I am someone who feels swimmy-headed walking along by the mill-race in Lyme Regis; who can’t even look at a swell on the sea without feeling funny – the last person on this earth to be captivated by sailing ships, you might think. Wrong! I think it is something about beauty; something about the curving lines, the way they ride the waves, silent and majestic, the billowing white sails...
There is romance there too, as poets knew: 'speed bonny boat like a bird on the wing; ' And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by’; 'Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir’; Homer’s black ships on a wine-dark sea. They all speak of the power and grace and magic of ships under sail. I was there, watching as the great flotilla of tall ships sailed down Southampton Water; I stood at Tynemouth in freezing, driving rain, watching them come down the Tyne, both times with a tear in my eye and a lump in my land-lubber’s throat.
Only in my imagination can I be there on the deck, but I would if only I could... Perhaps that is why I wrote 'The Stormteller*; in my story, if not in reality, I can be like Zeke and feel his longing to be at sea. Perhaps that is why the Jubilee Sailing Trust is important to me; it makes that dream, that imagined journey, come true for so many people who would otherwise never know what it feels like to ride the waves, to watch the wind fill the sails - but here I go again...
Sandra Horn
*The Stormteller is an ebook, available from www.smashwords.com and suitable for confident early readers from about age 7. It costs $2.99 (around £1.90). Earnings from sales will be shared with the JST.