Ships

I don't know what it is with ships.

Ships, that is - I am not talking ferries or dinghies, the rowing boats you can rent to splash your family around on lakes or any of the huge cruise cities that adorn quays also now in Copenhagen.

No - I mean *real* ships. With sails and masts and lots and lots of rope and even more wood.

And I don't really know what it is with them. But I like them!

I do not claim to know much about them, either - for instance I probably cannot name any of the different types with any degree of accuracy. But I enjoy a stroll up and down a quiet harbourside very much when there are some of them tied up there - they quite simply please me.

I have once had the luck to be sailing with one of those beauties for a few hours - off the Atlantic coast of Maine in the US. Hoisting sails hand over hand (are sails hoisted? pulled up? ...?), listening to the sounds of the wind in the big sails, the creaking of wooden parts working against each other, sniffing the smells of the wood, ropes, salt air... A genuinely lovely afternoon. The ship - a two-masted thing of beauty - had been left to rot somewhere down the east cost when it was saved by this guy who subsequently invested an enourmous amount of time and resources in bringing her back to former glory. Very fittingly, he had been awarded several prizes for his work - and the ship was on the list of historical ships of America.

And no -I dream do not of becoming the skipper of one or even part time owner or crew member of a ship. Not time enough in my world for that. But I'll continue making a stroll past them now and then, enjoying them for just being there.

An old Danish song actually touches upon the topic:

I like simply touching the ship
it's kinda like a greeting from life
I don't know why - probably you just feel
like that when the day is done

("Havnen", lyrics by Arvid Müller, sung by Osvald Helmuth in the Fønix 1937, my attempted translation - with apologies)

That particular text - which is a quiet, daily life marvel in its own right - is really about the longing to be somewhere else, to see some of all the exotic and wonderful places out there just over the horizon. Heaven knows that I have stilled that thirst a couple of times over with the travelling I have been doing over the last 15 years - and will continue to do so, touch wood. But even though our strolling past the ships down there at the harbour stems from different reasons within, the joy is much the same.

Ships are nice.

[Listening to: Cæcilie Norby - A Brand New Life (4:13)]