Bobbing Along

November 19th

Like teaching, I have been sailing every week but haven’t really written about it, because it is pretty repetitive. The sailing club is open on Saturdays and Wednesdays, and me and Lija go out in ‘funboats’, which are tiny yellow plastic things with lurid fuschia sails, or in catamarans with someone competent to take charge, or we go kayaking if there is no wind. The weather has been amazing, and it is so exhilarating to scud along in the sunshine, being drenched with salt water, and to see the mountains topped with snow above the town. Apart from a minor mishap involving me tearing a hole in a wetsuit while trying in vain to get it to accommodate my thighs, we have been doing pretty well. Recently, there hasn’t been much wind, so we have taken the kayaks out to chase cormorants or fish for edible sea urchins.

The ile rousse has a collection of little rocky islands to navigate around and cliffs to jump off for the more adventurous. The adrenaline junkies include the teenage boys from the sailing club and Lija, rather than me. I have been swimming though, although the water is chilly now that it’s the end of November. One week the sailing instructor, Pierrot, who is friendly and leathery and reassuringly knowledgeable about the sea, dropped us off on one of the little islets and we scrambled around on it. It is bare orange rock, so covered in guano that I thought there was some sort of white quartz mixed in with the other stone. The seabirds leave piles of fruit stones and tiny white snails in sheltered places.

Although I say it is repetitive, the sea is completely different each time. Today we finally had some wind and the water was slate blue. Once we left the harbour’s shelter the big waves rolled around the island, bucking our little plastic boats about, and the breeze ruffled the water so that it looked as if it was pocked by raindrops.

The best day so far was a kayak trip when the sea was eerily calm. Sea kayaking is strange because you are so close to the water and can see to the bottom where shoals of silver fish hang above the sand, almost motionless. I always feel very small on the empty sea, with the huge sky above, almost as if I can see the curve of the earth. Anyway, that day the water was like some other substance, a silvery gel rather than a liquid, and not a single wave. It looked computer generated. So we paddled out and Pierrot spotted some dolphins a little way out to sea, and we went after them as quietly as we could, trying not to let the paddles knock against the hull. We came close enough to see them very clearly. There were three of them, chasing the tiny fish that leap out of the water. The dolphins puffed out their clouds of breath and we followed them until they disappeared.