Maiden Voyage

by Tania Aebi

  “Oh, thank you, God,” I said to myself waving and greeting another potential tow. “There’s still hope.”

  “Hi, Tania,” one of them called in an Australian accent. “Finally, you’ve arrived. Everybody is sick with worry.”

  “What?” I hollered back at them, unaware of anyone that would be waiting and surprised to hear my name. It was practically impossible for Akka to go faster than Varuna in those pansy winds. “Who’s worried?” I asked.

  “Your boyfriend. He’s been waiting for five days.”

  “Olivier? You’re kidding.”

  “Here, throw us a line. We’ll tow you in.” Within half an hour, Varuna was tied up and I was in Olivier’s arms.

  Straightaway, we went ashore to the house of Don Windsor, whom the cruising guides said was the sailor’s middleman in Galle. I followed Olivier up the stairs of a veranda, and was greeted by a dark-skinned man dressed in a white robe, who smiled when he saw me.

  “Welcome, Tania,” said Don Windsor, holding out a telephone receiver. “Your father is on the phone.”

  9

  She has been described as a drop of milk from the breast of India, and Sinbad of old Arabia called her Serendib. From there evolved the word serendipity, the aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally, and Sri Lanka certainly was a desirable sight for my sore eyes burned by the equatorial sun.

  During the twenty-eight days to Bali, six to Christmas Island and thirty-one to Sri Lanka, I had had ample time to picture what this part of the world might be like. My imagination had done somersaults conjuring up elaborate visions inspired by fairy tales that were read to us as children by my mother.

  I remembered back to the first time she took us to London when, to keep us quiet, she read from British books of India filled with pictures of exotic Indian rajahs and their princess loves bedecked in jewelry and flowing saris. An elfin sapphire-blue Krishna pranced all over the pages with a swirling octopod Vishnu waving his multiple arms all about. These tales, and later on The Far Pavilions, were enough to fire my imagination for this part of the world. Of course, I didn’t expect little blue men to be jumping out of every corner but was anxious to see how close these visions would be to the reality of being here.

  “Hello, Ding-a-ling!” my father’s voice boomed through Don Windsor’s telephone that first night. “What in holy hell took you so long? We’ve been going crazy.”

  “Daddy? I didn’t have any wind or engine, that’s all. How did you know I was here?”

  “I’ve been talking to Don Windsor all day. Thank God I had somebody to call. Oh, I’m so relieved. You have no idea what it’s like to be waiting like this. . . .” And off he went nonstop, telling me how everyone was wild with worry. As it turned out, Olivier had arrived five fretful days before, mostly because of a firmer grasp of the frustrating weather patterns, and he had steered a course farther east. Most important, his engine had propelled Akka out of the doldrums and into the northeast monsoons while Varuna had wallowed.

  “Well, anyway, here I am, all set to go to Sri Lanka right now and organize a search for you. I can’t believe this. Everything’s OK? I don’t care, I’m coming anyway. Do you need anything?”

  “You’re coming here?” I asked incredulously, realizing that we hadn’t seen each other for over a year and a half. “That’s great. Yeah, sure I need stuff.”

  I eagerly rattled off the top of my head a quick list of boat supplies that I was either without or unable to replace. We arranged to rendezvous two days later at the Galle Face Hotel in Colombo, the capital. Hanging up, I turned to tell Olivier of the latest turn of events. Although it was probably hidden deep in the complexities of my father’s brain, I thought I knew the overriding reason he was coming. He wanted to see for himself who this Olivier character was.

  The next morning, I went about the business of checking in. Sri Lanka has many complications in store for visitors arriving by cruising boat, and appointing someone to act on behalf of the vessel with immigrations and customs helps to smooth the bureaucratic waters. A man with a business, say a jeweler, and political aspirations and connections, would stand in very comfortable shoes if he were to act as a sailors’ agent. Enter Don Windsor, whose house with its large veranda was the first to be seen upon leaving the guarded extremities of the port.

  In Don’s house the cruising folk gathered, and he opened his arms to them. His showers were our showers; his dinner table was our dinner table; and for a small fee, his servants took our laundry and beat it against the rocks to wash it. A well-educated man, Don seemed to have unturned every stone in Sri Lanka; he could recount extraordinary stories from his country’s rich history, as well as arrange welding for an errant piece of a boat’s stainless steel. And if you happened to want to buy a little jewelry, well, he just happened to have a few cases to show you. Don whipped out the forms to be filled and took my traveler’s checks; soon enough I was legal.

  The first day in Sri Lanka was a feast for senses numbed after so long at sea. Olivier and I stood on the corner of the main road, waiting for the bus under the eye of a 15-foot-high orange Buddha. Vintage cars whizzed by, weaving past plodding, wizened brown men leading emaciated cows drawing carts with wooden wheels.

  A variety of odors assaulted the nose. No longer did I have to rely on the salt air and occasional redundant meal to tweak my sense of smell. There was no comparison between the smell of land and that of the sea. Sri Lanka had the smell of people, many people, almost 12 million of them, plus their vegetation, their meals in the process of being prepared and their animals.

  On the timeless ocean, the days had melted into one another and, if there were no clockworks or responsibilities for navigation, I would surely and happily have lost count of time. The only necessities had been to sleep, prepare food, keep a good course, fix and adjust the odd thing and plot the position once a day. Making a landfall was like shoving an extension cord into a 220-volt socket.

  I experienced new languages and accents, arguments, the jigsaw puzzle of lists and trying to plan out one simple day, the apprehensions of planning for the next departure, the organization of the provisioning and the need to grease my jaw muscles in a desperate attempt to catch up on the conversation missed. My eyes had to adjust over and over again, taking in a new world of sights, streets, faces and customs.

  My ears were reintroduced to the cacophony of screaming children, reprimanding parents, broken mufflers, outboard engines, braying donkeys, rather than the sound of water, wind and the occasional muttering of my own voice. No longer were there only the familiar things on Varuna to touch. On the veranda of 6 Closenburg Road, my hands felt the smooth molded wood of armrests on Don Windsor’s chairs. My feet pounded down on the hardened damp dirt roads and hot and sticky asphalt. I could run my fingers through silky hair and rub squeaky skin just washed with fresh water, and I could feel the sensation of wearing clothes and standing up in them with material swaying around my elbows, arms and legs.

  A man rolled by on an oversized tricycle, peddling with his right hand the gears that were mounted to one side of the handlebars. Olivier enjoyed watching my pleased reaction. “I love this place,” he said. “It’s like being in another century.” Together we marveled at each new sight until the bus finally arrived, canting over at a 25-degree angle. People rearranged themselves as we slithered aboard into the 5 square inches of extra space between the uniformed children returning from school and sweated out the ride into town. I looked into their faces and they openly smiled back without hesitation. Already, I knew that this would be a special place. A smile is a free pleasure and the people who realized it always made a welcome sight for a tired visitor.

  It had been thirty-one days since Olivier and I had seen each other and we had only two days before my father was to arrive to be alone together, gather our wits, clean the boats and do a little sightseeing. Varuna looked as if she had taken a turbulent trip to Oz, and Olivier stared at Akka’s rust stains with a look of dismay when we
returned to scrub down the boats; there wasn’t much we could do to the cosmetics in two days. Olivier, being Swiss French, understood only too well that we were facing my father’s Swiss-German perfectionism and rued the fact that he hadn’t had the chance to overhaul Akka in Australia, as he had hoped to do before meeting me.

  We bought fruits and vegetables, tied the two boats alongside each other, hung the awnings over the booms for shade in the cockpits and scrubbed to alleviate the salt-stained, travel-weary aura. We did the best we could before visiting the village of Hikkaduwa, a 3-mile-long strip of beach with a pounding surf an hour up the coast from our anchorage that some new friends had recommended.

  Driving along the coast, we passed giant coconut palms, strung one to another with sets of lines that climbers used to traverse the treetops and shake down the fruit. All along the seashore were what looked like crucifixes standing sentinel in the surf, where lone fishermen climbed up and cast their lines for hours. We strolled the bazaar of Hikkaduwa and, from a smiling raisin of an old man sitting at an ancient foot-pump sewing machine, I bought a custom-made pair of satin harem pants before heading back to Galle.

  That night, the anticipation of seeing my father for the first time since eighteen months earlier in Bermuda kept sleep at bay. My relationship with Oliver aside, so much had happened in that time span that I didn’t know what to expect when I saw him. I was sure that he would recognize the many changes in me, and was curious to see if he would be at all different. Eager to catch up on all that was happening on the home front, I couldn’t have wished for a better gossip and storyteller to fill me in, and now there was an album full of my own tales to serve up in return.

  Meeting my father wasn’t the only reason for a visit to the urban alleyways of Colombo; I needed to get some traveler’s checks, the baksheesh in Bali and provisioning in Christmas Island having pretty much wiped me out. We awoke early and at 6:00 A.M. met Don Windsor and his son Leonard, who drove us and another sailing couple, Dean and Faye, in his Volkswagen bus on a hair-raising ride to the capital.

  Leonard handled that bus as if it were a hot Lamborghini, speeding in and out past the jalopies, buses, bicycles and cow-drawn carts, only once screeching to a halt along with most of the other passing traffic, at an enormous Buddha waypoint. Sri Lanka is considered the cradle of Buddhism, and every 300 feet there was one symbol of worship or another—miniature emerald likenesses, immense sculptures carved out of the sides of cliffs, and Dagobas, the domed prayer sites, some as large as the Egyptian pyramids. Everywhere were pictures, relics and statues of the Enlightened One in postures of meditation, calling to mind the Buddha’s years of teaching and his passing to Nirvana.

  While Leonard threw a couple of rupees into a collection box, Don jumped out of the car and put his hands together for a moment of contemplation, and we curiously watched the proceedings at a Sri Lankan-style tollbooth of veneration.

  In Colombo, after attending to our business, Don Windsor and Leonard, Dean and Faye, and Olivier and I all sat in a state of infectious nervousness waiting at the Galle Face Hotel for my father, who was late. We sat inside on the cool stone terrace overlooking the Indian Ocean, imagining from the ambiance of the manicured garden, the swishing white-pajama-clad waiters and wood-paneled walls that we were characters in an Agatha Christie mystery and that Hercule Poirot himself might just show up any minute.

  When my father finally arrived, I didn’t even have to see his entrance to know he was there, his energy so charged the room. People turned their heads as he swooped like a dynamo through the lobby and onto the terrace. I had to blink twice to make sure that I knew him. He looked funny, a little chubbier, New York pale and sporting a longish haircut with his jeans and Banana Republic safari vest. I was not the only one surprised.

  “My God,” he bellowed, simultaneously summoning a waiter over to order a drink, “you look like an Ethiopian refugee. We have to get some meat on those bones. Let’s have some lunch right now.”

  “You feel like the Michelin man,” I said, hugging and pinching his waist. “What’s this, a coupla spare tires?”

  I sneaked a peep at the others; Faye was straightening out her dress, Dean watched our reunion with a pleased grin and Don Windsor was getting up to meet the man that everybody had heard so much about. I knew what they were thinking: “What kind of person would send his daughter off around the world alone so young?” Well, they would soon find out.

  “Very funny, Ding-a-ling.” He looked over my shoulder at Olivier, who had also gotten up and was standing behind me with a foolish grin.

  “Oh yeah. Daddy, Olivier. Olivier, Daddy.”

  “Bonjour, Olivier,” my father smiled, extending his hand. The tension could have been cut with a knife as I waited for Olivier to say something smart and witty.

  “Bonjour, Ernst,” he answered. “How was your trip?” Clearly, it was time to introduce Don, Leonard, Dean and Faye, and we sat down for lunch to an excited babble of conversation that could only be conjured up by envisioning six people trying to talk louder than my father.

  • • •

  “Tania, I want you to know that I only brought two pairs of underpants, two pairs of socks, a pair of shorts and a T-shirt with me in order to have enough room for all the things you asked for,” he said later, on our way back to the boats. I grabbed his black duffel bag and tore through the sack of Italian nougat bars, Hershey’s chocolate, charts, pictures, spare parts and presents.

  The next afternoon, he and Olivier hung out on top of my engine compartment and ran around together looking for spare parts, trying to get chummy, while I tried to form on paper the words of my sixth article and squeeze the experiences of almost 5,300 miles, four con-tries and five months into thirty-five hand-written pages.

  A couple of days later, we took a break and my father hired a local driver, Siri, procured by Don Windsor, and set off for three days to see the island and Yala National Park for an elephant safari. At first, my father’s philosophy of seeing a little of a lot, instead of a lot of a little, didn’t sit well with Olivier, who was inclined toward a more casual pace in getting to know a place.

  “But then you will have seen everything at once,” insisted my father, incredulous at the notion of dilly-dallying, “and you can leave afterward.” I had to try and convince Olivier, who preferred to visit by hitchhiking, buses and trains, that this could be fun also, and so our tour began.

  On the eve of the elephant safari, Olivier and I went to sit on the rocks in a nearby marsh to watch the sunset when one of the enormous pachyderms sauntered out of nowhere and relieved himself 25 feet away from us. We were agape. This biological function has got to be the eighth wonder of the world. Besides certain features of noteworthy size, the beast carried at least a ton of water. We counted ourselves lucky to have witnessed this display because the next day’s early morning safari only revealed a couple of dozing peacocks, several monkeys, some water buffaloes in a mud bath and the hindquarters of an elephant heading over the horizon.

  The route from Yala National Park took us to Nuwara Eliya, a village of houses and buildings topped with red-tiled roofs nestled in a wooded basin at the foot of Sri Lanka’s highest peak. Siri drove over the steep winding roads and through the primeval jungles hung with wild orchids, and we climbed steadily into the hill country, around waterfalls, past colonial mansions and thatch-roofed bungalows, over streaming rivers, through the lush green steps of terraced tea plantations.

  Occasionally, monkey families preening themselves on the roadside would leap across the thoroughfare and disappear into the forests of rubber trees. The steaming hot coastal climate gradually gave way to more temperate conditions, and finally, as we were drawn into the overwhelming mountain scenery of the interior, we were actually cold.

  Our hotel in Nuwara Eliya, with its antiques, wood paneling and hunting trophies adorning the wood-paneled walls, was again a reminder of the British occupation of the island they had called Ceylon, only forty years earlier. We w
ere propped on a hill overlooking a patchwork quilt of greens, field after field of tea bushes outlined by hedges of blooming flowers. We could see the colorful wraps of women with baskets strapped to their backs as they walked up and down the rows, examining and picking the plants.

  A mist rolled down from the vista of tropical alps, enshrouding the Tudor and Victorian homes in the village, leftovers from a small British colony that had thrived in the 1800s. By evening, a damp chill permeated the air, seeping into our clothes, and we could vaguely see our breath as we talked.

  My father and Olivier seemed to be getting on just fine after dinner. Together, they wiped out an entire night-capping bottle of brandy while talking about the fate of the universe. It usually took a nip or three to lubricate Olivier’s vocal cords when he was not completely at ease. Ordinarily, he was a rather silent person and often, I found myself setting the stage with one of his stories so that he could carry on and finish telling them to my father.

  Early the next morning, we found Siri trying to start his 1955 relic of an engine in the frosty air, remarkable considering that we were only six degrees of latitude above the equator. Siri reminded me of my mother when on icy mornings in Vernon she would be out with the hair dryer blowing on our Volkswagen’s engine to heat it up in order to get us to school on time, while we squealed that we were late.

  • • •

  It was funny how little things could trigger a long-forgotten memory and, at any time of the day or night, something would happen to make me feel that I was back with my family and I’d be swept with a longing to see Tony, Nina, Jade and Jeri. For eighteen months I had been living on daydreams of home and memories that seemed to have had happened to another girl in another lifetime.

  A huge pile of mail had been awaiting me at Don Windsor’s when I first arrived in Sri Lanka. The dog-eared envelopes and rumpled packages, manhandled around the world, contained the jolting revelation that my brother and sisters were growing up without me, discovering what they wanted out of life, in some cases screwing up, but generally getting on with it. I felt removed whenever I read and reread the letters.