Casting Off (25 page)

We were at Havelock for New Year’s Eve and we saw in 2011 at a beach party, watching excited Indian men disco-dancing to techno music, doing, oddly, the white man overbite and pumping
their shoulders up and down, elbows cocked. There were no women dancing and the men were getting very touchy-feely with one another.

I flopped down next to Tyrone in the cool sand, where he sat with his arms loosely circling his long legs, which were crossed in front of him. He was still and seemed relaxed.

‘It was like this in India,’ he said, watching the dancers. He’d told me he had spent a year there in his twenties. ‘The unmarried men would hold hands with each other in
the street, put an arm round another man’s shoulders on the bus. It was strange to see.’ By strange, I guessed he meant worrying, to his 20-year-old straight self. Indeed, in a culture
to which homosexuality is anathema, it was doubly odd to see such close physical contact between men and for that contact to raise eyebrows only among nations more comfortable with gay people.

Everyone on the island had come to the party. The organisers had set up a beautiful wooden bar in the sand, decorated with strings of paper feathers. It was all very ecologically sound. Near the
water’s edge, groups of people let Chinese lanterns fly up into the air, cheers and claps breaking out with each one released. Some wrote their names on the paper sides of their lanterns and
by midnight the black air was filled with dozens of tiny, flickering orange lights, disappearing high over the Indian Ocean.

There was very poor phone reception on Havelock, although it was the best we were to get for the rest of the trip, but I persevered in sending Happy New Year texts to friends and family. A reply
came through at about 2am from Guy in Thailand, sent just before midnight: ‘Happy new year baby… have fun x.’
Blimey – a ‘baby’ and a kiss. It must be
love!
Despite my sarcasm, it was wonderful to hear from him, and so affectionately at that. But I still found him confusing. I am rarely confident enough to trust in what a man seems to be
feeling for me and I even – for a split second – imagined he had meant that text for someone else, possibly because it was so out of character. Then I caught myself being negative,
thought again of my new philosophy of letting things be what they are, and shook myself out of that.
Don’t over-complicate things
, I ordered myself
. Just be pleased that he
contacted you
.

The next morning more messages started to trickle through, with the usual best wishes for the year ahead. And then came one from Steve. I stared at his name in my phone’s message inbox. I
hadn’t expected, or wanted, to hear from him. I pressed ‘open’. ‘You were the most important thing that happened to me last year and I still love you,’ it said. It
left me cold.

We were off a day later to visit my first bona fide deserted island, North Button, and I was really excited.
This is real adventure
, I thought as we shot through the water at 9 knots.
How many people can say they’ve actually been to a real desert island?

Within a day I was bored. I was in paradise, a perfect desert island of a paradise, where we were anchored in clear water off a small, sandy outcrop dotted with brush and the odd coconut palm
and surrounded by rocks and coral, and I was bored. The bleached coral and rocks, combined with the waves, made landing the dinghy too dangerous and swimming ashore looked like an equally foolhardy
– and scratchy – option. So we were stuck on board and, with nothing to do, I ate. Pablo baked cakes, Ben made bread and I ate. Bread with butter and honey and bread with peanut butter
for breakfast; bread with chocolate ice cream syrup (yes, it was as disgusting as it sounds) as a mid-morning snack; pasta, veg and beans for lunch; a teatime snack of coconut biscuits and an
ancient, slightly rusty can of bitter lemon; a bag of cashew nuts; a curry dinner. Having read back through the previous day’s journal entry, which consisted of little but a list of various
things I had put into my stomach, I decided I could not go on like that. I was already reading and this place was a bit too wild for swimming. What else could I do to entertain myself? Putting my
thinking cap on, I had it – I would plan my future.

So much for letting it be. Old habits die hard and I am a list-writer by nature. I find great satisfaction in scratching a line through a needed item bought or an objective achieved. And I
didn’t see why my future could not be condensed, ordered and bullet-pointed in exactly the same way. I came up with this:

Chewing on my pen lid, I surveyed my work. Options 1 and 4 were the most appealing. I wasn’t that enamoured with the idea of another six months of cruising, option 3, and the settling-down
part of option 2 I was never really serious about.

It’s funny
, I thought.
Two years ago, settling down was all I wanted
. I had yearned for it. Cuddling other people’s children actually made me physically hurt with
the need for that kind of life for myself. I got upset when friends told me they were pregnant. But how things change. Now I was mainly putting option 2 on the list to pad it out a bit.

For inspiration and guidance, I re-read
Working on Yachts and Superyachts
, a book I had brought with me in case I wanted to stop somewhere and find work. I had my timings off with
option 1, it emerged. I’d need to be in France in April, which was when captains looked for crew. That meant getting off
Gillaroo
in late March, when we were expecting to be in Yemen
or Eritrea. The more I read of the book, the more excited I got. I started to daydream: I’d get a job as a stewardess or deckhand on £2000 a month, rising to chief stew in a few years,
save an awful amount of tax-free cash, marry a captain, have a baby at 38, do the odd yacht delivery and set up a training school of some kind… in the Caribbean, naturally. Sorted.

I let myself run away with this daydream and option 1 became the favourite over option 4. As lovely an idea as it was, I couldn’t really take number 4 seriously. Being a boat bum traveller
for the rest of my life was just a step too far. It was best to think of my time with Guy fondly as a happy holiday romance and leave it at that.

The crew had been 50/50 about visiting Narcondam, a dormant volcano 100 miles north-east of the main archipelago, when we were drawing up our itinerary. Tyrone, Ben and Vicky weren’t
fussed, but the rest of us voted in favour. It went on the list. And boy, as I sat outside now in absolutely sheeting rain, struggling with the jib in 44 knots of wind, wearing full oilskins and
feeling sick after bouncing sleeplessly for two days straight on a hard close-hauled tack, I really wished I hadn’t raised my hand.

It was the north-east monsoon season for the Indian Ocean so it made no sense at all to deliberately go in that direction but Narcondam was on the list, and the authorities had been very clear
about having to stick to the submitted itinerary, so here we were, wet and miserable and hours and hours away from anywhere.

Visibility was poor but once we got near enough to the island to see it, it was very impressive. Narcondam had steep sides reaching up from the sea to a flattened-off point wreathed in mist.
There was very little land at its base; it
was
just a volcano. I was relieved that we would soon be able to stop. But no.

‘We can’t stay here,’ Tyrone said. ‘It’s too dangerous. We could easily drag anchor offshore.’ We had had 30 knots on our approach and very deep water at the
one recommended anchorage. He went off to consult the pilot book and came out bearing bad news. ‘We have to go back. I’m sorry, Emma.’ Not as sorry as I was, thinking about the
dreadful conditions out to sea. He said we could do a circuit of the island, so I motored us slowly in a clockwise direction around Narcondam. On the north-east side I spotted a small green hut and
some wooden boats pulled up under the bushes. We had read in the pilot book that Narcondam was an abandoned police outpost but it turned out that people actually lived here, on this rock 100 miles
from anywhere, and they came, six of them, including a woman, to stand shoulder to shoulder in a line on the beach and stare at us. Two men lifted a hand and waved at us slowly. I wanted to stop,
to go ashore and talk to them, find out their stories, how they came to be here, how they got their food, their water, what they did for shelter. But we couldn’t. So I kept going until I
reached the point at which I had started my circumnavigation and then set a course back to where we had come from.

When I got up for Pablo’s night watch, it was to find Libertad sailing downwind under the reacher at 9 knots from 20 knots of wind, in much calmer sea conditions and with no rain. Hooray!
The rain hadn’t been entirely unwelcome, since we had topped up our tanks, but we hadn’t needed two incessant days of it.

We were to deviate from the itinerary, Tyrone decreed, and go instead to Long Island, which wasn’t on the list at all. Everyone was tired, the food stocks were running low, although they
hadn’t reached dangerous levels yet, unless you count having to eat Supernoodles for lunch as a crisis (I kind of do), and we could all do with a break.

We anchored by a crumbling jetty and went ashore just after dark in search of dinner. As I had suffered the most with seasickness, no one was as glad as I was to step on to land. Until I saw the
dogs.

I have never liked dogs. If a new acquaintance notices me acting weird in a pub garden or a park, I tell them that I ‘don’t like’ dogs. But ‘don’t like’ in no
way encompasses the sheer awful, uncontrollable panic that sets in when I see one. It’s something I’ve always suffered from and, while no one I have met really understands what it feels
like for me, close friends and family know what is expected of them – basically, they need to throw themselves between me and the animal and selflessly sacrifice their lives for mine. It is
an uncontrollable physical reaction on my part. From nowhere an enormous burst of adrenaline gives me a punch in my stomach. My eyes open wide, my head spins and I start to panic. I absolutely, at
all costs, no matter where I am, have to get away from the dog. I have no mental control over my body. Sometimes my adrenal system and legs react before my eyes and brain are aware that I’ve
seen a dog. Even something that sounds like a dog leash – a person jangling their keys, for example – will trigger it. Friends are left, mid-conversation, wondering why I am suddenly on
the opposite side of the street. One day I’m going to end up dead, sprawled in the centre of a busy road, after I’ve dashed out carelessly, just because a Jack Russell has looked at me.
I joke about it, but it’s serious. And sad. And excruciatingly embarrassing.

On the rocky beach where we were coming ashore was a pack of wild dogs that started barking and running around excitedly when they saw us. I froze, looking around for another way through to the
road. The others were barely even aware of the pack. Up to this point, no one, not even Tyrone, who I had spent the longest time with, had witnessed my fear. Malaysia and Thailand had been
relatively dog-free. I spotted an alternative route – it meant going right out of the way and climbing over some rocks and walls. I didn’t stop to worry about what my crewmates would
think of me; I just went. The main road, once I reached it, gasping because I had been holding my breath in a panic for so long, was mercifully clear and I relaxed a bit. When the others reached me
we walked along, talking, looking for signs of a village where we could get something to eat. When the road – and the street lamps – ran out, we turned off down a path in the darkness.
Ben, who had the only torch and so was leading the way, asked the next people we met if they knew of a restaurant, and they said ‘hotel’ and pointed diagonally off from where we were.
We continued, following the path. It was so dark now that all I could make out was the occasional light-coloured stone peppering the hardened mud we were following. Then the barking started.

The dogs were somewhere ahead of us, in the direction we were headed, and they were getting louder and more frenzied as we got closer. Panic rose up again and I fought to get it under control,
digging my nails into the palms of my hands. I was at the back of the group and had slowed down, afraid of going any closer to where the barks were coming from. As we neared a couple of houses,
whose gardens we had to pass between, the barking reached, to my ears at least, deafening proportions. It sounded like there were so many, all around me. It was so dark I couldn’t see them. I
didn’t know how far away they were. I didn’t know if they were about to leap out at me. I couldn’t physically take another step. I stood, paralysed, on that path, with every
muscle in my body trembling and my fists, still with my nails driving into my palms, lifted up to my ears to protect my head. And I wept.