Maiden Voyage

by Tania Aebi

  “I’m going to have to open him up,” he said, softening. “If it’s what I think it is, I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do. It looks like a cancer in the kidneys.”

  “Let’s go outside and wait,” Olivier said, tightening his hand around mine, and ushered me out to a bench. I sat there, dazed to hear the word cancer again after such a short time, and thought about my brave little buddy. All those times that I had gotten mad at him for missing his litter box were for naught. He couldn’t help himself. Dinghy was my first pet, my closest companion for half the world. Only he had been there right beside me, living through all the bad times and the good. He alone had tolerated my cursing and screaming, watched me laugh and talk to myself, shared my meals. Whenever life had really gotten me down he had been my only comfort, with his gentle little face rubbing mine before curling up in my arms. My handsome snuggly motorhead was the only one who had shared the memories of those endless days in the sea warp.

  The doctor came out and shook his head. I hadn’t even had a chance to say goodbye.

  I paid the bill and Olivier and I hitchhiked home to a strangely empty boat. Mimine poked her nose at my legs, into all the cabinets, and wandered absently around all the spots where she and Dinghy had liked to sleep together, while I set to getting things ready for departure. As lovely a memory as Vanuatu was for bringing me Olivier, I would also remember that it was here I lost a precious treasure, and I couldn’t wait to leave.

  Christoph, Michel, Olivier and I exchanged and photocopied charts for our next landfall—Cairns, Australia—and began to provision. Calling home to say goodbye, I talked to my father, who had just finished singlehanding his new boat across the Atlantic but said that he had decided not to enter the BOC around-the-world race after all.

  The race would take a year and he said he had second thoughts about leaving Tony and Jade alone for such a long period of time after they had just been through so much with my mother. I was relieved to hear of his change of plans and told him about Dinghy, which, he said in his typically hasty way, was a bad stroke of luck but not the end of the world. And before we hung up, he brought up the inevitable, that I was behind schedule. “You stayed in Tahiti to avoid hurricanes,” he said. “But it looks like you’ll get them anyway in a different ocean. What made you spend so much time in Vanuatu anyway?”

  “Oh well, I made a really good friend here, I wrote an article and won a race,” I said, hedging the issue. Knowing how much my father hates to run up a telephone bill, it was easy to put off telling him about Olivier.

  Before Mimine became too accustomed to being alone, I decided to get a new kitten. A friend told me about a batch in the country and drove me out there. I chose one at random, thanked the owners and brought the fuzzy tabby ball back to Akka. Mimine took him under her wing and he followed her around the boat, clawing his way up the wall hangings, belts, my legs and the table whenever it was mealtime. His clumsy shenanigans inspired the name Tarzoon, in honor of the Belgian cartoon character who was the “Shame of the Jungle.”

  Michel was the first to depart Efate, planning to stop at an island in the Vanuatu group to the north. Two days later in an early morning calm, Varuna and Akka motored out of the harbor on Thursday, August 21, 1986, and glided through the passage between the two islands that gave Port Vila Harbor its protection from the sea. While Olivier and I hollered out last goodbyes, I boomed out Varuna’s genoa and mainsail in the feeble wind and we drew slowly apart.

  Climbing down into Varuna’s cabin, I saw poor Tarzoon living out the perils of seasickness. All the milk he had gulped down earlier now lay on my bed. “Bravo, Mr. T,” I said, cleaning up the mess. “Are you going to join the ranks of those who bear a complete disregard for my sleeping quarters?” He looked up, and as soon as I had finished and sat down in my corner, he crawled into the crook of my arm. Gently, so as not to disturb him, I picked up the chart.

  The genoa slapped around softly as we caught the ocean swell and began bobbing slowly toward Australia, 1,300 miles to the west. I looked out the companionway to the dwindling shape of Akka’s sails and at the island in the background, realizing that Vanuatu had been my last South Seas landfall. Behind me were memories to last a lifetime, the richest being of those islands where people I loved had left and entered my life.

  For the first time in a while, I remembered Luc, the storms of our brief relationship, and the beauty of a world that I had seen through the eyes of such a dreamer. All the sharper edges were now softening in my memory, and no matter how things had turned out, I couldn’t deny that he had taught me much, helping me along in the journey that had finally brought me to Olivier.

  As they were becoming accustomed to doing these past four weeks, my thoughts drifted to Olivier. Unlike Luc, he was a man comfortable in his own skin, and with him I felt a certain special calm, without the heady intoxication of grand schemes or the urgency to get somewhere fast.

  Unfortunately, my inflexible schedule didn’t allow for the luxury of lingering with him and letting our future work itself out with time, and I couldn’t help hoping that Olivier would offer to alter his own course and follow mine for a little while longer. Otherwise, we’d have to say goodbye in Australia. If our being together was truly meant to be, I believed that things would turn out for the best and, as he once said, we’d just have to see what happened. “Anyway,” I thought, “first I have to get to Australia and that’s not going to be an easy task.”

  Before us lay the Coral Sea, named for the numerous reefs strewn haphazardly below the surface of the water. Between Vanuatu and our next landfall would be my final exam in navigation. For 1,300 miles there would be no way to confirm a position visually. Without a SatNav, Varuna had to be navigated by the sun and stars to specific points on the chart, directions altered, then navigated to the next point, all the time sailing around unseen coral heads lying in wait for a boat making a wrong move. Thirty-five miles off the coast of Australia, I had to find a lighthouse propped on top of a reef that would guide us into Grafton passage, through the extremities of the Great Barrier Reef. I was hundreds of miles from nowhere, and there were no second chances; my navigation had to be perfect.

  I had about ten days to practice, day in with the sun, and evening out with the stars, calculating optimum angles and times, trying to make myself so comfortable with the sextant that it became second nature. After one squall the first day, the weather was as accommodating as it had ever been, making my last days with the South Pacific a gentle goodbye. On the sixth day, a pod of pilot whales stayed alongside Varuna for two hours, a rambunctious one leaping into the air and executing a perfect flip for its solitary audience. Below, Mimine and Tarzoon hopped around, chasing each other’s tails.

  On the ninth night, my calculations had us passing 15 miles north of Willis Reef on the chart. As the boat lifted with every wave, I cringed, imagining that rushing noise and eventual crash if my navigation were even the slightest bit off. After safely passing this unseen obstacle, we had to hang a quick left in order to dodge another set of lurking reefs indicated on the chart, and then head on the straightest course possible for the lighthouse. I stared endlessly at the horizon and the chart, which was covered in penciled crosses from sun and star sights, and colored scribbles identifying coral heads. The smallest error in mathematics and we’d be history.

  First light found me up on deck with the sextant, estimating the night’s progress, and the fix told me that the lighthouse should emerge by 11:00 A.M. Hoping that it would be sooner, I nervously sat on the foredeck, scrutinizing the horizon through binoculars. Then I ran back to the Monitor, adjusting it and trying to keep the course as exact as possible. Frustrated, I looked up to black clouds overhead that were beginning to obscure the sun. Untying the bungie cord on the tiller, I took the helm myself for a half hour. Then, antsy because I couldn’t see as well from the cockpit as from the foredeck, I gave the steering responsibility back to the Monitor, reclaiming my position on the bow.

  The w
ind began to gust, causing Varuna to round up. Concerned over the consequences of even a slight course variation, I reefed the main, keeping a relentless vigil as beneath us the topography of the ocean floor began to slope up toward the continental shelf of Australia, kicking up steeper and steeper waves.

  Varuna was picked up by each wave, and I looked down into the troughs as we perched momentarily on the tops of cliffs of water just before surfing down the chutes. I held onto the grab rail and leaned against the mast on the foredeck. It was like being in the first car of a roller coaster. By ten-thirty, the morning sun was shadowed by an enormous gray front with black overtones. There was no lighthouse to be seen and by eleven-thirty, fearing a nervous breakdown, I doused the jib and stopped Varuna in order to think. I hate roller coasters.

  The most valuable piece of advice I always heard from other, more experienced sailors was: “If you have doubts, seek sea room and wait until you feel right about your landfall. Never make a hasty decision for the sake of an anchorage and a shower.” Here, under deteriorating weather conditions, speeding toward the world’s largest barrier reef, I was definitely not feeling right.

  “Forget it,” I said to myself, “I can’t handle this yet,” and headed under reefed main east back toward the open sea.

  The next morning dawned a little cloudy and overcast in spots, but with the security of an entire day’s worth of daylight ahead and knowing that I could always turn tail again, I jibed around and resumed the search for the lighthouse. As the sun’s fuzzy outline peeked momentarily through the clouds, I hastily grabbed a sight, calculating and crossing it with an RDF bearing received from the coast.

  Until 9:00 A.M., squalls and driving rain buried Varuna in sea water, obscuring my vision as I tried to scrutinize the horizon. Suddenly, I thought I saw a bird ahead. Keeping my eyes trained on the black speck, I realized that it was motionless and that the vague outline of a lighthouse base was emerging, growing underneath the bird and becoming a mini Eiffel Tower. I gasped, then shouted in elation, then gasped again.

  “I found it!” I screamed. This was a moment of triumph and I reached down into the cabin and grabbed little Tarzoon, pointing his head in the direction of the lighthouse. He didn’t like the rain, or the noisy squall that had just engulfed us and dug his claws into my arm and jumped back into the safety of the cabin.

  The line squalls marched in one after another, intensifying as we sailed close-hauled past the lighthouse at midday, and by the time we reached the pass the wind was raging at 35 knots with gusts up to 45. Swirling currents and steep, confused chop made steering the boat an enormous effort as white water crashed and thundered against and over the exposed reefs on both sides of us. Instead of making progress, we seemed to be pushed sideways toward the reef with the endless squalls punching the lee side of the cockpit under water.

  At the tiller, I struggled to keep control of Varuna, anticipating the waves and trying to steer her through them from the right angles. With the exhaustion of four days of little or no sleep and changing and reefing sails, every muscle in my body ached and my brain felt ready to burst from the pressure. Varuna was no longer able to make headway, but I thought that if I could only get one glimpse of the land that lay 30 miles away through the mist, I could find the energy to carry on. But there was nothing, and the weather was getting worse. In despair, I turned Varuna back out to sea again.

  Bouncing around for the rest of this day and night, I’d had all I could take—emotionally and physically—and swore by all that was holy that the only way I would leave Australia was on a 747. All I could remember were the head-banging days I had spent paralyzed with fear from storms, howling winds, the lonely and ominous nights, while being tossed around in a 26-foot cork on the world’s largest ocean, praying that I would live to see land again. After all, what was I but just another human being on a planet that had too many already? When my emotions plunged into such an abyss, life didn’t seem to add up to much anymore and I couldn’t see the water for all the waves. On Tuesday, September 2, 1986, all I knew was that I was a very scared nineteen-year-old who wanted to quit the whole shebang.

  September 3 dawned a sunny day. Varuna had been pacing like a mad dog at a closed gate and we were quite familiar with the area now. The winds were still strong, but at least the squalls had gone elsewhere, and determined to get in, I retraced our steps of a day earlier and found the lighthouse.

  What a difference from the day before. The angry, gray, foaming-at-the-mouth waters were transformed into sparkling blue mounds with bubbly crests blowing up into a spray that shimmered like crystals. The sun, I knew, was a major factor in determining my daily mood. It was hard to dwell on black thoughts when the sun beamed warmly down on Varuna’s deck, her sails, her wake and my face and everything began to emit a radiant glow. Even Tarzoon and Mimine came out to sit on the drying wood of the cockpit, watching me steer by hand past the lighthouse, playing with the waves and gusts. In the distance, to the right and left, the gentle crests of waves lapped over the reefs. I studied the compass to keep the exact course in the plan of approach that I had had plenty of time to mull over and memorize, and the beauty of the sunny morning erased my fatalistic gloom of the day before.

  After the lighthouse and first major outcropping of coral heads, I steered into the well-buoyed system of pathways that run the length of the Barrier Reef, and headed for Cairns. Closing the distance toward the mouth of the Cairns River anchorage, we passed ferryboats bound for the outlying islands along with fishing and pleasure boats as the profile of the hilly green coastline became clear. In a cheery mood, I found myself waving in great excitement to the skippers of other boats. Making a landfall had never been as major an accomplishment.

  Six hours after passing Grafton Lighthouse, we motored past the outlying sailboats at anchor and headed toward the docks. Tied alongside an official-looking launch was the familiar rugged shape of Akka, and Varuna’s engine puttered up to her companion.

  “Olivier!” I called. His blond head popped instantly out of the companionway and his body followed in the mad rush to get on deck.

  “I blong you!” he shouted elatedly and signaled for me to pull up against Akka. “Perfect timing,” he called. “I just arrived and customs, immigrations and quarantine are already here.”

  Michel’s cry over the calm waters the next morning heralded his arrival; Christoph arrived a week later. Together we explored Cairns, which could have come straight from the script of a spaghetti Western. The rambling buildings stretched the length of arid, hot pavements, and inside, fishermen, charter-boat crews, plantation workers and ordinary “blokes and sheilas” gathered in the cool interiors of bars that often had bands playing folk, rock or country music. It was the beginning of summer Down Under and already I could appreciate that people could find solace only in an icy mug of beer. I preferred Coke.

  I gave up the idea of abandoning the rest of the trip. When it actually came down to it, I couldn’t picture myself quitting the biggest and most important thing I had ever started, emptying out Varuna, packing my bags and heading home. She was my home.

  That resolved, I faced the fact that I was definitely behind schedule. We were already well into the middle of September and there was no way possible to make it to South Africa and the Cape of Good Hope before the December hurricane season. Fears about the weather set me to entertaining thoughts of how the time schedule could be gracefully extended. We still had to cover 450 miles of Barrier Reef up to Thursday Island in the Torres Straits, then sail the 6,500 miles of Indian Ocean to South Africa. Because of the hurricane risk, I would have to forgo Christmas Island, Mauritius, Reunion and Madagascar and sail the entire 6,500 miles nonstop in order to get out of the danger zone as fast as possible.

  The idea terrified me. I didn’t know if Varuna could take the wear and tear of the moody Indian Ocean and I didn’t know if enough food and water for the two solitary months could fit aboard. And above all, staring at the endless expanse on my charts, I d
idn’t know if I could handle leaving Olivier so soon after finding him.

  Being with him and the two other Frenchmen was a blessing. In the evenings, after working on the boats, we four sat together either on Akka or Adonis, preparing meals and talking about the future. I wasn’t the only one who had decision-making problems in that department, and in the cabins of our boats, we thrashed them out into the wee hours of the mornings, throwing out suggestions and giving each other advice. Cairns was the end of the South Pacific and of an old way of life. For each of us, a new course had to be plotted.

  Australia was the last port of call that Michel wanted to risk with Penelope. Between Vanuatu and Australia, she had been knocked down by a rogue wave, her cockpit lockers robbed of their covers and inhabitants and her interior swamped. The knockdown had shaken Michel, and he decided that Penelope had fulfilled her destiny. Christoph asked him along for adventure à deux in Papua New Guinea. But first they had to make some money by picking tomatoes, and they calculated the months needed at labor and the profits they could make from exporting Australian wine to other islands.

  As they planned and schemed together, Olivier and I also discussed our own alternatives. He had to get back to Europe and I to America. South Africa was not the only route available. I could also head toward Sri Lanka, up the Red Sea, through the Mediterranean, then across the North Atlantic to New York. This dovetailed with Olivier’s plan and was almost 3,000 miles and one month of sea time shorter than taking the southern route around South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope. Our timing, as far as the seasons were concerned, would be perfect, even to the point of allowing a month’s break in Sri Lanka. Once in the Mediterranean, Olivier could leave Akka in Malta, and the Med and Atlantic would be Varuna’s last oceans to cross.