What’s the best escape?

THE BOAT by Adam Nicolson – author and broadcaster
The best moment is always just after the beginning. I have a small boat nowadays, just under 16 feet long, and it is not the sort of boat people usually ooh and aah about. There’s nothing wooden in it, no delicious, polished spars. It has an aluminium mast and a fibreglass hull and all sorts of snap shackles and jamming cleats. So although I love the way all this works, sailing for me is not a kit thing. It is more about what happens when you get it all to go.

I almost always sail alone, launching from a beach, and as I push off, jump in, lower the daggerboard, grab the helm, harden up the sheets and feel the wind coming and going on the skin of my cheek, it’s then that the miracle happens: all the elements that on land had seemed half-chaotic, banging here and there, too complicated to be coherent, suddenly come into a perfect, steady relationship—with each other and with you. The sails fill, acquire their beautiful, held-bosom shape, the boat heels away from the wind, you lean out against it, tiller in one hand, mainsheet in the other, and, in that most expressive of sailing terms, you and the boat start to gather way.