Of Foreign Build

by Jackie Parry

  ‘We’ve hit a whale, and it’s coming back for us!’ I cried. We’d heard a couple of horror stories of whales hitting back. Frantically, we checked the bilges, started the engine, and hit full throttle. It was the first time I had looked at our grab bag thoughtfully. Relief flooded the adrenaline as the whale vanished. We believe the impact mortally wounded the beautiful creature. We were shocked and saddened. We pulled in our trolling line and vowed to never fish ever again.

  Luckily, Mariah was strong; there was no physical damage. Too easily this could have been fatal for Mariah. Every tap for the rest of the journey had us jumping out of our seats. We were glad to reach the Cape Verdes and finish that leg and put the incident behind us.

  The Cape Verde Islands lie just over eight hundred nautical miles southwest of the Canary Islands, where by far the largest income was foreign aid. They didn’t have much there, except, maybe cholera.

  We, in convoy with Frodo decided to take enough food and water for a brief stop, and then gather ourselves together to traverse our biggest ocean yet: the Atlantic.

  The Verdes was barren, poor, and quite bleak; however, lively, happy children brightened the landscape. Rowing ashore, we were bombarded with kids of various ages and sizes, asking us to be the one to keep a watch over our dinghy. For this they wanted twenty cents per day. We agreed to pay fifty cents. A tall, lanky lad got the responsibility of our dinghy, but he insisted on showing us where to purchase diesel in town. His Portuguese was too hard for us to understand, so he came with us, even though we were paying him to look after the dinghy! He helped us carry the diesel; of course this cost more, only cents, but it was all a bit strange.

  Supplies were few and far between. Pens were like gold for the kids. I was almost trampled by the girls who saw I carried pens and pencils for gifts. One of the first little girls I gave one to took the pen as if it was made of silk, placed it in her palm, and literally gasped. My heart went out to them, and I planned to get back to Mariah and take every pen I could find to give them to all the girls on the island. However, I looked across to Noel and feared for his life. About fifty lads pawed at him, shouted, begged, and tugged at his clothes. He had loose change to hand out and the beach became a riot. He tried to be fair, but of course, as the larger change went he was left with small denominations. One boy came up to me with a look of despair; he showed me the twenty cents he had been given and I looked back at him, wondering what he meant. He violently threw the money on the floor in disgust. His actions infuriated me and I said, ‘Well, if you don’t want it, I’ll have it back,’ and I made to reach for it. He quickly snatched it back. What were we to do? We couldn’t give them everything we had. The girls around me had been so different: gentle, giggly girls, patiently waiting to see if they would receive a gift. The boys had been violent, tough, and a bit scary. I didn’t go back to shore with more pens.

  We anchored at our last island, Sao Vicente and the capital town of Mindelo. It was here that we checked out. The other islands were so small and non bureaucratic, we could cruise between islands and not worry about officialdom. The HF radio was brilliant, because boats in front of us would give us the information we needed, where we could anchor, the laws of the land, and where to buy good supplies.

  This island was a little more tourist-y, but for the more adventurous travellers. We met crew that had been dumped off by one boat and were stuck on this island. The story was odd, and we decided we were happy with just the two of us on board; we didn’t need to take a stranger who had been dumped by a captain.

  ‘Tash and I went ashore together to do the shopping. We left Noel and Den doing the last minute mechanical touch-ups before crossing two thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean.

  As we had entered the last of the Verde Islands, our steering gear had stopped working. We had hand steered the last five miles into the anchorage. When we left the Cape Verdes, we were due to be in heavy winds for three weeks. The timing was incredible: if the steering gear had broken just ten miles later, we would have had to sail for three weeks, across the Atlantic, hand steering. It would have been too hard to turn around against the wind and waves. Imagine driving your car, at a slower speed perhaps, but for two weeks without stopping once, and just doing this with two people. To make a cup of tea or to have a pee, and just a walk around was necessary to enjoy and survive the trip. At sea the failure would be near impossible to fix and only then on a calm day. We thanked our lucky stars.

  Tracking our supplies down was an interesting challenge. I chose the best fresh foods I could, the price for them was shown to me on a calculator (my Portuguese left a lot to be desired). I knew the prices were inflated; they always were for foreigners. They thought I was rich – if only they knew! Perhaps in comparison to them I was, however, my lifestyle was simple and cheap. We had no incoming bills. We bought gas and diesel when needed and purchased local foods. Noel and I worked when we could and lived with few luxuries – our lifestyle was the luxury.

  Purchasing food in a local, foreign market was a bit like a badly scripted play. I played my normal role, but while viewing the price of my goods, I feigned shock, despair, with lots of shaking of the head. If this didn’t reduce the price, I handed back the shopping – this time I had to hand it back, pick out each item and ask its worth individually.

  I was shown an inordinate price for some bananas, I put them back, and then the price came down. This occurred for every single item I had picked up. It was tedious, but I had become used to the charade. The final price was almost half the original, and I knew they had still over charged me.

  I put away the groceries with a bionic effort to stow everything on board. I had to ensure that it would all stay put in the roughest of conditions. The murky depths hid the water line on Mariah, and I thought it would be a miracle if we made a decent speed.

  The day of departure loomed, and I was anxious and fighting thoughts of, Why am I doing this? Later, after days of delay due to weather, I wanted to go. I was full of excitement for the challenge – which lied in endless views of sky and sea, and in bottomless depths that were unexplored by man – the great Atlantic Ocean.

  For four years, I had lived on a wooden boat with my husband. Mariah was my home, and I loved her as if she were a living being. She moved as if she was alive, and after all this time on board, I could understand the old sea shanties of viewing material vessels as living things.

  Thinking about the miles before us, I started to question our medical supplies – our first aid on board was more than lax. When I did my senior first aid certificate, my instructor made a joke that the bandages I kept after the course would probably double as our first aid kit. He was a little too near the truth. We didn’t tell too many people we were going around the world with a few band-aids and aspirin! We’d coped thus far, so I just chucked in some extra strong painkillers and resolved not to worry any more about it.

  Dried food would be our staple diet again: pasta, lentils, pasta, rice, pasta, chickpeas, pasta… so powders and sauces that could alter these bland foods were stock-piled. Fresh foods, tried and tested for their longevity, were hunted down. Finding dense, heavy cabbages was a great coup. I stocked up on flour, eggs, and yeast for cooking bread and muffins once the packaged supply was gone. Tinned food by the tonne was pushed, shoved, and cajoled into any space available.

  Toilet rolls were purchased by the dozen, along with gallons of shampoo; the water and diesel tanks were swollen, jerry cans and containers with extra supplies were lashed to the deck. With gas bottles full and last minute checks completed, we were ready to leave.

  The three of us had traversed waters from Sydney through to the Mediterranean, then England and on to Spain, Portugal, and Africa, but it felt as though the Atlantic was the big one. Reports from friends, who had already traversed this great ocean, were comforting.

  ‘You won’t notice the huge swells; you’ll just lumber up and down with them,’ said one.

  ‘You’ll jibe maybe once or twice. You’ll b
e on the same tack for so long, barnacles will grow up the side of the hull,’ said another.

  All lies of course.

  Preparation for the trip was a major undertaking. You would have thought we were organising a cruise ship. Practice and advice over the years had prepared me for most of the organisation, but with somewhere between two and three weeks at sea in front of me, it needed a little more thought. If we had a problem along the way, we could be out at sea for much longer.

  Once we left port, it took three days for my tummy to stop somersaulting. Sea-sickness was held at bay by little round, magic pills, but the discomfort was still there. After four days, pill popping became less frequent, and Noel and I started to settle into our routine. It was like a tag-team match: four hours on, four hours off, twenty-four hours a day. Enormous ships glided silently across our path; through experience and hearing hideous stories, I knew that they did not always keep a good watch, they would never know if they hit us; Noel and I were vigilant in our watches.

  The immense lumbering Atlantic swell our friends and all the books promised decided to split itself in two and slap Mariah on each side with relentless efficiency. I felt like I was in a washing machine, tumbling side to side, around and around. The minutes seemed like days, the days felt like weeks – more so at 2 am, during the graveyard watch.

  One of us was either on watch or trying to sleep. After the years together, I could rest at ease in my bunk; Noel was as avid as I at maintaining watch.

  The single bunks we used at sea could still feel too big when Mariah rolled from side to side. We would clip up a lee cloth, making the bunk like a cot, and then stuff many cushions and pillows down each side to keep our body still. Eventually, we became accustomed to our outer body remaining still, while our insides rolled around to rhythm of the swells.

  At 11:30 pm one night, despite my whinging about the unruly swells, the night was peaceful, almost calm. Although the new moon had slipped below the horizon early, the clear sky allowed the stars to show off their mysterious lights, which kept the feeling of plunging into utter blackness at bay, at least for tonight.

  I was sitting in the cockpit throughout my watch, listening to the reassuring trickle of water along our wake. I was enjoying the night, minding my own business. It was clear, cool, and I was content. The self-steering gear was working a treat, and I relaxed. Suddenly, without warning, a blinding spotlight from above lit me up as if I was on stage; in a split second, I dived towards our tiller ready to manoeuvre. I peered out, half expecting to see an alien spaceship.

  ‘It can’t be a ship,’ my mind raced. I was over vigilant on my watches, and I always spotted ships from the horizon. As I scanned the surroundings with wide eyes and heart thumping, a huge ball of flames shot through the blackened sky, a glistening super nova trail in its wake. Distance helps you lose the perceived size of meteorites, to me they were usually star sized; however, this racing orb appeared to be the size of a small car. After many seconds that felt like years, it faded, and I assumed entry into earth’s atmosphere blew it to pieces.

  About an hour later, my heart regained its usual rhythm and I started to calm down. Throughout the rest of my watch every noise or change in movement had me achieving a personal best in the vertical jump and gasp event.

  As quite often happened, Noel woke up before I called him.

  ‘Everything okay?’ he asked. It never ceased to amaze me that he was so cheerful upon awaking; it took me several hours to reach that point. With some adrenaline still skipping along in my veins, I recounted the story of the ‘enormous light.’ I was quite disappointed to not receive congratulations on being so brave (even though I wasn’t!).

  The following morning, on the radio Sched, an American boat piped up, ‘Did anyone see that meteorite last night? It was incredible, just huge!’ Noel and I were both up and listening in. My smug grin was not lost on Noel.

  ‘I didn’t realise it was true,’ he said, ‘I thought you were exaggerating!’

  Two days later, I was back to my old self, enjoying the solitude of the watches, the times when I could think unhindered by land life racing around me.

  Mid-Atlantic, the journey became hard; I just wanted to get off. I wanted to stand on something that didn’t move all the time! My little heart was tired of the adrenaline shots that grabbed its beating momentum and shoved it up and down at alarming speed.

  We did sail changes two, three, sometimes four times a day and night. We’d both be on deck within the cocoon of our deck lights, plunging into the black void; the sail adjustments meant handling heavy poles to fix the fore sail out, so it didn’t flap while the wind pushed us along from behind. When going down-wind, the boat rolled; we kept the wind on Mariah’s quarter, about twenty degrees from directly behind; this eased the rolling to a bearable motion. Umpteen ropes, clips, and cleats were utilised to keep the large, heavy spinnaker pole in place. It took two hands to lift the poles, while the knees were bent, trying to predict the boat’s next lurching movement. It was always more daunting under the cloak of night.

  One thousand, five hundred nautical miles slowly passed, and then it was Noel’s birthday. Four days later and we were celebrating Christmas Day; the day after it was my birthday.

  During the night, on Christmas Eve, Noel was sleeping so soundly I decorated the boat around him (between keeping an eye out for traffic). With the bright decorations and fun presents from my mum that we’d carried on board from England, our spirits were lifted. The hilarious talking toilet roll holder and the singing bottle opener diverted our attention away from the lonely days.

  Mid-ocean, we heard a radio report of an abandoned yacht, sadly adrift, forever a mystery. Day-in and day-out, we experienced dull sunsets, blotchy clouds, livid squalls, and vivid bruises. For seventeen long nights, we plunged into darkness, watched shooting stars, and welcomed each dawn.

  Squalls came and went and became routine, not drama. The deep grey, angry sky gave plenty of warning to close the hatches, reduce sail, and don wet weather gear. Mariah enjoyed these fun times, as the wind gathered momentum and the waves held hands, Mariah pitched up high, hovered gleefully as if holding the fun moment for as long as she could, then launched herself down the waves with all the excitement of a child on a roller coaster. We hung on and grimaced when we looked behind to see the wall of water catching us. The squalls passed quickly and all became calm. The crew was relieved, and settled back to routine.

  The best time was dawn. The long, black night had slowly receded and the first glimpse of light silently stroked the sky. We had a long, bright day ahead. Although the ships were easier to spot at night, the days were less sinister and it was a time to relax, read novels, and to try to forget about the possibility of containers lurking beneath the surface.

  At last, after seventeen long days and nights, the night-lights of Barbados came into sight. As I stared up into the inky infinity I watched a star slowly move towards the west.

  ‘West! What the…’ I watched and tried to calm down. It was 3 am, and I was quite good at imaging horrors at this time. I took a breath and tried to think logically through the haze of weariness. It occurred to me that the star was moving awfully fast. It finally dawned on me that it was a plane, the angle of its light causing a slow trajectory and my imagined horror that the world was upside down and inside out. A little chuckle escaped my lips – sailing makes you laugh at yourself… or go mad. I chose the first.

  The sweet smell of land tickled my nose: the grass, the trees, the rubbish, and the people. We made landfall the following morning, with calloused hands, fatigue, and elation. Barbados would witness our celebration of a successful landfall and crossing the Atlantic, but first sleep beckoned.

  We rested well, which was good as we’d have to face the results of two smashed boats in the coming days: one ours and one a friends’.

  18

  Working in a brothel

  Checking in to Barbados followed the usual script: find the required papers, locate
the bank, track down the right officials, fill in inordinate quantities of paperwork, and hand over cash to everyone you met.

  The first anchorage welcomed in the Atlantic swell that had over 2,000 miles to build itself into a solid, continually rolling wall. Having just spent two weeks sitting in these swells, we didn’t need to experience it any longer so we decided to move the following day.

  We had arrived a day before Frodo; the ever frugal Dutch had not used their engine once – indeed since Holland they had used an incredible ten litres of fuel in total! They claimed they could live on $1 a day! We admired them, but could not do it ourselves. Our life was about safety, then comfort, and then speed. If, occasionally, it meant using the engine to incur one less day at sea or spending a bit over our budget to have a fun night out, then so be it. We were living for today and although to most standard landlubbers we were frugal, compared with Frodo we were big spenders!

  Frodo arrived with a big fanfare, provided by us. The skies were translucent, the rolling had calmed a little, and the water was crystal clear; it was perfect. They anchored smartly, and we promptly joined them on board for a party, celebrating the successful crossing. The Santa and fairy outfits (another inspired gift from my mum), were donned, which provided plenty of laughs. The pictures of me wearing fairy wings and Noel’s white beard appeared all over Holland, within a magazine following Frodo’s journey. Needless to say, we all became quite merry, and late into the night we poured our satisfied selves back into our dinghy and collapsed into bed.

  At 3 am, the wind changed direction, and all the boats on anchor swung around; the wind was now coming across the vast ocean and pushing all the boats towards the shore, their anchors straining to hold them still in the pounding swell. The swell built higher and higher, and as Mariah’s motion changed Noel and I leapt up. Accompanied by the seedy feeling of excess wine and heavy eyes, our bodies were so in-tune with Mariah that we instantly knew there was a problem.