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

by Nancy Knudsen

  I woke up most mornings feeling the slight sway of the hull around me like a womb but thinking: Shouldn’t I be at work? Am I allowed to do this? Our days were now spent making last-minute preparations for the boat: varnishing, provisioning, repairing, installing. We were also cutting the ties that defined our place in the world we knew. We talked to our children about how we would remain in touch – email and satellite phone; we cancelled memberships, registrations and subscriptions and had ourselves removed from electoral rolls; we sold our cars and said a hundred small farewells to our friends.

  It was now just a few weeks to our planned departure in March. The remaining tasks seemed infinite. Would we ever be ready?

  2. Sailing in Circles and Sinking by the Bow

  Sydney to Darwin

  Finally there is nothing to do but depart. Just over six years has passed since that day in Broken Bay when we’d first discussed sailing around the world.

  The day is gentle and sunny with a light breeze. A small group of family and friends has come to the Royal Prince Alfred Yacht Club to wave goodbye. Kassandra and Simon are there along with some of my oldest and dearest friends. We have ‘dressed ship’, garlanding the boat with flags from bow to stern. Finally, after drinks at the club, speeches and tears, we all amble down to where Blackwattle lies resplendent and sparkling in the sunshine, her flags making small clapping noises in the breeze. Then the moment comes when just Ted and I are left on the deck, looking down on all the dear familiar faces on the wharf. I watch dumbly as members of the gathered party begin untying the lines.

  As Ted motors slowly ahead, coloured streamers explode from the crowd and, as I catch and throw them back, more tears (which I hope no one else can see) start to run down my cheeks. People are waving, smiling, a precious crowd. I can see Kassandra and Simon standing quietly with their friends, not waving. They have their own full and successful lives, I tell myself; they don’t need me. But I am used to sharing all their small successes and challenges. I can’t help wondering how long it will be before I see them again, how long before I can again share the small details of their lives.

  Then one of our oldest cruising friends, Keith Laker, starts booming ‘Now is the Hour’. He is in magnificent voice as we cruise away from the wharf and the small clutch of friends become smaller and smaller. ‘Forward,’ I think. ‘I have to look forward.’

  The wind is a tiny freshening of the air as we purr off in the glorious afternoon sun, the multicoloured streamers still playing around the rigging. I am laughing and talking and pulling lines and winding winches but my excitement is tinged with a nameless regret. We sail north overnight towards Port Stephens. It is an exhilarating start as we balance between sky and ocean on a calm starry night. We take turns at night with watches of three hours each, a habit we are to continue as long as we sail.

  My first night watch alone while Ted sleeps is a pivotal event. With an airy ‘Goodnight’ he disappears into the black hole of the companionway to the saloon as though it is a normal occurrence. I am left to look around the now-familiar cockpit in the deep darkness of the night. It seems empty, suddenly strange and alien. I am alone, just me with the dark moving waters outside and the distant black line of the shore to the west. I have been preparing mentally for this moment for years, but it doesn’t help. My constant secret fears of those six years come bubbling to the surface: Where is the crew to carry out all the multiple tasks that keep a boat sailing? Of course I can steer, but who will race forward to clear a caught line? Who will adjust the sails, perhaps all of them at once? I know how to do all these jobs, but how can I do them all together?

  In fact, nothing much happens. The breeze is steady and the sea gives the boat a gentle rocking motion. There is little for me to do except watch for ships.

  The next morning we nearly run down two albatrosses. They grudgingly flap away. A large flock of mutton-birds hovers just above the waves and we see a fairy penguin or two. I am soon deliciously lost in the natural world around me.

  After the tension and exhaustion of getting away, we decide to rest for a few days in Port Stephens before heading for Queensland. We think we are pretty smart sailors but that doesn’t mean we know much about anchoring. We gingerly put down our new ‘CQR’ anchor for the first time in the muddy bottom of Fame Cove on a remote shore of the spacious bay. Our stay is blissful as we watch whistling kites, a scattering of greedy seagulls and cavorting dolphins.

  Now we are ready to embark on the longest leg we have ever sailed together. As we leave Port Stephens my solar plexus aches with excitement and expectation, fear and disbelief. Under full sail, white water rushing beside the boat, seagulls screeching, we watch the land disappear behind us.

  Blackwattle dances up the coast all that night and the rest of the following day. Sometimes the wind reaches gale force, but Blackwattle loves it. We eye the weather and ready the boat before each three-hour watch so that the off-watch person won’t need to be called for help. An exhausted, sleep-deprived sailor is not good in emergencies.

  Plumbing is our first big challenge. When Ted discovers water covering the floor of the forward cabin, we are both appalled, but our reactions are quite different. I am the one who starts scooping up panicky saucepans of water, racing to the galley and throwing them into the sink. Ted meanwhile looks wise and mutters, ‘Mmm, now where could it be coming from?’ Turning off the head sea-cocks (the water-inlet for the toilet through the hull) seems to solve the problem. Luckily there is a second toilet.

  On the second night, in the middle of my watch, the breeze is so light that, without wind to push the boat along, I lose steering. Then a strange thing happens. The boat starts going round in circles. I am glad it is dark, so that the fishing boats around can’t identify who is behaving so erratically, but I am really stumped by this turn of events. I certainly don’t want to wake the skipper to say: ‘I don’t know how to stop the boat going round in circles. Can you help?’ This might end our sailing-as-a-couple ambitions before they have really begun.

  Luckily, it only takes a few minutes to solve the puzzle. Our trailing generator is a propeller at the end of a rope around thirty-two metres long, trailing behind the boat. There is a small generator at this end, fixed to the stern of the boat. As the propeller spins and drags through the water it twists the rope, which in turn works the generator. If the water is shallower than about thirty metres, the propeller will drag on the seabed.

  Sure enough, the depth gauge tells me we are now in sixteen metres of water. Blackwattle has anchored herself to the bottom of the ocean! When I pull in the propeller it is muddy and smelly. Instantly Blackwattle takes off like a horse let out of a stable.

  ‘How was the watch?’ Ted asks later.

  ‘Fine, just fine,’ I say cheerily. One day I’ll tell him about sailing round in circles, I decide, but not now.

  ———

  From then on we make fast progress up the coast. Late in the afternoon of the third day we sail over the notorious Southport Bar, quiet as a millpond, and anchor in the Broadwater at the glitzy Gold Coast. I have always hated Australia’s best-known holiday destination: the poseurs, the cheap glamour, the bad architecture, the traffic jams, the concrete-lined beach. But this time I experience it differently. We have a beer and a rum and Coke, the first of our many sundowners, while watching clean sandbanks alive with seagulls and pelicans. Swarms of pilchards leap from the water and fly through the air, their little backs glinting in the last rays of the sun. Dragon boats and outrigger canoes pass by and wide-armed commercial fishing boats full of sunburnt testosterone-charged blokes head for the open sea. Since it is the cocktail hour, the tourist boats too come past, faces that look Japanese peering out at us. Music streams behind them and strobe lights flash. There are even a couple of amphibian army ducks which waddle slowly past and then charge self-importantly up the nearby beach. It is a very entertaining welcome.

  As we sit sn
uggled together, clinking glasses and watching the sunset, we both feel euphoric. We have completed our first passage together, just the two of us. We have experienced no breakages, no significant problems. We had felt every wind from dead calm to thirty-five knots. The boat is an untidy mess but that’s easy to fix. I wonder to myself whether Ted knows I sailed in circles, whether he knows more than he is telling me.

  It is here in Southport that we meet up with some dear sailing friends who are to be part of our future cruising life. Suzy and Robin are a warm-hearted and gutsy pair of sailors. Their ambition is similar to ours, a circumnavigation, but they have an uncommon role reversal. Suzy is the sailor, having been a sail-trainer in the British military, and has taught her husband Robin how to handle the ocean. ‘I’m the deckhand and Suzy is the skipper,’ he tells all with amused affection. We spend hours discussing with them the best routes, best gear and best methods of long-range sailing. Already there is a serene happiness in everything we do, and Suzy and Robin seem to feel that too. The four of us are escaping the taxing routines of daily life.

  As we make our way northwards, anchorage after anchorage, Ted cannot seem to wipe the smile off his face. It is a slower process for me. I still wake every morning with guilt as well as euphoria. I did it! We’re here! one part of me shouts joyfully. But there’s also a refrain that repeats in my head: Shouldn’t I be at work? Am I really allowed to be here? Occasionally I find myself singing as I rush around my small daily tasks. Singing? I never sing!

  My manicured nails are gone, the stockings, the suits, the deadlines. I wear only shorts and T-shirts, thongs or sailing shoes. There are other adjustments, and one of the biggest comes from the knowledge that we have to learn to conserve water. I have what I consider ‘normal’ habits – rinsing dishes freely before putting them in the dishwasher, leaving the tap running while I brush my teeth . . . and then there are the showers. I remember that my childhood was peppered with demands from my mother and other loved ones that I get out of the shower, this second!

  ‘You’ve been in there a full forty minutes.’

  ‘It’ll cost us a fortune in excess water rates.’

  ‘You’ll use up all the hot water. Other people want to have a shower too, you know.’

  As an adult I have always treasured the luxury of the long, long hot shower with no one to yell at me to get out. But our small onboard water-maker, which converts salt water into fresh, makes only thirteen litres an hour and uses power, a precious commodity which is generated by the sun, wind or the fuel of the engine. In anticipation of long periods in remote areas, I take up the challenge of showering using as little water as possible. Here’s how to have a frugal shower:

  Lean over the wash basin, which you have stopped with a plug, and aim the handheld shower at your head so that most of the water wets it and the rest falls into the basin. Quickly turn the tap off. Now stand up straight and wriggle a little so that any spare water drips down over your body. Interim result is wet head, damp body and basin containing warm water.

  Next, shampoo your hair into a rich lather. Also use this lather to wash your under arms, your crotch and as much as possible of the rest of your body. This saves using soap. Turn the tap back on and quickly wash the lather out of your hair while bent over the basin. This may cause a little spine-warping, but it’s all in a good cause. Bend further over the basin to rinse the body, ending up with even more soapy water in it – and a slightly more curved spine.

  Now for the pièce de résistance. Take your dirty knickers, shirt and shorts and wash them in the soapy water in the basin left over from your ‘shower’.

  In a choppy sea this is a little more challenging, since it becomes difficult to aim the water in the direction of your choice. For the beginner like me, there is much slipping and spraying. Practice, practice and more practice . . .

  Every day on board together we learn something new. One day at anchor an unexpected guttural noise interrupts the peace. Ted and I, about our separate tasks, quickly look at one another. Clouds of black smoke are pouring from the engine room. We had both taken a diesel-engine maintenance course, but Ted still knows very little about engines and I even less. We immediately turn off the engine and let it cool down while trying to keep panic at bay. It turns out to be the alternator belt. No problem! We have four replacements on board, as recommended by our mechanic in Pittwater. Ted the architect is on his way to becoming Ted, Mr Fixit.

  This incident results in Ted dragging me along to every hardware shop in every town, city or village along our way, making sure there isn’t any spare part that we don’t possess. This interferes with my dreams of cocktails drunk at sunset in exotic climes. I imagine myself emailing my friends back home: Spent a lovely morning in the hardware shops of St Tropez . . .

  The truth is, I find this thought amusing, not irritating. I am starting, even at this early stage, to laugh at my former self. Like Ted, soon nothing can keep the smile off my face. As we sail ever northwards, we encounter new cruisers and look up old friends in the various ports. Our dinners are leisurely, with no 5.45 am alarm to worry about. Lunches last as long as we choose. We welcome these simple pleasures of cruising. Life on board becomes easy as we drift into routines that are to last as long as our trip. Our refrigerator and deep freeze, our gas stove, oven and microwave mean that we eat on board much as we did at home. Before we left we had loaded five crates of one of our favourite wines into the hold, so we never lack a glass of red wine with a meal on Blackwattle.

  We soon find that one of the joys of life on a sailing boat is the economy of existence. As part of the consumer society, when clothes were damaged or out of fashion, like everyone else we gave them to charity. If an item broke, we threw it out and purchased another. Repairs took valuable time and I never thought to wonder at all those garbage dumps full of the detritus of ‘civilisation’. On board, each item now becomes important for its special role, not for its monetary value. Each varnishing brush, each egg cup or cleaning rag, each piece of stainless steel, each bucket: all are to be treasured. I am highly conscious that we will soon be far away from land, unable to get replacements. Slowly, slowly, I find myself feeling less and less desire for new things. The boat begins to smell each morning of freshly baked bread. I learn to make yoghurt and ice-cream.

  Without daily newspapers we have quickly become divorced from news of the political and cultural events that had once seemed so important. Sydney already seems distant, unrelated to the world we now inhabit. We are in touch with our children by the Sailmail (email) system on the boat, but transmission is slow and we keep our messages short. To stay in contact, I begin writing a journal on the internet so that those who are interested can find out what we are doing and where we are.

  I push away thoughts of when I will next see Kassandra and Simon. With the exception of our families and very close friends, I guess that our Sydney world will soon forget us. A stone, when thrown into water, makes a splash, but then the ripples soon spread and dissipate and before long have disappeared as if they never existed.

  One day we anchor beside some long-time cruisers, a German couple who invite us over to their boat for a sundowner. I am bright with anticipation at meeting some experienced sailors.

  ‘How long have you been cruising?’ I enquire, feeling as if I am talking to a pop star.

  ‘Nine years,’ says the wife nonchalantly. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Er, well, about three weeks.’

  ‘Ah yes,’ she smiles, calmly sipping her gin and tonic. ‘I thought you were new cruisers.’

  ‘You did?’ I am appalled but try to seem indifferent. ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘Ja,’ she says, ‘we can always tell new cruisers by the size of their towels.’

  I stare at her for a moment, then understand. Big towels, big luxurious towels, take more water for washing and longer to dry. She tells me that you can get three
serviceable towels from one bath sheet and save huge amounts of water. The new me is delighted. I cut up our bath sheets to make small, economical towels.

  On cold nights we use the diesel heater, thermostatically controlled to keep the saloon and cabins warm and the air dry. In anchorages at night we become accustomed to the wind generator lulling us with its humming – the pitch rises and falls with the gusts of wind. In anchorages we sleep cosily, with the lap of the water outside the boat broken only by an occasional clang of wires against the mast. Occasionally, if there is a different noise, Ted is gone, racing up on deck to check. I follow, sleepily.

  We are rarely alone on this journey. There are many other yachts travelling north with us: families with children being schooled through distance learning; retired couples who have given up land-based life to drift with the seasons; adventurers who have thrown in their city jobs to find an alternative lifestyle; round-the-world cruisers; and Americans, dozens and dozens of Americans. Maybe the troubles in other parts of the world have driven all these exiles into the refuge of the South Pacific.

  We discover for the first time the camaraderie which is to sustain us for years to come. When we arrive in an anchorage where there are other boats, soon there is a knock on our hull. ‘We’re all going to that boat over there for drinks at sundown. You’re welcome to come.’ This contact is not merely social. Cruisers bring many different skills from their previous lives so that help is always at hand for engine, electrical or sailing-gear problems.

  We continue to move up the coast of Queensland. Sometimes we stop for day trips and sometimes we sail non-stop for three days. Almost every morning Ted puts out a trawling line using little fake fish as bait. In my opinion, loudly expressed, they wouldn’t fool the stupidest fish, with all those hooks down their sides.