The Driftwood Boat

“The sea’s curious workmanship: bottle green glass sucked smooth and porous by the waves: wood stripped and cleaned and bark swollen with salt…gnawed and rubbed: amber: bone: the sea”  –  Lawrence Durrell – Propero’s Cell

After a gap of about  five years, maybe even more, this week I returned to the Driftwood  Boat project, found my old sticks at the back of the shed and set to to build a boat.

This is a box of driftwood and other bits and pieces that I collected on various holidays to the Greek Islands and brought home in my hand luggage.  Interestingly I never once was stopped at airport security or UK customs and asked to explain my unusual cargo.

So, it has been carefully assembled but now comes the tricky bit – negotiating with Kim on a place in the house to display it.

A year or so ago and two thousand miles from the Greek Islands I was in a seaside fishing village in Northumberland  called Seaton Sluice.

Not an especially attractive name I agree but it turned out to be a delightful place with a working port full of fishing boats, wonderful rugged coastal scenery and a curious gaily painted blue shed.

A timber treasure house full of riches washed up from the sea and fashioned into wood carvings, trinkets and what you might generously describe as exclusive souvenirs by the hippie owner/artist with grizzled beard and wild hair.  He might easily have been washed up from the sea himself.  I thought immediately of Hemingway’s ‘Old Man and the Sea’ and Norman Lewis’  ‘Voices of the Old Sea’.

Here I am looking for inspiration…

Click on an image to scroll through the Gallery…

“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—waiting for a gift from the sea.”  – Anne Morrow Lindbergh