I have been sailing several times this year, living aboard for up to a week to ten days. There are three ways to go sailing: with a massive and extremely well organised and planned event like the Semaine du Golfe, with one or several friends in an informal gathering – planned to some extent but leaving the details to personal initiative and understanding of the conditions. The third is alone without any rigid plan other than having consulted the weather forecast and the tides (when at sea). It is during this option that I often meet people along the way, in ports or even on the water or in remote stopovers where you can dock to a pontoon, moor to a buoy or “drop the hook”. This posting is less about sailing or boats than a more human and spiritual dimension.

I have discovered that the sea, rivers and ports attract souls who are seeking something other than modern urban life, marriage, family, conventional social norms and “following the mainstream”. I believe that this is what makes or breaks each one of us. Two years ago, I wrote a little posting on Liminality. It seems to be a state of life involving spiritual seeking, not necessarily for a God or a religion, but one’s own inner meaning and Sehnsucht. It can take the form of a vocation to monastic or a hermit’s life, though monasteries often represent an institutional structure like the armed forces in which the individual person is annihilated for the sake of the community. I would like to study this notion of liminality in greater depth, comparing it with Romanticism and the “re-wild Christianity” movement. I do believe that this is the only way that Christianity will cease to be a sectarian and political ideology and rediscover its spiritual roots as given in the teachings of Christ.

Without this dimension, the life of priests will dry and burn out as priests encounter the realities of this world, whether in the city or among the marginal. In the quest for liminality, it is too easy to fall into loneliness, drugs and mental illness. I have found myself in a vocation resembling that of Fr Guy Gilbert, the prêtre des loubards.

Fr Gilbert came from an older generation, and is quite “progressive” in his style and is often interviewed on television. He wears his hair long (as I do) and dresses in motorcycling leather jackets and trousers. He ministers to young delinquents in cities, who are often in trouble with the police, take drugs and are quite devoid of vision or hope. One must be very strong to deal with such people, and Fr Gilbert is known to have an authentically spiritual life. I am too sensitive to embark on such a ministry, and some of those thugs in cities can be dangerous people. We are also fraught with personal struggles and humanity is flawed and wounded by our experience of family life, school, work, conflict, poverty, inability to fit in. So are they.

See my video Cruise on the Vilaine and the Sea.

As I sailed and motored away from Redon last weekend, I crossed two sailing boats of about 22 or 24 feet heading towards the Pont de Cran. This bridge has to be opened for any sailing boat to pass without taking the mast down (something I can do reasonably easily, but which is more complex on larger vessels). Until the end of September, the bridge opens about six times a day. From the beginning of October, it will be opened only at 9 o’clock each morning and on request the day before by telephone or VHF. I arrived at the waiting pontoon in the afternoon and the two boats arrived shortly afterwards. We all tied up and struck up a conversation. They were a young woman and a man in his 50’s, very emaciated and with a “man bun”. They are live-aboards and are unemployed apart from the seasonal work they do on farms to earn a little more. The boats are quite old (like my own) and depend on DIY abilities to fix the various problems that occur. The bigger the boat, the more expensive it is to maintain in seaworthy condition.

The young woman has found a spot to moor her boat free of charge, in the “middle of nowhere”. She has two young, healthy and affectionate dogs, and she has a large solar panel to give her electricity. I spent an evening with her, the man I mentioned (I will call him Jean) and two friends of his. We sat on the ground and shared some red wine. They smoked roll-ups, but I have ceased to smoke once and for all. Some of the ideas were quite radical, such as the tensions between Brittany and Parisian France since the Revolution. I sympathise with the Celtic way, but I feel concerned about some of the radical left-wing ideologies and pent-up anger against capitalism and globalism. I tried to understand their marginality which seems quite different from the thugs who burn and pillage in cities. I think the two friends have homes in or near Redon, and the two in their boats would be homeless without their boats.

As the evening Jean became quite incoherent in his conversation as he got a bit drunk on the wine, but it seemed that there was something more than alcohol. The word schizophrenia was mentioned, and this corresponded with the word salad and the extreme mood swing. Jean became very agitated and threatened to be violent. Eventually, his friend persuaded him to go back to his home in his car which was parked nearby.

As I returned to the Pont de Cran after spending two days on the sea and returning to the Vilaine, I moored to the little pontoon in the middle of the former marshes become farmland. Marie (fictitious name) was in her cabin and the dogs came out to greet me with sniffs and licks. She was alone, and offered me some wine. We talked about Jean. He had stolen a tender and an engine, I don’t know where. He doesn’t seem to be an accomplished thief because he returned both to where he took them. I expressed my disappointment in this man who was so mutilated spiritually and mentally. Marie told me how he seemed to “tip over” during the Covid lockdowns. He had been in psychiatric care at one time and had medication to take for his schizophrenia, which he had stopped. That led to the relapse. Marie advised him to move his boat back to Redon and spend the winter moored on the jetty outside the port in order not to be charged some €100 per month.

The Vilaine has a number of ports with electricity and facilities, but free mooring is possible in many places (within limits). I would generally spend one night in a port for two nights using my batteries in other places.

The lesson to me is that we have to have some strength of character to live the life of an individual person and not get sucked into the mainstream and the “machine” of urban society, work, competition for power and so forth. Living on a boat full-time must be very hard, especially during the winter with the condensation and the cold. During the Covid lockdowns, Marie had a spell of pneumonia and caught Covid in hospital. As is often the case of some women, they can be much more resilient than many men. I was careful to keep some distance from her to resist any tendency to form an intimate relationship. She is simply “not my type” and I am certainly not hers. We undertook to stay in correspondence. I will remain prudent, especially in view of what happened with Jean. That night, the space that had been occupied by his boat was free for my little cabin boat. I visited her the next morning and we had coffee together, and then I went my way back to the Pont de Cran and my waiting trailer.

My reflection as a priest is that talking religion with them would be highly offensive. I did not hide the fact that I had come to France in search of my vocation as a priest and related my times in Switzerland and Italy. They did not react in any way. My own experience of churches and zealots has led me to the idea of the “underground church”. The institutional churches have done too much harm and scandal through immorality of priests, toxic bureaucracy and hypocrisy. Most people just lump everything together. If Christianity is not to disappear from this world, it cannot be imposed in the style of Franco’s dictatorship or the ideas of Civitas. It has to come from the spiritual experience of souls who are ready by their general attitudes in life. Clearly the mainstream has failed, as have the loubards who have gone over the edge. I hope that I have left a positive impression, a seed that may one day germinate and become a healthy plant. Non nobis, Domine – Not unto us, O Lord, but unto thy name give glory.

The Vilaine is full of boats from the most luxurious to sunken wrecks. I am about to do an edited video to give a glimpse of this little world. Many of those boats are 30 to 40 foot vessels that will sail anywhere, including the oceans. They are stored for the winter for more modest charges than in the prestigious ports, and they are more protected from foul weather. A few of those boats are live-aboards. I crossed one and greeted its skipper. It looked like a complete eccentric’s mess, like the study and library of a university don. I was amused to have this comparison come into my mind. Sailing is not always about stuffy yacht clubs, but represents a whole diversity of human life, experience and aspiration.

Another skipper I met doing some work on his beautiful classical boat came up with the idea that some have sailed the Capes on little more than a windsurf board and others have foundered on the rocks just outside the port in beautiful yachts because of a lack of essential skills. How right he is! I replied with two rules of my own: learn to sail in dinghies and “The sea teaches us modesty“. Never underestimate the sea who can kill us with the indifference of swatting a fly.

I was tempted to live in a boat when I was desiring an end to my marriage. I was strongly advised against it by my family with some very practical considerations. The first is a boat big enough to live in but small enough to handle single-handed, which would mean a 28-footer – too cramped to live in without sacrificing my library, my music and much more. Most boats spend more time moored than under way, and my old house is almost a kind of boat. Another problem is getting old, sick or disabled – which put an end to boat life and sailing. There are solutions for keeping warm in winter. Precautions have to be taken against carbon monoxide from heaters! My own compromise is to live in a house in a little village and take the boat to different places to live aboard for a week to ten days at a time. In season, it is slightly more cramped than a small caravan. The important thing for me is this life as a “wild” Romantic.

My Sunday morning with the Celtic Orthodox so near to Saint-Dolay and the Pont de Cran was illuminating. I must have surprised Bishop Marc that I was not there to ask for anything other than a time of prayer and a pleasant time with his clergy and people. I give you a few photos I took of this impressive wooden church being gradually improved.

That was last Sunday when the Liturgy was of St Francis of Assisi. Bishop Marc was most cordial with me and interested to hear about the Anglican Catholic Church and my sailing exploits on the nearby Vilaine river. The history of this community is interesting, beginning with Bishop Tugdal, an episcopus vagans harshly criticised by Peter Anson, who was given some marshy land where he lived a very hard life of a hermit. The seeds he planted were healthy enough to create the present community which is part of the Communion des Eglises Orthodoxes Occidentales. Article in English. I would never join them, but I felt God’s presence in that church, the Liturgy and the devotion of the congregation.

In the afternoon, I returned to my boat.

I keep Jean in my thoughts and prayers. Something is missing in that soul which cannot be supplied by other people. He has his own work to do. It would be good for him to find God and Christ, do some reading. If he wants to live in a boat and be a nomad, then he has to live with solitude and self-reliance. I fear he will end up a loubard and finish up as a homeless derelict in the streets of some town. Perhaps there is something within him and a guardian angel to light the flame.