Green Ghost, Blue Ocean

by Jennifer M. Smith

  We soon settled into our fixed address – a small one-bedroom apartment in Bloor West Village. Compared to boat living, it felt palatial, all 650 square feet of it. We revelled in the luxury of a rectangular bed and long hot showers – to have great volumes of fresh water pour down upon you for as long as you liked every single day seemed nothing short of a miracle. We bought an old car from my cousin. We shipped possessions left in storage in Vancouver to our new Toronto address.

  I wish I could boast that we smartly planned our return to the corporate world by studying world economics and graphing stock market movements, but the truth is our timing was pure luck. After years in the on-again/off-again mining business, we arrived in Toronto in the midst of the most impressive rise in metal prices that had occurred in our lifetime. The mining industry was booming. Job prospects were good.

  We worried that the three-and-a-half-year gap on our résumés would be a concern for future employers so we confronted it head on, boldly stating our recent experience at the top of the page: Co-Captain aboard Green Ghost … Remarkably the downtime on our résumés did not discount us; instead it drew people in. One company interviewed Nik for four hours over two sessions before admitting that they didn’t have a role to fill; they just wanted to meet him.

  But the transition from the cruising life to the city life was not easy. We found the city unfriendly and demanding. There was so much don’t-cut-me-off, I’m-not-letting-you-in, get-out-of-my-way mindset. Even the squirrels in the courtyard seemed to have a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately attitude. We didn’t know anyone in our apartment building. No one spoke to each other in the elevator. In the cruising world, no occasion was ever needed for an impromptu cocktail party on a beach. But we were sure we’d be met with suspicion if we knocked on neighbours’ doors and invited them in for drinks. There was no doubt about it – we’d left the cruising world far behind.

  We both got work within a couple of months and we were back on a mission. We focused on the plan – to make enough money to go cruising again. Two to three years, that’s what we told ourselves, that’s what we told everybody, but four and a half years later we were still in Toronto. Norbert-the-wise was right again.

  On our break from cruising we got some things right and we got some things wrong.

  In a booming industry, we found ourselves in ambitious and professionally satisfying roles. Nik worked in sales as an Account Manager for a well-known mining software company. I worked as a VP of Corporate Development involved in financing, mergers, and acquisitions for a uranium mining company. For two years, I averaged one out of every four nights in a hotel room somewhere, travelling in the U.S. and Europe to fulfill the company’s aggressive growth plans.

  We were smart to rent a one-bedroom apartment, a space that felt like a great indulgence at first, but soon felt like a tiny home. Our restraint on square footage enforced a restraint on the accumulation of things. We saved one paycheque and lived on the other, often saving some of that too. For the first two years, we doggedly built up our bank balance.

  We were right to be near family. A couple of months after our arrival, Nik’s sister succumbed to her battle with cancer. A year later, my father passed away. My mom and Nik’s parents were glad to have us home.

  We adapted to the city life: the subway crush, expensive lattes, pressed shirts, take-home food, and weekends that were much too short. With family, friends, demanding jobs, and happy pastimes, our lives were full. We’d made a comfortable space for ourselves in Toronto, so what did we get wrong?

  We didn’t give ourselves a goal or a deadline. As we worked and saved our bank balance grew, but how much was enough? Nik frequently spoke of wanting more of a cushion. He hadn’t liked the precarious feeling of low bank balances when we returned from the Pacific. He often said he didn’t want to feel that poor again.

  On our first foray in the cruising world we’d picked a number, a savings threshold that would prompt departure. During our cruising hiatus, we failed to do the same. Without a goal, we were blindly moving forward. Two years went by in a flash, then, three. Making money felt good. Saving money felt good. Watching our bank account rise was the reason we were in Toronto. Meanwhile the feel-goods of the cruising life faded in our minds just as I’d feared they would.

  Australian Customs wouldn’t allow us to keep our boat in the country indefinitely. We were initially granted a six-month Temporary Import Permit and had to apply for extensions biannually. The maximum allowable stay was three years. While in Toronto we routinely submitted our request for extension on a timely basis, but eventually we bumped up against the three-year mark. We had two choices: pay 15 percent duty or get the boat out of the country. After so many months on the hardstand, we knew much maintenance would be required to sail Green Ghost out of Australia. The mining industry continued to thrive. It made sense to keep making hay while the sun was shining. We paid Australian Customs and worked on.

  While this allowed us to continue to enjoy our careers in the buoyant mining market, it removed the one and only deadline we had. The date to restart our cruising life remained uncertain.

  In our fourth year of work, we bought a new car – a brand-new car. I was spending hundreds of dollars on suit jackets and shopping for jewelry. Nik indulged in a radio-controlled airplane hobby which transformed into the pursuit of a pilot’s license – an actual pilot’s license. We’d saved enough money to go cruising but we’d lost our focus. To keep ourselves entertained while we lived the busy urban professional life, we were blowing money on distractions and things. Of course, if that makes you happy, then why not? If you can afford nice things or a wonderful experience, then why not go for it? But clothes and jewelry had never made me happy. We had a dream, a big, grand dream, and we were distracting ourselves from achieving it with trinkets and baubles. Something was wrong with our plan.

  I began to get restless. In the ever-merging company I worked for my job unwound before me. My title was re-jigged and I was slowly elbowed out of my role, constructively dismissed. I sat in my office with nothing to do. It was no wonder that a return to cruising grew ever larger in my mind.

  More than four years had gone by since we left Green Ghost high and dry in Queensland. We owned a boat in Australia. If we weren’t planning on returning to it, then what were we doing? If we weren’t going back, the boat should be sold. If we were going back, what was stopping us?

  Nik was stopping us. He was reluctant to let go. His role as top salesperson filled him with a sense of achievement unparalleled in his career. At odds with one another, in an incredibly lucky turn of events we were able to find a compromise. In November 2008, Nik was promoted to the role of Sales Director for East Asia, a position that required a move. His new role was in Brisbane, Australia, thirty-six kilometres from Green Ghost. It wasn’t a return to cruising, but it was the next best thing.

  Figure 2. Asia Route Map

  CHAPTER 17

  Queensland Coast, Australia

  (November 2008 – June 2011)

  Green Ghost had waited for us, but like a lost dog she had a look of neglect that begged for some tender loving care. The gleaming jade mist topsides had faded to a chalky forest green –too much time in the Aussie sun. But the cosmetic deterioration didn’t really matter. It was the many other problems that did.

  “A boat, she likes to go, eh?” a French-Canadian sailor once told us.

  While offshore sailing takes a certain toll on a boat, it is shocking what disuse can do. The fridge/freezer, working perfectly when we left, was broken due to a split seal on one of the evaporation plates. The windlass, similarly in perfect working order upon departure, inexplicably failed to hoist or lower the anchor. The bilges were full of water. The HAM radio was pronounced DOA by a local radio expert. New house and starting batteries were needed. The BBQ burner had turned to powdered rust. The life raft needed servicing. The EPIRB battery was stale-dated. The deck prisms were leaking. The fire extinguishers and flares had expired. Gaskets had
deteriorated, allowing water at the galley taps to flow from everywhere except from the faucet itself.

  Some things needed replacement (sails, dinghy, outboard, canvas dodger, holding tank plumbing, running rigging, cutless bearing). There was a wish list of upgrades too (water-maker, feathering propeller, line clutches). Then there were all the cosmetic touches – the laborious bent-over back-breaking make-it-look-pretty work. The brightwork all had to be sanded back to bare wood and revarnished. The stainless steel was in a sorry rust-spotted state. The teak decks were filthy.

  While Nik settled into his new role in Brisbane and laboured for pay, I settled in to commuting to Scarborough where I laboured for love. On weekends, we jointly tackled the larger projects and Nik turned his attention to the mechanical and electrical work that was not my forte. There was much to do, but there wasn’t anything that time and money couldn’t fix.

  After eighteen months in Brisbane, Nik resigned from his position and we extracted ourselves from the fixed address life once again. In June 2010, at the age of forty-eight, we began our second installment of retirement, part two of our sailing adventure.

  For our first season, we decided to keep it simple and stick to coastal cruising with a relatively short trip to the Whitsunday Islands and a plan to return south to the Mooloolaba Marina before the threat of cyclone season.

  With southeasterly winds at our backs, the 600 NM trip north to the Whitsundays proved a good reintroduction to cruising. Friends from Vancouver, Toronto, and Brisbane flew in to enjoy that world-renowned sailing destination with us. We were energized by the islands and chuffed with how well Green Ghost had done.

  In our fifteen-week round trip up the coast, we noticed a few things that had changed in the decade since our previous cruising adventure. New technologies made some things easier. Older joints made some things harder. Older parents made us worry just a little more about the happenings back home. As it turned out our concerns were justified. On our southbound journey, we panicked when we got the news that Nik’s mom had had a mild stroke and we scrambled to get to Mooloolaba so that Nik could make an emergency trip home.

  In 2011, we registered for the Sail Indonesia Rally, a gathering of cruising boats that would sail out of Darwin in late July and, in a loosely defined fleet, cruise the waters of Indonesia all the way to Singapore. From Mooloolaba it was a 2,000 NM journey to the Darwin starting line. For the first time, we were sailing to a deadline in a flotilla with other boats.

  Much like the first time we went cruising, before our departure from Mooloolaba, we made one last trip home to Canada to visit family. Nik’s mom was recovering well. Upon our return, we again performed that immutable act and severed our connection to the land life – we sold our car. It was late April when we set off up the Queensland coast. We were already behind schedule.

  The northbound trip was challenging. Long distances between safe anchorages required twelve- to fourteen-hour sailing days. Rising as early as four a.m., once the kettle had boiled and coffees were poured, we weighed anchor and departed under a starry scattering of white diamonds on a black velvet sky. It was cold, only 14°C (57°F) and the chill, exacerbated by the fifteen-knot wind, was too much for our summer-thin Queensland blood. There was something terribly incongruous about wearing long underwear as we rounded Cape Capricorn, so named because of its position on the Tropic. I winced as I bent over to stuff my legs into my long johns. After all our preparations before departure, an old herniated disc injury in my lower back was acting up. I found it dreadful to be up so early, to be braced against pain and hunched against the chill air. I was a bundle of clenched muscles and, despite the cold, my back was on fire.

  Starry nights gave way to blue-sky days. We warmed ourselves with hot breakfasts and eased into sunny afternoons. Green Ghost was happy to have water flying past her keel again, but conditions were poor and the long days were tiring. We experienced tremendous southeasterly winds as we moved through Broad Sound and Shoalwater Bay. We slept poorly in rolly conditions, only to rise still fatigued to sail on.

  “You know what my friends back home are saying?” I complained to Nik one night. “They’re saying, ’I know this woman, she and her husband they’re sailing around the world! They’re living the dream!’” I wasn’t feeling it. “It’s at times like this, right now, when I just think, Bah – what are we doing this for anyway?”

  Obviously, I needed a break. And I got it. We ducked out of the big seas and spent a couple of days at the lovely Scawfell Island where dolphins were arcing about the anchorage and turtles swam by our hull. It was a much-needed rest and welcome respite.

  On our journey north from Mooloolaba, we’d met very few boats heading to Darwin for the rally. Our late departure had put us at the back of the fleet. In Cairns, we finally caught up to the others. How exciting it was to be in the midst of long-distance voyagers again. There were Americans, French, Swedes, Germans, Britons, South Africans, Kiwis, Brazilians, and of course plenty of Aussies too. Nearly every yachtie we met was registered for the rally. We immediately felt part of something. From Cairns, north and west to Darwin, we felt sure there would be more fun in store, more social time with fellow sailors. We were certain we’d never be far from one of the hundred other rally boats.

  After celebrating Nik’s forty-ninth birthday with a A$ 10 steak and mash special, we pulled out of Cairns for far northern Queensland (FNQ). The next phase of our journey was a six-week voyage that would take us to Cape York. From there we’d turn left and sail west to Darwin. We were venturing into the wilder, more far-flung parts of Australia. Happy to be back on schedule, we allowed ourselves to take our foot off the gas pedal and enjoy ourselves a little more through the northern section of the coast.

  We made a stop in historic Cooktown, and when I say a stop I mean it.

  Cooktown is the very place Captain Cook came in for repairs in June of 1770 after running his ship Endeavour aground in an attempt to get out to sea through the Great Barrier Reef. We arrived at low tide late in the day and in a salute to the famous sea captain we came into the small crowded anchorage and immediately ran aground ourselves. It was only the third time we’d ever made that mistake. Fortunately, it was a low-speed grounding, such a soft touch that Nik, who was on the bow readying the anchor for deployment, didn’t even feel it.

  “I think you need to head over there,” he called back to me at the helm.

  As I watched the depth sounder zero out I replied, “Well, maybe later. For now, I think we’re going to have to enjoy this spot right here.”

  We tried reversing out. No luck. We launched the tender then lowered our anchor off the bow into the dinghy. Nik drove the dinghy over to deeper water and chucked the anchor in. Using the winch to pull against the anchor, an action called “kedging,” didn’t work for us either. We had a two-hour wait before we would float off on the rising tide, so we made the most of it. Nik was already in the dinghy, it was getting late, we were both hungry, and the smell of fried food wafting out from shore was too tempting. There was only one thing to do: buy takeaway fish and chips and wait for high water.

  Our sail to Cape Flattery and on to Lizard Island was pure pleasure in perfect conditions. We were enjoying some of the best sailing we’d ever had. Along this section of the coast, the Great Barrier Reef blocks the ocean swell and with the genoa poled out, Green Ghost cruised downwind with good speed on flat seas. All the way to Cape York we had day after day of downwind runs with my favourite soundtrack playing – the most mellifluous sound in my ears, that gentle gurgle and swish of a following sea.

  At long last we reached Lizard Island, a much more beautiful place than its moniker suggests. Well offshore and unlikely to be croc infested, we could finally get in the water. We’d read that Lizard Island is the site of one of the few remaining giant clam beds in the world. When it came to snorkelling, we were getting pretty hard to impress – we’d seen plenty of giant clams before. Nonetheless, we had to take a look and we were mightily impressed wh
en we did. The clams in Watson’s Bay were truly giant-sized with gorgeous jewel-toned mantels. Like something right out of a Flintstones cartoon, they were large enough to contain my entire torso. They were the largest clams we’d ever seen and there were so many of them it was impossible not to be wowed.

  At that time of year there are few boats that go north of Lizard Island that are planning to return south. In June, if you were up there, it was because you were headed north and west. During our stay, the anchorage population varied from eight to eighteen boats from nearly a dozen different countries. As in Cairns, it was an international crowd of long-distance cruisers. Most were on their way to Darwin for the rally and everyone was in a companionable frame of mind. The announcement of sundowners on the beach one night resulted in sixteen dinghies lined up on shore and about fifty people mingling in an impromptu cocktail party.

  After six days of fun we departed Lizard Island at 4:30 a.m. and picked our way through the anchored boats in the dark. As we exited the bay we viewed a partial eclipse of the full moon. The sunrise enhanced the lighting – the bottom sliver of moon, the only segment visible in the dark, glowed with amber light. It was an effect similar to a person in total darkness holding a flashlight up against their chin, the light causing all their features to become intensely highlighted. I was awestruck. I’d never seen the moon more spherical, more heavenly, more unforgettably beautiful.

  We were surrounded by nature: emu tracks on long lovely stretches of sand, sightings of dugong, dolphins at the bow, evening walks on ribbon-like sand cays exposed at low tide. The sailing was fantastic, the environment was stunning, but there was no denying that the trip up the Queensland coast was a forced march with brief rests in what felt like an endless series of anchorages.