DINNER'S OVER BY THE time we reach Barrenjoey Point where the sinister profile of a hook-nosed witch bulges out of the ochre cliffs like an evil nemesis. It's barely visible in the dark. From here, we plunge straight into the uncertain waters of the mighty Pacific Ocean.
It takes about half a minute for me to realise I am about to bring up my dinner. I dash outside. Puke. Facing the right way so it doesn't blow back in my face. It's one of the first rules you learn when you're a puker.
Half an hour later, I'm fully dressed in my bunk with a sick bag over my face, paralysed by nausea. Under the hull, I can feel the currents of the ocean, Broken Bay and the Brisbane Waters, clashing and corkscrewing the boat. My stomach heaves. I try to think of Canadian geese flying across a field of pumpkins in upstate New York, a sight I saw once and will never forget. The image has soothed me through many a rough time. But I'm sick again. 'There are fairies in the bottom of the garden', I recite, like I used to when I was a kid to help me fling a nightmare into space. But nothing works. Then Jackie hits me with a pill.
Sometime during the night, I vaguely hear Big Dave giving Kerry and Annette a crash course in navigation before they begin their first watch. Two hours on, four hours off. Twenty-four hours a day.
'No drinking at all,' he says firmly. 'No-one is allowed alcohol on a watch. It's an unbreakable rule.'
By the time I wake up early the next morning, we're well on our way to Eden with a perfect tail wind and Jackie's on her bunk with a stack of sick bags. Big Dave's talking to the girls.
'Putting whisky in your coffee is the same as drinking straight alcohol,' he says.
'It was hot coffee, Dave. That's different,' explains Annette.
'Yeah,' Kerry adds, 'the heat burns off the alcohol.'
Dave sighs loudly. 'No. It doesn't.'
'But we needed to stay awake,' Annette says. 'And it was the tiniest, little-est amount.'
'No more whisky on a watch. That's final.'
Bob comes in to our cabin with a bottle of water.
'Sounds like Dave's got a mutiny on his hands,' I joke.
'Annette and Kerry are doing brilliantly,' Bob says. 'They're amazing, actually.' He unscrews the lid and passes me the water. 'You've got to get some fluids into you.'
'Thanks.'
When he leaves the cabin, I hide the water. If I drink it I'll have to pee. To pee I have to get up. If I stand, I'll puke. Slight dehydration seems like the lesser of two evils. I struggle into my pyjama bottoms lying down. It's a start. When my stomach settles, I'll have a go at changing into the top. I take another pill. Sleep, surely, is the greatest of all cures. I roll back and forward in the bunk in time with an ocean rising on a two-metre swell. Above, Kerry and Annette are flattening their bums against the galley cupboards to keep them steady while they fix breakfast, lunch and dinner. All day, laughter floats down the stairwell. Bob's right. These two middle-aged women who have leapt into the unknown are handling the rough conditions like they're on a picnic.
'I kept waiting to hear a whinge,' Big Dave said later. 'The sea got rougher and rougher and I thought they'd crack it because it was hard going. But they never did. Even when they got blisters on their backsides from trying to stay steady.'
At some time, I don't remember when, I bang my top lip and it is bleeding. Occasionally I wake to hear Big Dave, Bob, Kerry and Annette laughing.
A girlish voice giggles. 'I'm pole-dancing. Look at me. I've always wanted to pole-dance.' There's more laughter. I feel as envious as hell.
We average seven and a half knots and slide into Eden late on the second night. The anchor hits the water with a splash, the engine gives a final throb, the deck levels out. The crashing and banging ends as though a switch has been flipped. Peace. Everyone bunks down and no-one moves until the sun comes up, bringing with it a cool, light breeze. It's a perfect day. My stomach flips back to normal. It's as though seasickness was nothing but a bad dream.
***
In the morning, Dave manoeuvres Intrepid into a slot alongside the jetty between two yachts. After tying, testing, tying again, throwing out fenders the size of large gas bottles, we jump ashore. Everyone except Kerry.
'What's the problem?' we ask. We're lined up on the wharf like sailors ready to salute.
She's wearing one of her new off-boat outfits, her hair is washed and she's got makeup on (didn't matter how rough it got, Annette, I was told later, never appeared on a single morning or watch without eyeliner and mascara!).
'There's a gap,' she mewls, pointing at a six-inch space between the boat and the jetty.
We all look at each other in amazement. This is a woman who's just completed a rough passage on what boaties refer to as a confused sea (rocking, rolling, corkscrewing). She's cooked, cleaned, stuck her head in the freezer and fridge and even managed to light a ciggie on the back deck in a howling gale. She's learned navigation, how to steer a boat and done her share of the night-time watches. She's been tough, stalwart and utterly courageous. Six inches?
'Oh, get over it,' we say. And some terror deep inside her lets go. Her shoulders fall, her face relaxes. She steps onto the gunnel, grabs Bob's hand, and jumps.
'Nothing to it,' we say, turning towards shore.
'Yeah. Nothing to it.'
'Breakfast first! What do you reckon?'
My appetite is ferocious. Bacon, eggs, a vanilla milkshake, toast. We skip the tea when we see another customer being handed a cup of hot water and a teabag.
Bob shakes his head. 'I can't believe how quickly you bounce back,' he says.
'Easy,' I reply.
We hit the local library to get a weather report. 'Not looking good,' he says. 'If we don't leave this afternoon, we'll be locked in for a couple of days. There's a strong sou'easterly coming in.'
'Bugger.' There goes a night in a quiet, level motel room and time with Bob alone.
We find the others in the supermarket. Bob gives Big Dave the news.
'Why don't we talk about it over lunch at the club,' Big Dave says. 'See what everyone wants to do.'
We order deep-fried fish, scallops, prawns and calamari. The dining room is nearly empty except for the tinny ring of pokies which drifts in from somewhere out of sight.
'The weather's building,' Big Dave says, pushing his plate away. There's plenty left on it. He looks a bit pale. 'We could hang around for a couple of days until it goes past, or we can race it. What do you want to do?'
The vote is unanimous. Race it!
Outside the shelter of Eden, the boat slaps back and forth like a pendulum on even more confused seas. I grab a handful of sick bags and stagger below. I hate the weakness of it, am ashamed I am no use to anyone. Loathe, even more, that there's not a damn thing I can do about it. Drifts of conversation from the main cabin float through the pill haze. Jackie's almost well although she's taking it gently. Bob is invincible. Big Dave thinks he might have food poisoning. He's gonna rest up till his watch. Annette and Kerry are planning a proper cocktail hour. They, too, are invincible.
Bob, Big Dave who's still feeling crook, and the girls share the four-hour watches. Then the sea isn't confused anymore, it's rough as guts.
On day four from Sydney, we make it to notorious Bass Strait. Unbelievably, the water mutes to a smooth little tango, dipping and teasing. It's dark and oily instead of ferociously unkempt. I climb out of my smelly lair, struggle into the shower and wash off two days' stink. My stomach is almost under control and I'm fit enough to do a watch. Ten pm to midnight, longer if I'm able to.
'I'll sleep on the sofa. Wake me if you're worried about anything. And I do mean anything!' says Bob.
I grab the helm although we're on automatic pilot, run my hands over the wood. The boat smoothly surfs the swell. Everyone creeps off to bed. Big Dave says he's feeling better and we're all relieved. Bob pulls up a blanket and closes his eyes. Outside, moonlight frosts the water. Within a few minutes, the boat is silent. There's just the sound of water licking the hull and the steady, reassuring beat of the engine. I have memorised my instructions: Watch for lights. If they're green, don't worry. It's a boat that will pass safely. If they're red, be careful. If they're red and green, change course immediately. We're on a collision course.
A thin film of cloud softens the moonlight and we float like a matchstick on a sea that rises and falls as steadily as a heartbeat. It's a pure world.
Nearly two hours into the watch, eyes strained from searching the horizon for lights, I jump. From the outside deck, a black hand reaches for the door into the cabin. My heart thumps, panic pushing aside reason. It's an illusion. There is nothing but emptiness.
I check the time to see how much longer it is before the next watch begins. Then I notice the date. February the fifth. My brother's birthday. It's thirteen years since he died and out here on the water with no-one to hear, I have a long conversation with him. To bring him up to date. On the sea, with only unknown depths and a vast universe for company, it seems a completely normal thing to do. 'Life's good,' I tell my brother when I have nothing more to add. 'Life's good.'
We race the weather and make Wineglass Bay on the east coast of Tasmania before the wind builds to thirty knots and the seas turn black and ugly. A pod of dolphins escorts us through the entrance passage. It is a moment so exquisite none of us can speak. Inside the protective headlands, the turquoise bay is flat and almost tropical. The dolphins frolic around the boat, sticking their heads out of the water and grinning at us before plunging deep and swimming back out to sea. I lie on the bow in the sun and count clouds. Then Jackie gets out the vaccum cleaner. Kerry mops the floor. I cook lunch. Annette washes the dishes.
'Feeling a bit crook,' Big Dave says, scrunching the skin on his chest into a ball. 'But I'll be right.' He helps Bob lower the tinny from the deck to the water so we can go ashore for a walk. Kerry climbs aboard, no problems. On shore, we follow the curve of the white sand until Intrepid looks no bigger than a dinghy in the distance.
The next morning, boats not as lucky as we were limp in. Someone's broken a wrist, another an ankle. It is hellish rough beyond the bay.
Big Dave says he's having back spasms. We discuss calling for a chopper to airlift him to hospital. His face looks green, yellow sometimes, too.
'It's not a heart attack, though,' says his wife, who's the midwife. 'He'd be dead by now.'
'No chopper,' Big Dave says. 'No way.' But he doesn't eat much lunch. Or dinner. He sleeps through breakfast. It's such uncharacteristic Big Dave behaviour that we think of overriding his orders and organising to evacuate him. He threatens to whack the first hand that reaches for a mobile phone.
A day later, the weather report sounds ok. Big Dave looks a little fitter.
'Must've pulled a muscle,' someone suggests.
'I reckon it's his gall bladder,' says Kerry.
'Nah. He doesn't fit the profile,' I tell her. 'You've got to be fair, fat, female, fertile and forty.' I know, because I've had mine out.
'Well, at least it's not his heart. The rest can be fixed in Hobart,' says Annette.
Bob doesn't even try to guess. 'He looks crook, though, that's for sure,' he says.
We up anchor and make our way south. The weather is kind, the water smooth. Sleek dolphins appear out of nowhere and dive through our wake, wild and free. Along the coast, breaking waves surge towards the rugged shore. Shoals of fish scoot in glittering turmoil. Terns skate, smooth and precise, barely breaking the surface. Then the dunny blocks up. Bob finds a thick ball of hair – Annette's colour. She's cleaned her hairbrush.
'Don't do that again!' Bob pleads.
'Sorry,' she says, mortified.
Late in the afternoon, we cut through the waterway between Cape Pillar and Tasman Island. Lobster pots marked by colourful buoys linger outside mysterious dark caves that must fill and empty with the tide. Seaweed sways like ballroom skirts from the hemline of the rocky shore. Surrounded by a bleak, forbidding landscape of iron-grey escarpments and arid peaks razored flat by wind and weather, the cliffs are like prison bars, an echo of the island's violent past. It's impossible not to shiver.
We anchor in smooth, protected waters near the convict ruins of Port Arthur. Red bricks, wreathed in brutal history, ring the roofline like broken teeth. The sky turns black as thick low cloud creeps towards us from the south west. Inside the cabin, even the cheery yellow sunflowers printed on the tablecloth fail to shift the gloom. Big Dave's face is a pale shade of green. He rallies to find some local lobsters to buy for dinner. Our moods lift. But when they're cooked and waiting lusciously on our plates, split down the middle and fat with pearly flesh, he takes a few bites then goes below to lie down. His expression is hammered, his eyes cloudy with pain.
Jackie throws together a handful of pills and gives them to him with a glass of water.
'What do you think is wrong?' we ask her anxiously.
'How would I know? I'm a midwife!'
In the morning, Big Dave says he's definitely feeling better, but he doesn't touch breakfast and his skin has turned yellow.
'Next stop Hobart,' someone mutters. 'Let's get going.'
***
Rounding Cape Raoul into Storm Bay on the final leg of the voyage, the weather blows up hard and fast. It's so rough the boat is tossed from side to side and water pours over the gunnels to drain away at the stern.
'Feels more confused than usual,' I say, grabbing a sick bag and lurching towards the cabin. Halfway down the steps, I puke.
'Oh no,' Bob groans. 'Thought you'd broken through the barrier on Bass Strait.' He grabs my soiled bag, hands me another. 'I think this might be your last ocean voyage, my dear,' he adds.
'Like hell!' Wretched times, after all, are so quickly forgotten. Or at least the pain of them. What I will remember is sliding into the captain's chair, reaching for the helm, being part of the glistening night. Navigating dark waters. In such synchrony with the physical world, for a moment or two I felt immortal.
'I don't want to go to my bunk. I'll miss our arrival. Does anyone mind if I hang on the sofa? If I promise not to puke again?'
Bob looks at the girls, his eyebrows raised. 'Go for it!' they insist. I stretch out with my head on one of Jackie's red and gold brocade cushions where I have a perfect view of the outside world.
'Ah shit,' we hear Big Dave yell from below. 'We forgot to put out the stabilisers.'
Two massive and awkward weights known as 'fish' hang from outriggers on each side of the boat to moderate motion. They surfed alongside us from Sydney, just under the water, like faithful guards, until they were stowed in Wineglass Bay. Until now, the seas have been so placid, we all forgot about them.
'There's Iron Pot,' Bob says, pointing at a boxy red and white lighthouse on a barren, rocky island at the mouth of the Derwent River. 'We're nearly there.' Inside the sheltered waters, the sea reduces to a simmer but the wind is even more ferocious.
'Why is it called Iron Pot?' I ask.
'See the flat rock at the base of the island?'
I nod.
'According to legend, whalers dragged carcasses onto the rocks for butchering, then they boiled the meat in iron pots. It's theory, though. No-one's sure.'
At Constitution Dock, Big Dave, sick and weak, manoeuvres Intrepid in a 25-knot wind with a gearshift that takes twenty seconds to lock in.
'He's captain,' Bob says. 'He won't let anyone else take the helm and he's right.'
The old Hobart dock is racked with neatly nestled, pretty wooden yachts, steamers, barges and working boats, many of them historic and antique. Done out in cushions and covers, with flags flying in celebration, they have been lovingly tarted up for the festival. One wrong move and Big Dave could reduce them all to scrap wood. He reverses, moves forward, over and over, gaining an inch, a foot, a yard. Sweat pours down a face the colour of an oyster. Time after time, yachts bear down on us from the Derwent River. Are they blind to our strife? No. It's just that the wind's so strong everyone's stampeding to shelter.
When it seems we'll never make it without destroying the fleet, a rogue gust lifts the boat and carries us in the right direction. Big Dave gets a clear swing into the berth. We nick the paint of a tender boat hanging off the back of a multimillion dollar catamaran, but it's not even worth a touch-up. We cheer.
Big Dave slumps over the wheel. Then he looks up and smiles.
'Feeling a bit better,' he tells Jackie. 'I'll wait until tomorrow to see the doctor. I think I'm coming good.'
We yell at him, then Jackie grabs his arm and forces him off the boat.
A day later, a surgeon removes his gall bladder in the Hobart hospital.
'A few hours away from septicaemia,' the doctor tells Big Dave. 'You're a lucky man.'
'How soon can I get out of here, Doc?' Big Dave wheedles as charmingly as he can in a too-small hospital gown, tubes hanging out of his arm.
'You were a terrible mess, mate. You don't recover overnight. You'll be here a week. At least.'
'But I'm gonna circumnavigate Tassie,' he moans. 'I've got crew.'
'You a yachtie?' asks the doctor. 'S'pose you could be out of here in three days. Your wife's a nurse, isn't she? I do a bit of sailing myself . . .' And he settles on the end of Big Dave's too-short bed for a chat.
***
The big circumnavigation never happens. The weather gets grouchy and the Tassie coastline, especially the west coast, kills you if you treat it with anything less than total respect. I have an assignment in Western Australia, so I can't continue with the group. Bob and I book a swank hotel room for my last night in town. I fill the bath as soon as we check in and we sit in it for hours, drinking champagne.
'Wish I could do the trip home with you,' I say.
Bob shakes his head. 'We'll find more suitable adventures,' he says. 'The world's full of them.'
At breakfast the next day, before I leave for the airport, we're all gathered over French toast, bacon and eggs. Porridge.
'We need another fella for the trip home,' Big Dave and Bob agree. And out of the blue, an old buddy of Big Dave's wanders past and yes, he's got a bit of time on his hands. He signs on. I later heard he looked up an ex-girlfriend when the boat docked at Eden. She turned out to be Kerry's niece. Weird coincidence? Maybe. But I've lived long enough to believe there are forces at work that none of us understands. A year after that fateful saunter past a Hobart café, Big Dave's friend is a new dad happily living on the south coast of New South Wales. He could so easily have said no to Big Dave but he took a chance and his world opened up.
Intrepid 11 arrives home two weeks later to a flotilla of welcoming tinnies. We all race up to the stern of that brave, strong, tough, reliable and thoroughly cosy old girl whose engine never skipped a beat, then tie on while she chugs sedately to her mooring. We jump aboard to slap backs, cheer, share a beer and welcome the great navigators home. Bob stands on the back deck, where only three weeks earlier we planned cocktails at sunset and afternoon card games. Delusional, we were, absolutely delusional. He slips his arm around my waist. He is unshaven and stinks, ever so slightly, of diesel. He is irresistible.
***
Three days after Intrepid's return, Fleury calls with distressing news. 'Katie's not well,' she says. 'We're all worried.'
'What's happened?'
'She's having tumours taken off her lungs. It means the experimental chemo didn't knock out the growths,' she replies. 'Her emails are full of energy, though, and she's prepared a new exhibition. She's focusing on that. And with Katie, you never know. She's beaten the odds so far.'
About two days later, Sharon calls to say she's in hospital.
'Oh, Sharon, what's the problem?'
'Well, this is punishment, I am sure, for a lifetime of toast with my butter. My heart has staged a rebellion.'
'How are you feeling?'
'A little tired, dear. Yes. A little tired.'
'You'll be right, Sharon, you'll be right.'
The day after Sharon phones, it's suffocatingly hot. I'm lost amongst the spaghetti lanes of a motorway I didn't even know existed. My mother sits beside me, her hands folded in her lap. I'm trying not to let my frustration rub off on her. Two bunches of oriental lilies have collapsed on the back seat.
'If I could read maps, I'd try to help. Never been able to understand them,' she says.
'Now I know where I get it from.'
'You can blame me for a few things, but not everything,' she whacks back.
We're on our way to visit Sharon. I introduced my mother to her when I took them both to lunch one day. It became a routine, afterwards, to take them together to restaurants where they could look at the ocean and feel the sun on their faces. They forged a most unlikely friendship. My mother is Miss Corn, Sharon is almost unbearably proper, but they bring out the best in each other. My mother stops trying to be funny and opts for a little dignity while Sharon drops her reserve and lets her sense of humour loose.
With Sharon's prodding, my mother decides that, after all, my cooking isn't too terrible and she wouldn't mind a few 'offcuts from the main house', as she calls it.
'You've always hated my cooking,' I respond, amazed.
'I love your cooking!'
'Well, why did you say no to everything I offered you?'
'I didn't want to bother you. You do enough. But if you're cooking for Sharon, I might as well get in on it.'
And my cheeks flush with shame. Is that what's gone wrong for most of our lives – I've misinterpreted consideration as rejection?
When we finally find the hospital, Sharon is sitting in a chair beside her hospital bed. Her arms are black with bruising, her ankles swollen to bursting. But her face is pink, her skin flawless. She is still incredibly pretty, with an Alice band holding her wavy white hair off her face.
'You look fantastic!'
My mother, who's never in her life kissed a single human being on the cheek socially, bends unsteadily and grazes Sharon's cheek.
'Love your nightie,' she whispers.
'I'm told it's a style that's sweeping the world,' Sharon responds, looking at her crumpled hospital-issue robe with three ties down the back.
'You don't look a bit sick,' I tell her, sitting on one of those dreaded hissing hospital chairs. The sound makes me want to flee, takes me back to that room of last resorts with a thin tube trickling a bright red chemical into my veins. The remembered smell of chemo is so strong, even the pungent sweetness of the lilies fails to dislodge it. I swallow old fears.
'Here, Sharon, some flowers.' I hold out the bunches. 'They should come good in a bit of water. It was shockingly hot in the car.'
'Ah, lilies. Lilies to lie on a coffin,' she says, softly. And I could kick myself. Hasn't my mother told me a hundred times that for her generation, lilies in a house mean death?
'No, Sharon. These are oriental lilies, not arum lilies.'
'Ah.'
But we both know lilies are lilies.
'What's the doctor telling you?'
'He says he does six pacemaker operations a day and they are all easy, but I am not easy. He needs time to think about my case.'
'Are you in pain?'
'No, not really. But I think I know what dying is like, now. And it's not frightening at all.
'You see, the night I was admitted, I remember lying in bed and seeing an old friend hovering in the corner of the ceiling. He held the most exquisite bunch of pink roses I've ever seen. I looked at him and felt a bit confused. I thought I'd been to his funeral about twenty years ago, but I asked him how he was and what he was doing. And he said he was well and he'd come back to see me tomorrow.
'When I woke, he'd gone. And he hadn't even bothered to leave me the roses. I was quite put out.'
'Do you think that was death, Sharon?'
'It was certainly strange. But I felt the most wonderful peace. It was quite seductive.'
'Was it your old flame, Sharon, the man you should have married, hanging from the ceiling?'
'No. Just an old friend.'