3. Shooting Stars and Flying Fish

Ashmore Reef, Christmas Island and Cocos Keeling to the Maldives

It’s the middle of September when we sail away on the high tide, expecting to pick up the famed south-east trade winds to speed us to Ashmore Reef. As the few tall buildings of Darwin shrink and fade into the sea there’s little breeze, but when it does come, it’s ‘on the nose’. Instead of flying away we’re slogging into a brittle wind and constantly tacking to make our course.

After such a delay in Darwin, I am so euphoric to be on my way that nothing can sink my spirits. Ted, on the other hand, is the one who has been talking for years about the fantastic south-east trade winds, and he’s not happy at all. He starts praying on the bow.

At least that’s what I think he’s doing. He’s saying ‘Jesus Christ’ and ‘God Almighty’ frequently, although there are some other words that I think shouldn’t rightly go in a prayer. Anyway, the praying doesn’t do any good, as the wind just goes on blowing against us. Maybe it’s the tone of voice he’s using, which is definitely not how my mother taught me to get the best results from God.

Meanwhile, between the praying spells, we settle down to life at sea, getting into a watch routine. I am a little queasy for a day or two, and our time clocks are not yet settled to three-hour sleeps at night. After the first couple of days, however, we both begin to enjoy the immenseness of the ocean and sky, and feel like the infinitesimal speck that we are. A sense of reverence in the face of the universe develops as the days pass, and I am never lonely. We both enjoy the peace and novelty of this complete isolation, although our conversation reaches some impressive intellectual heights at times.

We’re both staring out to sea, in different directions.

‘I forgot to tell you, I saw some wildlife before.’

‘That’s interesting. What did you see?’

‘I saw a sea snake.’

‘Excellent! Was it big?’

‘No, not really. It was white with brown stripes.’

‘Oh.’

Pause.

‘I saw a turtle too.’

‘Wow! That’s great! Did you really?’

‘Well, it might have been seaweed.’

‘Oh, yes, well then . . .’

Pause.

‘I saw some wildlife too.’

‘What did you see?’

‘I saw a bird – twice.’

‘The same bird?’

‘No, of course not – two different birds.’

‘Why didn’t you say, “I saw two birds”?’

‘Because, they weren’t together. One small bird, and one large bird, at different times.’

‘Oh, I see, okay.’

Pause.

‘I wonder what they were doing out here on their own so far away from land? It’s too far to fly back to land by nightfall.’

‘I guess it’s because they’re sea birds.’

‘I guess.’

‘Maybe they were migrating somewhere.’

‘Birds don’t migrate by themselves, they migrate in big mobs.’

‘Flocks.’

‘What?’

‘Flocks. Birds migrate in flocks, not mobs.’

‘I knew that.’

There is a dark time that I love after the setting of each sun, and before the rising of each moon. The sea roaring past loses definition and the horizon melts. Instead of the convex watery ball of daytime, with the boat finely balanced on top, the ocean seems concave and gathers us with the warmth of a velvet cocoon. The Milky Way becomes a dramatic sash of light over the arc of the sky, and the rushing foamy water alongside the boat answers with a display of phosphorescent stars. They rush by, these tiny pinpricks of light, flashing brilliantly for a brief moment, before disappearing forever into the infinity of the wake.

Then my dark time ends, as the moon overwhelms the stage. The Milky Way shrinks and fades, and only the brightest of phosphorescent stars can shine through the brash moonlight.

So, hello, Moon. You’re looking a bit squashed tonight. Looks like the old face has had a bit of a beating. Been brawling in the pub again, eh?

I look at the illuminated dial of my watch. It’s 1.20 am and we have a bird! At first I think I am hallucinating. I see a smudge in the darkness, flapping past the dodger windscreen. It can’t be, I think, so I turn away, but at the edge of my sight there it goes again. Again and again it swoops past, as if trying to land. I rush for the torch and shine it obligingly on the bow as a landing light. Sure enough the bird settles in the torch glow. It’s a noddy – what a plebeian name for one of the most graceful and elegant of all sea birds. It perches on the fender rope at the bow, staying there for most of the night, flying away with nary a thankyou during Ted’s dawn watch.

The next night, it’s there again. Ted wakes me for my 4 am watch.

‘Your friend is back. He’s sitting on top of the dodger making a hell of a racket.’

It’s true. As I sit directly beneath him, he stamps and prattles and flaps and purrs, and offers answering quarks to other noddies flying by. Just before daylight, I decide to have another look to see which part of the dodger he is inhabiting at the moment. I pop my head out and we, the bird and I, find that we are staring at each other, heads not five centimetres apart. I don’t know who gets the greater shock. We both freeze for a moment, and then he’s gone forever, flapping lazily away.

The time passes. We haven’t seen a boat, or a plane, or even the sign of a fish for six days. The daily watch-keeping, navigation, eating, cleaning, showering and sleeping fill the time. Navigation is a particular pleasure, and then there is a ‘sched’ – short for schedule – which is radio contact at prearranged times with other boats by HF radio. We read and listen to Radio Australia news broadcasts – compacted news, without the bickering of politicians. Our fairly catholic CD collection blasts into the forever – the sea birds are treated to everything from Vivaldi to Lee Guiness. We argue about the future of the world and discuss the books we’re reading. Ted fishes with his strategically placed peg to tell him when he has a fish, I write the journal. I didn’t know how much I’d enjoy converting our experiences into words.

Sunrises are usually a solo thing, but sunsets are a nightly theatrical performance during the evening meal, and we watch every evening for ‘the Green Flash’. This phenomenon, which sailors love to claim to have seen, occurs but rarely. When the cloud and sky conditions are right, as the sun’s circle falls into the horizon, the tiny yellow blaze of sunlight turns, for a matter of milliseconds, vivid green. I have now seen it twice!

For an Australian, the name Ashmore Reef conjures up newspapers’ blurry aerial images of skinny-legged silhouettes, ‘boat people’, abandoned on a desolate shore. Ashmore is much more than this. The atolls, along with the nearby Cartier Reef, are an important way station in the bird migration routes of the east Indian Ocean. In addition to the eighty-eight sighted bird varieties, there are over twenty species of nesting birds, many sea snakes and nesting turtles. On advice from marine scientists about the importance of Ashmore, a large area was declared a Wetland of International Importance in 2003. Australia keeps coastguard vessels at Ashmore to allow certain privileges to traditional Indonesian fishermen while guarding the protected wetlands and watching for ‘boat people’ trying to make their way to the Australian mainland.

On cue, according to our navigated route, three small atolls appear as smudges on a morning made in heaven. A tiny zephyr breathes us forward on a rippled sea, indigo beneath the boat, pale green ahead. The blue above is lightly spread with cotton wool. Our first offshore landing could hardly be more full of beauty. What looks like a scattering of lime-coloured butterflies on the horizon are, we guess rightly, Indonesian fishing boats, and we can hear the growing roar of a surf breaking somewhere on a windward reef. Breaking the scene, sitting high and powerful amid the soft line of the atolls, is an aluminium monster – an Australian Customs vessel.

We call them on Channel 16, and there’s a polite response.

‘Welcome, Blackwattle. This is Customs Vessel Corio Bay. Just take the mooring to the east of our vessel, sir. We’ll come and visit you later in the day.’

Just take the mooring? I haven’t taken a mooring since leaving Pittwater. It seems bizarre to pick up a mooring line in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We laugh with the pleasure and ease of it, and I go forward to the bow. As we draw closer, I see a mooring line obviously designed for a 100,000-tonne ship. We won’t drag tonight!

The crew of the Corio Bay are generous and welcoming hosts. We are treated to a tour of their ship, and they tell us fascinating stories. Ashmore Reef has been a traditional fishing ground for the fishermen from the Indonesian island of Roti for hundreds of years.

‘The Roti Island tradition is for their fishermen to sail south for one day and one night,’ says Jeff, one of the customs officials, ‘and then look for a green cloud in the sky. Beneath that green cloud they know they will find Ashmore Reef. If they cannot find the green cloud, they must turn and sail back to their home village and try again another time.’

‘The green cloud?’ I say. It sounds like a fairy story.

‘Yes, the green cloud,’ Jeff grins. ‘The reef waters are so green that their colour is reflected in the sky – you should look out for the green cloud when you leave.’

I am sceptical, but let it pass . . . 

We stay several blissful days, swimming and relishing the strange environment and the release from our disciplined watch-keeping. A highlight is joining the customs crew to go searching for nesting turtles at night. The air is warm, the water warmer as we wade through the long shallows to reach a moonless shore. We trudge along a beach of broken coral to circle the island. My bare feet scream with the pain of it. Five torches flash chaotically, showing scrubby bush and just two palm trees in total. We cross many fresh turtle trails, as large as tractor tracks. There are dozens of birds: egrets, with slender white bodies; frigates, large and lolloping; noddies, needle-fine and elegant; and the dear boobies, plump and comical. They all look stunned by the torchlight. On the way back in the tender, giant manta rays and turtles swim below, cleverly illuminated by Jeff’s flashing light.

When it’s time to move on we are sad – an emotion that is to haunt us in so many of our departures to come – but there is a treat in store. As we watch the low atoll sinking fast into the blur of the horizon, we see it. The green cloud. She shines high among the other white clouds, as distinct as the ugly duckling from the fairytale. We stare entranced at a phenomenon that has guided generations of Roti fishermen to their fishing zone – where they are now forbidden to fish freely by white people with guns in a big aluminium ship.

Very soon the water is a dark indigo blue with no trace of green. The depth has dropped away quickly until we’re riding on around 6000 metres of water, through the Sunda Trench, some of the deepest water on earth. I try to imagine the many levels of life that exist in the six kilometres of sea below, the deepest of which has not been yet plumbed.

But up here, on the surface, the wind behind us, the Indian Ocean is heaving and panting from some monstrous turbulence to the south. It’s like a boundless watery desert, undulating hills and valleys, gently rolling countryside, reminiscent of proper English fields, without the hedgerows. The boat rises up an almost imperceptible hill of water, until we’re on the crest of a great mountain, looking out over a long slope the length of two or three football fields. She stays there, riding along the ridge for a time, then coasts gracefully down the other side.

These are heady days. The sea is full of fascination for the watchful: flying fish and huge blubbery jellyfish, mud-coloured to orange; great dark turtles; pristine white cuttlefish shells, drifting like lost feathers on the swell; a booby or two, sitting placidly on the water, looking for all the world like fat domestic ducks on a farmyard dam. Then there are the ubiquitous noddies, forever hunting, gliding just above the lip of the wave, swooping rarely, on the endless search for dinner.

Being many days at sea can take your thoughts into strange valleys. I am watching the birds and daydreaming . . . 

‘Ted, do you know there are over 6000 metres of water under us now?’

‘Mmm.’ Ted is reading.

‘That’s almost three times the height of Kosciuszko.’

No response.

‘If all the water in the sea evaporated suddenly, we would fall six kilometres before hitting the bottom.’

‘Mmm.’

‘You know what we would hit at the bottom?’

He looks up. ‘Coca-Cola cans?’

‘Fish. Thousands and thousands of fish that have fallen before us in a great rain of fish. It would be like falling through the hatch of a trawler into slithery piles of salmon.’ I pause. ‘Well, what do you think about that?’

He stares at me before replying. ‘I think you should get out more, Nance.’

Dolphins visit almost every day and often at night. They swoop and play, leaving phosphorus jet trails behind them as they shoot through the plankton-filled water, breaking the surface and then sleekly arcing back into the waves.

Luckless flying fish visit too. There’ll be a clatter in the darkness, and a noisy slapping. Then another will hit the deck, and another. Sometimes we smell them before we see them. By the morning, there will be a dozen or more found on the boat. Their scales are still scattered over deck and dodger long after their poor little bodies have rejoined the sea by Ted’s hand.

A night comes when we are surrounded by Indonesian fishing boats. The charts tell us that Bali is only around 120 nautical miles abeam. We count up to twenty at any one time, some quite near, others only a glow over the horizon. They sit stationary for a while, then take off at speed in any direction. They trail long nets, we know, and are a hazard. We need to stay alert, as we have learned from other cruising sailors that they don’t keep good watch.

The next day, with Ashmore Reef over 600 nautical miles astern, Christmas Island 400 ahead, and Indonesia around 150 miles to the north, we find we are sailing in foul garbage. There are cigarette packs, plastic milk bottles, noodle packets, bits of torn newspaper, green thongs, red thongs, polystyrene cups, plastic bags. Maybe those boats act not only as fishing trawlers, but also take the garbage from the entire village to sea and dump it. The paper will sink and dissolve after a while, but the thongs and the plastic and the polystyrene, never. For many thousands of years the only detritus humans left was organic and eventually became earth and spawned other life – until the twentieth century and the discovery of plastic.

One morning, as the chart promised, the Christmas Island skyline appears high on the horizon. The mainland of Australia is now over 2500 kilometres behind us. We’ve heard about phosphate mining on the island, about how the island grew with inducted labour, about the detention camp and about the crabs. (Every November about 100 million large red crabs make their way from their land homes to the sea, and the locals celebrate the event.)

What we didn’t know about is its beauty.

As we sail into Flying Fish Cove, we are heralded by scores of sea birds – mostly boobies – swooping and gliding like trapeze artists in the wind. For an east coaster, used to seagulls, ibis, terns and pelicans, their aerial display is breathtaking. Customs on VHF tells us to pick up a mooring – how easy. The voice is friendly and casual. ‘Just come in to shore when you’re settled, and we’ll complete formalities here.’

I had imagined it a bleak, flat place. In fact, it is the peak of an ancient volcano, with a canopy of preserved rainforest. As we get closer we see on one side high wooded cliffs and a settlement snugged into a jungle of palm trees and frangipani, and on the other side the yellow monsters of the buildings of the phosphate-loading facility.

Formalities are laughably easy. We sit under palm trees on the grass chatting amiably while two officers complete our paperwork. There’s more chatting than paperwork.

‘You’re leaving when? Saturday? Nonsense!’ chime Customs and Quarantine almost together. ‘It’s Territory Week. You can’t leave before Cove Day on Monday. It’s the best day of the year. I’m afraid neither of us will be available to stamp your papers until then, so you can’t leave!’

We laugh and shake hands. ‘Now that’s a different way to get tourists,’ I say.

We walk the seaside collection of little shops. The jungle-covered cliffs rise steep above the road. Between the shops we see crumbling stone and rusting piping from previous generations, abandoned buildings, empty workshops. Like a little Rome, each new phase of civilisation has built over the decay of the past.

And over the dilapidation and leftover junk which is strewn everywhere (is there no tip?), foliage grows, as if in apology – frangipani, wild antigonon, bougainvillea and nameless vines of all sorts, in an explosion of colours.

We hire a car and set off to explore. The settlement is in three tiers – the Malay village at sea level, complete with mosque, then the European enclave called Silver City, and at the top of the hill is Chinatown. A national park occupies around sixty-five per cent of the island and we learn that this is the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean, with many unique species of plant and animal life.

‘Did you know that?’ I ask Ted.

‘Nup!’ says Ted, and I wonder at the nature of the Australian education system. I remember that we learned about the Galapagos, drew the animals in primary school, wondered about Darwin’s discoveries in secondary school, but were never told that Australia had its very own equivalent.

With doubled interest we drive the island and walk the rainforests. We could be on an alien planet, so different are they from any forest I have ever seen. We are surrounded by the strangely plaited limbs of unique stinging trees, pandanus, chestnuts, ferns and coconut trees. The light in here is blue and ghostly, the tall plants tower above eerily. The dark floor is a slush of brown leaves, caused by the presence of millions of large blue and red crabs, which scuttle over each other with alarm or lie comatose in the half-light.

We stay, of course, until Cove Day, to watch the locals celebrate Christmas Island becoming an Australian territory. The entire island turns out – the men set up a temporary bar which becomes ever noisier as the afternoon progresses, the women watch the small children, and the shore is alive with swimming races, raft races, three-legged races and tugs-of-war, with participants of all ages. Another yacht has arrived, a solo American called Bill on a boat called Saltair. An ex-university lecturer, he tells us of his love for his Thai fiancée, how she will join him soon, and the book he has been commissioned to write on steering vanes. Nothing is ‘normal’ in our new life, every new meeting has a freshness and a surprise. Our formal customs clearance is done on the back of a boat trailer with beer in hand, while the raft races use Blackwattle as the windward mark.

The next morning we’re in water of depth over 1000 metres within about ten minutes of leaving Flying Fish Cove, and set course for Cocos Keeling. The conditions remain idyllic. The sun shines heavy with heat, and a few lumps of whitest cotton wool break the monotony of the blue. The wind is just aft of the beam and there is a steady current pushing us along.

Soon after I take over at 0400 for my dawn watch one morning I notice the change. I stare woodenly, a prickle of alarm turns into an ache of consternation and becomes a flashing anger in my chest. Ted is already asleep, and I will not see him now until I wake him at 0700 for shared breakfast and the next watch change. I fume and fret through the three hours, checking the horizon too often, adrenaline building as the dawn stains the sky with grainy yellow ochre behind me. Placing two dishes on the bench, I fill them with muesli which I then drown in soy milk. I cut bananas precisely, like throats, splaying them across the cereal. The yoghurt is spread like soil on a grave. At seven precisely I enter the log for the last time that day, my pen scratching as on cold stone. Then I wake Ted and wait for him to come on deck.

Ted picks up his cereal dish and starts eating the muesli.

‘Bon appétit,’ he says sleepily.

‘You took the pole down.’

‘What?’ The question is drowsy.

‘You heard me. You went onto the foredeck and took the pole down.’

There’s a pause while he munches. ‘Yep,’ he says, staring at something in his muesli bowl. ‘I did. It was very calm out there.’

So he knows what I am talking about. ‘I was not in the cockpit when you did it. We have an agreement.’

‘Yes, Nance,’ he says.

‘Don’t “Yes, Nance” me. Did you hear me? You cannot do that!’

‘Look, it’s all right, Nance – it was very calm. There was no trouble and you know I’m sure-footed.’

‘I don’t care how sure-footed you are, or how calm it was. I’ll bet you weren’t even clipped on.’

His transparently honest hint of a grin tells me that I am right.

‘Dammit, Ted, we have an agreement. We don’t go out of the cockpit unless the other crew is present!’

‘Calm down, Nance . . .’

‘Don’t tell me to calm down. Don’t you realise that if I think for one second that you are leaving this cockpit when I’m not here I will not sleep at all?’

When he is able to get a word in he says, ‘You have to give me credit for a little judgement.’

‘No, no, no, no! No credit for anything! Many, many of the people who are lost overboard are lost because they bent over to pick something up off the deck and the boat lurched. If that happens when the other person isn’t on deck it could be up to three hours before I know you’re missing!’

‘You’re making a big thing out of nothing.’

‘Oh no I’m not. Look, I know that when you started sailing there were no lifelines and no harnesses. I know you danced around the deck knee-deep in monstrous waves with a rope slung around your middle . . .’

‘You’re wrong.’

‘I’m wrong? How?’

‘I didn’t have the rope around my waist on the foredeck – it was when I was on the helm. We used to wrap the mainsheet – not a rope – around our waists to avoid being washed over while steering.’

‘Whatever. It’s not funny. You survived. That’s fine. I actually don’t care if you want to take risks, but I’m here too, and I don’t want to have to explain to the next customs officers why there is only one of me on this boat.’

But then I can’t help seeing the humour of it. ‘They might arrest me for murder. In fact, if you do that again, it might just happen. At least I’d be doing time for something I had actually been responsible for.’

He grins, and then I do too. We argue back and forth, and he agrees that he won’t do it again. But can I trust him?

As we thread our way through the coral reefs in the pass that leads into into a lagoon at Cocos Keeling in early morning, we already know something of the amazing history of this remote group of islands. Alexander Hare, formerly a British soldier, and by all accounts a miserable man, moved there in 1826, importing slaves from Malaya and Africa to work his copra plantations. A clever Scotsman, Captain John Clunies-Ross, moved there also, and, by offering better working conditions, he enticed the slaves to run away from Hare and work for him. Thus began the Clunies-Ross family’s ‘ownership’ of the island, which lasted for nearly 150 years until 1978, when the Australian government, which by then had control of the islands, forced the family to sell.

During the Second World War, the group was a strategically important outpost, with one of the islands – Direction – being vital as a telegraph station. The tale of the atoll’s involvement in the Second World War is a cloak-and-dagger story of Japanese occupation, submarine attacks, battles fought and lost, German ships sunk and mutinies quelled.

The current population of Cocos Keeling comprises descendants of the original slaves, together with a contingent of Australian government employees. The Malay people live on an adjoining island, Home Island, and the Europeans live on yet another imaginatively named isle, West Island.

As we enter the narrow pass, we see nothing but a long island of coconut palms, so low it hardly breaks the horizon line, but vivid green and dense with foliage. In the distance are some other landmasses, vaguer in the misty salt air. Three yachts are already anchored in pale aqua water – but it looks shallow, much too shallow for us, and we daren’t enter.

Hovering in deep water, we call Customs by VHF radio, but there is no answer – well, silly, it is dawn on Sunday morning – so we hoist the quarantine flag and sneak warily into the ‘quarantine area’ according to the chart, watching the depth counter, to anchor by the coconut-smothered Direction Island of telegraph-station fame.

Suddenly the microphone crackles across the cockpit, and we startle, not having heard another human voice for so many days.

‘Yacht just entered Direction Island lagoon, this is Sortelege on Channel 20.’

There are three boats already in the anchorage – Tree of Life, Giselle and Sortelege – and between them they tell us how to enter, that the customs man will turn up when it suits him, and to please come for sundowners later in the day.

This welcome sets the scene, and after the long sail we enjoy the companionship of swimming, snorkelling and enjoying beachside barbecues with the other three yacht crews. We are anchored behind the coral atoll without inhabitants, but with seashell-strewn beaches, sandy paths twisting under the thick palm-tree jungle, millions of crabs, and feral chickens cackling and pecking. In the clear water are fish and coral, and one can swim among the sharks with impunity. They are very shy and dart away unless you swim very softly and carefully and don’t splash.

Passing yachties have developed a long tradition of leaving some token to note their passing – a piece of driftwood, a flag, a bamboo pole, emblazoned with the name of the vessel and the date of the visit. We get busy with driftwood, soldering iron and varnish.

We find the individual stories of the yachts we encounter a never-ending source of fascination. A couple of single-handed sailors arrive a day apart – a young Frenchman in an engine-less twenty-three foot boat, with a windsurfer taking up most of the cabin space, and a Pole who has sailed direct from Fiji in forty-four days, headed for Cape Town, with just a two-night stop here. He has run out of money, cannot pay port fees, and therefore must keep sailing. He survives by catching fish.

Astonishingly, we are invited to the wedding of two Australians living on West Island. ‘Well,’ we are told, ‘it is a community event and the bridal couple feel that passing yachties are a part of the community.’

The wedding venue is Prison Island, a circular spit of sand with a jungle of greenery at its centre, and surrounded by spreading aqua shallows. It was here that Alexander Hare lived in virtual imprisonment for years after John Clunies-Ross took control of Cocos Keeling.

Dozens of dinghies and small runabouts converge on the island. The bride arrives by small motorboat in a traditional white dress with a bunch of flowers and bare feet. The groom wears dark sunglasses, a five o’clock shadow, casual white shirt with long shorts, and bare feet. The guests are arrayed in a wild confusion of colours, flowing sand-length caftans or tight shorts, with broad-brimmed straw hats or baseball caps, all with bare feet. Even the marriage celebrant, a huge-bosomed woman in black and red taffeta, is barefoot. Throughout the service the champagne flows, and kids shout and squeal in the shallows.

A tropical storm hits the island just as the big woman says, ‘I now declare you husband and wife.’ This sends everyone scurrying and laughing to their runabouts. Dozens of small boats rocket through the building waves and rain to the cover of the palm trees on our own Direction Island. Here the party continues, regardless of the fact that all are drenched with either rain water or salt water or both.

We are soon sobered by a drama unfolding in the anchorage. We had all but forgotten Bob on Tasneem, the English ex-avionics engineer who gave us anchoring advice in Seisia and sailed west without us when Ted developed a hernia in Darwin. But now, he enters our lives again.

On arrival in Cocos Keeling, we had been told that Bob had left for Chagos two days prior. Now we learn that at night in an angry sea, a gybing boom knocked him across the cockpit. When he recovered consciousness he could see a large lump protruding from the back of his shoulder – was it broken? He didn’t know. A full drama is unfolding as Bob, now a single-handed single-hander, tries to sail back, against the wind, which, unfortunately, is coming directly from Cocos at gale strength. Giselle, with Tree of Life and Blackwattle joining in, is in touch with him on a twice-daily basis on the HF radio to give encouragement and relay medical advice from the local doctors.

Some days he makes no progress, simply drifting, or hove-to, resting, sleeping fitfully to try to gather some strength. In the bucking sea he has difficulty eating, let alone setting sails. Finally, after several days, he is just eight miles away, and it’s getting dark. Most yachts would never try to enter the unlit lagoon in the dark, but we cannot have Bob wait all night. Volunteers from the yachts in the anchorage go out in dinghies with handheld VHF radios into a dishevelled sea and a high wind. Two intend to board his boat, and others wait to shine torches to show the way into the lagoon. Those of us left in the anchorage wait anxiously by the radios.

By 9 pm, the boat is anchored successfully. Bob has sailed against the wind almost 400 miles to Cocos in six days, in severe pain, with little food and scarcely any sleep. Later, Bob says that the sight of flashing torches and two silhouettes climbing onto his boat from the darkness, taking the wheel, telling him his job was over, to lie down, all was well now, was one of the greatest moments of his life.

It’s not the end of the story for Bob as he is in need of much medical treatment.

We yachts, however, need to push further west. With the approach of the monsoon, the season for travelling is fast ending. Bob will be unable to sail to Europe this season. The skippers of Blackwattle, Sortelege and Giselle sail Bob’s boat to Home Island, and the gentle people of Home Island move the large ferry boats along the dock to make way. Their concern for him is touching and we feel certain that he will be well cared for. Since we left our previous lives I am constantly in awe of the generosity of spirit of people with little material wealth. But when will we see Bob again? In this transient life, one never knows what may be in store.

This is the big one – westwards again and 1500 nautical miles to the Chagos Archipelago. We’re both charged with excitement as we ready the boat. There’s a range of submerged sea mountains in the way, and we must go through a pass in the range to avoid bad seas. Apart from that there’s nothing – nothing at all – between here and Chagos.

We’re away. It’s a flat-sky brittle day, the water outside the lagoon slate-coloured, hard-looking, like melted granite. The sun is a limp thing, trying lamely to break through the barricade of clouds. It’s sad to leave this small paradise. Trepidation is there – we must not make any mistakes out in that watery desert.

It’s a couple of days later and the 2200 change of watch.

‘I’ve put our six o’clock position on the chart, Nance. You’ll do the midnight?’

‘Sure.’ The routine is starting again on our long journey to Chagos.

But at midnight I can’t find the chart. Ted, always meticulous, has prepared all the charts. I go through them again and again – but there’s a big hunk of the Indian Ocean missing, and no chart.

I start looking. I search everywhere – the bunks, the chart locker, the cockpit, the aft tunnel. It must have slipped under the table. I get down and crawl deep under the table, feeling around for the touch of paper.

Just on the other side of the table, there’s a body movement – Ted going to the loo? By looking under my armpit, braced against table to counter the tossing of the boat, I can see the silhouettes of Ted’s legs going up the gangway.

‘Nance!’

‘I’m here!’ I reply, but he can’t hear me over the wind.

‘Nance, where are you? Nance!’

It’s hard to crawl backwards out from under a table fast in a bucking boat.

Louder: ‘I’m here!’

He’s still calling, and now I can see a torch flashing around the cockpit and outside on the deck.

I scream, ‘I’m here, here, on the floor, here!’ We’re both calling out together. It’s only seconds, but seems so long.

Suddenly there’s a torch aimed straight at my derrière.

‘What the f&%@ are you doing there?’ I can hear him breathing heavily. His voice is angry. His anger is disguising his fear, but I know we won’t be mentioning this. Some things are best left unsaid.

I get up with as much dignity as I can muster under the circumstances.

‘Searching for the chart which you seem to have hidden.’

‘Why are you looking under the f&%@ing table? It’s on top of the f&%@ing table.’

He hands me the Maldives to Sumatra chart, and sure enough the tail of the chart extends far enough down into the Indian Ocean to include the part of ocean we are in.

‘Go to bed,’ I say trying to stay haughty, but laughing anyway. ‘You’re not supposed to be awake. Give me a hug and go back to sleep.’

Maybe he won’t be so cavalier now about going on the foredeck without me present.

———

If visitors from outer space landed on this part of the Indian Ocean any early morning, they could be forgiven for thinking that flying fish are the dominant life form on this planet. Gutsy little critters they are, too. Faster than speeding bullets, they fly in great squadrons for up to half a minute, in perfect formation, their bodies shining silver in the sun like tiny jet fighters. Not all of them would make the Red Arrows, however. Some make exquisite landings, shooting without a mark into the depths. Others do less-than-exquisite belly flops, probably causing great smirks and guffaws among the flying-fish community below.

Faster than a speeding bullet they may be, but it’s those little superfish who try to leap tall sailing boats in a single bound at night that end up coming to no good. We discover their poor little bodies early every morning, sans kryptonite, and dead on our deck.

In the days of the Ancient Mariner they called it the Doldrums. In these times of flashier science it is called the ITCZ or Inter-tropical Convergence Zone. It consists of two zones of confused air on each side of the equator, distinguished by flat calms (Coleridge’s ‘painted ship upon a painted ocean’) and violent thunderstorms at night. These zones move north and south more or less regularly as the seasons change, and it behoves all good sailors to avoid them wherever possible. In sailing for Chagos, our original plan had us well clear of the ITCZ. While we are a little late in the season because of our delayed start in Darwin, we have always thought that we had time to get to Chagos before the ITCZ moves south. Now, from our daily weather reports, we find to our dismay that the dreaded Doldrums have moved south earlier than usual.

It’s my morning watch, with a nice twenty-five knots of wind behind us, and I go below to the sleeping skipper.

‘Wake up, Ted,’ I say, rubbing his hand. ‘There’s a storm about half an hour away. I think we should gybe and run south to clear air before it gets too close.’ I now do most sail adjustments on my own, but a gybe in a strong wind isn’t one that either of us do alone, as the swinging boom must be controlled at all costs to prevent potential damage.

The sun has gone, the water has a sly glint, and it’s grey and heaving from the thunderstorm activity in the area. We’re tense. A storm not only means higher wind and rain, but potentially lightning, which could destroy our navigation equipment. We run south and watch the storm carefully on radar. It is unfurling like an angry animal awakening and getting to its feet, ready for action.

‘Oh no, the bloody thing is coming with us.’

We gybe again quickly and run north like a mouse fleeing from the monster cat. This time we’ve won, but we are now right in the path of the Doldrums. Mornings the sky is alive with deceptively white fairy floss. By late afternoon there is a growing underbelly of pewter, until the pewter fills the sky, and the sea is like wetted lead and pregnant with the coming fury. Then, in the late evening, the storms begin dumping their loads of wind and rain on us. Night after night, we watch their development on the radar, and then twist and run, playing dodgem, taking off in any direction to avoid what we fear most: lightning.

Apart from the squalls at night there is no wind. Every morning the water is heaving, with a grey hungover look, exhausted from dancing to the tune of the symphony played out each night above us. We haven’t seen another vessel for many days. Becalmed during daylight and running in many directions at night, we are hardly making fifty miles a day.

We lean over the charts and the weather reports one morning, searching for good news, but it’s getting worse. Now the Doldrums stretch a full 400 miles from where we are – right to the Chagos Archipelago.

Ted says, ‘Look here, Nance. If we turn right and head north, we should be out of the Doldrums within a day.’

I glance back at the chart. ‘Well the Maldives sounds rather nice,’ I say, and with a grin we go on deck to change course.

Sadly, no Chagos, the uninhabited archipelago of atolls we have dreamed so much about, for so many years. But within twenty-four hours we have a nice ‘just before the beam’ reach, and we’re heading directly for the Maldives. With the new course we feel the world around us again – a world of rainbows and dolphins, of shooting stars and flying fish. The cornflower-blue sky is swathed with white lace or a filmy negligee of tulle and decorated with mares’ tails of high wind. Then the sea is a rich dark indigo and spread with white horses.

The sea now streams away fast in our wake, wind shrieking or whining, wind generator humming. The sea rushing along the side of the boat is like the sound of surf, the wind in the ears stops all thought. The exhilaration is intense, and the self seems to merge with the universe. I am in you, you are in me, we are one. This is what I came sailing for.

Inside the boat it’s a different story – cosy familiarity and quietness, teak bookshelves and soft cushions, domesticated smells of coffee brewing, bread baking or soapy water at shower time, and it’s hard to accept that it’s blowing outside. The noises are different too; the slosh of water and fuel in their tanks, the tinkling of waves on the hull, clanking within the mast; these are comfortable friends, like favourite old shoes. And pervading everything, above and below, the sweet, sweet smell of salt air.

I feel that I could go on sailing forever, but remote Addu Atoll, the most southerly atoll of the Maldives, is just before us, waiting to be discovered.

If I’d known what was ahead, we might well have kept sailing.