21. Heaven, Hell and Too Many Bananas

The Galapagos to the Marquesas

Shaken, sobered and saddened, we start the longest journey of our circumnavigation. On completion of this 3000-nautical mile voyage from the Galapagos to the Marquesas we will be halfway across the Pacific. I can’t stop the thought from re-emerging: Halfway home to the family, the friends, familiar places . . . and what?

We’ve been told that this leg is ‘sailing heaven’, and for a few days it is fifteen to twenty knots on the quarter, serene seas, huge swell rollicking under us and away to the north-west, and a knot and a half of current speeding us on our way. Even the weather is perfect. Clouds waft over us in innocent swathes of white tulle.

It’s dead boring.

We dealt with storms in the Indian Ocean, constant wind on the nose in the Red Sea, the capriciousness of the Mediterranean. Surprise and exhilaration were in equal mixture, and adrenaline flow a frequent friend to expand our abilities.

Now? Like a couple of comical afterthoughts there’s nothing to attend to but our selfish and homely needs, while Blackwattle does her stuff like the well-trained performer that she is. And if the boredom isn’t enough to drive you bananas, there are the bananas – the bunch that a seemingly innocent marketeer assured me would be green for two weeks. They start ripening rapidly after two days. So here we are in the middle of the Pacific with all these rapidly ripening bananas, and an upbringing that had me thinking constantly about starving children in a place called India. (India, I thought at the time, must be somewhere down the road a bit, and I was shocked to find in my first school geography lessons that my mother had been agonising for somebody’s children on the other side of the world.)

With thoughts of starving Indian children hardwired into my over-filled brain, which could have been otherwise more productively used, I set out to make sure we don’t waste the bananas.

It all works very well for a time. Ted quite warms to the idea of mashed bananas for breakfast instead of cereal, so I can get rid of half a dozen every morning. And fried bananas go well with freshly caught fish, and with pork chops. You hardly taste them in a stew, and salads are enhanced by the addition of a couple of bananas before you add the dressing. Banana bread is a firm favourite, and it isn’t until I introduce banana sandwiches for lunch that I find Ted staring at me with something that you couldn’t quite call adoration.

The situation changes radically when one morning the shackle on the mainsheet unhitches itself without warning. The boom goes swinging out to starboard, and the mainsheet shoots after it, swinging the block with it. The block swipes the bunch of bananas across the abdomen, scattering squelched bananas all over the deck, and detaching most of the rest from the bunch, some of which end up as soup for Neptune while the others belch into the gunwales like a flock of flying fish.

We both stare for an instant at the turmoil, before rushing to replace the lost shackle, as the main, reaching straight from the winch to the boom, is seesawing the rest of the banana bunch in half, mulching wet banana skins onto the cabin top. In a couple of minutes, the main is together again, and we set about cleaning the deck of mashed banana.

‘Well,’ says Ted, while picking up sloppy banana innards, ‘at least I don’t have to eat the f&%@ing things!’

For eleven days after the banana explosion we don’t see a vessel – any kind of vessel; all those horizon searches every twelve minutes for no result. Neither have we been able to hear the BBC, so we don’t have any idea what’s happened in Israel or Turkey, or whether there’s some new world concern that requires our opinion. So the conversation, which is never hurried given there is so much time available, gets to be strange sometimes.

‘Oh, look,’ I say.

‘What?’ says Ted, reading.

‘Bird.’

‘Where?’

‘There – the tiny one,’ I say.

‘Oh, yeah,’ says Ted.

Pause.

‘What is it?’ I ask.

‘Dunno,’ Ted answers.

‘It looks like a robin.’

‘Look it up in the bird book.’

‘Okay.’ There’s a pause while I look it up. ‘Nup – it’s not in the bird book.’

No answer.

‘It really does look just like a robin,’ I say.

‘They don’t have robins in the ocean,’ says Ted.

‘What else could it be, I wonder?’

Ted puts down the book he is reading. ‘It must be in the bird book. You surely haven’t discovered a new species.’

‘Well don’t get agitated,’ I say. ‘I’m reading a bird book about robins anyway.’

‘I’m not getting agitated.’

‘You sound like you’re getting agitated about the robin,’ I say.

‘Shit, Nance, there aren’t any robins in the . . .’ starts Ted, then pauses. ‘That doesn’t look like the bird book – what are you reading?’

‘Oh, it’s a book called How to Tell a Robin From a Seagull,’ I say.

‘You’re putting me on!’ says Ted.

‘I would never do that,’ I say sweetly.

‘What does it say then?’

‘It says if you’re on a beach it’s a seagull.’

‘Hah! Well we’re certainly not on a beach.’

‘No, that’s right – so it must be a robin, don’t you think?’

There’s a pause while Ted picks up his book. ‘I think the sooner you get onto dry land the better.’

Twin wings flying twenty-four hours a day . . . here the sight of a flock of flying fish, sleek silver flashing in the early morning sunshine, over there a pair of small hunting birds, silhouetted against the sky, oblivious of their heart-aching beauty as they swoop and glide, cut and curve, just above the waves.

This is the stuff of our world. Fifteen days since we have seen land, fourteen since we sighted another craft. The world of squares and blocks, the straight lines of roads and buildings, the blaring noises of traffic, the squalor of human existence, is barely a memory, so immersed are we in our present. All is moving and undulating, the sky and the sea – even the horizon is a mere illusion, a sloping away of the curve of the planet. A world of dreams, and of the harshest reality. Flying fish fly from a predator, and the hunting birds are on a traditional migratory route, and only the toughest will get there. But there’s no anger and no vengeance, no greed and no wanton violence – simply the stuff of being, without the smear of human intervention.

‘I love the sea, but the sea does not love me,’ Tim Winton said.

The words play a tune in my mind as I watch the ceaseless swish and roll of the waves. A languorous swell pushes away to the north-west. Blackwattle lifts her skirts and tail cockily behind each great hill of water, allowing it to swoop under us. She leaps these waves jauntily, thrusting forward, flying with her twin wings into the sunshine or the darkness regardless – confident, exhilarated. But the sea is not my friend, nor my enemy, it simply is how it is, and commands our reverence.

Yes, ours is a world of sunrises and sunsets, not as things of romance or special occasions – they are our daily bread, served twice a day in plentiful portions, in immense dramas that fill the whole world for a time. It is a world of stars and of some that fall, of rolling clouds bearing grey gifts of rain, and the sea that brings tiny sad gifts of flying fish in the mornings. Astonishingly beautiful, and so unaware of our presence.

Inside, the boat is a womb of comfort – carpets, sofas, soft cushions, shining teak; the mess of charts on the table, the saloon bunk where we sleep in a constant rumple of bedclothes, the smells of coffee and warm bread and the faint tang of citrus. It’s quiet in here, with the music of the waves, ratcheting of the trailing generator, whine of the autopilot and hum of the wind generator hardly heard. Here we complete the hourly log, plan future routes, sleep, stuff around in the galley, clean and tidy, rest and read.

In the cockpit, the halfway house, it smells of fresh salt wind and fresh blood from the dead flying fish, and sometimes of coming rain. We watch for shipping, sail the boat, meet for meals, read, converse and while away time watching the sea and sky in all their moods.

On the deck, we gybe the boat, cast the poor little dead flying fish back to sea, or Ted goes up the mast – three times in the last four days, to fix the lazy jacks, first with a jury rig, then, when that didn’t last, the full replacement of the broken lines. There are only about six to eight days to go, depending on the wind. Already we are regretting their passing – I don’t really want to get there . . . 

After fourteen days, the bliss ends. The engine stops generating power to our batteries. After much examination and many expletives, we realise that we have neither the parts nor the expertise to affect a repair at sea.

Our policy of redundancy is called on, in the form of Jane Fonda, the Honda emergency generator that had so far been having a free trip around the world. We called her Jane Fonda not only because it rhymed with Honda, but because she is red and hot, very shapely, and makes a frightful caterwauling of a noise when she gets going. Made to work for the first time, we discover that she is quite temperamental too. When the boat heels too far, she turns herself off.

‘I’m going to turn Jane Fonda on again,’ calls Ted mischievously as he attends to the task.

She drinks a lot too (something I hadn’t known about Jane Fonda), and as the days pass we find we are running dangerously short of fuel.

Serendipity is a wonderful thing. The tables have turned, as it is Jos and Mike with their kids Justine and Pippa on Mary Constance who are near enough to transfer fuel to us, happily in a less dangerous sea than the transfers in the Atlantic. As we negotiate gratefully on the VHF radio with Mary Constance, we are astonished to be called by our great friends from the Atlantic Ocean, Martin and Christa on Meitli, also now crossing the Pacific. ‘We heard the radio call and realised we aren’t far away – we can’t have you transferring fuel without us being at the party.’ They detour for half a day to be at the agreed waypoint. So, for the second time within a year, we three boats rendezvous in the middle of an ocean. My heart warms to the symbolism of this and the strong bonds that make this second rendezvous so special.

But the problems with Jane Fonda are not over. Not only does she drink to excess, but being an indoors girl and highly charged, she does not like rain, so, in spite of her outrageous singing, we have to keep her under the dodger. This causes a further problem, as she breathes out hot carbon monoxide, half of which, in the following wind, is going down into the saloon.

‘It would provide a mystery and a half,’ grins Ted, ‘for two dead bodies to sail serenely across the Pacific – we’d probably miss all the islands and end up on the Great Barrier Reef.’

‘Yes I guess we’d be pretty . . . serene,’ I giggle. ‘More likely,’ I add, getting into the spirit, ‘when we didn’t answer radios or emails, someone would start searching in a few days and find us still sailing.’

We grin, and think about that for a while.

‘Well,’ I muse, ‘it’d be a great story for my magazine.’

‘Some people,’ replies Ted, ‘will go to any length just to get a story.’

‘Well, that’s my job,’ I reply. ‘Getting good stories.’

‘Never mind,’ says Ted. ‘It’s time to gybe. The sailing is still great, so at this rate we’ll be there in three days.’

He should never have spoken, because as we gybe the goose neck slider where the spinnaker pole attaches to the mast track cracks and the pole comes bouncing onto the deck, luckily missing Ted. Our redundancy luck has run out. We don’t have the part to fix it, so that’s the end of poling out, depriving us of the ability to go faster when the breeze is soft.

‘So,’ I muse, ‘our main GPS is kaput, the lazy jacks had to be replaced, our normal charging system is shot, the pole has a broken nose, and the Jane Fonda Honda, that caterwauling lush, is trying to kill us.’

Ted is still studying the problem on the foredeck, and I call out to ask if he wants anything.

His reply is to the point. ‘Yup, I want something,’ he says without missing a beat. ‘A farm – with a horse, a motorbike and a shady verandah.’

Then the wind fails. We have four to six knots of wind, and without a pole, potter along at around two knots for several days, inching towards the Marquesas.

At the eleventh hour, on the day we are to arrive into the Marquesas, our engine fails altogether. It won’t start, no matter what we do. I am despondent. Nuku Hiva, where we are headed, is a long anchorage with a narrow entrance, surrounded by high cliffs, the watery crater of an extinct volcano. This means that any wind will be blanketed. How on earth are we to reach the body of the crater and anchor without wind for our sails and without an engine?

It is now, grumbling with irritation, that I realise the truth. It doesn’t arrive with a bang, with a slamming of doors and calling out, ‘I’m home!’ No, it steals in, like an alley cat through an open window in the night, tentative, one silent paw at a time.

The grounding at Isabella Island was responsible! While Blackwattle herself held true, six bone-jarring hours of thumping has loosened wires, stretched lines, shaken the connected parts past their endurance. Once I make this discovery it all fits, instantly. I am shocked that it took me so long to realise.

So I gather the crumbs of my cheerfulness – yes, my cheerfulness was starting to crumble – and I go on deck to find we are just inching towards Nuku Hiva at around one and a half knots. We will get there sometime tomorrow. The islands are in sight, but only because of their great volcanic height. They are still thirty miles away.

As we announce our approach by VHF to the authorities at Nuku Hiva, Pete and Chris on Australian yacht Chatti, whom we first met in Gibraltar many months ago, radio us a welcome. We tell them about our general lack of propulsion, and ask about conditions in the anchorage.

There is no hesitation. ‘We’re coming out in the dinghy to help you in,’ Pete tells us, ‘and there’s another boat here who will come to assist – Dimitri on Adagio has a fifteen-horsepower outboard, so he can tow you if necessary. Don’t worry – there’s plenty of room to anchor and we’ll be there beside you.’ Such beautiful words, music to our ears.