The wrong beach

I had been sitting on this groyne for over an hour, waiting for the tide to float my boat so that I could escape upwind within the narrow gap between the groynes, and hoping that some friendly soul would happen by and exchange the time of day; none had.

I hadn’t intended to come here, I wanted to cross the estuary and discover a foreign land, but the wind, and the tide, and my appetite for risk and discomfort had delivered me here; a shallow inclined beach covered almost completely with smooth round shingle, but I had landed on a band of small ugly rocks thrown up by the sea at mid tide on the flattest part of the beach. I had been quizzed gently by the river police, as I had allowed my boat to drift off the shore, awaiting the right hour to come ashore. They had been polite and friendly, but their business was immigration and customs control, not friendship, (others with larger craft were boarded today), and on parting, they had advised me to put up my sails, down my board, and go ashore, they seemed oblivious to my leisure.

It had been a lonely day, an early start, nearly five hours afloat, first on a windless creek – a vast, flat, marsh bound, misty mill pond giving on to the River Medway, where at last I found the wind, and large shipping berthed on the Isle of Grain. Further round Grain, hobby fishing boats, from my club, and others, were at anchor, but I hadn’t exchanged so much as a wave, as I was engaged in the concentrated task of beating against a rising northeasterly wind, and the Medway under me was approaching at speed the greater waters of the Thames, right at the point where the Thames empties itself into the North Sea.

Sea birds abound in my home creek, oyster catchers and gulls rule the roost, but other waders are on the shores, and smaller birds stay behind the sea wall. I had given them all little attention, engaged, as I was, in rowing, and then in trying to catch first the fleeting breaths of wind, and then tuning my sails to make good use of the wind as it gathered strength and consistency. As always on these excursions I had been concentrating entirely on the wind, and the tide, and on keeping my little boat the right way up, and, landing on the beach, I craved some form of acknowledgement of my effort, but was ignored by all, as is normal for one who goes about in a small town looking obviously different.

So here I was on my groyne feeling a little sorry for myself, watching the waves lapping on the beach, and aware of the few passers by, spread out accross the beach, and showing me, and my little boat, no attention, until Rihanna came running; She stopped a little way off, looking to the man she was with for permission to approach this strange wreck that had washed up on her beach, this delightful addition to the world that was her playground. I waved a friendly ok to the man, and my heart warmed with this long awaited encounter. The little girl had an infectious smile, she beamed as I raised my small sails and offered to take her with me to America, she and the man seemed impervious to my bizarre apearance in my sailing smock, building site trousers, beanie hat and red cotton neckscarf. I was so flattered at her approval, it made me feel special, but whilst I chatted to the man, she continued to beam, she beamed at the sea, and at the pebbles on the beach, and at the sky. Rihanna could see delight wherever she looked for it, and shared it with all around her.

When the little girl was gone, and at length, the little wavelets began to wet the stones under my boat. I had hooked my anchor over the windward groyne further down the beach, and when the first wave lifted the boat I shoved out to float on the tumult, and began to walk an ark around my anchor until the boat floated high enough not to crash on the sharp stones below as the waves broke. I jumped in and prepared my sails, rudder and board, and then pulled in on my anchor line from the windward, (starboad) shroud, the boat drew right up against the groin, enough to give unease, but then the line went slack and the chain was in my hand, and the anchor in the bottom of the boat. Then straight to the sheets, to pull in the sails, and we are away upwind.

And I look back to the shore, but there is no one.

No one smiles and no one waves.