Autumn was verging into winter. The passage had begun sweetly enough, but, as a low had come through, the wind had veered and stiffened, and the boat had been sailing close-hauled most of the day, well heeled over, only a reefed main and the stays’l up. Now there was snow. Grey, twisting showers of it were coming out of the northwest like smudges on the wind. When they arrived, the air bit into the skin of the face as if filled with knives. Drifts of the granular snow were piling up in the ridges of our hats and sat in small cushions in the corners of the cockpit. It was soft-looking air that hurt. Anyone on the helm needed a scarf wrapped around their face, but the Auk was in fine fettle, her deck stripped, clean and exact, and George, as ever, was cooking something down below. Land comes up grey and indistinct, a suggestion of what it might be rather than an announcement of what it is. It is always taught to novice navigators that the object you are in charge of is not a boat but ‘a circle of uncertainty’.
