Your bunk is no retreat. You are a vagrant chunk of ice in a cocktail shaker. You hold on to the berth with your toes and the muscles of your derriere, all the time scrounging out of the way of the Chinese torture-drop coming off the over-head. (Damn that shipyard man, you told him about that leak.) You don't feel like eating, but that damned fool Cookie (showing off) has fired up the alcohol stove. The cabin slowly fills with unconsumed alcohol fumes which make your eyes smart and which go right to the pit of your stomach before his miserable scrambled egg can get there.

In one season alone Coles made sixteen Channel crossings in COHOE, but her most famous voyage was the 1950 Transatlantic Race from Bermuda to Plymouth.