For skipper Steve, the Scillys are where Clean Ocean Sailing began. “I was caught by a freak wind and washed up on Annet,” he said, referring to the one of the archipelago’s many small islands. “It’s only a mile across, but I ended up having to spend a few days there. On the southwest of the island, it is six-foot deep of all sorts of plastic flotsam and jetsam — full of dead or dying seabirds and dolphins.”

Since then, Steve and Monica have returned regularly to Annet with a crew of citizen activists to help tackle the island’s pollution problem. They planned to return again in February, and offered me a spot on the boat. But because of recent storms — Britain had just been battered by the deadly storm Ciara, and the Coast Guard warned of further “danger to life” posed by the rapidly approaching Storm Dennis — they decided not to risk the open waters of a long crossing, and opted instead to stick closer to home.