Shooting Stars and Flying Fish: Swapping the boardroom for the seven seas

by Nancy Knudsen

  The next day we sail on down the western coast of Cape York to the quaint seaside village of Seisia. Our anchoring problems continue. There are intermittent rain squalls and a hot wind is gusting over thirty knots, twice causing the boat to drag the anchor. We start the routine we are to get used to in other tropical places: we shut the boat until the rain is over. But then it becomes so humid that we need to let some air in. At that moment, another squall will begin, and we have to close all the portholes again. We set and reset the CQR and do not dare leave the boat. At night we have interrupted sleep – checking, checking . . .

  Ted’s brother John is to join us here in Seisia to sail to Darwin, for the adventure. Just a couple of years apart in age, Ted and John had sailed together as teenagers. Ted is looking forward to it. I am not so sure. I can just picture what will happen: I will be left with the cooking while John and Ted share yarns and sail the boat together.

  Ted is both amused and perplexed by my worries. ‘John hasn’t sailed for years. I wouldn’t be able to trust him with the boat the way I can trust you.’

  ‘Me? You’d trust me with the boat more than your brother?’

  He laughs. ‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see. I’ve been thinking about the watches. If we do a rolling watch, that’ll leave John with only an hour at a time alone sailing the boat. And as for the meals, we’ll take turns, no problem.’

  I smile for the rest of the day. I wouldn’t be able to trust him with the boat the way I can trust you.

  It is in Seisia that we meet Bob, a single-hander on a yacht called Tasneem. He comes over for a cup of tea and, like many single-handers, likes a bit of a chat. He stays for six hours.

  We had first heard Bob on the VHF radio talking to a container ship somewhere up the east coast of Australia. A very distinctive English accent:

  ‘Container Ship at position xxxx, this is Tasneem. I’m the only person on this boat and I’m not a professional sailor and I don’t know which side you want me to pass on. Can you let me know please?’ In our Sydney sailing world it was unheard of for a sailor to admit to being anything less than highly skilled at everything, so we had been amused and touched by his honesty and innocence.

  We discover now he is hardly a novice sailor. He has been sailing the world for four years, after building his boat in the backyard in England. In spite of an avionics background in British missile systems, Bob tells us he is a Buddhist with a familiarity with the Koran, and is in direct communication with God. He is also psychic, with a knowledge of the occult. To depart on a voyage he waits for a message from God. For food, he appears to live on kidney beans and rice. He relates how, after buying fuel the day before, and owing to a slight miscalculation about the price of the fuel, he had only a dollar left for food. So he bought some overripe bananas for a dollar, and then found $10 on the beach. God is looking after him, he says.

  I shall never forget one of his comments during this visit. ‘Well, you know, about, um, anchoring? I was watching you, er, anchor there. You know you should make sure you’re reversing when the anchor hits the bottom. You should let more chain out, much more – maybe five to one, seven to one. It’s an art. It takes practice.’ He goes on to give us the benefit of his prodigious knowledge of anchoring. We, the smart know-it-all sailors, are finally learning from a ‘real cruiser’.

  Ted and I share a sundowner with newly arrived brother John.

  ‘We’ve had such glorious sailing,’ I tell him. ‘How can it last?’ Prophetic words.

  The three of us sail away from Seisia in high spirits, with Bob on Tasneem sailing a little astern. We sight a large yellow sea snake and a turtle or two, sped along by a fast hot breeze on the smooth waters in the lee of Cape York. Ted explains the watch system and we divide up the chores. John is a good fisherman, so we never lack fresh fish for dinner.

  On our first evening together the wind and sea start to rise, and the autopilot, so recently repaired, is not holding its course consistently. We have to hand-steer, a trial for this spoiled sailor. I love being at the helm, but we had become used to flicking the button to turn on the autopilot when we had to attend to some other task.

  Autopilot difficulties notwithstanding, the sailing is thrilling. In the early evening there is a moon and rushing clouds. The moonlight keeps switching on and off as if God can’t make up Her mind. John and I share two hours of the ten o’clock watch together before Ted and I are to change. John is a great raconteur, the natural comedian of the Nobbs family, and tells story after story. I find I am laughing away the long night hours.

  ‘Once, when I was fishing with my mates up here in the Gulf of Carpentaria, I woke up with a hangover,’ he tells me. ‘“Well, you drank a slab of beer last night,” said an unsympathetic mate. “Nah,” I replied, “it wasn’t the slab of beer that did it – it was the rum and Coke I had in the middle.”’

  Sometimes scuds of rain tear through the clouds and blot out the seascape. As I glance behind I see that the following seas are up to the top of the davits, the high stainless-steel superstructure at the stern of the boat. Blackwattle and I are in harmony as we stream through the night. In the dark I chat with Bob on Tasneem by VHF radio, occasionally exchanging notes. John falls silent, watching the waves behind us as I steer. We speed down the dips into the blackness with the faint glow of light on the stern revealing the huge height of the following waves. I love this weather our boat is telling me as I stand legs wide apart, relishing the rush of every wave. I think, This is what I came sailing for – and my Blackwattle seems to know.

  But suddenly there is a grumble turning to a roar from the saloon.

  ‘F&%@!’ It is Ted, coming on watch. ‘What on earth are you doing? We have a full-blown bloody gale up here! Why the f&%@ didn’t you reduce sail? What wind speed have you got?’

  ‘Forty-four is the highest I’ve seen.’ I am offended. ‘I think she’s handling it rather well.’

  Ted looks at me in horror. We have only half the headsail up by this time and no main, so together we reduce it further until a torchlight flashed forward shows only the smallest triangle of sail. We are still doing six to seven knots. Chastised but rebellious, I retreat to my cabin after a mini-lecture on how expensive sails are. Not only that, he rants on, in the remote areas where we are headed, we can’t afford to break gear. There will be no handy marinas to make repairs.

  By morning the humidity is high, the wind still just as strong and visibility down. There is salt everywhere, drying to wet crystals. Salt covers the decks, the seats, the wheel, the cabin top. There is salt on my face, salt on my hands, salt in my hair and it covers everything I touch. I wash my face every hour or so with a little precious fresh water. It helps a bit.

  The boat jerks erratically along in the short, uneven seas, and John is still uncharacteristically silent. I wonder if he is regretting coming on this trip. We all must hold on continually, but when John finds a secure position he braces himself and hangs on with whitened fingers. Ted is a hairy-legged angel, everywhere at once: dancing on the foredeck like a ballerina (with a slimmed-down figure these days to suit), up the mast to fix something, rescuing a caught sheet on the bucking and spiralling bow. Then he is below, cooking food, serving it, washing up, and swearing only at inanimate objects. He is loving sharing our experiences with his only brother. He even has time to give me a passing hug or two. After the first couple of days, John finds his sea legs, and the gale carries us gladly across the shallow waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria, with Bob on Tasneem sailing sometimes ahead, sometimes behind.

  We want to call up some more Australian history so we spend a night in the deep gulf of Port Essington, site of one of the first failed and abandoned settlements in the Northern Territory. Bob anchors Tasneem out at sea, reluctant to enter the narrow gulf as a solo sailor. Port Essington typifies the tragic stories that abound of the British trying to settle in the Antipodes. They wanted t
o establish a trading port and keep out the French. Three times they tried in the first half of the nineteenth century, but the harsh, humid climate, cyclones, the lack of fresh supplies and the right practical skills, voracious wildlife, unfriendly local tribesmen, diseases and the lethargy which affects Europeans who try to conquer the tropics (including us) beat them every time. Those early settlements collapsed in frustration, illness and death. Now the dense tropical undergrowth is host only to a single resort hidden sensitively behind bushes. I imagined the ghosts of the poor condemned soldiers and civilians trudging along the tracks, struggling in their ignorant way against the humidity, the crocodiles and mosquitoes, trying to make a settlement in that densely intransigent, mangrove-edged bushland.

  Now we are nearing Darwin, and to reach the port we have to catch two tides with some accuracy. Sailing as we have known it so far has not involved critical tides. This is another new skill we need to develop.

  There is little wind, so to keep to our tide schedule, we have to motor. Our engine is roaring as the vast reaches of Melville Island pass on our right, a smoke haze rising high above the long horizon. We assume this comes from Aboriginal burning. The sky is hazy and bleak and smells charred, the distant land so low as to be a mere mirage. As the sun falls at dusk it becomes a burnished red and we are treated to a 360-degree sunset, bronze to molten copper to green to lilac, blazing all around us.

  We are delighted to arrive in Darwin Harbour at the perfect tide level. Bob takes Tasneem to anchor in the large Fannie Bay. We have agreed to sail together to Christmas Island. It is morning when we approach our berthing place, quaintly called Tipperary Marina. We have to pass through a lock to get in. With tides of between six and seven metres, a lock system is used to keep the water at a consistent level for all the boats. Another new experience for Ted and me. We say nothing about it beforehand. We don’t want to frighten John.

  When we see the small opening in the rock wall, just a little wider than Blackwattle, it looks far too short for a thirteen-metre boat – and there is a fifteen-knot wind on the beam. Between Ted and me there is not a word spoken – and not much breathing either. We must enter at speed or the wind will dominate and push us into the concrete wall, so first we roar forward towards the tiny entrance, then roar urgently in reverse to stop.

  ‘Hand me a stern line!’ shouts the lock master. I hurl it to him and he ties it off expertly. ‘I always like getting the stern line,’ he says amiably before I start breathing again, ‘in case they take off after they get into the lock. By the way, you get ten out of ten for that entry, if it means anything to you.’

  Ted gets a bit pigeon-breasted, I notice. We laugh at our own naïveté. When I check the log I find we have sailed 3818.25 nautical miles from Sydney.

  The air is hot and still in the marina and we are sweating freely as we enjoy a beer in our shady cockpit, surrounded by the low murmur of other conversations up and down the wharf, the musical clanking of wires against the mast and the shouts of distant wharfies. It is the first time for several weeks that we have heard the familiar sounds of human existence.

  ‘I must admit,’ John confesses before he catches a cab to the airport for his flight home, ‘that I was sure one of those waves out there was going to overturn the boat.’ I think about his comment after he has departed and realise that John’s ‘quietness’ during the sail was just his way of coping with some unease at the conditions. Yet I had never come close to anxiety, and recognised Ted’s reaction to my comparative recklessness as sensible caution in order not to break anything, not a fear that we would founder.

  The town centre of Darwin is a twenty-minute walk away. The hilly streets are wide and the ragged footpaths sometimes even wider. Dry red dust flies in the air, colouring our shoes and clothes and tasting sharp on the tongue. The light is jarring to the eyes, the colours bleached out, and the air is like a furnace on the skin.

  The locals are friendly and helpful and seemingly colour-blind. Asian and Islander, Indigenous and European blend into a thousand variations. The chatter of small children is everywhere. Little children walk alone to school, dragging sticks, playing hopscotch, their parents obviously unafraid to let them out unescorted. I stare in wonder at these free-range kids, and think of the children of our southern cities, chaperoned, shepherded from location to location.

  Time is passing quickly, but our cruise up the coast has alerted us to repairs and improvements we should make before taking the big leap into the Indian Ocean – the radar, autopilot, HF radio. We need a steering seat and a dinghy cover; both outboards need servicing and we have to stock the boat for the next seven months. We start a major reorganisation to fit it all in. We sweat freely as we work in the windless marina, but the evenings are balmy and wonderful for long walks.

  Robin and Suzy on Vanda III arrive into the same marina. Amazingly, they have decided that Vanda, which they had taken years to prepare, is not good enough for a longer journey. They will sail her back to the Gold Coast and replace her with a better boat, prepare it and still sail to Thailand this year. They are to be as good as their word, and arrive with a new boat, True Blue, in time to set off with the annual rally from Darwin to Indonesia. Their speedy actions astonish their cruising friends.

  At times we think we will never get away from Darwin. Ted suffers a hernia from lifting a heavy outboard motor above his head and spends quite a bit of time recovering in Darwin Hospital after an operation. Bob on Tasneem cannot wait and sets off alone for Christmas Island. Then I break a tooth, meaning yet another delay for repairs.

  Finally, seven weeks after our arrival, one morning when even the weather seems just right, we move out of the marina and head for the wide expanse of Fannie Bay to spend the night. Blackwattle moves smoothly under us, happy at being released after so long hog-tied in the marina. A bright free wind is blowing. We glory in an afternoon of last-minute preparations for the long ocean voyage. It is five days to Ashmore Reef. To me, this is momentous. I have never been at sea for such a long stretch.

  We are about to sail away from the coast of Australia. This is the real thing. The big adventure is now beginning.

  3. Shooting Stars and Flying Fish

  Ashmore Reef, Christmas Island and Cocos Keeling to the Maldives

  It’s the middle of September when we sail away on the high tide, expecting to pick up the famed south-east trade winds to speed us to Ashmore Reef. As the few tall buildings of Darwin shrink and fade into the sea there’s little breeze, but when it does come, it’s ‘on the nose’. Instead of flying away we’re slogging into a brittle wind and constantly tacking to make our course.

  After such a delay in Darwin, I am so euphoric to be on my way that nothing can sink my spirits. Ted, on the other hand, is the one who has been talking for years about the fantastic south-east trade winds, and he’s not happy at all. He starts praying on the bow.

  At least that’s what I think he’s doing. He’s saying ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘God Almighty’ frequently, although there are some other words that I think shouldn’t rightly go in a prayer. Anyway, the praying doesn’t do any good, as the wind just goes on blowing against us. Maybe it’s the tone of voice he’s using, which is definitely not how my mother taught me to get the best results from God.

  Meanwhile, between the praying spells, we settle down to life at sea, getting into a watch routine. I am a little queasy for a day or two, and our time clocks are not yet settled to three-hour sleeps at night. After the first couple of days, however, we both begin to enjoy the immenseness of the ocean and sky, and feel like the infinitesimal speck that we are. A sense of reverence in the face of the universe develops as the days pass, and I am never lonely. We both enjoy the peace and novelty of this complete isolation, although our conversation reaches some impressive intellectual heights at times.

  We’re both staring out to sea, in different directions.

  ‘I forgot to tell you, I saw
some wildlife before.’

  ‘That’s interesting. What did you see?’

  ‘I saw a sea snake.’

  ‘Excellent! Was it big?’

  ‘No, not really. It was white with brown stripes.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Pause.

  ‘I saw a turtle too.’

  ‘Wow! That’s great! Did you really?’

  ‘Well, it might have been seaweed.’

  ‘Oh, yes, well then . . .’

  Pause.

  ‘I saw some wildlife too.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘I saw a bird – twice.’

  ‘The same bird?’

  ‘No, of course not – two different birds.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say, “I saw two birds”?’

  ‘Because, they weren’t together. One small bird, and one large bird, at different times.’

  ‘Oh, I see, okay.’

  Pause.

  ‘I wonder what they were doing out here on their own so far away from land? It’s too far to fly back to land by nightfall.’

  ‘I guess it’s because they’re sea birds.’

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Maybe they were migrating somewhere.’

  ‘Birds don’t migrate by themselves, they migrate in big mobs.’

  ‘Flocks.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Flocks. Birds migrate in flocks, not mobs.’

  ‘I knew that.’

  There is a dark time that I love after the setting of each sun, and before the rising of each moon. The sea roaring past loses definition and the horizon melts. Instead of the convex watery ball of daytime, with the boat finely balanced on top, the ocean seems concave and gathers us with the warmth of a velvet cocoon. The Milky Way becomes a dramatic sash of light over the arc of the sky, and the rushing foamy water alongside the boat answers with a display of phosphorescent stars. They rush by, these tiny pinpricks of light, flashing brilliantly for a brief moment, before disappearing forever into the infinity of the wake.