Grammar (at or at the...)

Question

In which of the sentences below would the use of at be grammatically correct?

i. I do not want to talk about mine stay at sea.

or

ii. I do not want to talk about mine stay at the sea.

Answer 1

While generally, 'sea' uses an article, in reference to taking a sea voyage, you should not use one.

Examples:

I am going out to sea.

I recently had a stay at sea.

Examples of places where you should use an article (that is, where it's not referring to a voyage or journey):

I found him looking at the sea.

I pulled some flotsam up from the sea.

Side note: You usually should not use 'mine' unless it's after the noun it's describing. Here's how these sentences are usually structured:

This is my boat.

This boat is mine.

In very old texts, you might find 'mine' before a word starting with a vowel sound:

Mine own brother is...

Mine orange is...

But this is considered obsolete, and is now extremely uncommon, so I would avoid it entirely and only use 'mine' after the noun it's describing.