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By Root 415 0

I came on deck there was a distinct line of low, green hills. It was still a long way off but we could already smell it. I had thought this was the most fanciful of notions—the belief that sailors can smell the land long before they see it—but take it from me, you can. We were all on deck in the early morning, bundled up against the cold and sniffing the air like a pack of dogs. I could smell flowers (which is what you’re supposed to be able to smell), and I could also smell bread and women, and cakes and hay. It seemed extraordinary, and I wondered about it for a bit, and came to the conclusion that we were closing with an entire continent, and that from Halifax to Vancouver there were countless bakers baking bread and cakes, and millions of women scented and powdered, and prairies of new-mown hay drying in the August sunshine. All these scents were rising on the cushion of warm air above the land and falling to earth over the cooler sea, where they drove mariners insane with longing for the loveliness of the land.

The New World

NOW, THE IMPORTANT THING when you make a landfall, as I well knew from my experience in Greece, is that your boat looks good. The wind and the tides were on our side and we were able to make our approach into the bay of Quirpon all standing, which means with all the sails up and looking pretty damn good for the benefit of any nautical-minded folk who might be watching. At the last minute we rounded up, dropped the bags, and, with the skipper standing proud at the wheel, edged in to the long wooden jetty. Mike sprang across the narrowing gap with the head rope; I took the stern line and we made fast to a couple of bollards.

Then we climbed back onboard and joined in the general preparations for going ashore. This meant folding the sails tight and neat in a “harbor stow,” flaking down all the ropes and lines, and generally tidying up the boat. Then we washed and shaved in salt water from buckets on the deck, and finally dressed ourselves in clean, dry finery for that great moment when we would march along the dock and greet the natives. It was pretty exciting for Mike and me, as neither of us had set foot on the soil of the New World before, and we were unsure what to expect.

On the jetty were a number of men all dressed more or less alike in dungarees, thick checked shirts, and baseball caps. They were bent intently over what they were doing … mending nets, I shouldn’t wonder, as it’s fishing that makes things tick around these parts. Not one of them so much as raised his head at our arrival; to our surprise, and indeed chagrin, they took not the slightest bit of notice. It was hard to believe: you’d have thought that the arrival out of the northeast of a boat that looked like something out of a romantic historical drama, with all her sails set and flags flying, would have excited a certain interest. But no—these were the most phlegmatic of men.

“Right,” said Tom. “I guess we’d better go and make ourselves known to these good people.”

We all climbed over the rail and onto the dock. Together we took two swaggering strides and promptly keeled right over … all of us in a chaotic and undignified heap. At this, one or two of the fishermen almost imperceptibly raised their heads and mumbled something with the faintest play of a smile. We picked ourselves up and, with circumspection and intense concentration, stumbled on. You get your sea legs, but when you’ve been at sea for days on end you lose your land legs, and so our first longed-for taste of terra firma was letting us down; the land was rolling and lurching, so it seemed, all over the place.

Tom staggered toward one of the fishermen. “Good morning to you. We’ve just come from Iceland …” He left a pause for the enormity of this statement to sink in.

The man looked with great deliberation up at him from beneath the peak of his baseball cap, while we wobbled about on the dock behind our skipper. Eventually, after perhaps a minute, he said: “Iceland, huh? I guess that’s a mighty long way off.”

We were clearly in a land where words and ideas