May 4th, 2013 – The steel wheels are spinning along the tracks noisily, the old rocks grow out of the grass around them, as the sheep chew hungrily at the new roots of spring. I have just read an article on R.S.Thomas, and am looking out of the train window at old men sawing on garden benches in the sun, and maybe, just perhaps, I am falling for my home yet again.
The grief of leaving West Wales just when, finally, it looks and feels comfortable and beautiful, and after an impossibly long winter, has almost stopped me from getting on the train back to the American Deep South. At last, we are poised on the edge of the American Beatnik project again. The Snowbird route South, into Hemingway country and beyond, possibly, into the worlds of Castro and Guevara. Three years in the boatyard; two films, and a war-zone later, with books illustrated, and money in the bank, we reckon we can survive for about four months – longer if we find some sustaining occupation. The ancient spanish port of Saint Augustine will be our first destination after leaving the quarter-mile-long condemned piers of Green Cove Springs, with all of its faded naval war-glory, its resident black widow spiders, alligators, otters and manatees. But first, we shall head into the dusty abyss of the workyard, propellers, water and refrigeration systems, one more coat of paint on the decks, and yacht varnish on teak.
I have been here before – 100% humidity, 100 degrees in the shade, local work grinding to a halt, the lone Briton grinding away on his boat in the mid-day sun. But we will soon be on the water, where it will cool, and should be tolerable. And then perhaps we will be living the dream of floating around on our boat in the sun.

July 31st 2013 – I look at our ridiculous choices, hardships, and the total lack of financial return I have to answer to when people ask me questions about fixing up this old, beautifully-built, strong, but unquantifiable ferro-cement boat, and I ask myself the question they are really asking: Why?
Then I read a passage at the end of my current reading-book; a favourite of my father’s, Admiral Evans’ account of the incredible disasters and excruciating near-salvations met by Scott’s last polar expedition.
He writes of the ‘infinite sadness’ with which they cleared up the mess in the antarctic in 1913. As they pulled out of the ice for the last time, leaving the pack ice, he describes it thus:
‘The evening before we finally broke through into open water was beautifully still, and a low cloud settled down in the form of a thick fog. – it was a change from the fine, clear weather – frost rime settled everywhere, and for a time we had to stop.
There was a weird stillness over all, and whenever the ship was moved amongst the ice-floes a curious hiss was heard; this sound is well-known to all ice navigators: it is the sear of the floe against the greenheart sheathing which protects the little ship, and it is, to the ice-master, what the strange smell of the China Seas is to the far Eastern navigator, what the Mediterranean “cheesy odours” and the Eucalyptus scents of Australia are to the P. and O. officers, and what the pungent peat smoke of Ireland is to the North Atlantic seaman.
I suppose the memory of the pack ice hissing around a wooden ship is one of the little voices that call – and they sometimes call as the memory of “a tall ship and a star to steer her by” calls John Masefield’s seamen “down to the seas again”.
I sometimes feel a mute fool at race meetings, society dinner parties, and dances; the lure of the little voices I know then at its strongest.
It is felt by the Polar explorer in peace times and in the hey-day of prosperity, and it is surely that which called Scott away, when he had everything that man wants, and made him write, as he lay nobly dyingout there in the snowy wild:
‘How much better it has been than lounging in too great comfort at home’
Reading this gave me the final resolve to come – no matter what – to the seas with my boat, as good as I could make it, and trust in the ‘voice’ enough to push through squalls and storms, and here I sit, writing ‘in too great comfort’ in the cockpit of the good ship Sandpiper, in Darsena, Northern Cuba. It is to this I owe the fact that WE MADE IT!

Clearing Sombrero Key Light with the dolphins, during our second crossing to Cuba.

‘It’ll be hellish lumpy out there, and as Bill always says, a tired decision is a bad decision, and look at the state of you two ¨You’re exhausted’. I couldn’t get a word in edgeways to mention that the decision had been made days before; that Hurricane Dorian was fading, that there was a weather window which might not open up again for weeks, and we were running out of mooring-fee money to stay. Dawn, our lovely new friend in Marathon, a fellow British citizen, was right: we had missed the bus after the long schlepp around Key West, trying to find the Customs Office to ‘clear out foreign’ with the boat. We now had 48 hours before we had to re-apply, although the whole of the Florida Keys was, it turns out, International Waters. We had missed the bus back, so were two hours behind.
OK, we’ll go get some fuel. We’ve got to go onto anchor anyway. We can’t afford another night on the mooring ball.
So we cast off the ball, and fell back away with the tide. Away to the fuel dock before it closed for the night. Towing the dinghy behind, we picked our way out through the complicated mooring field. Enough speed to keep some steerage or ‘way’. Forward motion pushes water against the rudder, allowing me to steer. But not with so much speed that we get into trouble. It’s a fine balance, considering other Boats, shoals, and a three-knot current unhelpfully behind us.
‘We’ll pull up port-side to’ I reckoned. So Dorry put the fenders out, as I drifted the boat between the narrow, battered pilings of the ruined bascule (draw) bridge of Boot Key Harbour. As we neared the fuel dock, I hoped we had enough space to spin the boat as we careered towards the red shoal marker with the current. I put the helm hard a-starboard. The new engine made the boat behave differently, as I had discovered under the gaze of the dock-master at Fort Pierce Municipal Marina, I was still getting used to her improved turning abilities. She cleared the shoals, and I brought her head back into the current, and what wind there was. Better control this way, and we crept towards the point parallel to the dock which I had imagined for a slow drift sideways to rest us gently on the fenders, wind assisting. Suddenly, we were in the lee of the Mangrove trees, and the boat felt as if she would sit off the key, just out of reach of a rope-throw. Dorry threw the bow line at my command. There is nothing for it in these situations, as they were about to close. I had no steerage with the boat not moving forward, and we would have to start the approach all over again. The third time, the increasingly surly dockmaster caught the now-sodden line. I could tell he was impatient when he yanked the boat towards the pilings as hard as he could. I ran up forward to stop the expensive stainless bow-rail from getting crumpled by ten tons of boat against an unmoving greenheart piling.
So when the boat took ages to accept the seventeen gallons we put in (a paltry amount as compared with the huge gas-guzzling tuna boats which dominate the space here), I stolidly refused to adopt the stress of keeping him an extra half-hour after closing. I didn’t tip his bad attitude, supposing a tip to be connected with good service, and that really annoyed him.
I had decided already that we would pull off the dock and make for the outside of the inlet, just to see how the swell was, under the predictions we had been receiving from NOAA (North American Weather), but his attitude cemented in my mind a growing reluctance to stay much longer in the USA. It is a very shoally and winding inlet, and I spent the time making sure not to overshoot shoal markers, and accommodate incoming day-fishers in their small craft. Keep right. Keep right, squeeze between the channel buoys…
Once clear, I turned the boat toward Sombrero Light, which would be our last outbound marker before Cuba when we decided to make the voyage. We had meant to go today, three hours ago, but I had all-but decided it was too late. If the East winds persisted, this course should constitute a beam-reach, a good point of sail for our boat.
‘180-due South’, I said to Dorry who was busy stowing away the fenders and warps for mooring. We wouldn’t need them on anchor that night. But what about tomorrow? No winds or too much for the next week, and what if the storm re-gathered? Dorry came back to the cockpit with a fender. ‘This sea is OK, isn’t it? Perfect’. It was then that my mind was made-up. If she was happy, most of my problems were solved. The big question after that was my stamina. I was exhausted.

The Iconic Sombrero Key Light, Hawk Channel, Florida Keys

‘Yup. If it’s like this when we go, I’ll be happy. I wonder how much more swell there would be outside the reef in the Straits.’ We were still inside Hawk Channel until we cleared Sombrero. It stood there, a far-off pyramid, but getting closer. It has a rating of 12 mile visibility. I looked down at the chart. The reef was deep out there. The swell we had should be pretty much the same. Tolerable. Not comfortable, throwing our boat sideways all the time, as it came from the beam, but tolerable. And once the sails were up, we’d have heeling stability.
‘I reckon this is about the swell we’ll get’, I said. Dorry nodded… ‘We could just do it!? Just carry-on. Cuba is just over there.’ I pointed ahead. ‘That’s the thing about cruising. We have our home with us. The weather is right.’
Should we just go to Sombrero to have a look? But by then, it’d be nightfall, there would be no going back. We fell silent, and, as we neared the light, which was just starting to visibly flash, I realised the decision had been made already.
‘We went for fuel, and ended-up in Cuba.’ If we went wrong, there would be little help as we got near Cuba. We were covered by TowBoat US, but they would not come anywhere near Cuban waters. However, the boat was as ready as she ever would be, and we were, apart from the fatigue, and we had seen enough summer weather to know that these weather windows were to be taken when they were there.
‘I’d better get the dinghy stowed then.’, Dorry said, and as we went up forward to lift it aboard, the Autopilot keep the boat heading out into the Caribbean Sea, past Sombrero light, and southbound one last desperate time. Eight accidental years it had taken to restore the boat and bring her to this point – ready to leave the USA, and to start going to places we really wanted to see.
We were soon to find out that the Autopilot could not handle the beam seas, that the depth sounder and compass were too dim to be seen at night, and that these beam seas were to get the better of both of our stomachs. I stayed on the helm for virtually all of the night, with better night vision than Dorry, and was treated to a beautiful moonlit beam-reach in the swells of the gulf stream. Before this, at about 11.30pm, Dorry said: ‘Look at that’, and pointed to the port bow, eastwards. There in the sky were what I can only describe as three northbound fireballs, accompanied by six or seven smaller comets. But they were not these things. They did not burn out, but stayed in the sky for three or four minutes at least. It was eery and conspiratorial. I reckoned they might be on a direct course between Guantanamo and Miami, but what were they?

MSF asked me to write a Christmas peice. Here it is:

Christmas in Lankien, South Sudan Mission, Eastern Upper Nile Region, Medecins Sans Frontieres-Holland.

Rupert Allan is currently working in South Sudan during a very interesting time in its history. The coming referendum is expected to create the birth of a new nation. His job, as a Logistician, involves the running of a Field Hospital from the technical, staffing, and supply point of view.  Lankien is a small isolated village in the middle of the bush, hundreds of miles from a paved road, and dependent on a baked-mud airstrip for supplies of medicine, food, and equipment. He has worked before in isolated places on relief projects, but for the last thirteen years has been more concerned with installing illusions on sets and locations in the Film and Television industry. The Art Directing he is used to has not differed so much in variety, scope, and bizarreness, as one might expect, but he is enjoying the extreme reality of being ‘back on the ground’ with MSF.

Rupert lives in Ysbyty Ystwyth, where he has ‘period restored’ the tiny house where he lives, using recycled materials. Having a godfather who was one of the founders of CAT, and with an interest in marine self-sufficiency, he now finds himself on the receiving end of supply chains which start in places like Dulas workshops, Machynlleth, (e.g Solar Vaccine Fridges which pass through Amsterdam Operation Centre on the way to Africa).

Welsh-Nuer dictionary:

Bore-Da= Shaba-ka-Mahl

Prynhawn-Da= Shaboot-ka-Mahl

Da-Iawn= Mahleh-magua

Sit wyt ti?= Gin-nasin?

Mae ‘n iawn ‘da fi.= Ah- nasin

Crikey, this is an inhospitable and unlikely place for people to have a settlement. The only water here has to be pumped up from boreholes nearly 500 feet deep in the earth’s crust. Holes used to get dug by hand, apparently, desperate nomadic cattle-herders frienziedly chasing the receeding river-flood, grubbing for dampness in the blinding dust. Indeed, Christmas this year in Lankien, South Sudan, will be a dusty affair. One of the great bonuses of the build-up for me here though, is the complete unawareness of its immanence. Religion here is, officially Christian, but with the absence of a market goes the absence of marketing. Fantastic!

That is not to say that anybody here is remotely ‘Bah-Humbug’, and I am informed that New Year will be ‘off-the-chain’. Continuous drumming and singing thud into the walls of the Tukuls (Mud Huts) of the clinics, wards and accommodation of the MSF compound here all through the night, and over the weekend. Weekend dances continue regardless of any other longer-term agendae, and every Sunday the imposingly tall and thin males of the Nuer tribe do a circular dance, wielding their wooden staffs on our hard dusty airstrip. The staff, a sturdy, carved, worn, and sometimes battle-scarred stick is a part of the adult male’s self-presentation. Along with the six wrinkle-like scars across the forehead. The dancers take giant steps in a circle, bouncing up and down above the heads of the crowd, every other step being a giant leap into the air, their sticks brandished. Tall thin giants, leaping giant steps, and singing, like a rugby team, in unison. Energetic? I think so.

I’m sure that Christmas will be a monster helping of this, the church singing and drumming added, which is beautiful. The Nuer sing in everything they do, and it is normal for me to wander off into the dark to switch-off the generator, and locate the whereabouts of our unarmed guards in the compound by their soft but note-perfect solo singing. Most of them are respected warriors, and are not afraid of many things, including bullets or any insecurity we might feel here. They have seen it all before.

I caught one of my carpenters singing a Sudanese carol whilst cleaning the workshop yesterday. He has promised to teach it to me. Christmas, as I’m sure everyone back home is acutely aware, falls this year on a weekend. It will be characterised by both Saturday and Sunday off here in the hospital, instead of just Sunday, but of course we shall all be on-call. A goat was brought into the compound as a Christmas present for our midwife  ‘Miss Sheila’. But that will probably get slaughtered tonight for the weekend, probably by me(!), as happened last weekend when we had a little leaving party for my predecessor.

I am determined to get the Frisbee out, and continue to teach the village boys what moves I know on the airstrip, but personally Christmas will be stressful for me, as I will be covering both Technical and Supply Logistics. Any mistakes will have a direct impact on hundreds of patients and all of our ‘in-pat’ and ‘ex-pat’ staff. Time here is measured-out in the long-term in flight-rotations. If there was not a flight on Christmas Eve, it seems quite possible that Christmas would get ignored in favour of that magical flight date. Everything arrives here by small plane, onto our hardened-mud runway, which I have to check at 6am/dawn on flight days, and report back via Sat-Phone or sometimes High-Frequency Radio, to Mission HQ five hundred miles away.

Cattle, goats, stray equipment from other emergency helicopter-drops, kids, rain(unlikely). All of these things could stop us from having the Christmas parcel on the 24^th flight. It will mainly consist of treats, I have heard BACON, and some whiskey and wine. If I was asked what I most wanted for Christmas, it would be an elusive item; too heavy to be included on the plane-full of medicine, impossible to obtain here, in the middle of this dustbowl. A large; very large…cold… BEER.

Last night, I arrived in a small plane into Lokichoggio border town on the South-East edge of Sudan. From what I can tell, this is the main nerve-centre used by scores of organisations  for the relief of human suffering over the last twenty years of shifting warfare. Funds from contributors to LiveAid, and all those other high profile efforts have, doubtless, passed through here, but the little desert town, split by a tarmac airstrip, on the other side of which is the borderline, and beyond which loom the rusty-red heights of Sudan, is comparatively quiet these days. Relative stability has reigned for a few years, after the ceasefire, but more about that later.

I am sitting in the tranquil Logistics office of the MSF compound. A cool breeze is taking the edge off what would otherwise be a scorching day, and I am enjoying the stasis already, after the last few weeks of mad preparation. Lizzards scuttle everywhere, but really I haven’t been confronted, in this well-kept and clean compound, with anything but a very large cricket/locust in the (flushing!) loo. On the 25th, three days time, I fly, in the MSF ‘caravan’ – an even smaller plane than yesterday – to my Project in Lankien.

After filming Ironclad, redesigned and rebuilt a bathroom at Hook Cottage in the Spring. 100% recycled:

Bit of a Custom Job...

Taps reclaimed from Chester, Bath from Colchester, Sink from Bristol, and one of the Queen Mum’s Toilet Cisterns! Lots of lime and elbow-grease…

USA:

Jacksonville, Florida.

Spent most of the summer so far changing engine and redoing cabin, deck, and cap rails of the boat in Jax, Florida. Infested with Giant Wolf Spiders, ants, and Black Widdows, as well as the usual boatbum melodrama…

Twas Hotttttttt!!!