Authors: Tania Aebi
Rushing below and pulling up the floorboards to listen for incoming water, I heard nothing. Michel was laughing when I came back out. “If what just happened gave you a hole, then this boat is a piece of junk,” he said. “We've hit many reefs inside different lagoons and the most damage was a couple of scratches in the paint job.”
“I don't care what you say,” I retorted shakily. “We are diving and checking the hull as soon as we tie up.”
Later, after finding that the damages were, indeed, only a few faint scratches, we went ashore to watch
Adonis
crawl in, the last straggler. Thoroughly upset over nearly imperiling my boat for an unimportant race, and embarrassed by going aground in front of a crowd, I didn't go to the after-race ceremonies and later found out that
Varuna
had won on corrected time. Instead, I left Olivier and Michel sitting on a bench in front of a spectacular sunset and went alone to the Waterfront Restaurant's bathroom feeling profoundly depressed. Lost in thought, I passed the mirror and was stopped by my own reflection.
“What do you think you're doing?” I asked myself. “Why are you still here? You should have left over two weeks ago. And you haven't even written anything since that miserably short article in Tahiti.
You've been having one continuous ball, hanging out and doing nothing other than enjoying yourself. Daddy didn't give you a boat for a gift; he gave you a job.”
I had stayed overtime in certain places before, but always with good reason. Here in Vanuatu, it had already been three weeks instead of the two I had allotted myself, and still I was making no gestures toward leaving.
Varuna
had just hit a reef, it could have been serious and I was feeling guilty about all the time I spent with Olivier, as if I had no responsibilities. Most of all, there was the pressure of the steadily advancing seasons.
Every ocean has a hurricane season during its summer months. In three and a half months, the Indian Ocean's hurricane season would begin and by then I had to be in South Africa or else run the risk of getting tangled in the fury of its off-season. Every extra day spent on land was at least 100 miles lost in making that goal. A clock had begun to tick, getting louder with every passing day.
Looking in the mirror and filled with self-reproach, I made a resolution to write the next morning and to start preparations for leaving. I had a sneaking feeling that it was already too late to get to South Africa in time, but laid that thought to rest and narrowed my worries down to one: just get to Australia first; the rest will come later.
Feeling a little better about my plans, I went back to the boat that night and found Dinghy bleeding from his genitals. “Oh my God,” I cried. “No, not Dinghy, please.” I tenderly wiped him off and gave him some of his favorite snacks. He lay there limply, quietly meowing his pain. Mimine meowed, too, as she circled his penguin body, nosing him to respond. Feebly, he tried to move about but was too weak.
I scratched his ears in his special place, trying to console him with my voice. He looked so small and helpless. I edged a bowl of water to his lips. He lapped a little and I was swept with hope. All of that sleepless night I spent trying to push away the thought that something could alter the one precious relationship that had sustained me for almost half the world.
First thing the next morning, I bundled him into a large towel, and Olivier brought us to shore in the dinghy where we caught a taxi to the only veterinary clinic on the island. It was actually the department of agriculture, whose job it was to inoculate the vast cattle herds, but they also had a small-animal section. A young Australian man brought Dinghy to a stainless steel table.
“Where does this cat live?” the vet asked as he felt his stomach.
“On a sailboat, with me,” I answered. “We've come all the way from New York together.”
The doctor's eyebrows rose to his hairline. “What! You brought a foreign animal ashore? He could bring diseases. You're not supposed to do that.”
I began to tremble, suddenly struck with a premonition that Dinghy wouldn't be returning home with me. “Look at him. He's bleeding and he never even touched the ground. I carried him the whole way here. What should I have done? Let him suffer and bleed to death on the boat?” I began to sniffle.
“I'm going to have to open him up,” he said, softening. “If it's what I think it is, I'm afraid there's nothing I can do. It looks like a cancer in the kidneys.”
“Let's go outside and wait,” Olivier said, tightening his hand around mine, and ushered me out to a bench. I sat there, dazed to hear the word cancer again after such a short time, and thought about my brave little buddy. All those times that I had gotten mad at him for missing his litter box were for naught. He couldn't help himself. Dinghy was my first pet, my closest companion for half the world. Only he had been there right beside me, living through all the bad times and the good. He alone had tolerated my cursing and screaming, watched me laugh and talk to myself, shared my meals. Whenever life had really gotten me down he had been my only comfort, with his gentle little face rubbing mine before curling up in my arms. My handsome snuggly motorhead was the only one who had shared the memories of those endless days in the sea warp.
The doctor came out and shook his head. I hadn't even had a chance to say goodbye.
I paid the bill and Olivier and I hitchhiked home to a strangely empty boat. Mimine poked her nose at my legs, into all the cabinets, and wandered absently around all the spots where she and Dinghy had liked to sleep together, while I set to getting things ready for departure. As lovely a memory as Vanuatu was for bringing me Olivier, I would also remember that it was here I lost a precious treasure, and I couldn't wait to leave.
Christoph, Michel, Olivier and I exchanged and photocopied charts for our next landfallâCairns, Australiaâand began to provision. Calling home to say goodbye, I talked to my father, who had just finished singlehanding his new boat across the Atlantic but said that he had decided not to enter the BOC around-the-world race after all.
The race would take a year and he said he had second thoughts about leaving Tony and Jade alone for such a long period of time after they had just been through so much with my mother. I was relieved to hear of his change of plans and told him about Dinghy, which, he said in his typically hasty way, was a bad stroke of luck but not the end of the world. And before we hung up, he brought up the inevitable, that I was behind schedule. “You stayed in Tahiti to avoid hurricanes,” he said. “But it looks like you'll get them anyway in a different ocean. What made you spend so much time in Vanuatu anyway?”
“Oh well, I made a really good friend here, I wrote an article and won a race,” I said, hedging the issue. Knowing how much my father hates to run up a telephone bill, it was easy to put off telling him about Olivier.
Before Mimine became too accustomed to being alone, I decided to get a new kitten. A friend told me about a batch in the country and drove me out there. I chose one at random, thanked the owners and brought the fuzzy tabby ball back to
Akka
. Mimine took him under her wing and he followed her around the boat, clawing his way up the wall hangings, belts, my legs and the table whenever it was mealtime. His clumsy shenanigans inspired the name Tarzoon, in honor of the Belgian cartoon character who was the “Shame of the Jungle.”
Michel was the first to depart Efate, planning to stop at an island in the Vanuatu group to the north. Two days later in an early morning calm,
Varuna
and
Akka
motored out of the harbor on Thursday, August 21, 1986, and glided through the passage between the two islands that gave Port Vila Harbor its protection from the sea. While Olivier and I hollered out last goodbyes, I boomed out
Varuna's
genoa and mainsail in the feeble wind and we drew slowly apart.
Climbing down into
Varuna's
cabin, I saw poor Tarzoon living out the perils of seasickness. All the milk he had gulped down earlier now lay on my bed. “Bravo, Mr. T,” I said, cleaning up the mess. “Are you going to join the ranks of those who bear a complete disregard for my sleeping quarters?” He looked up, and as soon as I had finished and sat down in my corner, he crawled into the crook of my arm. Gently, so as not to disturb him, I picked up the chart.
The genoa slapped around softly as we caught the ocean swell and began bobbing slowly toward Australia, 1,300 miles to the west. I looked out the companionway to the dwindling shape of
Akka's
sails and at the island in the background, realizing that Vanuatu had been
my last South Seas landfall. Behind me were memories to last a lifetime, the richest being of those islands where people I loved had left and entered my life.
For the first time in a while, I remembered Luc, the storms of our brief relationship, and the beauty of a world that I had seen through the eyes of such a dreamer. All the sharper edges were now softening in my memory, and no matter how things had turned out, I couldn't deny that he had taught me much, helping me along in the journey that had finally brought me to Olivier.
As they were becoming accustomed to doing these past four weeks, my thoughts drifted to Olivier. Unlike Luc, he was a man comfortable in his own skin, and with him I felt a certain special calm, without the heady intoxication of grand schemes or the urgency to get somewhere fast.
Unfortunately, my inflexible schedule didn't allow for the luxury of lingering with him and letting our future work itself out with time, and I couldn't help hoping that Olivier would offer to alter his own course and follow mine for a little while longer. Otherwise, we'd have to say goodbye in Australia. If our being together was truly meant to be, I believed that things would turn out for the best and, as he once said, we'd just have to see what happened. “Anyway,” I thought, “first I have to get to Australia and that's not going to be an easy task.”
Before us lay the Coral Sea, named for the numerous reefs strewn haphazardly below the surface of the water. Between Vanuatu and our next landfall would be my final exam in navigation. For 1,300 miles there would be no way to confirm a position visually. Without a SatNav,
Varuna
had to be navigated by the sun and stars to specific points on the chart, directions altered, then navigated to the next point, all the time sailing around unseen coral heads lying in wait for a boat making a wrong move. Thirty-five miles off the coast of Australia, I had to find a lighthouse propped on top of a reef that would guide us into Grafton passage, through the extremities of the Great Barrier Reef. I was hundreds of miles from nowhere, and there were no second chances; my navigation had to be perfect.
I had about ten days to practice, day in with the sun, and evening out with the stars, calculating optimum angles and times, trying to make myself so comfortable with the sextant that it became second nature. After one squall the first day, the weather was as accommodating as it had ever been, making my last days with the South Pacific a gentle goodbye. On the sixth day, a pod of pilot whales
stayed alongside
Varuna
for two hours, a rambunctious one leaping into the air and executing a perfect flip for its solitary audience. Below, Mimine and Tarzoon hopped around, chasing each other's tails.
On the ninth night, my calculations had us passing 15 miles north of Willis Reef on the chart. As the boat lifted with every wave, I cringed, imagining that rushing noise and eventual crash if my navigation were even the slightest bit off. After safely passing this unseen obstacle, we had to hang a quick left in order to dodge another set of lurking reefs indicated on the chart, and then head on the straightest course possible for the lighthouse. I stared endlessly at the horizon and the chart, which was covered in penciled crosses from sun and star sights, and colored scribbles identifying coral heads. The smallest error in mathematics and we'd be history.
First light found me up on deck with the sextant, estimating the night's progress, and the fix told me that the lighthouse should emerge by 11:00
A.M
. Hoping that it would be sooner, I nervously sat on the foredeck, scrutinizing the horizon through binoculars. Then I ran back to the Monitor, adjusting it and trying to keep the course as exact as possible. Frustrated, I looked up to black clouds overhead that were beginning to obscure the sun. Untying the bungie cord on the tiller, I took the helm myself for a half hour. Then, antsy because I couldn't see as well from the cockpit as from the foredeck, I gave the steering responsibility back to the Monitor, reclaiming my position on the bow.
The wind began to gust, causing
Varuna
to round up. Concerned over the consequences of even a slight course variation, I reefed the main, keeping a relentless vigil as beneath us the topography of the ocean floor began to slope up toward the continental shelf of Australia, kicking up steeper and steeper waves.
Varuna
was picked up by each wave, and I looked down into the troughs as we perched momentarily on the tops of cliffs of water just before surfing down the chutes. I held onto the grab rail and leaned against the mast on the foredeck. It was like being in the first car of a roller coaster. By ten-thirty, the morning sun was shadowed by an enormous gray front with black overtones. There was no lighthouse to be seen and by eleven-thirty, fearing a nervous breakdown, I doused the jib and stopped
Varuna
in order to think. I hate roller coasters.
The most valuable piece of advice I always heard from other, more experienced sailors was: “If you have doubts, seek sea room
and wait until you feel right about your landfall. Never make a hasty decision for the sake of an anchorage and a shower.” Here, under deteriorating weather conditions, speeding toward the world's largest barrier reef, I was definitely not feeling right.