A pic to make you dream.

To anyone sitting ashore who has been to sea and loved their time under sail, this picture will speak to something deep within them. Look at the sea - whitecaps on the swells: she's sailing in a force four or five wind. Just right. The pic's taken from the foremast (the front of the three masts on a three masted ship) looking backwards towards the stern. It looks to me like she's got all plain sail up: the boat will be a pyramid of white sails against the sky, and looking at the sea that was a blue sky, blue water day. The boat would be surging along at nine or ten knots, sails taut and full, water hushing along the side, masts and rigging making that soft, organic creaking: that's a wooden boat talking back to you, telling you all's well. You may step up to a piece of rope that vanishes 50 feet up the mast, into the blue and grasp it, searching for a little more depth in your communion with the masts, rigging and the wind. You may elbow your way to the wheel, pull rank (or plead) and steer for a few moments, feeling the waves, swell and currents humming through the rudder to your hands, all adding to your feel for the boat, the weather, her trim, the crew. Or you may be off watch, with eight hours to look at the ever-shifting sea, sleep the sleep of a sailor who's just sailed from night to morning, you may eat away a fresh-air- wrestling-with-flogging-canvas hunger: fresh caught fish cooked on a barbecue and eaten scalding hot, nothing like it. Or, you see that platform on the mid-left hand side of the pic? Maybe you just want to lie there and read, while shipboard life goes on 50 feet below you, but while the canvas bellies and raps above you, and the seabirds wheel around the boat's stern and swoop into the wake, picking small fish out of the roiled water.

We want to build the replica Beagle that will take international crews of young scientists and sail training cadets around the world and leave them with memories like this, and better. The pic is by Dr Miranda Gomperts of Cambridge University. Help us: donate.