Empathy

Today the rock locally called “A Pinela”, one hundred yards offshore the beach, has claimed a victim, a French-flagged sailing yacht. I couldn’t distinguished boatbuilder nor model from the distance. She looks beamy and seaworthy, aproximately 35 feet or more.

To be precise, it was not only the rock who perpetrated it, but also the conspirational tide, which covers the hazard in high water.

So the yacht was standing in an auckward position, heeled but not heeling, strangely still. It is disturbing to watch a boat, born and bound for sailing the ocean, hanging defenceless on a hard dry trap. Not funny…

The owner was struggling around on a dinghy. Heartless rock: it had hit both of them (boat’s hull and sailor’s seamanship) in foreign waters… It may be just a minor scratch, but who knows. Maybe they now will have to careen into an unfamiliar yard, and perhaps change all their passage schedule, long-planned on winter evenings to be deployed on longed-for summer holidays…

It was me and my daughther witnessing the situation on a bycicle ride to the grocery, feeling sorry for not being capable of any help: you cannot tow a ten-tonnes grounded vessel with a bike…

“Shall we inform him about tide times?”, I wonder. I don’t think so – I answer to myself - that mustn’t be any news for him, he must already  know. Moreover, it is bad news anyhow: it will be still ebbing for half an hour…

“It could be us” is my first inmediate thought.

“May there always be water beneath your keel”… What a wise advice. So easy to unobserve.