Alone on a Wide Wide Sea Part 6

The ice was here,

the ice was there, The ice was all around:.

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled, Like noises in a swound!.

At length did come an Albatross, Thorough the fog it came; As if it had been a Christian soul, We hailed it in G.o.d's name.

Every time I spoke those words now, I felt that somehow I was living inside the poem, that it had been written just for Dad and me, just for this moment as we approached the Horn on the 9th March.

Around the Horn, and with Dolphins Too!

2005hrs 9 Mar 55' 47"S 74' 06"W.

Dear Mum, dear Grandpa, dear everyone. Feels like this really is the bottom of the earth down here. The sky up there is black with rain squalls and the wind's screaming like I've never heard it before. this is not a funny place to be. don't think I'll hang about. Kitty 4 doesn't seem to care though. she just bounces along, two storm jibs up twin poled, 6 knots, riding each wave like it was just a ripple. If this was a talking boat bout the only thing she can't do! -she'd be shouting at the waves bring it on baby, gimme more, see if I care, you think you can beat me? no way hosay! And you should see the waves she'd be shouting at. Bout 15 metres from bottom to top, so when you're down in a trough and look up they look as if they're about 50 metres. And they're long, that's what makes them different. They've travelled all around the world just to meet us here aren't they nice? aren't they kind? building all the time. Up to 200 metres long, I promise you. Awesome, magnificent, majestic, amazing, exhilarating, overwhelming (running out of adjectives so I'll stop). They're wave monsters that's what they are, and when one decides to break it's like an avalanche that goes on and on, and Kitty 4 does s...o...b..arding then surfing through the middle of it, raging white water all around, the air snowing foam. So beautiful, so wonderful. Should be scary but it's not. Too excited to be frightened, too much to think about, too much to do. And maybe I'm too Cretan to be scared, Grandpa!

And besides, I keep thinking that every wave brings us nearer to the Horn. The Horn is dead ahead by my reckoning, only 230 miles to go can you believe that? We should be going around it on Friday if all goes well. It's strange, I'm not worried at all. Maybe that's because my albatross is still up there, still with us. He hovers over the bow, like he's leading us, like he's showing us the way. Wind doesn't seem to bother him at all. I mean why isn't he just blown away? How does he do it? He looks like he's playing with the wind, like he's having fun with it, teasing it. He's not just the king of the birds, he's the master of the wind too. Against the black of the clouds he looks whiter than he's ever been, white as an angel, a guardian angel. I keep saying it I know, but that's what he looks like to me. Had the last of my sausages and baked beans for my supper. Got to go easy on the hot chocolate. run out if I'm not careful. One little problem, caught my little finger in a rope, think it's broken so I've strapped it up. can't feel it most of the time so that's good. I can hear what you're saying Mum. Yes, I'll be careful. Got 9 more fingers. So no worries. Loving this. Love you. Allie.

1825hrs 11 Mar 56' 00"S 67' 15"W.

Done it done it done it! Woweee! We're going around the Horn and with dolphins too, and my albatross of course. I'm going to tell you how it was. I knew the Horn was there, but I couldn't see her. Every time we climbed a wave in the last four hours I was looking for her, but she was never there. So from time to time, I'd go down to check the screen. The Horn was always on the screen but never where she should be when I went back up into the c.o.c.kpit again. It was so so frustrating. Kitty 4 didn't seem to want to stay on the top of a wave long enough for me to catch my first glimpse of land. Then I did. I whooped and yelled and sang and danced, well sort of, not a lot of room for dancing in the c.o.c.kpit. And my albatross swooped down low over the boat almost touching me as he flew by. Then he soared up high and went off towards the Horn, to have a look I guess. He'll be back.

I've been dreaming about this moment, Mum, Grandpa, ever since I first read about it, or did Dad talk about it first, can't remember. And now I'm doing it. I'm here. Kitty 4 is poled out, full main. No squalls about. West wind 15-20 knots. Got to change the flags soon, Chilean to Argentinian. Aussie and Greek one still up there Grandpa, looking a bit battered and torn, like me. But they're still flapping away up there, like they're really happy, really proud we've made it. Me too, me too. I'm flapping with happiness.

The rocks of the Horn do not look at all inviting wouldn't want to be any closer, black and jagged when you can see them through the sea mist. grey and grim and dismal. been so lucky with the weather. Not hard to imagine what this place can be like in a Force 10 when it's really angry. Underneath us, the seabed must be littered with all those s.h.i.+ps who didn't make it, those who didn't get so lucky. I thought a lot about that when I was sitting there half an hour or so ago, drinking a celebratory hot chocolate who needs champagne when you've got hot chocolate?

I think I just had a moment I'll never forget. I so wished you were with me, and Dad most of all. I was just sitting there looking at the Horn and sipping the last of my hot chocolate when a shaft of evening sunlight broke through the mist and lit the Horn. It set her on fire and all the sea around her too. Never in my life saw anything so beautiful. Don't mind telling you, I had a little weep. It was the joy of just being here at this moment, of being alive, grateful to y'all, to the Horn for letting us sail by, to my albatross for sticking with us, to dear old Dad who's made it all happen and who's been with me all through this and is here with me now.

I love this place so much I almost don't want to leave it, don't want the moment to pa.s.s. But moments always pa.s.s, don't they? It's pa.s.sed even as I was writing this. Gone. I'd better be gone too.

I'll be going up north towards the Lion Islands, just south of the Falklands, a little over 300 miles away. Stop in the Falklands for a few days, have lots of long hot baths been dreaming of those and lots of big breakfasts and a warm dry bed for a few nights. Been a bit lax on my was.h.i.+ng lately blame it on the weather whole plastic bags of it waiting. one whiff would kill, promise. So I'll get all my was.h.i.+ng done. Be so good not to be rocking and rolling every hour of every day, not to be banging my head all the time. Be good to see people again. Be good to be dry. And yes Mum I'll do what you say and get my little finger checked out.

Went up into the c.o.c.kpit a few minutes ago and my albatross is back from the Horn, done his explorations. He's sitting in the sea, and by the look in his eye he'd like another fish. Soon as we turn north I'll put the line out again, and hope to catch a fish or two. That should keep him happy. It should be flatter that side, so better for fis.h.i.+ng. Then up to the Falklands for a bit of a rest. I need it. Kitty 4 needs it. she needs a good clean covered in barnacles and slime. Slimy she may be but she's done Hobart to the Horn in 60 days. Not another boat like her in the whole world. Just gave her a smacking great kiss to tell her I loved her. Put Louis Armstrong on the CD. "What a Wonderful World". It is too.

2115 same day.

Just got all your congrats, thank you, thank you, and and and your grate grate news Mum about Kitty, you said something would turn up and it has, but only because you never gave up. Love you so much. It's incredible, brilliant, wonderful, grate! So I've got a whole new family I never knew about! And Kitty is real, really real, not a figment of Dad's imagination. Tell that bloke who emailed you that he's the best vicar in the entire world. When I get to England I'm going to go to St James in Bermondsey to see the baptism records for myself, see the place where they were baptised. I keep looking at the family tree you sent me, Mum, I can't believe it! New grandparents! Ellen and Sidney Hobhouse. And the marriage certificate too Ellen Barker (spinster) Sidney Hobhouse (cobbler). Now I know for sure that Dad was a baby once! He was a happening, wasn't he?!! And so was Kitty. Like you say Mum we mustn't get our hopes up too much. We still have to find Kitty, and when we do it may be too late, she could be dead, but at least we know she is or was a true person, a happening, just like Dad, real just like Dad. Will you thank the vicar bloke from me too for helping us like this and tell him I want to meet him when I come to London. So Dad was right about Bermondsey too. Is that far from London Bridge? He had a better memory than he thought he had, dear old Dad, didn't he? Best day of my life, I've rounded the Horn and I've found a new family. This calls for another hot chocolate, maybe two. Know I shouldn't, know I'll run out. But who cares? A x.x.xx.x.xx.x.xx.x.xx.x.xx.x.xx.x.xx.x.xx zillions of them.

Dr Marc Topolski.

Thinking back I should have stayed longer in the Falkland Islands. I didn't, mostly because the hopeful news I'd just had about Kitty made me impatient to be on my way again. The Falklands is a bleak and barren place, that's for sure, and the people are tough-they have to be. But they were kindness itself. My arrival caused quite a stir. Lots of people were following my trip now on the website, so they knew I was coming. I had lots of helping hands, and a place to stay in Stanley which was a home from home for me. Mrs Betts mothered me like a happy hen who has just found a lost chick. I had all the baths I'd been longing for, all the breakfasts too. I did a couple of interviews, but then she made sure I was left alone to recover.And Kitty Four was well looked after too. Within a week she was tidy and trim again, not a trace of slime, and the barnacles gone. She was ready to go. The solar panel was fixed-I'd been having a lot of trouble with that. She was filled up with diesel, and I had all the provisions on board I needed to get me to England, all the packets of hot chocolate I could ever want! I was just waiting for the right wind, and the right tide. But an onsh.o.r.e wind was blowing a gale, and it went on blowing for days on end, apparently quite common in the Falklands. So I couldn't leave. If I'd tried I would have been crunched against the jetty.

Mrs Betts offered to show me the island a bit while I was waiting. So off we went in her little Morris Minor van, b.u.mping our way across the island. She took me all over, told me about the daughter she had who'd left the island and was living in New Zealand and had a baby now, but how she'd never seen her grandchild. I told her a bit about Dad. She knew something about him already from the newspapers, and she made me recite The Ancient Mariner just to prove to her that I could-she'd heard about that too, from the website I guessed. I knew almost forty verses by then, so she got the lot. We saw penguins and we saw sheep, all huddling against the cold of the wind. She took me to the British war cemetery, and told me about the war they'd had there when the Argentinians invaded the island twenty years before. It made me so sad to see all those graves. Standing there, the wind whipping about us, I thought of Dad and Vietnam, of young men dying a long way from home. "They were fine boys," Mrs Betts said suddenly. "But then so were the Argentinians. And they all had mothers."

That evening, my last on the Falklands, I read her the last part of The Ancient Mariner, because she said she wanted to know what happened. She had tears in her eyes when I'd finished. "So in a way it's a kind of happy ending," she said. Then she looked at me hard. "I'll be thinking a lot about you, Allie. I want your journey to have a happy ending too. And I want you to find Kitty. You deserve a happy ending."

She offered me her phone then to ring home. She said I should, that a daughter needs to speak to her mother, that emails weren't enough. So for ten minutes I talked to Mum and Grandpa, who kept s.n.a.t.c.hing the phone from one another. We laughed a lot and cried a lot too, which meant we didn't say as much as we should have. Grandpa kept going on about a "big surprise" that he couldn't tell me about yet, and then he would almost tell me, and Mum would s.n.a.t.c.h the phone off him again, and I could hear her telling him off, that he'd promised to say nothing, not until they could be sure of it. I was certain I knew what it was.

"You've found Kitty, haven't you?"

"No, it's not that," Mum said. "But we're still looking."

"Then what's the surprise?" I asked.

"Nothing, nothing," she told me. But I knew something was going on.

I had a big send-off the next day, and as we said goodbye Mrs Betts gave me a digital camera. "A going away present, because yours doesn't work, dear," she said. "This one does, I promise."

And so it did too. The first photo I took was of Mrs Betts waving goodbye from the jetty. I was in such high spirits. I was on Kitty Four again. I'd had all my home comforts with Mrs Betts-but I'd missed Kitty Four, missed the smell of her, missed the movement of the sea underneath me. This was my real home. This was where I wanted to be. I knew I had a lot of tomorrows ahead of me before I reached England, about sixty-five days away. Then I'd go to London, go to St James in Bermondsey, and find Kitty if I could. As I left the Falklands, I had never felt better about the outcome of the whole expedition.

But now I was back at sea I had one growing doubt, and it was a doubt that nagged me every hour of every day that followed. My albatross wasn't there. I had dolphins, dozens of them all around me. But the last I'd seen of my albatross was the day we'd sailed into the Falklands. I'd just presumed that he'd be out there, that he'd be just waiting for us to put to sea again.

I was wrong. The days went by. I began to feel so alone without him. My emails became shorter and shorter at this time, partly because I didn't want Mum to know how miserable I was, and partly because I wanted to be up there in the c.o.c.kpit as much as possible so that I would be there when he came. But he didn't come and he didn't come. And by now I'd worked out why of course. Albatross rarely come this far north. They are southern ocean birds, I knew that. But I went on hoping he'd come back anyway. I tried to keep myself as busy as I could, tried so hard not to dwell on my loneliness. But I couldn't sleep at nights now for thinking about my albatross. I was beginning to believe, in the darkness of those long nights, that I really was on my own now, that Dad had gone too, gone with the albatross. I had been right about that then: they were one and the same. Having been so hopeful, so sure of everything, I was suddenly overwhelmed with misery.

There was a lot of kelp about, ugly-looking stuff, the bubbly kind, the thistly kind, and some of it in very thick long strands of up to twenty metres. And it was all around the boat. I felt hemmed in by it, threatened. It looked like writhing sea snakes coming to get me, reaching out to grab me. It would rise up on either side as we ploughed through it. I longed not to have to look at it, to go below, but I couldn't. It wasn't just because I was looking for my albatross that I needed to be up on deck. I had other reasons.

There were suddenly a lot of fis.h.i.+ng boats around down there, I could see them easier at night all along the horizon-and fis.h.i.+ng boats were every bit as dangerous as icebergs. Get caught in the miles of nets they trail behind them and I knew that would be the end of everything. I hadn't ever felt this low before. To make it worse my pc was playing up, and for the first time on the trip I could neither send nor receive. The wind died. The sea stilled. There was grey sea, grey sky all around, and I was marooned in a sea of serpents. I sang to keep my spirits up. I could think of nothing else to do. I sang till my throat ached, every song I'd ever known. But one song I sang again and again, London Bridge is Falling Down. It was a cry of pain, I think, but also a cry for help.

How fast things can change at sea. I came up into the c.o.c.kpit one morning to find the kelp all gone, the fis.h.i.+ng boats nowhere to be seen. And the wind was up and gusting. It was like the whole earth had suddenly woken up around me. Where there had been grey, there was blue, endless blue, beautiful blue. I breathed in deep and closed my eyes. When I opened them, he was there floating down towards me on the wind. An albatross, my albatross. He didn't care about north or south. He just wanted to come with me. When I'd finished all my crying and whooping I told him exactly what I thought of him leaving me in the lurch like that for so long. Albatross can't smile of course, that's what most people think. But they can and they do. They smile all the time. And when I threw him a fish I'd caught for him that evening he was smiling all right. I know he was.

I was down below in the cabin a couple of hours later, baking the first bread I'd made since leaving the Falklands, and still revelling in the memory of my reunion with the albatross. His return had not only cheered me, it had clearly had some magical effect on my pc which was now working again, perfectly. Then the phone rang, the Satphone. It had rung only a few times on the whole trip, and then it had always been a coastguard calling, and always much nearer land. I picked it up, worried there might be something wrong at home, or maybe it was just Mum panicking because she hadn't been able to reach me on email.

"Hi there," it was a man's voice. "This is Dr Marc Topolski. You don't know me"-he had an American accent-"but your Grandpa's been speaking with NASA. They phoned right up and suggested I might like to talk with you."

I didn't understand what he was on about, not at first. "I'm not ill," I said. "I don't need a doctor. I'm fine."

"Sure you are, Allie. Thing is, Allie, that I'm up here right above you in the International s.p.a.ce Station, and you're right down below us, and your Grandpa said you can see us sometimes and how you'd like to get in touch. And I thought that seemed like a fine idea, because we're both kind of explorers, aren't we? And so I thought like you did, that maybe we could like get together on email or by phone, from time to time, whatever you like, a kind of ongoing conversation. Might be fun. Might be interesting. What do you say?"

I couldn't say a thing.

I had that first amazing phone call from s.p.a.ce, so my emails tell me, on the 29th March. Grandpa's surprise was a surprise all right, the surprise of my life.

"One Small Step for Man"

0715hrs 29 March 45' 44"S 50' 13"W G'day best Grandpa in the world. No question. You are the coolest Grandpa that ever lived, the greatest, the greekest. Just had the surprise you told me about, the one you made happen. I can't imagine anything more surprising happening to anyone ever anywhere. Thank you, thank you Grandpa. He's going to send me a pic of himself and the crew up there, and we're going to have what he calls "an ongoing conversation". I think it's the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me. He sounds like George Clooney, but don't you dare tell him I said that. I think Americans must all gargle in stuff that makes their voices so husky. And...and...and, what you don't know is that my albatross is back with me too! So I got an albatross and an astronaut all in one day. Not bad eh? Don't know how long my albatross can stay. He's already way too far north. I'm going to try to feed him lots of fish to keep him with me, which is silly I know because he can catch all the fish he wants for himself, albatross are quite good at that stuff, but he seems to like hanging around for mine too. Can't believe how many of you are looking out for me now out here, all of you at home, my albatross and now Dr Topolski. No one ever had a supporters' club like that before. Grib forecast is horrible, so I've got lots to do and in a hurry. I'll get back to you later soon as I can. Love y'all, specially you greek Grandpa. Axx 1112 hrs 31 March 42' 29"S 48' 30"W Hi Mum, g'day Grandpa, not had a lot of time to do anything except sail the boat. So have had no time to write emails to you or to Dr Topolski. Just been through a storm like no other. Two knockdowns, but I'm still alive and kicking, still here to tell the tale so no worries. Most of the time there was nothing to do but hunker down below and hope, getting quite good at that. did a lot of bad singing and quite a lot of clutching Dad's lucky key too. 70 knot gusts rising to 80. vicious wind. Ma.s.sive flat top waves, wind flattened, the worst kind, the really dangerous kind. Breaking waves of grey water, a spray storm all around me. I just tried to keep the wind and the swell on the quarter as much as I could. Not always possible which is when things went very badly wrong, nearly catastrophic. We came beam on twice into a rolling breaker, and she just went over. Both knockdowns happened in the s.p.a.ce of half an hour. Not a half hour I ever want to repeat, I promise you! Nothing I could do, but I knew she'd pop right up again.

Kitty 4 is a real star, a real life saver, all the blokes in the boatyard should be so so proud of her. Wish you could have seen how she was lifting herself up out of the water, giving two fingers to the storm and the wind and the waves, like she was saying teeheehee you can't sink me. She was magnificent, awesome. And do you know the best thing? When I looked up through the cabin window after each knockdown was over, there was my albatross up there like he was on angel wings hovering over me, protecting me. We make a pretty good team, him and me. Managed to take a piccie of him with Mrs Betts' brilliant camera just when the storm was dying down. Sending it to you and Dr Topolski. When the worst was over, I managed to cook myself my first hot meal in two days, bacon and sausages and baked beans, a whole plateful it was so yummy so good and washed it all down with a mug of hot chocolate of course. Still frozen in my fingers and feet, but I can feel a warm glow inside me now which wasn't there before. Love you loads. Allie.

2112hrs 3 April 38' 54"S 46' 03"W Hi everyone. Tootling (Dad loved that word) along 5 knots. gentle swell. Phew. Got some time now to tell you bout Dr Topolski. We've emailed each other twice now, and we've spoken again too and we've seen one another at night at the same time. Here's how it happened. Dr Topolski phoned from the ISS and said they were pa.s.sing over my position and could I see them. I went up on deck and there it was. He wanted me to s.h.i.+ne a spotlight and put up a flare to see if they could see me. So I did and they saw me. Can you believe that, they really saw me. I could see him, he could see me. I could hear him he could hear me we laughed like a couple of kids, not cos it was funny but cos it was just amazing, amazing.

In his emails he has been telling me about the s.p.a.ce walk, EVA he calls it, he's got to do in a couple of days. Never done one before and he was really looking forward to it. He's got to carry out some kind of scientific experiment. He told me a little of what it was about, but I didn't understand it really didn't tell him that!

He's up there with a Russian physicist, Dr Uri Malakov and another American, Mike Petersen, he's the commander. The three of them have been up there nearly four weeks. Very cramped living quarters, that's what he told me. "I guess that's what you'd kind of expect in a s.p.a.ce Station. But at least we can fly about a bit whenever we feel like it. Weightlessness is the best, when you've gotten used to it."

He's told me a lot about himself, he's got a wife back home in Vermont and a couple of kids, ten and twelve, both girls. He's a scientist, a physicist, as well as an astronaut, pretty brainy sort of bloke, I'd say. I've been telling him a whole lot about us on my emails to him, about Dad and our trip to England to find Kitty. He's really interested, said he'd do anything he could to help, and I think he means it too. Decided he sounds more like Johnny Depp than George Clooney, but I've got his pic. He doesn't look like either. Looks more like Tom Hanks, got a kind face, a good face. He said he loved my emails and pics, specially the one of my albatross. He reckons we've got so much incommon, each of us circ.u.mnavigating the earth in our own way, each of us in a tin can not exactly built for comfort. I told him he's doing his circ.u.mnavigation just a little faster than me, and he's got wide wide s.p.a.ce around him and I've got wide wide sea.

He says my albatross is the most beautiful bird he's ever seen. That's one thing he misses up in s.p.a.ce, he says, you look out of the window and you never see any birds. He wants me to send him a lot more pics of birds, so I will. He's emailed me some brilliant shots of the earth we do live on such an awesome amazing planet. I've got lots of pics too of him floating about in his s.p.a.ce station with Uri and Mike. So cool. Have to do that one day. He's got more room up there than I have down here but he's got to share it. Nice pics of him and his wife too, she's called Marianne, and his two kids in the snow outside their home. He looks like his voice, kind, thoughtful, intelligent. Hope his EVA goes well.

Fis.h.i.+ng's been good today. I caught six and kept two for myself. Threw the rest to my albatross, my lip-smacking albatross. Every day he stays with me I know is a bonus. I shall so miss him when he goes, but I keep telling myself that this far north he can't stay around much longer and I'd better get myself ready for the day he's not there any more. No more news about Kitty then? She's got to be somewhere, right? See you. A x.x.x 1216hrs 5 April (GPS on the blink for some reason, so not sure of precise position) h.e.l.lo from the Atlantic. It's me again. Dr Topolski's sent me an email all about his EVA. He sounded so excited. Said Uri took lots of pics of him doing his slow-motion s.p.a.ce dance. He'll send them on down when he can. Here's part of his email: "I was six hours out there in s.p.a.ce. I was busy, but I had plenty of time to look around me. That was when I guess I really understood for the first time the immensity of s.p.a.ce, and the timelessness of it, the stillness of it. And our planet seemed to be suddenly so precious, so utterly beautiful. I thought of my family down in green Vermont, and of you out there on that blue, blue sea."

I emailed him back asking him why he did it, why he'd become an astronaut in the first place. He said it was all Neil Armstrong's fault, the first man on the moon. When he was little he'd sat there in front of his TV watching him step down on the moon's surface. Said it was listening to him speak from the moon that did it for him. "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." He'd wanted to go into s.p.a.ce ever since, and he was loving it, except he could do with a little more privacy he said.

We sent emails back and forth comparing notes really. I'm down here at sea level, (well ground level), only the sea keeps moving so it's not level, and he's up 350km above ground. They're going at 5 miles a second up there in s.p.a.ce. I'm doing 5 nautical miles an hour down here. I've got my laptop, my five GPSs (two of them are still on the blink) and some basic software. He's got all the most amazing gizmos in the world, most of it operated from NASA. He's floating around up there, I'm being bashed about down here. Don't tell him this, but I've decided I'm definitely better off down here. Except for his s.p.a.ce walk, he's been shut in up in his s.p.a.ce station for weeks. And at least I can breathe good clean sea air, and to be honest, I couldn't live in such a confined s.p.a.ce for so long I'd go bananas. I mean you couldn't even talk to yourself without being overheard could you? And he's got another month cooped up up there. Think I'll stick to sailing. But we're both adventurers, he said, both explorers, and just about the luckiest people alive because we're out there doing what we love best. "Isn't that great?" he said. He's right. It is great. I am lucky. He asked after Kitty, after my albatross, about the weather, about how I'm doing down here. He says it's hard to imagine how life must be for me, but he wants to know all about it says he wants to see diagrams of my yacht, inside and out. So I'll send them soon as I can. When he pa.s.sed over I let off a flare again, but he couldn't see it this time. He's become a real friend to me, like no other. A friend I've never met.

Can now wiggle my little finger again Mum. So I've got all ten in use again now. Hands still sore, but otherwise I'm fit as a fiddle another Dad-ism. Why is a fiddle fit? Always wondered that.

There's some flying fish around, the first I've seen. My albatross doesn't seem at all interested in them. He's sitting there now waiting for me to put my line over the side again. I'll do it right now. Got to keep him happy, haven't I?

1202hrs 11 April 28' 54"S 44' 53"W Hi Mum, Grandpa. Haven't heard from the ISS for a few days. Hope all's well with Dr Topolski up there. More flying fish about. Getting closer to the Tropics all the time. Feel like I'm being boiled alive down here. A month or so ago I couldn't feel my feet and fingers, now I'm sitting here pouring sweat. I want to open the hatch but I can't because the spray comes in and soaks everything. So I wear very little, only way. Visibility is v. poor. Brazilian coast to port, but I'm keeping well away from it, much as I'd love to see it. Lots of fis.h.i.+ng boats out there. Can't sleep in this heat either above 30. can't wait to get further north into the cold again. When I'm hot I want to be cold. When I'm cold I want to be hot. What's the matter with me? Still all of it will be worth it if we can find out where Kitty is. As I get closer and I am getting closer now I think about it more and more. I hope for it more and more. I keep looking at her key, Dad's key, keep wondering what it's for. GPS up and running again.

1520 14 April 25' 85"S 41' 31"W The worst thing that could happen has happened, the saddest thing since Dad died. And it was me that did it. I should have known. I should have thought. My albatross is dead and I killed him. I didn't mean to, but that doesn't make me any less guilty, does it? I came up into the c.o.c.kpit at dawn and looked around for my albatross as I always do. And he wasn't there. My heart sank because I always knew that one morning, I'd find him gone. I saw there were a few flying fish lying in the scuppers. I think that's what reminded me to check the fis.h.i.+ng line. I could see at once the line was taut, so I thought I'd caught a fish. It wasn't a fish I'd caught, it was my albatross. He was being dragged along astern of the boat, hooked and drowned. I pulled him in and sat with him sodden and limp on my lap, his great wings stilled for ever. Mum, he came with me all this way and I've killed him, I've killed my albatross. but I've done something a lot worse than that. It's not just the albatross whose wings I've stilled. I feel deep in my heart that I've stilled Dad's spirit too. A.

Alone on a Wide Wide Sea It was only in the days and weeks following the killing of my albatross that I understood what Dad really meant in his story when he said that his "centre would not hold". I know only from the emails I sent home each day after this that I sailed north for a month. I think I must have sailed on almost as if I was in a trance. It was like I was on automatic pilot. I sailed efficiently. To get as far north as I did, I must have done. I did everything that had to be done, but I did it with no excitement, no joy, felt no fear and no pain, not even any grief. I was numb. I just sailed the boat. I told them I wanted the Kitty Four website down for good. I recorded only my daily longitude and lat.i.tude position. I didn't want to have any communications with anyone any more. I ignored all the pleading emails that came in and I didn't answer the Satphone either. There was nothing more I wanted to say to anyone. I no longer cared about Kitty or the key. I no longer cared about anything. I even ignored all the messages of sympathy and encouragement that came in from Dr Topolski up in the ISS.

After ten days or so I did send one email that wasn't just longitude and lat.i.tude. Looking back now I'm not sure quite why I did it, unless it was an attempt to explain my silence to everyone at home, and up there in s.p.a.ce. Maybe I couldn't find any words of my own, but I think it was more than that. By now I knew all of The Ancient Mariner so well. The words echoed in my head without my even wanting them to be there. Sometimes I'd just find myself sitting in the c.o.c.kpit and the words and the lines would speak themselves out loud. And the more I recited it the more I lost myself in it, and came to believe that I was in some way the Ancient Mariner, that my journey, like his, was cursed because of what I'd done. Here's some of what I emailed on 28th April:.

And I had done a h.e.l.lish thing,

And it would work 'em woe: For all averred, I had killed the bird That made the breeze to blow.

Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay, that made the breeze to blow!

...Water, water, every where And all the boards did shrink; Water water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink.

I know now of course how worried everyone must have been at home when they read this. I know now Grandpa wanted to call the whole thing off, to mobilise a major air-sea rescue at once to pick me up. But Mum had stood firm. And the only reason she had stood firm was that she could see my reports were still coming in each day. She could see on the chart that I was making good progress on my journey north. I know too that Dr Topolski was in close touch with them during my long silence, and encouraged Mum in her decision to give me time to work things out on my own.

I still don't understand why I came out of the darkness of my despair when I did. We can't ever really know these things, I suppose. For Dad it was the moment when a nurse was kind to him in hospital in Hobart when he was at his lowest ebb, and helped him through. But even so he wouldn't have come out of his black hole unless he had really wanted to. If there was such a moment of revelation for me, the moment I found I wanted to start living again, I know exactly when it was, the exact day, the exact place it happened.

I was in the c.o.c.kpit of Kitty Four when I saw him. A turtle. A leatherback turtle. He surfaced right beside the boat, and just swam along with me. He looked at me quizzically like he was asking me what I was doing there. I told him I was going to England to find Kitty. I told him everything, and he stayed and listened. I wasn't alone. I heard myself singing aloud in the wind. I hadn't sung for weeks. I went through my whole repertoire from London Bridge to Here Comes the Sun to What a Wonderful World to I Will Always Love You, and I belted out the last one with tears pouring down my cheeks. When I'd finished, the turtle gave me one last look and left. I didn't mind. I hadn't cried ever since my albatross died. Something was gathering inside me, finding itself again, during these songs. It was my centre.

Maybe keeping myself as busy as I had been with the sailing was the best therapy I could have had to lift me out of the sadness I had been living through. Maybe also it was because I could see that the end of my journey was in sight now. I was only 2500 miles and twenty-three days out from Falmouth. But one thing I'm quite sure of. That day sitting there talking to the turtle, singing and crying in the c.o.c.kpit of Kitty Four, I felt I was not alone any more. Mum was there with me, Grandpa, Dr Topolski, everyone at home, and Dad too. They were all there with me, willing me on. There was still grief in those tears I cried, but it was a sudden surge of joy that had released them.

I went down into the cabin then to email home at once, and I saw there was an email waiting for me from Dr Topolski. He was back on earth now. They'd brought him down a week before, in Kazakhstan, a bit of a b.u.mpy landing, he said, and he was back home with his family now on leave for a while, and he'd been doing some investigations. He hadn't forgotten about me. On the contrary, he'd been in touch with Mum and Grandpa a lot ever since he got down. He'd come up with something "pretty interesting" about Kitty, but, tantalisingly, he wouldn't say what it was. He did tell me that his whole family knew about me, that they were all thinking of me every day, that they had a map of the Atlantic ocean pinned up on the kitchen wall and were charting my progress, moving the bright yellow pin that was me a little further north and little closer to England every morning. He knew that I'd been going through a hard time, he said, but he wanted me to know, "There's a whole bunch of people here in Vermont and all over the world just rooting for you." Every day after that I felt as if I was recharging myself somehow.

I was sailing into trade winds which didn't make for comfortable sailing, but I didn't mind. It wasn't only the winds that were blowing us along now anyway-and Kitty Four was flying-it was the emails that came in all the time from everyone at home, and from Dr Topolski too, everyone contributing to my new sense of wellbeing, of euphoria almost. I never saw my turtle again, but I've never forgotten him. I can still see his face gazing up at me, a kind face, old and wise. Sometimes I think that turtle saved my life.

With every day that brought me closer to England, I kept asking them about Kitty, but all I got back was that there was no real news. They had one or two hopeful "irons in the fire," whatever that meant. It didn't sound very hopeful. To be honest, I thought they were just stringing me along, trying to keep my spirits up, knowing perfectly well that the last thing I needed to hear was bad news about Kitty-that they couldn't find any trace of her, or worse, that they had discovered she was dead. Often I'd sit there down in the cabin, Dad's lucky key cupped in my hand, wondering what had been so important about this key. What did it mean? Why had Kitty given it to Dad that day all those years before when they were parted? What was so special about it? He had always called it his lucky key. I'd hold it and squeeze it tight, and every time I'd wish on it, just as Dad used to wish on it. I wished I'd find Kitty alive and well in England and that I'd find out at last what the key was for.

I'd be lying if I said that my new euphoria didn't from time to time give way to times of sadness. There was still an ache inside me, left by the loss of my albatross, that would not go away. I thought of him so often. Every bird I saw reminded me of him, of the majesty of his flight, of his grace and his beauty. And sitting in my c.o.c.kpit in a cold grey North Atlantic, I looked out and saw an albatross of a different kind, an albatross of the north, a gannet, diving down to fish, splicing the sea. He was magnificent, but not as magnificent as my albatross.

"London Bridge is Falling Down"

It was a good thing I was so buoyed up now and so determined, because in those last couple of thousand miles just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong. First of all, the North Atlantic turned out to be every bit as vicious and hostile as the Southern Ocean. Kitty Four took a terrible battering. And it wasn't just one storm, it was a whole succession of them. We'd sail out of one and straight into another. We got knocked down three times in three days, and the last time was very nearly the end of the story.

Not many single-handed sailors go over the side and live to tell the tale. I did. It was my own fault it happened. As Dad used to say, I was a silly chump. I was in the c.o.c.kpit in a storm and I wasn't harnessed in properly. Yes, I was tired. I hadn't slept for a couple of days. But that's no excuse. I was just a chump and very nearly a dead chump. I was caught completely unawares when the wave came. As the boat lurched violently I was catapulted overboard. Somehow I managed to grab a safety wire and just clung on to it. But Kitty Four was on her side and I was dunked in the ocean. I remember hearing the roar of the sea in my ears, and I knew that was always the last sound a drowning sailor ever hears. Then Kitty Four righted herself. She flipped up and I found myself flung back into the c.o.c.kpit still in one piece, just. But I was nursing a broken arm-I knew it was broken at once because it was completely useless-and I was cursing myself loudly. You're a lucky chump, a very lucky chump, I thought, when I'd stopped my cursing. My survival was down to Dad's key, I had no doubt about it, it was entirely down to Dad's lucky key.

I didn't feel any pain in my arm at first. It was too cold after my dunking in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. But when I'd dried off and warmed up down below in the cabin, then it began to hurt like h.e.l.l. I knew I'd need help, so I picked up the Satphone and rang home. Grandpa answered. I told him all I needed was a doctor to tell me what to do, and I'd manage. No arguments, Grandpa said, he was going to have me airlifted off. "You can't sail a boat with a broken arm," he said. I don't think I'd ever shouted at Grandpa before (or since) but I did now. I told him that we were only fifty miles or so off the coast of England, off the Scilly Isles, which was less than a hundred miles from Falmouth; that Kitty Four and I were going to finish this thing together, and that I'd never speak to him again if he did it. Mum and Grandpa had a little talk about it-and five minutes later I had Dr Topolski on the phone. It turned out he was a doctor of medicine as well as a doctor of physics and engineering and just about everything else. He "examined" me by asking me dozens of questions. Then he talked me through how to make a splint, how to bandage it to my arm-not easy one-handed, but I did it.

Of course it wasn't just me that was beaten up and hurting. It was Kitty Four too. Not the boat herself, she was fine. She'd just rocked and rolled, and bobbed up again, like she always did. She'd been built to be indestructible and unsinkable, and she was. It was all the bits and pieces that were beginning to fail as we neared the English Channel. Neither the generator nor the desalinator was reliable any more. The self-steering was in pieces. I'd tried mending it, but with one arm I couldn't do it, so it meant I had to be up there in the c.o.c.kpit almost all the time. In fact I'd have had to be there anyway, because there was a lot of s.h.i.+pping about now, more than I'd had on the whole trip, and for a little yacht, for any yacht, that's dangerous. I could see them, but in seas like this I'd be lucky if they saw me before they ran me down.

I didn't tell anyone how bad things were really getting. I knew how Grandpa would react, how upset Mum would be. Instead I wrote chirpy emails, sounded deliberately upbeat and jokey on the Satphone. I think maybe that having to sound chirpy was very good for me. The truth was that I was now really worried that I might not be able to make it. My arm pained me every time I moved. Every sail change I made was sheer agony. I came to a decision.

I emailed home saying I'd put into Scilly, and not go on to Falmouth. After all Scilly was England. It was as good a port as any to end the first half of my voyage. Mum phoned me back. She said she and Grandpa had thought about it and they were flying over to England as soon as possible, and they would let me know when they'd landed. I said I didn't want any fuss, and that they weren't to tell anyone what had happened. I was already dreading a welcoming flotilla coming out to meet me. Grandpa said that even with no website up there, there was huge interest in the papers everywhere.

"Just don't tell them I'm coming into Scilly," I told him. "Promise me, Grandpa." He promised, but I wasn't convinced. I knew the temptation of having "Stavros Boats" on the television news in big letters, and his little Allie, the apple of his Greek eye, standing on deck and waving, would be too much to resist. To be honest I expected the worst, but I'd come to terms with it. Maybe it would be quite fun anyway, and even if I didn't like it, I could stand back and smile through gritted teeth-after all, I'd done that before in Hobart.

So there we were the next day tootling along with a bit of a limp, but happy as Larry (I do sound like Dad sometimes I know, but I love the phrases he used. I inherited them. They're mine now.) All the storms were behind us. The forecast was set fair all the way to Scilly. Suns.h.i.+ney day, clear skies, and not a sign of a welcoming flotilla-amazing, Grandpa had kept quiet. I had just sighted land, not much land, but land all the same, and it was the land I wanted to see-the Scilly Islands. I toasted the occasion with a mug of hot chocolate. The Scillies looked like little grey dumplings lying there low in the sea, about ten miles off. We were going nicely, about five knots. It was early morning. I was so nearly there. I'd seen a whale, or perhaps a basking shark, in the distance the day before and was looking out for him again. What I saw instead was a school of porpoises playing off my starboard bow, giving me quite a show. This was the kind of unexpected, spontaneous welcome I really wanted.

But I was enjoying it so much that I wasn't keeping a good look-out all around. That was when a sickening shudder shook the boat. She reared up and rolled, and then crashed down into the sea, where she stopped dead, as if the life had suddenly gone out of her. The tiller was light in my hand, so I knew at once that we'd lost the rudder. Then I saw pieces of it floating away astern of us. I thought at first we must have hit the whale, but we hadn't. The dark shape I saw lurking just beneath the surface rose then and showed itself. It was a dirty orange with flat sides and sharp edges. A container, a lousy stinking container. I cursed that container s.h.i.+p wherever she was, then I cursed all container s.h.i.+ps wherever they were. Cursing over, I checked below. At least we weren't holed. We hadn't lost buoyancy. We were rudderless and helpless, but still afloat. I hoped we could drift in on the tide at first, but a quick look at my chart confirmed what I already knew, that there were rocks all around Scilly, thousands and thousands of them.

I had no choice. I used the Satphone and called out the lifeboat. Within half an hour they were alongside and threw me a line. So with a busted rudder and a busted arm I arrived on the Scilly Isles, came into St Mary's Harbour, towed in ignominiously by the lifeboat. Because of that, of course, there was a lot of interest, and very soon they found out who I was. No flotilla, thank goodness, but any hope I might have had of slipping in unnoticed was gone. They whisked me up to the hospital to have my arm looked at and told me I had to stay there the night, but I said I didn't want to. I'd had a better offer. Matt Pender, the lifeboat c.o.xswain, said he could put me up at home with his family. So after my arm was set and plastered he came to fetch me, and we went straight to a pub where they feted me as if I was Ellen McArthur. "Proper little hero" they called me. Everyone made a fuss of me and I loved it. I tried phoning home, but no one answered. They'd probably left already. I didn't mind. I was so happy to have got to England, so happy the boat was in one piece, just about.

I did some TV and radio interviews the next day, got them over with. Then I went down to the jetty to tidy Kitty Four before she went off for repairs. There were crowds all around her, dozens of people photographing her, and she was just bobbing up and down loving it all, taking her bows.

I waited about till everyone had gone before I went on board. Then we had a quiet time together, just Kitty Four and me. I emailed Mum, emailed Dr Topolski, told everyone that repairs would take a couple of weeks at least, that I would catch the ferry the following day from Scilly to Penzance, and then the night train to London Paddington getting in at seven o'clock on the Wednesday morning. If they were there by then, they could meet me, and we could go off to Bermondsey and start looking for Kitty right away. I told them something else too, something I knew neither of them would want to hear. I'd decided that once Kitty Four was repaired, once my arm was better, I would be sailing Kitty Four home. I'd do the whole thing just as I'd planned, the whole circ.u.mnavigation, and nothing anyone could say would stop me. "I mean it, Grandpa," I wrote. Before I left Kitty Four I got an email back.

"Whatever you say, Allie. See you at Paddington seven a.m. Wednesday morning. There's a big clock there on platform one. Meet you there. Love Mum and Grandpa." They'd given in just like that. I couldn't believe it.

Matt and the whole lifeboat crew came to see me off on the ferry to Penzance. I'd never been hugged so much in all my life. I liked it, I liked it a lot. I had to wait around a while until I could get on the night train for London. So I was quite tired by the time I got into my seat. I was getting out my laptop. I wanted to send another email to Mum. When I looked up, there was this bloke sitting opposite smiling at me. We got talking as you do. His name was Michael McLuskie.

The rest you know already, just about all of it, anyway. What you don't know is what happened when I'd finished telling him my story, when we got into Paddington Station the next morning. The train came into platform one, and we got out together, Michael carrying my rucksack as well as his. (He wasn't just good-looking, he was thoughtful too, still is-mostly.) I could see Mum and Grandpa under the clock waiting, looking around for me.

"That them?" Michael asked.

"That's them," I said.

"So it's true, all if it, everything you told me. None of it made up?"

"None of it."

"Then," he said, looking straight at me, and meaning every word he said, "then you are the most incredible person I've ever met, and I'd like to see you again, if that's alright."

I don't know to this day what made me say it. "Look," I said. "I'm hungry. Why don't you come and have breakfast with us, with Mum and Grandpa and me?" He didn't say no, which was why, after Mum and Grandpa had each hugged me again and again, and after we'd all cried and laughed Cretan style under the clock at Paddington, we all piled into a taxi, and went off to their hotel for breakfast.

They seemed, I thought, a little nervous. Grandpa kept looking away whenever I caught his eye. I thought he was cross with me because I'd insisted on doing the whole circ.u.mnavigation. He'd always been so much against it. Mum couldn't seem to find her voice at all, just sat there patting my hand fondly. I exchanged glances with Michael who shrugged with his eyes, as only he can do.

It was one of those huge modern hotels, made entirely of gla.s.s, and was right on the river. We walked into the breakfast room which was full of laid up tables, all of them empty except for a large round table near the window. Sitting around it were what looked like a family with a couple of kids and all of them were looking at me very intently, which was odd, I thought. And Mum and Grandpa weren't leading us to one of the empty tables, as I expected they would. Instead they were leading us directly towards the round one by the window. "And this," Mum said to them, not trying to disguise the pride in her voice, "this is Allie, my daughter Allie. Arthur's daughter, Allie."

Still they stared, and then, one by one the stares turned to smiles. "I think you had better introduce yourselves," Mum went on.

"Shall I start?" I knew who he was before he opened his mouth. I recognised him from his photograph. "I'm Marc, Marc Topolski. From up there, remember? And this is my family, Marianne, Molly and Martha, known in the neighbourhood back home in Vermont as the M&Ms." I couldn't speak, partly because I was so choked up. But there was another reason too.