The Cruise of the Nona

It was late in May, near midnight, the air being very warm and still, and the sky not covered but somewhat dim, with no moon, when I took the Nona out from Holyhead Harbour, having on board one companion to help me work the boat, and a local man who could speak Welsh for me in whatever places I might make along the coast.

The very slight breeze, which had barely moved us through the water after we had got up the anchor, died away long before we reached the end of the breakwater, and it was necessary to pull her out with the dinghy in order to fetch round the end of the stonework and get to sea. There was at that time of the tide a little current running towards the Stack, which would slightly help us on our way once we were outside, and with this we drifted a full hour and more, aided now and then by faint breaths of air, which rose and died again like memories. So came we, with the turn of the night, under the glare of the lighthouse at last, and then put the nose of the little ship round for the point of Carnarvonshire and the strait between the mainland and Bardsey Island, which is called Bardsey Sound.

It was a course of about thirty-three miles, with no chance, apparently, of covering it in all that night, nor perhaps in all the coming day as well; for we had struck, as it seemed, that hot, steady summer weather in which one may play at a drifting match for days on end.

While it was still dark the distant mountains could barely be seen as something a little blacker than the sky. They looked astonishingly low, as mountains always do on a moonless night, when there is nothing to distinguish their details, and nothing against which to compare them, or by which to tell their distance. Already—it being now nearer two than one o’clock—a little wind had arisen, settling down, as it seemed, into somewhat east of north, and blowing over the Anglesey flats. It gave us perhaps no more than a couple of knots an hour, but it was heartening after the long calm, and as we had all sail set she pulled to it steadily enough. I was at the helm, my companion was still awake, sitting in the cockpit and talking to me, and the hand who was to be with us till we next landed smoked beside us on deck.

The wind had freshened somewhat, we were making perhaps four or five knots, when the dawn began to show beyond Snowdon, and those great hills at once looked higher against the glimmer of grey light. Soon the whole coast was apparent, and the Yreifles with their triple peaks (clearer than I had expected; indeed, too clear for fine weather) lay right ahead and Bardsey Island beyond them and the narrow sound in between. The wind seemed steady, as though it would hold. I reckoned that the tide would turn against us anywhere between six and seven in the morning, that it would turn back through the Sound about noon or one o’clock, and I calculated that we should be running into Cardigan Bay, past Bardsey, on the middle of the ebb, an hour or two later than that time.