Death, stars and fishing

I ducked as the lighting cracked overhead from starboard to port ripping across the sky as if it wanted to tear it. We were on our way to Bermuda from Jolly Harbour in Antigua and had over 900 nautical miles to run. Miles from help, miles from land and surrounded by miles of sea. Before leaving the UK, I’d called Richard, a friend I’d known the longest, he was dependable and worthy of trust, we’d grown up together in Burnley, spent the summers hay baling and moving cows between fields on his grandad’s farm, gone to high school together, I went to his wedding in Poland and drove down a treelined path in a fancy car with him and his beautiful wife and had felt incredibly happy for him. My mum often compared us. As his dad picked me up in his Land Rover heading to the farm she was happy I was with Richard, she wished I was Richard and would not deny it, he was every Pakistani mum's dream, a polite smart boy who graduated from university, became a successful career man, homeowner, husband and father, but I was not Richard, I was here on the sea at night ducking from the lightning. I'd asked Richard to look after my will if I died, another close friend used to but he had in his mid-forties taken up free fall parachuting, sending pictures of himself falling over California or jumping out over English fields, I was not sure which of us would last the longest, we’d both written our wills at eighteen on joining the military, I’d kept the practice up thinking it rude to leave a mess if I’d died. I felt good knowing Richard was there. Not throwing himself from planes. I expect at my funeral my mum would say Richard had even been better at outliving me.

After the lightning, I kept on course heading north, when there is a landmark it is easier, but at night and in the expansive sea it is necessary to use the compass, the yacht had a beautiful and clear floating compass below the wheel, under N it was marked Sestrel and above SW to SE you could read Made in England, my mum had bought a fridge freezer when we moved to the UK which had a sticker with a drawing of a bulldog wearing a Union flag on its body under which it read Made in England, we kept it on the door with pride, it represented quality and we could show off to visitors, and here the English compass did not fail us, James said along with the wind vane on top of the mast they were the two most accurate instruments on the boat. But there was another aid as we were heading north, the North Star, lining it up with the bearing it sat between the mast and the first shroud keeping us true. Each time I looked down to check the compass the bearing was good. It gave me confidence when sailing at night.

We were on a routine of 4 hours on and 4 hours off. All four of us had been soldiers used to long marches into the nights wearing heavy packs and digging trenches and then sentry duty, lying down in a tree line to watch for an enemy. We started at 1200hrs, the first two would be on deck, the others sleeping. We did 2 hour watches between 4 and 8pm local time to stagger the shifts. It was tiring at first but we got used to it. After day three it was difficult to remember if it was day three or four or five and had to check. All we'd do at each shift change was make the oncoming a cup of tea, enquire how they slept, if they'd had any successful bowel movements and then shuffle off to sleep. We watched the mileage to Bermuda come down, at the start it sat in the 900s and 800s and gave little comfort but as we went along it helped to see it go down, 700, 600, 500...

We ate only three small meals a day, breakfast at 0800hrs which was cereal with long life milk, lunch at 1200hrs which was a sandwich or a salad, and then dinner at 1800hrs which was pasta or rice with some fish or meat. A French girlfriend told me in Paris the reason the English were fat was that we ate outside of mealtimes, there was none of that here, the heat made us eat less as well as the routine. Aside from the stocks we bought in Antigua there was the ocean. A friendly couple gave us advice on fishing before we left, to subdue a caught fish quickly they recommended pouring a little rum down its throat, had done it themselves and seen the fish die rather than thrash about on the deck for minutes. To prove their method they provided Joel with a bottle of rum, he had fishing experience and was the best cook. He put a line out off the stern with a lure which looked like a colourful squid, a couple of days of not catching anything he'd tell us fish could not swim at 5 knots an hour. But then it happened. I was wakened by commotion on the deck, the muffled voices and thuds had been Joel fighting with a Mahi-mahi, pulling it from the water, Peter and Joel giving it a quick death, cutting and gutting it, finding not enough space in the fridge, keeping some steaks and giving the rest back to the sea. James took a picture, the fish was near half of Joel's height. We ate the steaks the next day.

Until the next time thank you for reading and please share this post with friends,

Adnan
20°04.6N, 62°34.8W, Atlantic Ocean, 2025

Adnan Sarwar is a philosophy student at the University of Oxford and a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He won The Bodley Head/Financial Times essay prize, edited for The Economist and is an Iraq war veteran of the British Army.