Ship Lag: This Was Three Hours Ago

How delightful the departure! Not because it’s a departure but because it’s delightful—just the way I would have done it: fire the engines backward from the ferry terminal (the 11-lane parking lot, near full two hours ago, empty now), let the back end drift out a bit, fire the sideways engine at the front until the nose points out to the exit channel in the middle of Santander Bay, and then fire forward, letting loose with a deep, echoing blast from the horn and sliding past the para-sailers, faster than a man can walk, and out beyond La Magdelena peninsula, where I spent such happy hours yesterday, out to open sea.

First I was ready to claim this ferry is so large I can’t feel it moving. Then, walking back to my sixth-deck cabin near the back left corner of the ship, I felt it move. One step of my Spanish sandal seemed to land sooner than expected, the next not landing at all.

If I wanted to hum, I’d hum “Farewell Iberia”, if there was a song of that name. Land of the sea.

Having finished Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway (borrowed from Maria in Vigo and already posted back) and Sterne’s A Sentimental Journey (bought second-hand in Lisbon), I’ve started Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked, almost the only book in the ship’s shop by someone not named Steele, Brown, King, or Ludlum (although I almost opted for a Patricia Cornwell mystery). After Woolf and Sterne, and Moure before that, the Hornby seems thin, quick—like travelling by plane, instead of the mightyPont-Aven, bound for Plymouth.