If there’s one thing that can give an immediate sense of what Afloat is about, it’s a photo gallery. I’ve chosen these photos, from the eight journeys that make up the book, to illustrate things mentioned in chapters. I’ve also tried to put them roughly in the order they appear, in the hope it’ll be possible to co-ordinate images & text.
Galway boat workshop
Roundstone, race day
Roundstone
An Tonai entering Roundstone victorious
Lettermore, with Bád Iomartha (foreground)
Oileán Mhic Dara
Oileán Mhic Dara, festivities on the Saint's Day
Outside the house in Adabroc, Ness, that was home for the first 6 months of Afloat, wearing a rash vest embroidered for me by the wonderful Sandra Macleod who sadly passed away during the writing of the book
My home for the first six months, looking out over Port of Ness (with the necessary shelves of writing by coastal poets).
Port of Ness
A night on storied cliffs, the old village of Arnol lying beneath the waves
Filiscleitir, Isle of Lewis
Sea eagles lurk in rocky gaps in the skerries
At Imbolc, paying respects to a second sea saint, Brighde who was said to have been propelled across the Irish sea by the beating of an oystercatcher's wings.
Out to the Flannans, some of the array of small islands round Lewis
Peregrine on sea cliffs
The Arnol surf, through which the boats are launched
Eoropaidh, a famous Sgoth Niseach launch beach, in January
After days of rough Lewis weather, sea foam like whipped cream
The only shieling with a chapel? Filiscleiter
The sea, at Arnol, through which many a Sgoth Niseach somehow once launched
Arnol breakers
One of hundreds of shielings amid the apparent wildness of Loch Langabhat
Loch Ròg Otter, once a semi-domesticated animal around the North Atlantic
The sheltered world of inner Loch Ròg
Great Northern Divers
Small island arctic skua
Pabaigh Mòr
Nights on Hebridean skerries, shards of rainbow over distant islands
Barvas
Not spectacular, but a place that sums up the reasons Afloat exists. Aird Orasaigh (Loch an Stroim).
Some of the many millstones littering regions supposedly always lacking in grain.
The Sgoth Niseach, Jubilee, in front of Lews Castle - a boat style that adapted to sail - from its narrower, rowed, earlier form - in response to the islands' commercialisation
Sgoth Niseach
West Loch Ròg
Scarp
The window of a lost croft, Scarp
Sleeping arrangements
Woken by a golden eagle on Scarp
Golden eagle, Scarp
Scarp
Dawn over Skye during a spring paddle south
Outside the Sámi boat workshop
The Sámi boat workshop
Sámi Spirit Level
Rowing a Sámi boat
Island headlands on the approch to Nordkapp
Shards or rainbow among the islands of Northern Norway
Flocks of Mergansers, Northern Norway
A few of the multitude: Porsanger porpoise
Porsanger porpoise
Porsanger porpoise
Porpoise in the mouth of Porsanger Fjord
Islands of Porsanger Fjord
Landed for the night in the Sámi boat
The Sámi boat
Porsanger Fjord
Sámi skies
Birch- & berry-scapes
Reindeer on the Sámi coast
Where pine gives way to birch in Sámi country
Northern hawk owl
Company when exploring the pine forests boats were built from
Faroese Tribekkur
Risin og Kellingin (The Giant & The Witch)
Dramatic landing, út á Lónna
Calmer launch
"Ull er Føroya gull" (wool is Faroes gold), hardy little sheep transported between islands by small boat and present on the smallest skerries.
Whimbrel, Kalsoy
Before entering the sea mist
Successions of high headlands, barely a real landing place in sight, but ropes down the cliffs to reach the beaches.
A typical boat noost, Nólsoy
"Down comes the puffin from the cliff"
Still a world of little boats - the only place fishing vessels cruised past as though my tiny boat wasn't odd
Entering Tórshavn for the first time, feeling like part of the fleet
The last night in the islands
Crossing Greenland mountains
Humpback, Nuuk Fjord
Paddling towards the ice cap, Nuuk Fjord
Arctic fox, Nuuk Fjord
The plant known as "little kayaks"
Lapland Longspur, Greenland
Kapisillit
Greenland merganser
Nuuk Fjord
Greenland sleeping arrangements (an ill-chosen extra layer)
Paddling toward the ice cap
Greenland Long tailed duck
Humpback, Nuuk Fjord
The noxious breath of a humpback, shockingly close, & 30,000 times the weight of my boat
Nuuk Fjord
Ephemeral sea caves, Disko Bay
Humpback in front of Disko Island
Humpback, DIsko Bay
Disko Bay, seas stilled by ice despite a storm
A fulmar circles the cliffs of a half-mile long iceberg
Sleeping on the sea ice, amid mountains made only of ice
Plumes of whale breath
Trinity Bay, Newfoundland
Indian Burying Place
One of 86 lost bay punts I recorded on Newfoundland shores.
Bay Punt in an emptied outport
An emptied Newfoundland Outport (Indian Burying Place)
Flakes and boathouses at an emptied Newfoundland outport
A Newfoundland boathouse unused since the 1950s
Inside a house in Indian Burying Place
An Outport house
One of the houses at Indian Burying Place
A floor in a lost Outport
One of the many outports cleared to build a welfare state
Newfoundland Bay Punt
Out in the Newfoundland Bay Punts
Travelling the rivers of Newfoundland's coastal forests, where moose melt silently into the trees.
Sunfish
Newfoundland Bald Eagle
Carbonear Island
Belted Kingfisher, Newfoundland
Jerome Canning building a Rodney at Winterton
Bays & headlands with centuries of small boat infrastructure
Mount Desert Island
Blue Heron over the sea, Mount Desert Island
Floating skerries near the Cranberry Islands
A sheltered place to (secretly) sleep among the Cranberry Islands
A coastal capital of Maine (and the world)
The Wooden Boat Workshop, Maine
Chickadee over the sea on the forest coasts of Maine
Approaching Lowell's Boat Shop from the water
Building a dory, Lowell's Boat Shop
Lowell's Boat Shop
The seemingly infinite beaches and dunes of Cape Cod
Cape Cod seal
Great Egrets in the ocean-edge saltmarshes near the site of the book The House on Nauset Marsh
Walter Baron's boat shop
Picnics amid the tide races
Making camp on a Cape Cod sandbar
Moon over the Cape Cod sandbars
Saltmarsh hawk
Cape Cod boat workshop
Massachussets Boat worlshop
Cape Cod boat workshop
Massachusets mudflats
Constant seal company, Cape Cod
Cape Cod
Cape Cod picnic
Moses Boat on the ocean West of Barbados
Small boats at Six Men's
Six Men's social club
Danny and family at Six Men's
Ice boats at Six Men's
Bathsheba, surfers paradise (when you know the reefs)
Bathsheba
Surf south of Bathsheba
Moses boat at Bathsheba
Oistins boatyard