‘So it’s just a short delivery, down to Mackay,’ said Stu. ‘Up for it?’
He’d met Stu on the radio course, where he was the instructor. A friendly young bloke, as tall as Jamie, with a mop of dark hair. Well, youngish: in his forties probably. He had a slight stoop which, along with the sharp nose and spectacles, gave him an intellectual air, at odds with his deep tan and muscled forearms.
They’d hit it off immediately, gone for a beer after the course. Stu had worked in the mines. It was good to have someone to trade stories with, and yarn to about the Audrey Liza.
‘How long’s “short” though?’ Gotta be back for my flight to Cloncurry.’
‘Four hundred miles. Three days, but allow four in case we get dirty weather. Easy sailing – Ana and I just need a third hand to take a watch, so everyone gets some kip. We’ll put the autopilot on: you won’t need to steer, or do much, really. Just keep a good lookout and check the radar every fifteen. Occasionally a bit of grunt work on deck. Take your turn in the galley. The owner’ll reimburse our flights back to Cairns. We may put into Magnetic Island to refuel, so you’ve got the option of ducking out after two days if we get held up.’
A good opportunity to get some coastal sailing experience. Pottering around Trinity Inlet and staying on board moored yachts was one thing; crewing a yacht under way, actually completing a passage was another entirely.
As long as Stu’s estimate was right, he’d have a day or more in hand to do his laundry, give Coral Dreaming a quick once-over, and be ready on Thursday morning for the usual six-thirty pick-up.
The delivery boat was a modern fibreglass sloop, a sleek charter vessel that would be rented out for four thousand dollars a night in peak season, Stu reckoned. It was about the same length as his own Audrey Liza, but a very different kind of boat. Sunday Girl was a top-of-the-range Beneteau, owner’s version. Over two metres draft with its fin keel. Luxuriously appointed cabins, and a galley and ensuites that wouldn’t look out of place in a modern city apartment.
What could possibly go wrong? Stu and his wife Ana were both experienced commercial skippers. It was an easy way of getting four hundred miles under his belt.
Forty years younger, and he would have loved the life of a yacht bum. A carefree existence: sun and salt air; young women from all over the world, with cute accents, dressed in not much and here for a good time. Scuba diving and snorkelling on the Reef, hanging out at open-air bars until late into the soft tropical night … There were worse ways to spend your youth.
Maybe he wouldn’t have turned out so square and risk-averse.
‘Sure,’ he said.
It’d be good to have this trip to look forward to. It’d get him through the next eight days at the mine.
As the Metroliner taxied towards the terminal, his phone dinged.
Ana will pick you up. I’m gonna stay here and get the boat ready. Red Mazda 3 in the pickup zone. See ya shortly ;-) Stu
Jamie flicked through the photos Stu had sent. She was a delicate Filipina, a full head-and-shoulders shorter than her husband. Standing next to Stu in a wetsuit, wet hair pushed back from her pretty, high-cheeked face, lips parted by a white-toothed grin, while the big fella squinted into the camera. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine her as skipper of a commercial dive-boat.
In the flesh, she wasn’t as smiley. The interrogation began as soon as he closed the passenger door.
‘How much experience do you have?’
‘Well, I’ve been living aboard …’
‘No, no. How much sailing experience do you have?’
‘Oh, a bit, down on the Huon, where I’m renovating an old wooden cray boat …’
‘You sail a cray boat? A lobster boat? Why!? Are you a fisherman?’
‘No, I err … My dad was a fisherman.’
‘But not you? It isn’t important to me right now, what your daddy did. I want to know ’bout you. Whether I can trust my life to you, my business. How many years? How many miles? Where have you sailed?’
She pulled out abruptly into the building peak-hour traffic. A horn sounded behind them.
‘Look, I’m new to this. Stu just asked me because …’
She snorted. ‘Stu! How are you gonna take a watch? Do you know navigation?’
‘I’m learning.’
‘Hmm. You know the COLREGs?’
‘I’m working on it.’
‘Three vertical lights,’ she said as they waited at the traffic lights. ‘Top green, others white. What kind of vessel, what direction does it steam?’
‘Ah, … sorry.’
‘Trawler. Heading away from you …’
Off in a squeal of tyres. Jeez she had a lead foot.
‘Two vertical red lights.’
‘Um … nope.’
‘Vessel not under command.’
‘We’re under sail, close-hauled on starboard tack. Another sailboat comes from starboard. Five minutes, we gonna crash!’ She illustrated with hand gestures, both hands off the wheel. ‘What are we gonna do?’
‘No idea. I’ve never sailed.’
‘What have you learned, Jamie Anderson?’
‘I’ve just passed my radio licence, VHF and HF.’
‘Hmm. Make a mayday call, yacht Sunday Girl. Man overboard. Position one seven point two one eight south, one four seven point eight one five east. Three persons on board. ’
At last something he could do. He reeled off what Stu had taught him.
‘Correct.’
They drew into the parking lot behind the Shangri-La. A double row of white balconies amidst the tall, slender palms.
‘Look, it isn’t your fault, okay?’ For the first time, she smiled – a tight little smile. ‘Stu gonna get a piece of my mind. A very big piece!’
She wasn’t wrong.
Afterwards, Stu and Jamie sat in the cockpit. The younger bloke had a haggard expression; his tan seemed to have curdled. Jamie felt sorry for him. Decided to make it easy.
‘Look, Ana’s obviously not happy. It’s fine. I’ll just go back to plan A, spend a cruisy weekend on Coral Dreaming. She’s right, you know. I don’t know shit about sailing, I’d be no use to you.’
‘It’s not fine, Jamie. She does this. Gets fixated on “perfect”, and as they say, it’s the enemy of “good”. For a dive-boat skipper, it can be an asset. For everything else …’ He puffed out his cheeks. ‘Give her half an hour to cool off, and she’ll come round. We’re going anyway, so there’s no harm in you coming along. It’s not like we’re paying you, for fuck’s sake. You’re just on board as a guest of the owner, for insurance purposes … Go and get some brekky at the marina café, mate. I’ll come and fetch you.’
In the event, it was Ana who fetched him. He tensed when he saw her bearing down on him. But she was smiling.
‘Jamie, I’m sorry,’ she opened with. ‘Big misunderstanding, me and Stu. All good now. Forgive and forget?’
She held out her hand. It was light in his. Delicate, but with a hint of steel.
She and Stu had quickly hammered out a revised arrangement in the light of his incompetence. They would change to a two-watch system: six hours on and six off, with Jamie in charge of the galley and on call as required. He wouldn’t be left on deck alone, in charge of the vessel. Not under any circumstances.
After this inauspicious start, their departure went without incident. Ana could be charming and kind, it turned out. Clearly good at her job – and deadly earnest about it. If he were a dive-boat punter, he’d have no worries entrusting his life to this woman at sea.
Which, come to think of it, was exactly what he was doing.
Cairns waterfront receded into the distance, then disappeared as they rounded Gunner Rock and began their long trip, all the way down the inside passage to Mackay. It was a bright morning, the mountains washed clean by the previous day’s storms.
Man, it was good to be alive. On board a beautiful, fast yacht, plying the sparkling waters inside the Great Barrier Reef. Bound for Magnetic Island and Mackay.
He was down in the galley, preparing lunch, when he first noticed it.
They’d been under way for five hours now. There was a slight fuzziness in his mind. It wasn’t unpleasant, but it was difficult to focus on the task at hand: shredding papaya and fine-chopping red chillies.
He looked out the portlight at the shifting seascape. They were equidistant between Russell Island and Scott Reef, motoring south outside the main inshore shipping route.
Nimbostratus had rolled down from the tableland and the once-blue sea was a leaden grey. A long swell rocked them from the east, overlaid by a steep chop from south-southeast – the same direction as the steady twenty knot breeze. They were making good progress all the same, cresting the waves on the diagonal then sloping down the back of each one, Ana’s steady hand on the wheel.
He called to mind the six motions of a boat at sea. There were the three rotational motions: roll, pitch and yaw. There were the three linear motions: surge, sway and heave. Yep, there they were. All of them.
Heave was so aptly named: that feeling of weightlessness as the boat dropped from under you, then you caught up at the bottom of the drop. Ah, but your stomach was still on its downward plunge, squishing your large intestine into the small. Then up she rises; and after a time-lag, up the sack of mush comes, barrelling into the heart and the liver and the lungs. Sloshing the bacon and the eggs and the coffee …
‘To port! No! Port!!’ shrieked Ana, as he staggered towards the open stern and swim platform. ‘Over the side!’
Coming up:
This Friday in The Last Orchard: Leigh meets the neighbours. (Paid subscription.)
Next Tuesday in Audrey Liza: The voyage continues.
Over the side? Gulp.