Of Foreign Build

by Jackie Parry

The uneventful sail to Bali was filled with days of clear skies and smooth seas, warm nights and the purring Yanmar propelling Mariah due to the lack of wind. Occasionally, I woke Noel to help me manoeuvre past a large ship. Night watches could be hard work with my body nagging for sleep. Engulfed by deep darkness, spotting the loom of a ship from miles away was easy, leaving plenty of time to monitor its direction and adjust our course if necessary. The red and green navigation lights helped decipher the direction of the other traffic. It felt a bit odd to rely on lights for a vessel’s heading, but all this was happening at only seven miles per hour. However, coupled with the three dimensional movement, at times it became near impossible to guess what was happening. I could become entranced with other boats and stared at them for hours as they were slowly swallowed up in the spangled black. I just didn’t feel comfortable averting my eyes. I had no idea why. It could take hours for a boat to pass, so it was pointless to keep watching the silent silhouette until it eventually became indistinguishable. At three in the morning, tiredness stabbed at my eyes and mental ability; I found it easy to let my imagination run away with me. I would imagine the ship coming sideways towards us! Eventually, my fears would gather momentum and hold hands with my inexperience and I would wake Noel from his slumber. He would rarely need to take any action, because I had already altered course as necessary, but sometimes I needed him just to be with me in the cockpit. It was at these times I was starkly reminded just how much of a novice I still was.

  Noel never complained about being woken up. We both agreed that being completely sure of the situation was better than the unthinkable. A dalliance with a 200,000 tonne steel ship was going to do more than step on our toes. We did, on occasion, find ourselves on a converging course. Learning to use a hand-bearing compass to note and log the other vessel’s angle from us was important. If the bearing didn’t change (after taking two to four bearings, every few minutes), you knew you were heading for the same patch of water and you had to do something about it. Collision Regulations (Col Regs) are the international rules of the waterways. Sometimes, we had right of way. But if there was an enormous vessel heading straight for us at twenty-six knots, we made sure we got out of the way. The navigation lights on these mountainous ships seemed the same size as our own navigation lights and were hard to distinguish, especially if they had other cabin lights on. Even with all the equipment, common sense, and checking, I still managed, at times, to get into a bit of a pickle. The heavy tiredness, the fear of being hit, and the odd sensation of being awake at 3 am night after night could reduce me to tears. The thick cloak of darkness coupled with my total lack of night-time experience could mix up to create a great dollop of doubt. We had met people that had been sailing for years and still claimed they were learning.

  Surely there is an ending to learning at some point? I thought, foolishly. I found this highly daunting, but I had come this far and was determined to continue climbing the almost impossible heap of knowledge. It was fortunate that I could let Noel into my mind to take a look at my perspective. This provided him a semblance of understanding the tapestry of my life and how my thoughts led to the fears that I tried so hard to swallow.

  By our fifth day at sea, we had settled into a comfortable routine and cast grateful glances at the sea, sky, and clouds to thank Mother Nature for being kind. At dawn on the ninth day, after leaving Darwin, Bali crept slowly over the horizon to meet us. We furled the sails and puttered across the smooth water, untouched by any breeze, into Benoa harbour. Unwrapping the gleeful smiles that were stuck on our faces, we looked like a couple of silly fools – we had sailed to another country.

  As the land became clearer, we spotted a small speedboat heading straight for us. A brown, wrinkly man manically waved while trying to steer a straight line, I wondered what we’d done wrong. Impressively, he was hand delivering our mail. The day before leaving Darwin, we had organised our Indonesian visa (most people organise these a week or two before leaving). I had selected a date we would arrive in Bali. The sun-dried Balinesean postman had been looking out for us continually on the day I said we may reach their shores, and he promptly delivered our Indonesian visa before we stepped onshore. Mail and communications were a completely new ball game now; we had so much to learn. Giving our families the address for the harbour in Benoa, we thought they would have plenty of time to send on mail. They duly sent lots of updates, which did not reach Bali until a few weeks after we had left. Another sailboat carried our letters all the way to Thailand until they caught up with us. We soon learned that the Internet and phones would be our only communication from now on.

  Benoa harbour was a colourful, esoteric feast for eyes. Awash with peeling paint, top-heavy fishing boats languidly wallowed side-to-side, curiously in dead calm waters. Armies of tiny, brown men scurried around the drunken blue and red decks. Large motors roared boom, boom, boom as they cruised by with black smoke spiralling aft. Locals zoomed by closely, trying to peek inside our alien-looking yacht.

  Anchored amidst the cavernous bay, the row to shore was about a kilometre; we had not purchased an outboard for our dinghy, so we relied on oars and our rowing ability. Fortunately, my ability had improved since Brisbane. While getting ready to leave Australia, we were both fed up with endlessly emptying our pockets of cash for gear for the boat. The outboard was a long way down the list and never materialised. Going cruising is all about learning when to stop writing more lists, getting to the end of your current list, and just going.

  Now faced with the long row in a busy harbour, we understood our mistake. We became the locals’ entertainment whilst rowing across the busy, commercial harbour. We dodged charter, local, and fishing boats with nothing more than two oars, a torch, and plywood. People pointed while we wobbled up and down in huge wakes perched on our small timber dinghy (we had managed to swap our fibreglass dinghy for a lovely timber sailing-dinghy). David and Petrea, our friends on board Dolphin Breeze (an Australian couple whom we had met at Ashmore Reef), took pity on us and lent us their spare outboard with a warning of its temperament. Out of practice and with an amused Balinese audience, Noel started up the motor and we slammed, bumped, wriggled, and giggled out of the body of dinghies tied at the jetty. The small marina was chock full of other international sailors. But the borrowed motor soon showed its dislike for water and work. Inspired to own an outboard of our own and a more civilised way of getting ashore, we toured Bali for the best deal. Spending a whole day negotiating, drinking tea, and telling stories to the only place on the island that sold the motor we wanted, we finally became the proud owners of a little two horse power outboard.

  Typhoid fever claimed two fellow cruisers as hosts. The couple had spent over eight hundred Australian dollars on jabs before leaving Australia, whereas we had injected no more than coffee. Our guardian angel must have been on his or her toes. Initially, I had envied Petrea and David. Dolphin Breeze was a beautiful fifty-foot sailing boat, and they were paid to take it around the world, the owner joining them at certain locations. An amazing job, I thought. However, when Petrea became ill, she cried, ‘I just want to go home.’ I realised then that Noel and I were at home; Mariah II was our home wherever we were. Suddenly, their attractive career had lost its sheen for me.

  Benoa’s expensive marina was held together with string. The added attraction of rats and festering heat along the packed jetties left us dumbfounded as to why sailboats were vying for a space within the marina. On anchor, the fun didn’t stop.

  THUD, ‘What on earth was that?’ Noel called out.

  I was already half-way out of the boat, ‘oh dear, a ship has just drifted into us.’

  This made Noel spring-up from our bed.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I continued, ‘no harm done, it sounded worse than it was.’

  In the dead of a peaceful night, a rather large, rusty tanker drifted into Mariah. The Balinese vessel had swung too close and had given us a noisy nudge. Apart from the fact it sounded like they were coming through our hull
, we suffered no damage and like ants spotting a yummy snack, the crew frantically scurried into clearer water.

  The next day, armed with cans of Cola and small toy koalas as a thank you gesture for moving away from us straight away, we puttered up to the long, elderly tanker.

  ‘Hello, hellooooo,’ we called out as we tried to hold on to the rusting ship. As we approached, the crew became nervous and avoided eye contact; their covert scurrying seemed a little odd. Eventually, a serious looking man leaned over the corroding decks towards us, clearly thinking we had come to complain. His white eyes pierced out from his sun-baked skin and thick, dark hair.

  ‘Hello, we’ve bought you some gifts,’ we unholstered big smiles. ‘Thanks so much for moving so quickly last night, we really appreciated it.’

  Our friendly behaviour channelled around the battle-scarred boat, and the crew started to appear. Pure delight smothered their lined faces and toothless grins, and they all came out of hiding when we lifted aloft our small gifts. Their wide, bright smiles were priceless. Cola, it seemed, was a useful currency.

  So much had happened in such a short time. New friends, cultures, and experiences were a daily event. All my life, blinkered in an office, I had never known this alternative world existed. I had broken away from the shackled drudgery of the norm. My second life had only just begun at twenty-seven. After a heart-breaking time in England, I began to see some truth in the saying, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining.’ Later though, I would be surprised how those hard times in the UK would come back and devastate me all over again.

  The watery way of life soon revealed itself as being extremely social. I was intrigued about why other people were sailing and not going to ‘work.’ ‘Work’ is where I previously believed everyone belonged.

  Some people were following a dream, others were escaping or just didn’t know what else to do. We were all the same in the fact that we had taken a leap of faith and given up the home, car, and mortgage – the normal way of life and the regimented nine-to-five. In fact, I came to realise that making this change was a brave step, not a cop-out. My judgements and beliefs were starting to change. Landlubbers talked about breaking free from society, but when it actually comes to the crunch, it isn’t that simple. Friends at home said, ‘You are so lucky.’ I agreed that we were lucky to have our health and wits (mostly) about us. But we had made this decision. We had got up off our backsides and made this happen for us – it wasn’t a gift. And there were certainly compromises that came hand-in-hand with this life. No running hot water, constant shifts at sea, distance between friends and family, and sometimes terrifying moments where death seemed inevitable or even wished for. We were on a constant budget, because there was no income. We watched every single penny.

  Ageism was something that raised its ugly head once or twice when Noel and I had met landlubbers in a pub.

  ‘You obviously married Noel for his money,’ someone once said to me. It didn’t help that in my late twenties I had looked about eighteen, but I was conscious of what other people thought. Noel is sixteen years older than me. I was, therefore, surprised that ageism didn’t exist in sailing folk. We would all get together with a vast range of cultures and ages, and there was never a barrier between us; we were kindred spirits with a desire for freedom and adventure. It was like a breath of fresh air.

  In Bali, the days raced by with frequent trips into town. Just getting ashore was a project in itself. It was too far to return if we had forgotten an item.

  Each time we went ashore at Benoa harbour we’d first check that we had all our necessary items: shoes, bag, money, laundry, water containers, shopping list, sun-cream, passport, ad infinitum. We’d balance all our gear and ourselves in the dinghy and find a space to sit. Next we’d play dodgems with all the other vessels (no ‘rules of the road’ exist in Bali). It was necessary to frantically bail-out the dinghy and keep a three-hundred-and-sixty degree look-out while holding aloft all possessions to keep them dry. When we reached the marina we’d tie up cursing those who tied their painter too short! Then to complete the trip ashore we’d traverse umpteen dinghies of varying stability to reach land.

  There was never a dull moment.

  ‘Oh crap, I’ve forgotten my sandals.’ We had almost reached the jetty.

  ‘What do you want to do?’ Noel asked, clearly not happy about returning to the boat.

  ‘Oh, sod it,’ I grinned, ‘I’ll buy some sandals in town.’ I went into town shoeless and purchased a pair of cheap sandals. My feet were embarrassingly filthy by the time we reached the shops. Bare feet were not considered unusual in Indonesia, but with our western world of dressing, I felt partly naked without shoes.

  Road travel in Bali was yet another challenge; in fact, it was a real battle of nerves. Viewing the traffic and behaviour, their road transport rules must read:

  1. Don’t stop for anything.

  2. Do not remove your hand from the horn – ever.

  3. Precariously balance as many family members as possible on one scooter to terrify all the tourists.

  Scooters were the locals’ choice for transport, and they thought nothing of loading up the entire family. Mum, Dad, three kids, and gran all piled together onto the machine! In town, skinny children washed in a filthy stream, while further up-stream a mother washed her family’s well-worn clothes; further along, a man used the stream as a toilet. We were not on a package holiday, shielded from the real life by a modern hotel. We witnessed how the locals really lived.

  The two weeks in Bali were spent re-stocking (food, fuel, and water), hand-washing clothes, boat maintenance, officialdom (customs, immigration, police, marine officials including open baksheesh/bribery), making new friends, and some sightseeing. Folks at home imagined us sitting on the aft deck watching sunsets with our G&T (vodka for me still). This did happen on occasion, but most of our time was spent sourcing supplies, making repairs, and organising both Mariah and ourselves for the next leg. There was no car to hop into, just our own propulsion and the odd taxi. Sightseeing consisted of fighting off tactile locals who wanted to sell us their fake wares; this daily battle came to tarnish the beautiful mountains, lush green paddy fields, and clean air.

  With many new friends and promises of a reunite in Thailand, we finally packed our last fresh items on board and hauled anchor.

  At this time, computers didn’t figure hugely in our day-to-day travelling, I tapped away on our old laptop to keep a diary, but that was all. Little did I know that soon I would have a whole wealth of heart-stopping information I would want to record.

  7

  Restoring my faith in the world

  Grooming each morning to make myself appropriately respectful for the office used to be a way of life. In my sailing days, my well-worn tweezers had become as effective as chopsticks. But it didn’t really matter, my eyebrow shape morphed monthly. September I looked surprised, October continually perplexed. My fashion became fifteen-year-old Levi’s that were holding up quite well. My style was chameleonic after a DIY attack at the long, brown mop atop my head. The make-up I owned, at its third birthday, had congealed into a honey-like substance. I still used a dab of mascara, once every year or two. The bizarre thing was, I enjoyed this state of being. My friends who still did battle in the ‘real’ world thought I was quite odd, and they were probably right. But, I had found the liberty I craved. No longer did I have to speak the corporate speak and dress correctly. Those blinkers I had been wearing all my life were gone. My senses craved more and were not let down by the feast that was about to be bestowed upon them.

  It was the little things that meant more, like good food, wine, and a good time with lots of laughs. Of course, I had these things before, but life on board was different. The laughing was hearty, the enjoyment complete; for the first time ever I was being me and not dressing-up myself or personality to fit in. Being free to go where the wind took me had restored my faith in the world.

  Before freeing myself from land life, I had started to t
hink that maybe I was actually living in hell. Not too long ago, I had walked through Hades, holding hands with someone who was to leave the torture, to go into a better world – not hell and not earth. This part of my life would haunt me for some years. Later in my watery world, as I learned to relax during the lonely night-time watches, the acute stab of loss would, again, twist in my gut.

  As well as all the personal changes, natural changes, like weather, were a major factor in our agenda. There were the “trades” (the trade winds) that dictated all of our departures, the length of time at sea, and the quality of journey. As we headed north towards the equator, squalls became a main event. A thick, black cigar shaped cloud would spiral towards us, like an evil hand ready to give us a shove. Within the wink of an eye, a severe wind would blast down from the tumultuous cloud and slam down on us hard. Thick curtains of rain would surround us and make any sort of lookout impossible. During the day, we had time to reef down the sails in preparation. At night, bruised clouds carrying squalls sneaked up on us under the camouflage of dark. Without warning, the clouds would intensify, and we would be suddenly thrust out of control, speeding towards an unfamiliar coast at break-neck speed. This all added to the excitement of unknown waters. Indeed, we often experienced our best ever sail and our worst ever sail in a matter of a few hours.

  I had read a theory somewhere that each human has the same number of heartbeats in a lifetime. It didn’t take long for me to realise that life on the water reduced my quota rapidly on a regular basis.

  After leaving Bali and settling the boat to match conditions, Noel took a nap while I did the first watch-keeping shift. Mariah was clipping along, the water relatively flat. Mother Nature provided enough wind to propel us smoothly along. Tucked in the cockpit, I was contemplating such things like why men were gifted with a multi-directional tube to pee from. Every time I wanted to pee, I had to go below to the loo, which was fine most of the time. But in wet weather gear, the performance could take ten minutes. Trying to balance in a confined space, smashing soft bodily parts on thoughtlessly placed metal handles, could put me in a real pickle. Either way, trying to hang on, muscles taut to stop moving, yet relaxing those important ones in order to fulfil the need, became quite an interesting exercise. It’s a bit like trying to act cool on a roller coaster ride.