The Darkness and Light We Share: an anecdotal account of being somewhere else when 9–11 happened.

The Darkness and Light We Share: an anecdotal account of being somewhere else when 9–11 happened.

I manage to keep a steady bearing for a few minutes at a time before we yaw up and down another massive swell, each one pulling us into the trough that it leaves behind. The boom snatches and rattles as the reefed main sail fills and snaps tight. We are sailing downwind, with the wind at an angle to the stern. The sailing term is a ‘broad reach’ and this point-of-sail though comfortable in some respects, needs constant monitoring. In rough weather and in these waters, with all the busy shipping traffic moving in and out of the English Channel, one needs to be vigilant. The compass spins and settles as we surge forward.The wind growls and moans but the gale is moving with us, soft and warm from the west, swirling around the cockpit. A tropical system; Carribean, Floridian, Cuban or further north perhaps. We make good ground.

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Two and a half days earlier, we were sailing in the opposite direction, having left the Isle of Wight in the early hours, to catch the tidal run, past The Needles heading south-west toward the Atlantic. There was little wind and a powder blue sky was emerging from a glaringly white sea fog. We sat around relaxing in good spirits for the trip ahead to sail around the Channel Islands.

A radio call came in for the skipper. It was his colleague back onshore at the Hambles Marina, Southampton. He told him to listen to the News. Something big was happening in America, a terrorist attack on New York. We listened to the news and a nervous silence fell upon us. Nobody really knew what to say and to make matters worse the skipper’s younger sister had been due to board a plane out of JFK that morning.

At about that moment, NASA astronaught Frank Culbertson was passing by far overhead in the International Space Station. ‘The only American not on planet Earth,’ he had just documented a view of New York, post-attack, after learning from his ground crew that they were not having the best day down there. Airplanes had flown into the World Trade Centre, another flown into the Pentagon. Culbertson grabbed a camera and started to video New York from space, clearly visible in the clear Autumn skies of the East Coast.

Looking across the Atlantic, our little crew of inexperienced sailors, can hardly imagine what this all means. The news skims details at that point but airports and security in the UK are on high alert, flights grounded and ports are closed. “Is this World War Three?,” someone suggests, only half joking. Our passage to St Peter port in Guernsey is uneventful and we arrive later that evening. We go ashore hungry for both food and information. We sit in a dismal pub and watch the same dreadful images transmitted over and over until wearily we return to the boat to sleep.

In the aftermath, Prime Minister Tony Blair has already pledged that Britain will stand “full square alongside the U.S.” in the war against terrorism. British Armed Forces and Law Enforcement Agencies in the country and across the world are on high alert. A Service of Remembrance is held at St. Paul’s Cathedral and attended by Blair and members of the royal family, senior government officials, military representatives from both the United States and British armed forces and a congregation of thousands inside and outside the cathedral. In an odd break from tradition, the Queen orders the Coldstream Guards to play the American national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, during the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. This historical gesture of allegiance draws thousands of emotional onlookers.

The next day we sail around Guernsey and visit the small islet of Jethou. A young woman called Maggie and myself swim ashore from the boat in the chilly water. That evening there is talk of going home early among the crew. Nearly all want to leave the next day to return to families and loved ones, to share the sombre mood of the British public at that moment. We listen to the shipping forecast on the radio in the boat. A large cylone would be passing through next day in a north-easterly direction with possible Force 9–10 gales. A few of us, myself and the skipper included, think it would be better to wait for the storm to pass. The rest of the crew ask the skipper Sam if it can still be possible. Sam tells us that it will be rough but that we can make use of the following winds to propel us home more quickly, catching a ride on the tail of the storm. He also says that the boat is quite capable of handling it. I can see a glint in is eye as he says this. I suspect he is secretly looking forward to the more exciting sail and early return himself. We take a vote and it is agreed that we will leave the Channel Islands for Southampton next day.

I am feeling slightly disappointed by this decision if I am honest and perhaps a little apprehensive about the sudden change in plans. I know this is selfish but the hopes I’d

had for this trip; to produce an attractive travel article and be published, payed and commisioned; have been snatched from my grasp. As a freelancer in the media industry, my workload has taken a hit from the financial crisis on th reun up to now. I have fallen on the kindness of friends, sleeping on their sofas, searching for answers, knocking on doors. That’s how I got here and so to be truthful, I’d rather stay, at least for a while. It’s a good position to be in as a writer I’m thinking, in a parallel universe of sorts, observing, drifting.

On the afternoon of September 13th 2001, we head out of St Peter’s after a day of anticipation, preparation and some time relaxing in the town. As we motor through the harbour entrance; grey-green walls slipping by; the sea is already heavy and surging into the port. We pass a sailing boat coming in. The crew look exhilerated and bedraggled. As we pass in the opposite direction one of them looks to us and makes the ‘you’re crazy’ gesture and mouths the words with a grin. He points upward with his gloved hand to indicate the size of the waves. We steer north out of the heads and see a huge black cloud obscuring the horizon directly where we are bound. I personally feel like we are doomed actors in a cliched disaster movie but the skipper is upbeat. He plays the song ‘Fantastic Day’ by the band Haircut One Hundred as loud as the stereo can take it. I see the strain on the faces of the others and the sky darkening behind them.

After sunset, the sea turns deep black especially straight ahead where it may as well be a solid wall we are destined to crash into. Later, above me the sky is quite clear, the surface of the sea is lit by the heavens and the clouds are pinkish. I watch stars falling in showers; the moon appears fleatingly. It is sufficient to comprehend the enormity of the rolling waves and as they charge eastward towards the French coastline. The boat slews hard over suddenly in a gust, my lapse of concentration partly to blame. The skipper, emerges at the companionway hatch, takes a deep breath of the night air and shouts over to me to be heard above the wind, “Keep the port shroud in line with that star!” He points over the cabin about forty five degrees above the horizon and at about two hundred and ninety degrees on the compass, the course I had been trying to keep steady, about forty five degrees east of that. I turn the wheel a few inches to the left and watch the bow move over slowly, reluctantly, feeling the pressure against the rudder as we change our angle to the waves, wind and currents. Just before my bright Evening Star dips from sight she comes into line with the rigging. I straighten up on the helm and the bow plunges down the seething surface.

The Evening Star or Morning Star is really the planet Venus, our closest neighbour in the Solar System. Being a planet it appears in the sky as a more consistant object unlike the stars in the constellations. For this reason, it is a vital navigational beacon and because of its orbit being closer to the Sun than the Earth, it is the brightest natural object in the sky besides the Sun and the Moon. Venus’ switches its identity as Evening Star visible in the western sky just after sunset to Morning Star visible in the eastern sky, just before sunrise, every 263 days as it passes between the Earth and the Sun. Ancient cultures mistakenly believed the two positions of the planet in its cycle to be two different objects. Venus has thick gas clouds enveloping it which intensely reflect the Sun’s rays, making it very visible even in twilight. Globally, different cultures have valued, revered and to various degrees worshiped this specular body of luminosity. Al-Zuhara in Arabic; the Islamic world also recognises this planet’s brilliance and the name means ‘to shine’ or ‘to illuminate.’ Different names for the same heavenly object shining brightly above the horizon, yet really our universal experience of this light is the same.

Steering through a storm like this is not something I had expected to be doing. My role on this trip was as a photographer and writer, an observer. However, the rough sea has rendered all the crew seasick, apart from Sam the skipper, Maggie and myself. So, the skipper is down below with Maggie, navigating with compass and paper charts and the seasick stricken crew. I am glad to be outside in the fresh air, at the helm, witnessing the drama of the storm, on watch.

Hours pass, the hatch is flung open, a mug of hot sweet tea thrust into my hands. I savour it and feel the warmth spread into my core, as I notice ahead of us the first glimmers of gloomy dawn appearing, backlighting The Needles as we approach them from the west. Those pale towers, seemingly impenetrable, forboding and yet reassuring, seem different, more vulnerable now.