, though! Good luck!’

2
The Passage
    I hauled the warps inboard, and as George took the boat under motor out from the quay, I coiled them and stowed them in the starboard cockpit locker. Fenders in and stowed in the lazarette. Stays’l out of its bag, hanked on to the forestay, its tack fitted with a locking shackle to a strop fixed to the stemhead, the head of the sail itself on to the halyard snap-shackle, the tail of the halyard made up on the pin-rail, and the body of the sail marlin-hitched for the time being to the boat’s safety rail. The two stays’l sheets then tied with bowlines through the cringle at the clew, led back through the sheet-leads on the side-decks, figure-of-eight stop-knots put into their bitter ends, and the full length of the sheets wound around the secondary winches beside the cockpit.
    The mains’l next. Ease the leeward runningbackstay and make it off on the leeward shrouds under the light box. Bring the windward backstay up around the primary winch on that side and winch it iron-tight. Release the sail ties holding the mains’l to the gaff and stow them. Unloop the peak and throat halyards from the pin-rail, loosen the leeward topping lift, bring the head of the boat almost up to the wind, ease the main-sheet and haul on both the halyards. Up the sail goes, filling as she does so, that full belly swollen with wind. Make sure the battens in the leach don’t get caught on the topping lifts and when they are clear tighten up the throat first and then the peak, making up the main halyards on the rail and then, with the jiggers on the port side, put extra tension into both of them, the luff board-hard, the peak just tight enough to put a crease into the sail running diagonally all the way across it down to the tack. The mizzen up in the same way, then the big heads’l, the high-cut yankee, unravelled from its roller-furling gear on the bowsprit forestay, its leeward sheet hauled in tight on the primary winch next to the cockpit. Finally, the stays’l, released from its marlin-hitched tie, sheets eased, hoisted on its own halyard, made up at the pin-rail, jigged with its own jigger and its leeward sheetwinched in on the leeward secondary. Ten minutes out of Mylor, the engine off, a full suit of sails driving her, tell-tales aligned on the swell of the yankee, the
Auk
was now making for Ireland.
    In the end, however perfect your boat, you go to sea exhausted, when the weather is least suitable. You just bite off what you can’t do. The
Auk
was now going to look after us in a way that before we had only been looking after her. It’s the deal you make with your boat. Pour it into her and she will, in time, pour it out for you.
    There was a problem. The wind was strong but at least in our favour, just veering that evening from easterly to southerly as we made our way down to the Lizard. If we were lucky it would stay on the beam all the way to Ireland. The boat felt sleek and tight. George and I were tired but keyed up. It then slowly became clear to us that no instruments were working. We turned every switch but nothing came on. The electrician who had arrived to replace two of them two days before did not have a depth gauge in stock. He was going to send it to us in Ireland. But the system on which the