Salty flavours

Since Alex and I took up this cruising lark in 2009, I’ve regularly eaten humble pie. Not such a great taste, but I choke it down.

I’ve mentioned before how apprehensive I was about giving up my usual stimulants i.e regular doses of new books and the New Yorker, movies, Radio National programs and so on. “What do you do on a boat?” I asked Alex (he enjoys reminding me of that). I feel as confounded now as he must have back then when shore friends say to me “Doesn’t it get monotonous? Don’t you get bored sometimes?” Well, no. The ocean is magnificently various and interesting. Boredom doesn’t come into it. Plus, there's lots to do on a boat.
Choke, splutter on that bloody humble crust.

I’ve also had to revise my narrow-minded preconceptions about the kinds of people whom I might meet at sea and how much I’d have in common with them. It’s embarrassing to admit to now, but I didn’t expect to meet the sharpest minds lolling about in paradise. Weren’t all the smart people hard at work – making films, decoding gene sequences, saving forests, toppling governments, inventing new apps, defending the innocent, that kind of thing? I had my patter –cruising seemed to me like a watery take on caravanning, the kind of thing you did when you’d run of puff, lost your appetite for invention, problem-solving, fortune-hunting and so on?  

Well, no again, as it turns out. All wrong.

We’ve made some fast friends since we’ve been cruising - People Like Us (that phrase courtesy of Mike and Alisa). Before you leap to the obvious conclusion that PLU must be dull as ditchwater, I’m going to suggest that, even in these high tech times, setting out in your own boat to cross oceans and to hang out in remote, foreign parts for months at a time presupposes some strength of character.

My guess is that three out of five skippers we’ve met (yes, only men so far) have engineering backgrounds. That’s useful. I could do with some more engineering in my background! But also floating around out there are people who’ve had big jobs in all sorts of other fields – medicine, computing, television, academia, business, teaching etc. You meet them in an anchorage, or on a marina, and start by talking boats and weather, but then conversation wanders onto what you’re reading, or places you’ve been, or want to go, music you’re into or common experiences with kids. Something clicks, you find you like their energy. Chomp chomp chomp. More humble pie goes down the hatch.

I half suspected that our “cruising community” would dissolve once we came back from Vanuatu, especially since we’d signaled we were taking a year out to sell Kukka and buy another yacht. Instead, it’s been a bit the case of “guess who’s coming to dinner?” at Darling St this summer (autumn arrived a few days ago, so ‘tis the season to reflect on the vanishing summer). We’ve gone barely a week without seeing or hearing from some cruising friend.

In November, it was the Swedes, Bertil and Agnes (Panacea) who were wandering in and out of our house, keeping the air salty. Then we were in Hobart before Christmas, visiting John and Ange (Nada) and Mike and Alisa and their boys. On a whim, we thought to ask John and Ange if they fancied spending some of January in Sydney. They house-sat in Rozelle while we were on holiday in New Zealand.

We still pinch ourselves at how much we enjoy chewing the fat with Dave and Melinda (Sassoon) who we met in Mooloolaba in 2009. When Sam walked in on one of our long lunches, he found Melinda trying on my spiffy Spinlock harness for comfort (his look was one of “whatever is happening to Mum?’).We never run out of conversation with these guys, and we still hope to cruise with them one day though they'll be up in Asia again this coming cruising season.

A couple of weeks ago, big Mike Brown (Wombat of Sydney) swung by on his scooter, minus Sweetcakes who had returned to South Carolina to see her ailing dad. We headed out together to watch Inside Job, which a day or so later picked up the best doco in the Academy awards. In a previous life, Mike ran the Bank of America’s corporate lending desk in Sydney, so afterwards, over dinner at a Darlinghurst bistro, we got his  view of those Wall St emperors with no clothes. Dull, huh?

After Mike came the Cornish connection, Jason and Fiona (Trenelly) and their two sea pups, Dylan and Molly. Fiona’s brother lives in Bondi, and they’ve been hanging off a mooring at Rose Bay for the summer (In the picture below, taken at Lamen Bay, in Vanuatu, Fiona drops the anchor “helped” by Dylan while Molly gives advice from the car seat.) .They remind us in many ways of Mike and Alisa who crossed the Pacific with Elias and are now about to repeat that performance with Elias and Eric on their new boat Galactic, just launched in California. I’d love to introduce them, but Trenelly is going north, bound for Darwin, and from there, to Indonesia and beyond i.e. in the opposite direction from Galactic. That’s the only snag with cruising friendships. Everyone charts their own course, no matter what, and inevitably there are many more goodbyes than hellos.