Ultimate Sports (24 page)

So I don’t suppose I looked like very promising crew material when I stepped aboard the
Dolphin
, which was tied up at a city marina, for the first time. And frankly, the thought of three months at sea at various strange angles, being frozen, bored, or sunburned to death, didn’t appeal to me much. I didn’t know if I’d get seasick out on the wide ocean, did I, as opposed to the sedate Norfolk Broads. And the first sight of Barry and Harry Wildblood (cousins, and their real names, no kidding) didn’t do much for me.

If I was on the plump side, they were both as skinny as rakes, with hard muscles stretched taut over long bones, like scarecrows. Hair cut ferociously short, three days’ stubble, eyes wrinkled up, ice blue; the searching eyes of mad scientists you see in that
National Geographic
magazine with the yellow cover. They’d met Pete when they came to Auckland to avoid the Pacific hurricane season and do some work on the boat. Aged about thirty, give or take five years either side. It’s difficult to tell. They looked like ex-cops, actually, tough and mean. But Barry had very
red lips at the center of his stubble, and a voice like silk. He laughed a lot. Harry was quieter, with tattoos of sailing ships on his arms. Their accents were vaguely English—hard to tell, though they told me they had New Zealand passports. They wore very short shorts, gold chains, Rolex Oyster watches, the best French sunglasses, and that was all. They both smelled nice, though French toiletries for men didn’t quite fit on a yacht.

I wasn’t too impressed. But the yacht was impressive. They took me on a tour. It was forty feet long, a steel ketch, New Zealand-built, their home for the past six years. On deck were lots of color-coded ropes, new sails in bright blue bags, and shining chrome. Below, a huge galley—sorry, kitchen—lots of varnished wood, Italian-looking cushions, two bunk rooms; everything tidy, clean. Electronic gear. Charts. Fresh flowers. They grew herbs. I noticed lots of books, CDs, tape cassettes. It all felt rather luxurious. I wondered what they did for money.

Now, Martin, and my eventual readers, you’re probably thinking, What was this nice sixteen-year-old English girl thinking of, going sailing with these mean-looking but mysteriously smiling rogues? They had welcomed me politely enough. I heard that they planned to write a book about their coming Pacific trip. They were going to study seabirds and Polynesian methods of navigation along the way, heading for Tahiti, Hawaii across to Vanuatu, the Solomons, many of the islands in between, and finally back to Auckland. We sat on the deck in the sunshine, drinking chardonnay, crunching macadamia and pine nuts. They asked me about my family, about England, about the sailing I’d done on the Norfolk Broads, but I got the distinct impression that I hadn’t passed the potential-crew test. Too young, too plump, too inexperienced
—right on all counts. I told you I was a bit of a blob.

So I wasn’t thinking of vast Pacific oceans when I accepted their invitation to go sailing for a weekend around the inner Hauraki Gulf. A shakedown cruise, said Barry. I thought, why not, just for a bit of a laugh; these were Kiwis being kind to the young English visitor. Safety in numbers. Just bring enough gear for two nights. No food. They’d been provisioning the boat for the long voyage, due to start shortly, just as soon as the hurricane season was over. Bring wet-weather gear, swim togs, sunblock, a hat. Bring yourself.

They were friends of Pete’s, weren’t they? And Pete was a friend of my father’s. How naive can you get?

I honestly think they really did intend—at first—to drop me off back in Auckland before they headed off into the wild blue yonder. That’s another if…if I had not cooked dinner on that Friday night. But I’d looked in the food lockers and seen wonderful fresh provisions and offered to cook a pasta and make a salad. Harry produced extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar, pine nuts, fat cloves of garlic, capers, homemade fresh pasta, Gorgonzola.

That’s another thing about New Zealand, or Auckland, at any rate. For someone who loves good food, it’s Mecca. It was the capsicum season, the apple season, the peach, apricot, nectarine, raspberry, courgette, and tomato season. The city is surrounded by orchards and gardens. Perhaps it’s coming from England, where fruit and veggies are all wilted or frozen or horrendously expensive, but I’d never seen anything like the fresh stuff Pete’s wife brought on her way home from work every second day, nor what was loaded on that yacht.

So, when we came to anchor in a green bay fringed with trees, I made an Italian salad with basil and capers, and a pasta with Gorgonzola and pine nut sauce, and a frothy zabaglione with marsala and raspberries. Over a fire Barry built ashore with smooth stones, we butter-basted and grilled the three small snapper we’d caught with a line out over the side. It was a good meal, a wonderful meal. Barry and Harry loved it. That meal, I was shortly to realize, was my big mistake.

Now it’s wrong to say I was kidnapped, or abducted, or hijacked, or captured, or taken hostage, or any other legal word that a whole lot of horrified adults used when I finally reappeared in this world two years and seven months later. I just wasn’t allowed to get off, that’s all.

Hey, wait a minute, I hear you say. Not
allowed)
A sixteen-year-old, forced against her will to go blue-water sailing and heaven knows what else besides? That’s
dreadful
. Find these Wildblood cousins, charge them with all sorts of crimes, expose them to the world as child-stealers, exploiters, molesters, or worse. Who are these young men with so much money and so few morals that they can swan around the Pacific on a forty-foot yacht with a sixteen-year-old girl as their hijacked cook and bottle washer, and no doubt sexual object and slave? Feminists of the world unite against these scoundrels, these… these…
men
.

There won’t be any charges, Martin and readers. No recriminations. Just a sort of love, thanks for making me what I am. How can I convince you that it was the best thing that ever happened to me?

The night I cooked my fateful meal we lay on the beach and watched the stars come out. As we rowed out to the boat, phosphorescence swirled like a million Tinker Bells around my fingers and the blades of the oars. We had a
glittering silver swim, and later that night I saw phosphorescent dolphins as we sailed out into the gulf. I was utterly at peace.

It wasn’t until I woke, until next morning, that I first thought something odd was going on. It wasn’t until I’d seen no land at all for three days that Barry admitted we were bound for the vast expanse of the Pacific. We were already well east of North Cape, New Zealand’s northernmost point. “We’ve passed the point of no return, sweetie,” said Harry with a disarming smile. “You are such a superb cook, we just had to keep you.”

Now this is where you might think me quite odd.

Barry and Harry, didn’t they expect—Martin and readers, aren’t
you
expecting—that I would be throwing tantrums, mounting a one-woman mutiny, demanding to tell the VHF radio that the yacht
Dolphin
had a kidnapped, helpless sixteen-year-old English girl aboard and would they please send a helicopter or a frigate from the Royal New Zealand Navy to get me off?

Wasn’t I terrified, terrorized, alone on the ocean with two strange and dubious men?

Didn’t I want my mum?

And of course I didn’t have a passport, traveler’s checks, enough gear, or two years’ supply of tampons and decent shampoo and sunblock and other girlish necessities.

At the very least, surely I would be refusing to go anywhere near the kitchen.

I worried about none of those things.

I decided to outwit Barry and Harry, for however long it took.

I allowed them to send a radio message to Pete, and therefore to my parents, that my plans had changed but I
was perfectly okay. I determined that I would not complain—and I didn’t. I would not get seasick—and I didn’t. I would not allow myself to be touched or in any way sexually approached by Barry or Harry—and I didn’t. I would cook—and I did, superbly. I would enjoy the cooking—and I did. I would take the opportunity to learn everything I could from Barry and Harry about the sea, seamanship, the boat, all those things I listed earlier— and I did. I would always sleep watchfully—and I did. I would lose weight and become fit and strong and capable—and I did. I would become a woman—and I did.

Too good to be true, you are saying. No teenager could have that sort of self-control, that sort of stamina for two and a half years, especially in the cheek-by-jowl living of a forty-foot yacht with only two cabins. Come
on
.

But you are forgetting one thing: Barry and Harry were not child molesters or rapists or murderers. They were decent people whose weakness for good food led them to convince themselves that they’d just played a little joke on me, and they’d let me get off at Fiji or somewhere. But by the time we called at Papeete in Tahiti for food and fuel, we’d become rather good friends. Without a passport or money, I joined in the elaborate precautions through which I escaped detection by any customs officer of the island ports we visited for that whole two years.

They never asked for any money from me. I shared their clothes, and found out how few clothes you actually need; how little washing when the rain is free and you let the oils in your skin do their work; how you
can
manage without tampons and shampoo and a choice of twenty-five varieties of deodorant.

It wasn’t that holier-than-thou back-to-nature stuff, it was just simple living with two together people in a small
space with the right supplies aboard. We were in harmony with the sea and the elements. You looked after everything carefully, from brass screws to olive oil to every last inch of rope to every last squeeze of toothpaste, simply because you knew there wasn’t another supermarket just beyond the horizon.

When we were scudding along in the sunshine and I sensed they needed some privacy without having to shut themselves in their cabin, I would go and sit up by the bow (sorry, Martin, the sharp end), watching the froth of the bow wave swirling off the glistening arrowhead of the yacht for hours on end. Or I would steer while they lay on the foredeck, hidden from my view by the cabin top. Barry sang a lot—songs from the seventies, songs from shows, songs he wrote himself. He taught me sea chanteys and to play a ukulele, poker, five hundred, Chinese patience, and mah-jongg. I learned to navigate with a sextant, while Barry practiced his navigation, Polynesian style. Together we studied French and Maori. Harry spent a lot of time keeping a log and writing in a large notebook. Barry wrote his songs down too.

Occasionally, in calm, settled seas and with a good forecast by the electronic nagivation equipment, two of us, in strict rotation, would blissfully share a joint while the third sailed the boat. Otherwise, neither of them assumed the role of skipper. Nor did they scrap or bicker or argue, as most parents do. We laughed a lot. I was a sort of daughter/friend/able seaman. And they didn’t need me for any sort of sexual adventure, because they had each other. That is why they went sailing, why they had escaped even from the nineties when such things are supposed to be okay. They didn’t have AIDS. They just loved each other and had decided on a different sort of life. I tried to
respect that. Most people wouldn’t call it a marriage, but I would.

Of all people, you, Martin, will understand.

I’m not going to bore you with details of that long Pacific journey. Thirty-one months I was at sea. Yachting magazines and whole books are full of long accounts of visits to the Galápagos, the Canaries, Alaska, or the Antarctic, but when it’s all boiled down, seafarers all have much the same sort of experiences, don’t they? They have gales and disasters and they hit things, and the ones who survive write tedious books about their adventures.

But we had our adventures, oh yes. We survived storms, lightning, two freak waves, and another, bigger still, which pitchpoled us. We sloshed around in flat calms and reveled in trade winds and ran terrified before gales and put out sea anchors. I’ve seen icebergs. I’ve changed sails with snow on the deck, ice on the rigging. I’ve seen flying fish, whales, albatrosses, and rare dolphins and slept on the deck under the stars when it was too hot to sleep below. We hit a whale off Tonga and a container between Tahiti and Hawaii. On that long passage, one night, we also lost Barry over the side. Because he was a good seaman, he was wearing a lifeline, and Harry and I hauled him back on board, trembling and shocked and half drowned. Once is enough for that sort of exercise. We had weekly person-overboard and fire drills.

Harry tended me when I got tropical fevers and rope burns, as gentle as any nurse. He dug fishhooks out of my hands and foreign bodies from my eyes. I learned to cook all kinds of exotic fishes in coconut cream and banana leaves and pineapple juice. We attended village feasts in the Cooks. Our eggshell-thin dugout canoe got nudged by a twelve-foot shark in a lagoon. We sailed past that
dangerous, rocky landing place on Pitcairn Island where Fletcher Christian’s mutineers found another sort of escape and refuge. Barry studied his birds and his navigation and wrote his songs and Harry wrote his book. I learned to splice and mend sails and carve dolphins on bone. I was very happy. I returned to Auckland a different person and knowing what I want out of life.

And that is the end of the tape, and where I hope I’ve totted up my five thousand words and earned my ten thousand pounds.

It’s got quite dark, making Mother’s bed of white roses below my window glow, almost as though touched by phosphorescence. I have Harry’s book of stories and Barry’s book of songs beside me on my bed. I haven’t yet decided what to do with them.

They returned me safely to Auckland, without having to explain anything to any customs or immigration officer. I’d just been on rather a long holiday around the Hauraki Gulf, that’s all. Quite an undercover operation it was, with Pete sailing his keelboat out into the Pacific fifty miles east of Great Barrier Island and a dawn meeting between two small yachts making sure no one else was snooping around. Pete took food and fuel too, but the cousins wouldn’t or couldn’t tell us what their plans were, just that they were heading north into the sunshine again.