Of Foreign Build (21 page)

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 be 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’.

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.

Other cruisers began awaking and started up a loud racket. We watched as an American boat glided past us and up onto the rocks. We had joined in with the cacophony trying to arouse the drifting boat’s owners, but they couldn’t hear us from below their insulated decks. We all watched in horror, and as they went past us, Noel said, ‘I’ll switch on our engine, just in case.’ As he did so our anchor let go, and we started to drag towards the land, too.

Other boats were in our destructive path, and Noel grappled against the large seas and howling wind to keep
Mariah
from clashing with other bucking vessels. Noel was doing a great job on the helm, so I jumped on deck to haul in the anchor. Kneeling down on one knee, with one hand grasping the stanchions, I pressed the anchor winch button with my heel and tried to feed in the chain. It felt like sitting atop a bucking bronco. I was terrified. It was pitch black; we smashed up and down in the waves, each one coating me in fine salt and skin tingling icy water. I could barely hold on.

Gritting my teeth, I knew Noel was working hard with
Mariah’s
engine and the tiller to help me haul in the chain. As
Mariah’s
bow lifted, the chain became bar taut. As she theatrically plunged into the dip, the chain slackened and I hauled in as much chain as possible – breaking equipment now was not an option.

The electronic winch was powerful, and I had remembered Noel’s lesson of, ‘We can fix the boat, but we can’t fix missing fingers,’ so, I kept my hands well clear of the moving parts. Gradually, painfully, the anchor came up. Noel had kept us in one spot so we didn’t latch on and haul up someone else’s anchor chain with ours. I had achieved my goal and was still in one piece, as was our equipment. We both concentrated on our own jobs while working together. Talking was pointless, as we were at either end of the boat, with the wind whipping any sound cleanly away. Once the anchor was clear, Noel turned
Mariah’s
bow into the mountainous swell and pushed the throttle down, asking the Yanmar to get us out of here. By now it was about 4 am, and as we bounced into deeper water, the waves reduced in rowdiness.

All of a sudden, we were in a different world: the black sea mellowed, the moon shone to light a pathway, and the stars glowed serenely. Behind us, the shallow bay was a nightmare. A tangled boat sat on a reef, and the pumping seas continued to pummel the boats on anchor.

Away from the shallow water that heightened the swell and the wind that bounced around the shore, the waves were moderate, and as dawn approached all was back to normal on
Mariah
. We headed an hour south towards Barbados’ capital and an alternative anchorage.

Bridgetown anchorage was much better protected, but we had to anchor a fair way out to gain the depth we needed. However, the violent, swearing, ugly music that boomed out across the anchorage at full, distorted volume, made our boat vibrate each night. It was hideous. For a few days we alternated between different anchorages: when we were fed up with rolling we headed south, when we were fed up with the music we headed north.

Soon the resourceful ‘Tash had sourced the cheapie shops and we obtained supplies, did some sight-seeing, and paid attention to our need to move. We decided to stay for New Year’s Eve and were safely anchored in soft, pulsating swells from the ocean, ready to welcome in a new year and new adventures. Little did we know that in just a few days’ time, Noel would be working in a brothel. This is where Noel joins us again to tell us the story.

We’ve made it across the Atlantic to Barbados, arriving just in time to celebrate New Year’s Eve. Two weeks later, Den and I were still hard at it, every day, in a Bridgetown brothel. There wasn’t much privacy either, as we worked at the rear of the establishment, in an open shed, exposed to the derisive laughter and unasked for advice from the local Cajuns.

‘Hey mon! Wat cha doo-in?’

‘Well g’day. We’re makin’ a little dinghy.’

‘Oh, you makin’ a little boat for the big boat, dat’s good. Hey, mon, you gonna fiba glas dat ding?’

This was the basic conversation, repeated on the hour with each new smiling face.

As our cupboard-bred collection of materials begrudgingly transformed into an object of nautical symmetry, the laughter increased. What I looked upon as fine lines, the locals viewed as a receptacle for ice and cold beer. If only we would ‘…fiba glas dat ding, mon.’

The head honcho of the establishment was accommodating and made us feel welcome. He seemed to run the joint at the command of the boss lady. Mr. Honcho stood at 190 cm (6 foot 3″ in the old money), had a solid build and had a flashy smile that should have been fronting a toothpaste advert. Dripping gold from his wrists, neck, ears, and even his mouth, I swear he was a walking dubloon. The glow from his jewellery made me squint, and when he started laughing, I slipped on the sunnies. The red bandana on his cannonball shaped head, the vivid shirt, and the baggy trousers, neatly rounded off the whole Pirates of Penzance performance.

As he swaggered over, as if in a joint conspiracy, he whispered, ‘You don wanna laugh with dem Cajun’s, mon. All dey wanna do is steal yo’ tools, rape yaw wife, and den kill you!’

As he was Cajun himself, I returned to work, wondering whether to laugh or take note.

‘We’re ‘aving a party this Sat’day,’ our host continued, ‘celebrating a return to work for dis joint, we’ve been closed a year since dat murder dat night. You guys be finished by den, wontcha?’

At this point, I decided to take note.

‘No worries,’ I replied, gazing at our two made up frames and sheets of furniture grade ply. ‘We’ll be out of ‘ere Friday arvo.’

Deciding to build a replacement for our smashed dinghy named Penguin Jack (PJ), sourcing materials and finding a building site took about a week. A week of bus rides complete with Bob Marley blasting through the speakers, pounding our ears. The driver danced in his seat, chatting with his mates while scattering pedestrians, all with his right foot firmly on the peddle. It took a week of relying on our good friends, Den and ‘Tash, to be our taxi to and from shore several times a day. It was ‘Tash who bravely asked the woman behind the three metre corrugated iron fence and barbed wire whether we could use the shed out back. Mrs. Barkly was most accommodating, letting us leave our tools locked in her hallway. Mrs. Barkly, as we soon found out, was the madam.

For three days, we cut out frames, trying to bend Honduras Pine stringers into something resembling a boat frame. Honduras Pine looked like Radiata Pine without the knots; it had greater density, and therefore more weight. Its oily feel, I thought, indicated longevity and resistance to rot. What I failed to notice, until much later, was its natural abhorrence to being bent.

On entering the yard one morning, I found one of the girls, all fifteen stone of her, sitting stark naked on a stool, all limbs akimbo as she was hosed down by another woman, similarly clad. Not knowing where to look, I thought I would stare at one of the stencilled signs indicating that no credit was given and that guns were forbidden. That’s nice, I thought.

It was now Tuesday. Crossing the Atlantic only two weeks ago, I had images of coral sands, palm trees, scantily clad women, and Pina Coladas. The images proved correct, except that instead of a deckchair and a cool drink, I had a workbench and a screwdriver. Cruising reality was a hot tin roof and sawdust. Enjoying a new country this time, meant traipsing miles carrying or looking for supplies. It also meant that a shimmering crime-lord was custodian to all my worldly tools of trade. What went wrong?

We almost stayed on board that night, as the swell was swallowing the concrete jetty each time that we tried to land. We were about to return for a rave up on Mariah II, i.e. a tinned meal and our favourite book, when our American friends, Roy and Chris from Solmates, suggested that we tie up to their dinghy.

‘It’s anchored off as well as tied, so it’ll be fine,’ they called. Their four metre, hard bottomed rigid inflatable boat appeared to be sitting as comfortably as Mariah out on anchor, so what could go wrong?

‘Successful cruising is a matter of continual awareness.’ This adage was not followed. Sitting at a beach bar, boasting about crossing oceans to the only people who care to listen, other cruisers, was not awareness. With my back firmly placed to the worrying scene of two dinghies porpoising in their attempts to ride the increasing swell, I figured the Ostrich Theory would work. Could we not relax now, tonight of all nights? After all, we had just crossed the Atlantic. We deserved a break, didn’t we? The result answered that question.

The concrete wharf ripped the large, sturdy RIB to shreds as if it was paper thin; its 15 horse-power outboard dragged what remained of the planing hull into the depths of swelling sands and coral sea. Our beloved servant from Aussie, PJ, was shattered; the remnants floated off in the moonlight.

We stood on the jetty and with moist eyes wished each other an ironic ‘Happy New Year.’ We piled into our Dutch friends’ dinghy, headed for Solmates, and dutifully awaited midnight. We soberly repeated our ‘Happy New Years’ and ‘Goodnights.’ Then I remembered that PJ was gone. This began the first of many pleas of, ‘Give us a lift, mate?’

Two weeks later, on the promised Friday arvo, we launched PJ II as the sun set. It had been a frantic, albeit interesting time. PJ II had been prime coated, but was barely dry. The next morning, our home, Mariah II, turned into a work-shop. So we could finish the dinghy.

PJ II, built in Barbados, in a brothel, by an Aussie and a Dutchman, was unique. As we puttered along, people pointed, stared, and the odd snort of laughter could be heard. We heard children say, ‘I want one!’ I think it was the green fenders that were cunningly made from swimming floats that turned their eye.

But, we had the last laugh. No one would steal PJ, he looked too ‘unique’. Each year many shiny, new dinghies were stolen in the Caribbean, which caused heartache and drama that we knew too well. With the glue holding, and the timber staying in one piece, PJ almost made it home to Australia.

A new hard dinghy would have cost us at least one thousand Australian dollars, a new inflatable dinghy around two thousand Australian dollars, Penguin Jack II cost us two hundred dollars and a bouquet of flowers for Madam Barkly.

Frodo
and
Mariah
, were together day in day out. Never had we made such good friends; they were easy to be with and had no expectations. ‘Tash’s parents were visiting to spend some time with them on one of the Dutch islands, whereas we were heading north to Puerto Rico. A sad goodbye loomed before us.

Roy and Chris, had become our good friends, too. They had helped us in Egypt by supplying and delivering flour; we had enjoyed many a social night on board their huge floating home. They owned two apartments in Puerto Rico, which needed some renovations. When they heard that Noel and I had renovated houses previously, we came to an agreement to renovate their apartments.

Noel and I had to make a decision with the hurricane season looming. Were we going to go south to Trinidad or north to America? We had heard whispers about the inland waterways in America; we had both visited America some years back and wanted to see more. The work offer in Puerto Rico fitted in nicely with our plans, so north it was.

To fulfil these needs and wants meant a tough farewell with
Frodo
. Den and ‘Tash came on board
Mariah
for the last time, and we anchored between the two main anchorages in Barbados to dive with the tourists. At midday each day, a tourist boat headed to a certain area and fed the giant turtles. We anchored nearby and joined in the excursion. Snorkelling amongst these graceful creatures in their silent world was spectacular. Den and the largest turtle had a face-off: the turtle sat inches from Den’s masked face and they stared into each other’s eyes. I nearly drowned from laughing. The turtle retreated, and then Den realised he had some turtle food on his shoulder (some weed). After swimming with these gentle giants, we headed to the rolly anchorage, where the wind had subdued and the roll had settled down, creating just a gentle rock.