Crests and Troughs

The Wide Bay Bar is a small gap that exists between the east coast of mainland Australia and Fraser Island.

This channel, which leads onto the Great Sandy Strait and eventually Harvey Bay, is well known amongst sailors for being a technical hurdle, one best approached only under ideal conditions, for it can get nasty.

The entire Pacific Ocean gets funnelled into the gap, squeezing between sandbanks, rushing to find depths where it can continue to flow.

But there is too much ocean and not enough space, so most of the swell must accept its fate and admit it has reached the end of a very long journey and heroically smash onto the shallow sandbanks and vast beaches.

To avoid being churned by the waves that immolate against the shore when approaching on a sailing vessel, one has to shoot the gap on an incoming tide, good weather, and preferably daylight.

We were aboard our good ship Kailani (a few lifetimes ago, it feels), and for reasons I cannot remember, we were coming from offshore aiming at the slot between the island and mainland in the deep darkness of a moonless night.

Slowly but surely, lights marking the channel became visible in the distance, and the sea turned messy.

The next thing that happened, as we got close to land and the waves grew bigger, was the steering cables broke.

Like an umbilical cord torn mid-birth, the connection between tiller and rudders simply gave way, leaving us adrift with no ability to steer. Therefore, no control over the boat’s direction.

Had this happened far out at sea: no biggie.

We’d have had time to assess the damage, attempt repairs, or concoct a Plan B.

But here, not a good look.

I remember looking up to the dark black sky, with my neck tilted 45 degrees and seeing white foam form between the stars!

It was the crest of waves breaking, and they looked high, oh so high.

We had to think fast.

So Captn decides to unlock our precarious outboard engine. Usually, this is fixed facing forward and any course change is made by the effect of the moving rudders, which are controlled by the tiller.

But these were not operational, so our only hope of steering the blundering trimaran now rested on manhandling the outboard, which was mounted on an aluminium platform at the stern, being drenched by waves and positioned far too low to see anything or gauge direction.

So I stood in the cockpit, Beacon to Beacon in hand (that’s the local guidebook with charts), and I started calling the shots, or better said, shouting the shots: “20° to starboard!, 30° to port!, 40° to starboard!, 20° to port!” I bounced my gaze between the flickering lights ahead and the soggy maps in hand.

Meanwhile, Captn was clasped to the engine like a local koala, wrenching it left and right as per my commands, and hoping not to fall in the water.

Just when I started wondering if we would live to tell the tale, I realised we were managing to keep the boat roughly under control with the combined efforts of Captain’s grit and endurance, and my sight and directions.

Eventually, the dark night gave way to a silvery dawn, as we went into the shelter of the Sandy Strait.

We were floating peacefully over an oily pink watery delight.

-

In the fifteen years that followed, we’ve had plenty of what we came to call “Wide Bay Bar Days”: the kind of days when death becomes palpable, and what could easily end in a tragic finale somehow twists into yet another rewarding, if slightly deranged, experience.

There was the crossing of the Himalayan Mountains on foot, with our two donkeys, Padma and Tenzing, and a baby in the oven, dodging snowstorms on 5000m+ mountain passes, chased by angry locals.

There was the birth-giving of our two lotus babies by ourselves.

There was the magnitude 8 earthquake that almost saw us being squashed by centuries-old buildings that were collapsing around us like houses of cards.

There was Hurricane Beryl, say no more.

There was the time when we got lost in Maasai country, meandering through the Tanzanian bush full of hungry wildlife, carrying our two bite-sized and delicious children.

Just to name a few.

But then, there is the most dangerous of them all,

the one that could really kill us:

the daily mundane of shared existence, most challenging when carried out in the confined quarters of a sailing nutshell, with no doors to slam, no cave to retreat to, sharing physical and psychic space continuously while navigating the to-do lists and decisions and bills and bureaucracies and responsibilities.

Like drowning in oily pink watery delight.

But through it all, from Wide Bay Bar to wide-eyed babies to not-so-wide, slightly leaky boats, there’s been us, working it out as we go. Steering through storms with one hand on the tiller and the other waving cheerfully at death, like it’s an old acquaintance we’d rather not stop for tea with today.

And even though there are plenty of times I’ve wanted to feed him to the sharks (and quietly suspected even they might spit him back out), this is, against all odds, an appreciation post to the Captn for all the crests and troughs we have surfed together.