It’s 2am when Mike shakes me awake, ‘Ian, you’re up’. I roll out of the bunk and pull on a windproof and a lifejacket before climbing up into the cockpit. Mike briefs me in a hushed voice; ‘all quiet, no traffic, wind’s swung round to the south which means that we’re off course – but don’t worry about that, the auto helm’s on wind vane so we’ll go where the wind takes us and see how we’re placed in the morning’. With that he disappears below and pulls the hatch too behind him.

I arrange the cushions on the leeward and therefore downhill side of the cockpit and settle into my watch. No more than 10 minutes have passed before the music on my ipod is interrupted by the flapping of sails. The yacht stops heeling and my once comfortable seat dumps me back into the centre of the cockpit. Inexplicably we’re going about. I leap behind the wheel, click the auto helm back to manual and spin the wheel away from the wind. The yacht wallows between the swells, the sails flap once or twice more before the wind backs, the sails fill and the stars revolve back to their rightful positions. We begin to heel to leeward and pick up speed again, the surf surges past and the foredeck alternately reaches for the horizon or buries itself into the next wave. Mike pops his head out of the aft cabin hatch, ‘everything alright?’
‘Aye’ I assure him, ‘we almost went about then but we’re back on track now’. The hatch clicks shut and I am once more the only person in the world.

I think about putting the auto helm back on and burrowing down behind the spray hood. What stops me is the thought that I’m never going to be here again. On this night the south east trade winds are blowing at thirty knots, pushing us away from Australia and out into the Indian Ocean. Our tiny boat feels at home here, her sails shine in the starlight and the helm is in balance, light to the touch. There is no need for the compass; I keep the wind on my left cheek and the Southern Cross next to the mast. The night reaches through my jacket and I feel a tingle spreading across my back and shoulders and I crank up the volume on my ipod.

When the time came for Pete’s watch I switched the auto helm back on and clambered below to rouse him. In my briefing I did not see any point in telling him that I’d steered the whole watch, I wanted to keep that to myself for a little longer. In the morning when I confessed, both Pete and Mike confessed that they’d steered their watches too.

At the start of the trip Mike, the Skipper had asked me about my mountaineering. ‘Did I actually enjoy it all the time I was doing it’ he wondered? ‘Or was it one of those things that you enjoyed more in reflection?’ I answered that ‘there was only a tiny proportion of time when I was either too scared or too uncomfortable to enjoy it for the moment’. He said that for him, ‘sailing was something he tended to enjoy more afterwards’. Having now spent almost two weeks at sea with him I don’t think that he was being honest with himself in this observation. He obviously loves it out at sea and under sail. For me however, my selective memory is already starting to gloss over the discomfort of sea sickness and the chore that even something as simple as making a cup of tea becomes in a cramped kitchen that lurches from side to side and up and down.

Instead the things that I will look back on will be: humpback whales breaching on all quarters, a 5 foot marlin caught on our flimsy hand reel (we let it go), yellow nosed albatrosses soaring just inches from the waves and especially the look on Mike’s face when the Australian customs officers tested his boat positive for heroin and ecstasy. Most of all however will be sailing the trade wind by the stars on the Indian Ocean.

Related Posts