A Sea-Chase
Page 13
Tina produced a large, red plastic pencil case and a bundle of shorthand notebooks. ‘Take these blanks and pencils. Scribble when you can and keep the notes handy for the radio skeds. They’ll be dry in your ditty bag. Keep what you say for Tony Watson separate from what you get ready for me. I want you to write my bits out. Like telegrams, I’ll fill in the rest. You’ll be busy. Use the code to save time.’
The code was more than just chunks of phrases. It had suggested topics. WAKE-UP THOUGHTS, MOMENTS OF PRIVACY.
‘What I am looking forward to,’ said Judy, watching a cluster of debris sliding alongside Tina’s tethered kayak, ‘is getting away from everything people chuck away.’
‘Good luck with that,’ said Tina.
The ship’s radio service for offshore cruisers was a mum-and-dad operation on the Central Coast, a nest of wires on a hilltop dairy farm five minutes from Raymond’s oyster lease. While Tina was still on board they called them up. ‘Yacht Rattler. Australian Ship Register ON853557. Home port Sydney, Australia. Radio VZN 3526. Owner: Kenneth Webb Redlynch.’
That night Judy went to sleep with the couple’s homely voices ringing in her ears. There was a feeling of Blindale in the arrangement, the caringness factor professionalised into distanced but reliable watchfulness, quite possibly wearing knitted cardigans and carpet slippers. Tomorrow Ken, Dijana, Rev. Bannister and Professor Len Forester and her parents were coming out in a launch to say goodbye. Whisker Martin had booked a Tiger Moth, towing a banner to fly over the Harbour Bridge and buzz them through the Heads. At last light a Customs launch came over and okayed their departure papers.
It was still dark when Judy felt Wes leaning over her. ‘Stay there,’ he said, ‘keep warm, we’re on our way.’
She was hardly likely to stay where she was with the delicious shock of departure sprung so unexpectedly. Wes was engineering an escape.
Judy went up to the cockpit with a blanket and crouched on a locker lid. The starter motor whined, the engine lurched, thumped and burped. Pungent exhaust smoke hung in the clean night air. Linton pulled up the anchor by hand and used the windlass for the last length of chain. Wes helped him stow the anchor while Judy held the tiller. There was no wind. Wes came back and they held hands. It was the stars and the muted, glowing, sleeping city that drew them out, leaving a world behind as they passed through the rolling Heads in company with early morning fishing boats. Wes wanted to put miles under the keel before the next lot of questioners delayed them. Were they quite ready to go? Maybe no boat ever was. There was a job to do. A date to meet. Leaving before time as they were, they could already be running late. It was cold and Judy went back to bed.
When she woke a while later it was still dark but there was a change in what felt like everything. The engine was off. The freshness of early morning blew into the saloon. She pulled the sleeping bag up to her chin. They were at sea. The saloon was tilted. An insistent, slapping, rushing sound came past her ear pressed to the side planks. It was the bow wave ribboning by. They were under sail on a starboard tack.
When Judy came up onto the deck at daylight Wes and Linton were yawning. They passed her a mug of tea poured from last night’s filled thermos, loaded with sugar.
‘Isn’t this great?’ said Wes.
‘Ken will be furious,’ said Judy.
‘We’re perfectly trimmed on this tack,’ said Wes. He showed her the compass heading. ‘If she wanders just bring her back, but if you can’t, give me a call.’
Rattler went on, lifting and falling to the swell. Wes showed his head through the companionway, looking around for shipping. ‘Everything all right?’ He looked around again and went below again and stayed there. Rattler in ten knots of southerly was a baby elephant. Judy prodded her along.
Late morning Wes brought up the sextant, ready for taking the noon sight. He cradled the box under his arm like a baby. ‘If this goes overboard we’re done.’ The New South Wales coastline was still hazy behind them, so they knew where they were out from Port Jackson, but after a while, when the coast receded, the matter would be debatable and Judy intended knowing exactly where Rattler was the whole way through, a feeling she had that it was important she did. She liked the way they had slipped anchor early but some sort of antidote was needed to Wes’s impulsiveness. Coming down the coast from Yamba the sextant had stayed in its box. They had been able to follow the chart, headland by headland, so it did not matter. So far Judy had straight in her head the concept of position line and intercept line. But she had never, in all honesty, held a sextant up to her eye on the water, and only confusingly on land. There she had, on Linton’s insistence, tried taking a noon sight one day, over city rooftops, and failed to see anything that made sense. Wes took their sights and Linton checked them. When they disputed Linton was found to be right each time.
Doing Tina Stones’ radio calls, they learned they had angered SANT with their pre-dawn getaway. Youth versus authority and who ran the ship anyway? They were called irresponsible juveniles by Professor Len Forester. But they were making headlines. SANT had split like the atom. A youth wing spokesman called Wes Che Guevara. That youth wing spokesman was Georgy Redlynch, whose voice had barely broken, son of Ken Redlynch, teacher, businessman, boat-owner.
Of the three, Linton was the only one who had ever sailed properly offshore. He had been to Lord Howe Island and back, and on another occasion to Norfolk Island on a yacht loaded with judges and QCs. Now they were out on the water and on their way, no turning back, Judy sensed Linton’s strengths in a way she could only begin to away from land. Wes had been careful in his TV interviews and with Tina to avoid saying what experience he’d had in that direction.
After a few days she understood better why Wes and Linton so often had their heads together doing calculations. They confirmed how sluggish Rattler was to windward. In some conditions the extra leeway or sideways shifting movement that was the least noticeable force to those on board was the biggest influence on them. To report this to Tina and also, when the appointed day came around, crackle crackle, to Tony Watson, just seemed absurd. Why tell them Rattler was a tub? What Judy talked about was how they all felt queasy when the smoked oysters were opened, but staying out in the cockpit in the fresh air wearing their Terrapyn jackets fixed them. Judy was disinclined to analyse or dig deeper for reasons for anything, and, as she snatched sleep between watches, she laughed over a few code phrases, for example, MOONBEAMS: ‘I am badly bitten by the sailing bug.’ It was so very true. Also SEEDPODS: ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd.’
The idea that Linton would sleep in the forepeak proved impossible. There was nowhere he could brace himself there, even the size he was. So he squeezed himself into the quarter berth, meaning all three slept in the saloon although not at the same time.
The weather remained fine, the wind steady. Despite Rattler’s windward limitations they made good progress. There was no other world except the sea and the sea’s lumpy horizon, day after day. Eating away at the mood on the boat was their deadline for getting to Auckland. After a change of course they sailed on the port tack in predominantly north-east winds and averaged six knots, which was satisfying. Without the pressure of a timetable the sail might have been joyous. At this time of year whales headed north; Judy was thrilled when they broke from the deep, crusted as old iron, alive because of international whaling bans.
That things were not quite joyous showed in Wes’s frown, when Judy used the word holiday in a snatched phrase to Tina on a broken-up radio call. A holiday was not what it was, except ordinary responsibilities did not apply. That word holiday came back to bite them, in the expanding story they were somehow creating by putting themselves at the mercy of a journalist as well as wind and tide, the story of how a generation was taking an anti-nuclear jaunt. Initials were at war. The SA in SANT stood for STOP ALL now as well as what it originally did. In the youth SANT, breakaway SA stood for STUDENTS AGAINST. Bothered by what to say next on her radio sked Judy was glad to find they wer
e out of range, just getting through enough on long range for the mum-and-dad radio operators to know they were stacking up miles, with little chance for proper chat with Tina or Tony.
The twenty-four-hour day divided into watches meant, for each of them, four hours on, four hours off from eight at night until eight in the morning, with two six-hour watches for the other twelve hours. Cook for the day had it easier, except for the cooking. Getting the stove going was an art. Methylated spirits primer flared and if the kerosene knob was turned too early it rose in a pillar of smoky flame scorching the cabin roof, or if too late hissed and spluttered. When Judy came on watch Linton lingered, if he was the one she relieved, not saying much, eating half Judy’s ration of nut bars, just allowing himself to be companionable in a way that was impossible on land for either of them. If it was Wes she relieved, or if he relieved her, they overlapped a lot longer, sometimes the whole of a watch. They were the best times they’d ever had together, snuggling up. When conditions allowed, Judy stayed outside with Wes the whole of a watch, wrapped in blankets and a tarp, with a folded lump of canvas as a pillow. There was minimal attention to steering needed, the bows plunging and rising, the stars riding through clouds overhead, the two of them so absolutely one that it felt like infinity at their disposal, kissing and stroking while Linton was squeezed below in the quarter berth.
A week farther along on this heading the wind got up stronger, creating a great sailing breeze for Rattler, a revelation. Harmonic vibrations turned the human organism into a tuning device. It was what being made of music was like, the material of a separate spirit. Everything hummed, strained, fitted itself to the task. The standing rigging was strings in an orchestra of wind and ocean. The old-fashioned gaff rig was tensioned beautifully in the twenty to twenty-two knots that came spuming from the starboard quarter and Rattler’s speed over the ground corrected for leeway was around ten knots, Linton announced, almost enough to make the ketch shudder with the power of a windjammer or imagine an airliner with flaps down churning across the wave tops.
On the dampened chart table the line of crosses marking their progress joined together and brought them into New Zealand waters after fourteen days. They passed the rum bottle around in celebration. Auckland, here we come. There was a problem, though. Their perfect sailing breeze the whole time had pushed them a bit to the south into a position where they might find it harder to round the two northern capes of the North Island that stood out plain and in closer detail on the next lot of charts.
Although Judy had her opinions on how it should be done, she was, of the three of them, the least knowledgeable and so had a habit of biting her tongue. Or if she was not the least knowledgeable she bit her tongue anyway. She was the one with a greater sense of available time and a deeper wish to delay. If they kept going north they would lose time but put themselves in position for a wide arc of sail back towards the south-east, where they would be late in for their deadline. That was all right with her, not the other two, particularly not with Wes. So what did she know.
Gradually the wind dropped. The booms crashed from one side to the other, swell came from three directions at once, bringing to mind the punchy blows that had loosened the rudder when it had fallen off three years before. Nothing like that happened this time as the strengthened yacht slowed in calms and light airs.
Inching north, irritated with each other, they read their books, Wes Lord of the Rings, Linton Shōgun, Judy The World According to Garp. Nobody when their turn came for cooking could drag themselves away from their book for long enough to bother improving a crude menu. Sweaty cheese, damp biscuits, fried onions, oranges, tins of sardines – all got passed around on a tin plate. Cans of beer foamed from being tossed around, rum, whisky and vodka all acquired an oily taste through the stomach being stirred to receive them without the zest of a reach or a run. One splash and your fag went out, un-relightable.
For these slow few days Judy hoped if they were late for Auckland they would abandon the plan to join the protest and consider that having crossed the Tasman in the name of SANT was enough. To judge by the excitement and congratulation coming back from Tina it was. Then maybe a leisurely cruise of the islands.
It seemed that Linton thought like she did about slow progress, except he was scratchy around the timetable because he had taken time off work to make this jaunt and had an air ticket booked back to Sydney. Wes did not need to say what he thought. He spoke it aloud often enough: ‘This is giving me the shits.’
A strange thing happened. One night when Judy and Wes were sitting out in the cockpit a distress flare, red, shot up towards the east and floated down. They engaged the motor and set off in that direction. When they reached where they thought the flare had come from there was nothing to be seen. Linton argued they’d seen nothing. But he’d been asleep. For hours they circled feeling bamboozled, shining a spotlight, peering for dark and imagined shapes, turning off the engine and imagining they could hear the call of voices. They radioed New Zealand coastguard. At first light an Orion search plane came over. Nothing. Or perhaps an oil slick. Thank you, Australian ketch Rattler, your name is known to us, fair winds, an air force crewman said, and they were cleared to go on their way. Wes was distressed, though, locked into himself, confronting the frustrations of an imperfect world where serving the lost and needy had limits.
By now more motoring was needed. The mood of the previous couple of weeks was smashed, never to be recovered. In Wes’s strong opinion they were cursed as they settled down to throbbing hours of motoring, using up more fuel than was wise, pushing the eighteen-horsepower diesel they called the Raypower Compton past its recommended 2500rpm just to get anywhere.
The next day, their eleventh after leaving the latitude of Lord Howe Island, the hazy presence of land emerged on the starboard bow. They gave a cheer. It was a story-book moment, but only as dreamed of before experiencing. Reality was New Zealand, Cape Maria van Diemen, long imagined but dismal, a moody grey lump in the sea haze on the lower rim of a white sky.
Linton made sure Judy wrote in the log ‘land raised’ not ‘land sighted’, the nautical word-niggle an omen of more effort to come, effort wasted on fine distinctions the way fuel was wasted on the engine. More precious fuel was needed to get them tracking along the short northern coastline and visually separating out Cape Reinga. Tides and currents ran strongly there, the pilot guide reported, which they hardly needed reminding with both running against them. Wind funnelled along the cliffs with malicious attention to Wes’s anxiety over losing time. As they rounded Cape Reinga, starting the stretch to North Cape, the wind strengthened from the east and head-on they met the short, steep seas of a tide race on a starboard tack. They would soon be on the home stretch but only as long as they had the usual north-easterlies.
The wind persisted from the east. They reefed the main. As Linton, clutching a safety line, crawled forward along the deck to make a foresail change, the bowsprit buried itself in the oncoming waves then lifted up with a wild lurch. Linton, barely visible in the spume, lowered and gasketed the jib and set a smaller one, then crawled back. Judy crouched in the companionway with the washboards giving her protection. Linton looked lard-white; he was chilled to the bone. Wes swore at him. Everything was too hard to do. Something was wrong, very wrong. To gain ground east they had first to head north-north-east, away from the land, keeping the wind on the starboard beam, with the steep seas rolling Rattler to leeward, burying the toe rails and half the deck.
A tack was due to bring them back past North Cape on their starboard bow. Normally a yacht needed only ten seconds to tack. It did in races anyhow or less. The idea was tack and keep enough distance off-shore to clear North Cape, clear Great Exhibition Bay and Cape Karikari below North Cape, and begin the run south to Auckland clear of the coast. Other yachts might be able but Rattler had poor windward ability and Judy felt the shudder of a sick animal as the attempt was made and failed.
‘Bearing off,’ shouted Wes. ‘Lee-oh.’
They would or they wouldn’t. Angry voices blew about on the vessel. Although Rattler had worn successfully Linton thought it was done too soon and told Wes so in no uncertain terms. Linton believed they should keep standing on north to get well clear of land and ride out what was obviously, now, a whopper of a storm. Well, so did Judy. It was a mutiny. Wedged in the companionway dripping wet and shivering, she screamed at Wes to head back out to sea and go downwind till the storm blew itself out. Wes looked back at her like a carving.
Linton came down to dry himself off and get into dry clothes. He looked at Judy. ‘Don’t say it,’ he said.
The precaution of standing well out to sea in gale conditions was the wisdom of the ages. The sea had its moods but land was intractable. A lee shore, the wind driving a helpless vessel shoreward from the sea, was a sailor’s worst nightmare. Don’t blame the weather system descending on North Cape, coming down from Fiji at the wrong time of year like a dark avenger. It was nothing compared with Wes Bannister biting off chunks of storm with the fangs of a maniac. At some time in these hours he had made a choice without considering Linton and Judy’s welfare. Above all, to meet the Auckland deadline. ‘We can do it.’
Linton was a good cook, producing dishes under difficult conditions, like upside-down jam pudding. He cut a cold slice made in calmer weather into a metal pudding bowl and handed it to Judy. Passing the slab up to Wes, she said, ‘Even Dracula has to eat.’