There is an air of satisfaction with every new seam sewn and plate added to the craft, as if the end is creeping up on me. The story of 'The Elves and the Shoe Maker' comes to mind as each morning I wake and go into the garden to find another plate of leather attached to my currach. The craft and time itself,  becoming almost inconsequential and life that evolves around the project has altered so that life will never be the same again.  The term 'boat' is but a space in my garden that has become a theatre where imaginations are freed. Children playing pirates or reading fairy stories to me as I work, artists linking to a vision from which they can present to the world, archaeologists completing mathematical equations for what was possible and architects studying structure and forming ideas for future projects, all with in this space called the wicker currach, that sits out side my window waiting to be completed and live up to our bargain, that we shall sail the high seas. 

For me, this space has grown beyond  my greatest dreams and, by no small means, with the help and guidance of Paul Adamson of Sailing West. When this time last year he started me on a journey that has altered my thoughts fundamentally on the natural world and people around me by introducing me to the sea. Memories of sitting in darkness watching the lights of hollyhead slowly emerge from behind the sail on the horizon, will forever be with me, and the sense of helplessness and dependence upon strangers that I never before had met. But the satisfaction felt when a year later, I pick up a book to revise the rules of the sea or weather and navigation, and to understand their meaning  is almost reason enough now to have begun the project in the first place. Sailors and the sea speak a different language that they can only understand among themselves the sea is their master and the sailor forever drunk of his intoxicating breath, that being the wind.  Thanks for unlocking the door Paul. Wishing you and Sailing West all the best for the future......         

 

 

 

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