Casting Off (28 page)

With lunchtime approaching, Tyrone and I looked around for a restaurant to try some authentic Sri Lankan food but all we could find was a one-stop-junk-food-shop, a rip-off combination of
McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and KFC. We were starving hungry but we couldn’t bring ourselves to go in there for plastic cheese and reconstituted potatoes. A local man noticed us hesitating in
a dingy-looking alleyway and asked us what it was we were looking for.

‘Something to eat,’ Tyrone said, towering over the tiny man.

‘That is easy. You can eat here,’ the man said, straining to look up. ‘Where you are standing.’

We turned a full circle, confused. We’d been trying to find a restaurant for half an hour and hadn’t seen anything apart from the fast-food joint.

‘Here,’ the man said, gesturing at a doorway. ‘See?’

We peered into the darkness beyond. Inside it was tiny, little more than a corridor. ‘Here you can eat Sri Lanka food. You like rice and curry?’ We nodded and stepped into the room,
our bodies taking up all of the available space. We sat at a shelf covered with newspaper. Beneath us the floor was also papered over. When our lunches arrived (there were no menus, we were just
handed two plates piled with food and two Cokes) it became clear why: rice and curry (never curry and rice), the national dish, is a messy business. We ate with our hands and, despite our best
efforts, rice, curried vegetables, bits of deep-fried chilli, slivers of coconut and shards of poppadum went everywhere – up the walls, on the floor, all over the table. Our fingers were
stained yellow with spices and so were our chins. We were given a yellow curry, a green curry and a beetroot red curry, which added to the rainbow effect of our splatterings. Honestly, it looked
like someone had involved a six-month-old in a self-feeding experiment using food colourants. What we did manage to get into our mouths was delicious and cost only 100 rupees, or 60p. Our plastic
plates were covered in a layer of clingfilm and when we left, one of the teenage daughters peeled the clingfilm off the plates while her sister ripped the top layer of newspaper off the shelf and
floor, saving both washing and sweeping up. Pure genius.

The six of us spent a few days in Galle, sightseeing and reading the
Rough Guide to Sri Lanka
to work out what we wanted to do with our two weeks there. Ben and Vicky and Tyrone and I
were going to travel upcountry to see the tea plantations and mountains. Pablo and Libertad wanted to go to the north of the country, but that was as much as I knew of their plans because they were
rarely around, staying out late each evening.
They must be keeping normal Spanish hours
, I thought.
After all, they’d usually be having their lunch at the time of day we serve up
dinner on
Gillaroo. But it turned out it wasn’t eating they were doing ’til the wee hours, it was research. They were scaring themselves silly about pirates.

Nothing more had been said about piracy after Pablo had raised the subject on our last night in the Andamans and neither Tyrone nor I had thought any more about it. Then one afternoon the
Spanish came back to the boat and asked to talk to Tyrone and me. They were, they said, very worried. They had found reports that the pirates had strayed further away from Somalia, moving east
towards the coast of Oman, which was to be our next stop. More ships were being taken, Pablo said, trying to show us research in Spanish that we didn’t understand. The pair of them were quite
worked up. Ben and Vicky, who were leaving the boat in Sri Lanka, listened quietly but said nothing. Could we sail up the coast of India and underneath Pakistan instead? the Spanish asked. Tyrone
said it would take too long – four weeks instead of two – and we wouldn’t have enough fuel and we’d miss our convoy rendezvous date in Oman. Then they said they had spoken
to other yachties in Galle harbour and had found a man who was organising a convoy of boats all the way across the Indian Ocean, not just through the safety corridor, and would Tyrone consider
joining it? Softening, Tyrone said he would be willing to speak to the man to find out more.

Both he and I thought that they were overreacting, that they had allowed themselves to be whipped into a frenzy by this convoy organiser, who undoubtedly stood to make a buck or two from the
venture. Nonetheless, we looked into it ourselves, finding websites of various acronym-heavy organisations – UKMTO, EU NAVFOR, MSCHOA – which listed the names and locations of the ships
that had been attacked, and how many crew they had that were still being held hostage. It made for frightening reading when faced with pure statistics: more than 800 crew being held to ransom in
Somalia. But these were professional ships, major targets and serious money machines – no recent attacks on sailing vessels were cited.

The four of us went to see the TTT (Thailand to Turkey) rally organiser, Hans, a Dutch man who had his partner and two small children on board his boat.
Surely he wouldn’t be risking
their lives if it was bad as he was making out?
I told myself. He sat spread-legged in the cockpit of his expensive-looking yacht, spelling out the dangers to us and breaking off from his
scaremongering to take important phone calls.

‘This year,’ he said on the phone to ‘the media’, as he made sure to inform us after he’d hung up, ‘will be the first that not all ninety boats will get
through to the Red Sea.’ It was an impressive soundbite.

‘Why aren’t you going round the Cape instead?’ I asked. He replied that it was just as dangerous. I had to agree with him on this point – almost definitely dire wind and
weather conditions as opposed to the remote possibility of being approached by pirates. I looked at Pablo and Libertad, who were hanging on every word. Tyrone was silent, letting Hans have his say,
but I could tell he was not impressed.

It was like being given the hard sell by someone who had rung our doorbell with a very good deal on some new windows. Hans had the solution to our problem, he said. We could join his rally and
be reassured by safety in numbers. If we joined, he would give us a series of waypoints to head for and other yachts would be there. All we needed to do was hand over US$250. We asked what would
happen if one of the 30 or so boats in the convoy had a problem, for example with their engine, and fell behind. No one would wait for them, he replied, they’d be on their own.
So much
for sticking together and helping each other out
, I thought
. If the strong don’t stop to help the weak, what on earth was the point
? I was disgusted. I felt he was preying on
people’s fears.

Pablo and Libertad had told us that Hans had informed them he practically had a guarantee of a military escort from a Spanish commander. As we sat in the cockpit of his yacht, his phone rang
again. It was one of the acronyms.

Hans’s voice rose with anger. ‘These are frightened people,’ he said into the phone. ‘All they want is an escort for three days.’ So it was a convoy that
wasn’t a convoy and he was promising an escort that wasn’t yet assured. Those setbacks didn’t stop Hans from making a final push for a sale: we must hurry. There were only three
spaces left and when they were gone, they were gone.

Pablo was all puppy dog eyes at Tyrone when we got back to
Gillaroo
but Tyrone wasn’t remotely interested. He clearly thought Hans was a fool and that his ‘convoy’ was
a waste of time. With 1900 miles to cover, we would only be able to motor at our most economical speed of 4 knots so if we were to join Hans’s scheme, once the wind died we would be the ones
being left behind.

Ben and Vicky and Tyrone and I were getting ready to leave the boat to spend the second of our two weeks in Sri Lanka exploring the island. We had all agreed to be back in Galle by 10 February,
ready to leave on the twelfth. The night before us four were due to catch an early morning train to Colombo, Pablo and Libertad came back very late and were extremely subdued. I thought I knew then
what was coming and I waited for them to tell us they wanted to leave the boat, but when they said nothing, I assumed I must have gotten the wrong end of the stick.

Early the next morning we were climbing up the harbour wall, passing up our bags on to land, when Libertad ran up to Tyrone. Pablo was nowhere to be seen.

‘Tyrone, can we talk to ju?’ she asked. She didn’t actually need to say anything; her face told us all we needed to know. Tyrone and I looked at each other. Now was not the
time to have this discussion – we were on a tight schedule to make our train. Tyrone started to stride off towards the harbour entrance – it was a good five minutes’ walk away
– and I turned to follow him.

‘Tyrone, wait!’ Libertad called out. He kept marching, not turning back to look at her. Tyrone, Ben, Vicky and I walked on in silence, getting almost to the gate before Libertad
caught us up, with Pablo. They were sorry, they said, they hadn’t planned for this to happen, they were scared of the pirates and they had talked about it between themselves and thought it
was the right thing for them to do. Still Tyrone said nothing. He looked straight ahead. I took my cue from him and stayed silent, too, although I did make eye contact with Libertad. When I did,
she started crying.

‘Tyrone! Say something!’ she begged.

He stopped and sighed.

‘What can I say, Libertad?’ he asked in a calm and measured way. ‘You’ve obviously made your decision and that’s it. If you want me to say OK, then OK.’ His
tone was not angry, not accusing, not laced with spite. If anything, he sounded resigned. We said our goodbyes there, in the street, with hugs and handshakes. Libertad was still crying. She was
genuinely upset.
Did she really want to leave because of the pirates,
I wondered,
or had Pablo convinced her to do it? Was the truth really that he just didn’t enjoy being on the
boat and was using this as an excuse to hide behind?
Tyrone and I continued to walk towards the tuk-tuk rank and I waited for him to speak first.

‘It’s not the fact that they want to leave the boat,’ he said eventually. ‘It’s the way they’ve done it. They’ve known for days and they tell us now?
When we’re just about to go upcountry? I need to find more crew and we’ve got to make Salalah by March the first and we don’t have a lot of time. They could have given me more
notice.’

Later, in our hotel, we discussed our options. Tyrone didn’t really want to do the trip just two-handed, and neither did I, but we could if we had no other choice. He couldn’t
abandon the boat in Sri Lanka; he needed to get it back to Europe to sell it. We would try to find replacement crew for the passage to Oman at least. He said he would send a round-robin email in
the hope someone knew of somebody else who would be interested. I texted a couple of sailing friends who I thought might be at a loose end and up for a challenge. Tyrone renewed his online advert
and we crossed our fingers that that would work, even with the very small timeframe we had in place – a week and a half.

I
half expected live chickens and goats and bedraggled children clinging to the roof for the train ride from Galle to Colombo. Instead, in this
lasting legacy of British colonialism, we got five passengers to a three-man seat and countless more in the aisles. It was just like the old Connex service from Sevenoaks into Charing Cross, except
the hair and faces of all the other passengers were dark brown, many with a crimson dot dabbed on to their foreheads. The men, smart in their uniform of polyester slacks, collared shirts and
manicured moustaches, paid no heed to their proximity to each other. Small children stared at us unabashedly while their mothers allowed us polite smiles through lips pressed together as tightly as
their knees.

‘Wadi! Wadi!’ came cries from turbaned men who forced their way through the packed antiquated carriages with baskets of deep-fried prawns and sweetcorn fritters served in pages
ripped from children’s used exercise books stapled together along the edges. I unfolded the paper my breakfast – a sugar roll – had come in. It was someone’s maths homework
and they had been awarded eight out of ten. My lunch, a banana-leaf-wrapped serving of stringhoppers (rice noodles and spices) cost me just 6p, by far the cheapest meal I have ever had. I copied
the locals and tossed the empty leaf out of the train window. I can see why littering is such a big problem in Asia, if everyone is used to letting drop their biodegradable wrappings. It
doesn’t quite work with plastic bottles and crisp packets, though.

I didn’t think it was possible but the second train, from Colombo to Kandy, was even busier. And apparently having a first-class ticket didn’t make any difference – it was
every man, woman and child for themselves. Getting into the spirit, I managed to squeeze on to the end of a row of young British Sloanes, all pink cheeks and clipped accents, who passed the journey
reading their Kindles, rather than looking out of the window at the scenery.

And what a sight they missed. It was absolutely spectacular. As we climbed for hours, screeching and clanging, the crowds thinned, the cockroaches feasted on dropped crumbs and the land fell
dramatically away from the rails, dropping into steep valleys of a deep green, punctuated by villages and waterfalls. The names of the villages on the station signs reached improbable and
unpronounceable lengths. The heat, the rocking and the steady rhythm were soporific between the alarm-clock calls of the whistle announcing each station’s approach. I rested my forehead
against the cool glass of the cracked window to try to keep awake. I didn’t want to miss these views.