Lighthouse for the blind!

Canoeing By Drumbeat - From Tall Ship to peddalo, we've either been in it, on it or up it!

Cartoon of two blind men in a boat listening out for sounds from the shore

( By Stephen Cuffe)

As a blind person, boats have given me a strange combination of both danger and freedom. At the helm I feel that I can take part in travel and not just become a passive passenger. Whether I'm pulling on ropes of a sailing boat or rowing a dinghy, I feel that I've got true freedom of movement. And danger? Well, I think that's self-explanatory.

I've shared practically all my experiences at sea with my friend Mark, who is also blind. We used to take every opportunity we could to take to the ocean. From Tall Ship to peddalo, we've either been in it, on it or up it! If necessary, we have also resorted to building a seacraft ourselves out of two air-beds, a white stick and an old piece of string. So, we are truly dedicated seagoing adventurers.

Well over 30 years ago, I was on holiday in Turkey with Mark and his wife Sally. Mark and I were looking forward to two whole weeks of sailing, wind in our hair, weather-beaten faces a bit more rugged than Johnny Depp in the Pirates of the Caribbean.

However, once there we found that there were no boats for hire! For two weeks we pestered Sal to look out for some canoes or seafaring vessels of one kind or another.

As the holiday wore on, we continued to lay in the hot sun sipping beer and discussing our plans for escape in minute detail. One stroke of the paddle to every beat of the drum would give us a good rhythm, and after a hundred beats, we estimated that we would be at least 150 yards off shore and away from any hazards.

Also, as there was only one bar on our section of the beach that played loud music, we reckoned that if we kept the thumping rhythm within hearing distance, we could use that as an audio beacon to find our way back safely to the beach.

A lighthouse for the blind.

Every day, one of us would ask, "Sal, are there any canoes today?" and every day we would get the same response, without her lifting her head from the book:
"Nope."

Dejectedly, we would lie back and dream once again of the day we would take to the sea and carry out our plan.

On our last day, I threw myself off the sun lounger, white stick in hand, and headed for the bar on my own for a drink. Perhaps someone there could help us find some boats.

On my way I got a little disorientated, and before I knew what had happened, I had crashed into a canoe on the edge of the beach!
I cried out to Mark, "I've found a canoe!"

"Oh yes," said Mark as he punched the air and came dashing towards my voice.
"Dam, dam, dam," Sally muttered and turned another page in her book.

(Sal had been lieing to us for a fortnight. Concern for life and limb had stopped her from telling us that only ten feet from where we were lounging were canoes for hire. She refused to get involved.)

The man who hired out the canoes had no idea of the amount of sight we had between us. Seize the day, I thought. This was our moment, and a well-planned operation was now swinging into action.

I leapt in first and felt my way to the front of the canoe with Mark at the back, pushing us off from the shore. Then, groping for our paddles, we gave one almighty heave, and we were afloat and flying to the disco beat, Mark counting our strokes:
"One, two, paddle, paddle..."

Whoosh, crash — straight into a windsurfer.

OK, don't panic. Plan B was being put into action. We could hear the surfer cursing to our right, so we knew that he was OK. A man who could use such angry language was clearly not on the verge of drowning.

Mark shouted, "Emergency! Hard left!" Again, we struck our paddles deep into the water, whilst Mark shouted more instructions:
"One, two, pull. One, two, pull."

Then — crash!
Straight into the pier.

Two collisions within 20 feet of each other — this must be a record, surely!
I said, "Do you think anyone noticed?"

OK, Plan C. Prising ourselves off the pier and with our new information to the fore and the music steadfast behind us, we at last headed out for open water.

Ah, we were free at last. This is what we had been planning. The hot sun and wind in our faces as we felt the canoe cutting its way through the waves at speed. What a brilliant sensation of control and movement as Mark and I worked together. Neither of us spoke; there was no need to. In the background, the beat drove us on.

A voice cut through our consciousness from the beach,
"Look out for the..."
We never heard another word.

Then the front of our canoe was violently thrown into the air, then crashed back down into the waves. It wasn't a rock — it didn't feel like one — but what was it? We never did find out.

Shaken, we calmed ourselves and sat motionless in the canoe, listening out for any clues to what we had struck. Nothing, just the reassuring box beat coming from the beach bar and the waves lapping gently around the hull.

Mark broke the silence.
"Let's head out to sea away from the beach and swimmers."

Keeping the music behind us, we headed even further out. By then, we had a good rhythm and were gliding over the water at speed.

When we felt that we had reached a safe distance away from swimmers, pulling hard left on the paddles, the canoe turned parallel to the beach. The rhythm was now on our right, and our plan of using the music as a beacon was working perfectly.

Brimming with confidence in our skills as canoeists, we powered on, following the shoreline.

After a while Mark said, "Can you hear anything?"
I listened and then listened again.
"Absolutely nothing. Isn't it great?"

"Nothing!" said Mark. "Don't you think we should be hearing some music?"

A sickening feeling came over me. Where the hell were we?

I couldn't believe it. The music had been thumping for fourteen days without a break, but the very day we are out at sea, they decide to turn it off.

Our ears had been full of sea and wind. How long had the music been off for? We had been in such a perfect groove, man and nature as one (don't laugh), we had tuned out the man-made sounds and tuned into Pirates of the Caribbean!

Panic started to set in. Perhaps we might never hear the beach bar again. Perhaps we had paddled out too far.

The final solution: Mark had a plan Z.
"Let's just sit here and do nothing."

I responded, "That's your plan?"

His thinking was that the music would eventually return, and because sound travels a long distance over water, we would soon pick it up again. This assumed, of course, that the music wouldn't be off for long.

Sitting motionless in the hot sun, barely breathing, our heads swept from side to side like radar dishes, focusing on picking up any sound that might show the shore.

Suddenly, we heard it. A bell.
"Did you hear that?" said Mark.
"Yes, I did," I replied.

The bell rang again. Immediately we sprang into action. The sound was coming from some distance behind us. Plunging our paddles into the waves, we expertly turned the canoe around and headed for our new target.

The bell grew louder as we powered in the general direction, quickly regaining our former rhythm but just as quickly coming to an abrupt halt.
Crunch!

I was thrown back into Mark's lap. Something hard and wooden had struck me on my chest.

Winded, I lay in the bottom of the canoe as Mark struggled to keep us upright as the vessel rolled violently from side to side.

Stunned, we explored the structure with our paddles to discover it was an abandoned pier, full of rusted, tangled metal and nails. We gingerly paddled our way around it, keeping a safe distance.

We again listened hard, left and right, up and down: shallows with children playing to the front, the now familiar sound of the clicking of the windsurfer behind us, disco beat starting up again to our right.

We struck out for home, but something troubled Mark. The children swimming around us shouldn't be able to keep up.

He thrust his paddle hard and deep into the sea, only to let out an earth-shattering yell as his paddle painfully struck a rock only inches below the surface.

The canoe was sitting on rocks, and we had been going nowhere fast!

How had this happened? After all, we were sea dogs, masters of the sea! We felt sheepish. Anyone watching from the beach must have thought we were very strange, paddling like fugitive pirates but not moving one inch.

Freeing ourselves from the rock involved some pushing, sliding and bouncing up and down in the canoe, but we managed to escape without getting our feet wet!

We really were professionals.

The sound of the waves crashing on the beach showed that we weren't far from the shoreline. Keeping the music centred dead ahead, we paddled for the beach.

Triumphantly, we leapt into the shallows and dragged the canoe ashore, only feet from our sun lounger and Sally, still reading her novel.

"You're back then," she said.

Hot, thirsty, windswept and thoroughly pleased with ourselves, we felt delighted that our audio beacon had worked and that we were still alive.

We had discovered hidden sea structures but, alas, no treasure, and we had agreed that we should in future kidnap a sighted landlubber for future adventures.
We eyed Sally suspiciously!