Many Harbours…

For my writing prompt today I took the Anchorage page from Soul Food Café

Cobh

I have always loved harbours – those safe sheltered bays where the fishermen bring in their daily catch and you can look out across the endless sea.

Perhaps that was because I was born in one – Cobh in Ireland is a gorgeous place, with a row of houses along the quay holding each other up like drunken sailors. The smell of the ocean permeated everything. Boats and talk of boats were the wellspring of life there.

Cobh is where my father and his three brothers set sail one golden morning in an oversized rowboat they called the Black Hawk. For sails, they took the sheets off their mother’s washing line and rigged them up. They sailed into Cork Harbour and went ashore to impress the ladies, which they did by swaggering and telling them that the Black Hawk was moored below. They didn’t tell them it was a rowboat with sheets for sails, of course.

After a magnificent day, the four young men got back into their boat and returned to Cobh, where they found their mother on the dock waiting for them, arms crossed, toes tapping. She had spotted her missing sheets sailing out to sea early that morning. The resulting hullabaloo was just another of those glorious things that makes living in a small harbour worthwhile.

Dumbarton

I loved Scotland from the first time I saw it. Dumbarton was home for four years of my life and my time there is filled with happy memories. Not strictly a harbour, Dumbarton was a ship building town on the junction of the River Leven and the Clyde, so it had the smell of the ocean and tradition of boat building that went back centuries. While we were there, the first hovercraft was built and launched – unfortunately it didn’t go too well first time, because the big black bag that kept it hovering sprang a leak.

My daily ramble was over the bridge with my dog Lucky at my side and into the town itself, buy a couple of baps (lovely soft floury Scottish bread rolls – one for me and one for Lucky) then head down to the shore of the Firth of the Clyde, and walk for miles, enjoying the brisk air and the splendid loneliness.

Peterhead

Peterhead was a Scottish harbour I only managed to visit once, but I have never forgotten it. When we arrived, the fishing boats were coming in and unloading their catch onto the shore. There was a thriving fish market and we bought fish straight from the sea.

Down at the harbour I met the crew of a Russian fishing boat that had to put in because of bad weather. The Russians were not allowed to sell their catch, so one of the crew, a very handsome young man, gave me a huge live crab from the ocean.

``I’ll to send you down there more often,” my father said appreciatively as we tucked into dinner that night.

Sydney

My first sight of Sydney Harbour in 1969 had to wait until the fog lifted. We had arrived during the night and first thing in the morning I went up on deck – the fog covered everything but the arch of the Harbour Bridge which loomed over of the grey cloud like some strange prehistoric beast.

It has changed so much since then, but it is still magical. When we lived in NSW the children’s favourite jaunt was to cross the harbour from Sydney to Manley on a public ferry. For a couple of bucks fare, you get the same views that rich people pay hundreds of dollars for in luxury cruise yachts.

The ferry starts from the terminal in Sydney Harbour and cruises out under the bridge. Wait a few heartbeats, then look back. The view is spectacular. With cameras clicking all around, I never got tired of drinking it in.

There’s always a lot of activity around the Harbour – we’ve been to Chinese New Year festivals, free music shows, art shows – whenever we went down to the Harbour, there was always something going on.

I never imagined anything so vast or so beautiful was hiding under that fog.

What does a harbour symbolize to me? Not just safety and shelter, but the promise of adventure – it sits on the edge of the sea, and at night a harbour is an even more magical place because it seems to sit on the edge of the planet – not only does the sea open up the world before you, but the stars open up the universe. The earth is a great ship sailing through the seas of space – a harbour brings me closer to God and eternity than any other place on earth.