Compassion Magazine Winter 2022

Winter 2022 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 21 and one day my friend and Blue Spirit co- founder, Nina (Laury’s godmother) half- jokingly asked the SBP people if we could take part on one of those trips. It seemed fitting because Laury was born and brought up in Brittany and learned to sail there – and is buried there. However, we had not expected the answer to be “yes”, due to our complete lack of experience! In the end, Nina did not join the channel crossing itself, but we arranged for my family – Laury’s sister and two cousins, his mum and uncle, all completely novice sailors – to be crew on a channel crossing in August. And that’s how we found ourselves on Pelangi, owned and skippered by Dhara Thompson, founder of Sail Boat Project, on a windy day in early August, setting out from Chichester to the Isle of Wight on the first leg of our trip. We were on the boat for 5 days, blessed with dry weather and mostly favourable winds. We had no disasters and no one fell out, either literally or figuratively. The sea was pretty rough on the first couple of days, however, and my nephew especially had difficulty finding his sea legs, but I am very proud of him that he stuck it out and chose not to abandon ship at the earliest opportunity! The actual channel crossing happened on the second day, when we navigated from the Isle of Wight to Cherbourg. Normally Dhara would have sailed to Guernsey and then directly on to Brittany, but Brexit meant that those of us with British passports needed to get them stamped at one of the authorised ports; sailing along the coast in Brittany from a Breton port to our final destination would have been more complicated than our chosen route from Cherbourg. Our most dramatic moment came as we approached the French coast, when a thick fog came down and we had a nervous hour or so as we tried to navigate into the port without being able to see any of the lighted beacons meant to help us find the safe route in. Shortly before that, I had gone down below to wash up. When I went down, although approaching dusk, it was still daylight with a crescent moon in a clear blue sky. As I climbed back on deck, it was as though all the lights had gone out, and the tension was almost palpable. Laury at 19