doing just the very thing that you can't do in single-handed sailing.

'By the time I realized the danger it was far too late to turn and
hammer out to the open. I was deep in the bottle-neck bight of the
sands, jammed on a lee shore, and a strong flood tide sweeping me on.
That tide, by the way, gave just the ghost of a chance. I had the
hours in my head, and knew it was about two-thirds flood, with two
hours more of rising water. That meant the banks would be all
covering when I reached them, and harder than ever to locate; but it
also meant that I _might_ float right over the worst of them if I hit
off a lucky place.' Davies thumped the table in disgust. 'Pah! It
makes me sick to think of having to trust to an accident like that,
like a lubberly cockney out for a boozy Bank Holiday sail. Well, just
as I foresaw, the wall of surf appeared clean across the horizon, and
curling back to shut me in, booming like thunder. When I last saw the
Medusa she seemed to be charging it like a horse at a fence, and I
took a rough bearing of her position by a hurried glance at the
compass. At that very moment I _thought_ she seemed to luff and show
some of her broadside; but a squall blotted her out and gave me hell
with the tiller. After that she was lost in the white mist that hung
over the line of breakers. I kept on my bearing as well as I could,
but I was already out of the channel. I knew that by the look of the
water, and as we neared the bank I saw it was all awash and without
the vestige of an opening. I wasn't going to chuck her on to it
without an effort; so, more by instinct than with any particular
hope, I put the helm down, meaning to work her along the edge on the
chance of spotting a way over. She was buried at once by the beam
sea, and the jib flew to blazes; but the reefed stays'l stood, she
recovered gamely, and I held on, though I knew it could only be for a
few minutes, as the centre-plate was up, and she made frightful