I’d woken in the first pink-grey shards of morning to the strangely peaceful sound of early morning gulls and the gentle clatter of stays against masts. Light had come, while I’d nursed a tin mug of steaming hot tea on deck.

Once the swirling tide became my friend, I slipped my moorings.

The navigation channel was narrow and weaving, but clearly marked. Tacking upstream, the previous evening, had been somewhat more challenging. As the calm voice on the radio had warned me, though, even out beyond the shelter of the river’s mouth, the wind was barely there. I was already resigned to gently motoring home. Even with all my canvas and a hanky, these light airs would have taken me nowhere. Becalmed.

Fog doesn’t make it dark, but it’s more claustrophobic than a cave. At sea, it surrounds you. Smothering everything, like cotton wool. Soaking everything, more pervasively than rain. It dissolves the world, and leaves you in a hole that only you can see.

I reached for the charts. The sea bed would guide me, today.