Spithamn to Ramsholm

September 8th. Barometer 30. We had a fine night at our Spithamn anchorage. I went on deck two or three times, but those high clouds at midnight had been true prophets; the wind had changed to the S., Racundra swung with her nose to the land and at dawn the sea was scarcely rippled. Those six windmills on the skyline of the hill were now on our starboard bow, and we had a kindly little wind to take us out to sea again and round the point, after which it would be clean in our faces, for I had set my heart on going due S. and taking Racundra through the channel between Worms and the mainland, instead of back by the way we had come through the deeper, wider channel between Worms and Dagö. The Baltic Pilot says: “Hapsal [whither we were bound] can be approached from the northward by the channel between Wormsö and Nukke Peninsula, but it is so narrow and winding that the navigation is difficult even with local knowledge, assisted by the buoys.” There is no need to explain to any yachtsman the passionate desire of everyone on board to take Racundra through that way. I had had the chart on the wall of my room all winter, and was sure that, given a fair wind, there would be no difficulty about it. So we decided to make no change of plan, but to beat S., get into the shelter of the land as near the channel as we could, and, if the wind should change, why, then rejoice and run through to Hapsal.

The wind did not change, and blew from the S., shifting in its most annoying manner, so that every time we went about we found ourselves pointing nothing like so well as we had hoped. We spent twelve tedious hours in making the dozen miles between Spithamn and the entrance to the channel, sailing, of course, a very much greater distance as we zigzagged against that fitful wind. As soon as we rounded Spithamn at about half-past seven in the morning we met three schooners racing northwards neck and neck; and after that throughout the day a long procession of sailing vessels with their booms wide out, schooners goose-winged, came rejoicing from the S., whither we were painfully beating. Sturdy Wormsö schooners, a few clean, smartly painted Finns, cutters running home to Reval, others bound for Kaspervik, more than twenty sail we counted, and we did not begin to count until many had already dropped hull-down to northward of us. Ship after ship made a fair and unforgivable picture. In a sailing vessel beating against the wind, meeting other sailing vessels running free, you know the whole bitterness of the poor man picking the crumbs from the floor at the rich man’s feast. And looking at the men on board the running vessels as they idly lean on their railings watching your slow progress as they flash by, it is hard not to believe that they are feeling all the selfish complaisance of the rich.

It was smooth-water sailing, and the Cook made jam with the cranberries that had been Anders Ringberg’s conscience money in the matter of the salt fish. The Ancient was much interested in the jam-making, and, while I was steering, I could hear them in the galley discussing the far more valuable art of making marmalade, an art that we discovered for ourselves slowly and by means of accidents, as Charles Lamb’s Chinaman learnt the delights of roast pork through the burning of his house. The recipe for marmalade in Racundra is as follows: First buy your oranges; then eat your oranges, but do not throw the peel into the sea. Then boil the peel. Then⁠—but here I must revert to our actual discovery, which was made on Kittiwake and not in Racundra, which is a far steadier boat. Then (in Kittiwake) make an inadvertent movement from one side of the boat to the other and upset the whole boiling into the bilge. Collect the orange peel from the bottom boards and stew once more with plenty of sugar, when the result will be indistinguishable from the best English marmalade. The important discovery, apart from the fact that by this process you can both eat your oranges and have your marmalade, was the upsetting. Until that event we had not known that the water of the first boiling should be poured off, and the final stewing done with fresh water, and this last is the whole secret of marmalade. Having once discovered it, we never troubled again to rock the boat, and can make just as good marmalade in Racundra as in the diminutive and unstable Kittiwake.

Jam-making was in full steam when at eleven I got a good fix of our position, with Telness beacons in line on the mainland to the E. of us and Saxbiness lighthouse far away on the island of Worms, bearing S.W. by W. After that we took turns in keeping a pretty careful lookout, for many outlying rocks and shoals explain the unwillingness of the Baltic Pilot to give any directions for this passage except the advice not to try it. By 2:45 we were about two hundred yards from the Savinova spar-buoy. We went about and, with a slight change of wind, pointed on the starboard tack S.E. towards the mainland, going about again when we came near the rocks awash north of Telness Point. It had long been clear that we could not hope to get through that day, and I began to search the chart for a possible anchorage and decided to leave the fairway close to the entrance to the channel and to anchor between two shoals north of Ramsholm. Accordingly, after passing close by the buoys that mark the Sgibneva bank, we steered S.E., keeping the lead going; and at 6:30 while it was still light enough to see that we had a sandy bottom, let go in two fathoms of water, lowering our sails but not taking the halyards off or putting the covers on, so as to be able to clear out at a moment’s notice. Just as we had everything snug, I saw a cutter, the last of that long procession, coming with a fair wind from the S. out from between the mainland and Worms, through the channel I wanted to enter in the morning. With the long-distance glasses I saw her pass between stakes, and was able to take a bearing of them and identify them on the chart. If need should be and the wind should come from the N., we should be able at least to get so far in the direction of shelter.

However, the wind did not change, but rather strengthened from the S. We had warm jam “to our supper,” as we say in Yorkshire, and lay very snug and quiet in a place rather beastly from a sailor’s point of view (because it gave us so little elbow-room in case of change of wind), but very fine to look at. Away to the S.W. was the wooded island of Worms. S. of us was the desolate point of Ramsholm, and far away eastward was the low-lying mainland. As dark closed in upon us there was not a single light to be seen. The Worms Lighthouse at Saxbiness was at the other side of the island and hidden from us. Odensholm had sunk below the horizon to the N. There was no light on shore in cottage or farm. Racundra tasted all the isolation of Noah’s Ark, alone as the flood receded and showed the peaks and uplands of a depopulated earth. She was, however, aground upon no Ararat, but swung gently to her anchor in a little natural harbour, every mole and breakwater of which was hidden under water.