owlrigh

There is great musical talent to be had hereabouts; a couple of months ago a musical regatta of sailing vessels was had in Double Bay, a seldom-visited anchorage just north of Airlie. I have gone to music parties a couple of times, where most had guitars and sang -- or at least plonked away on a bush bass.

On board Trekker -- the captain used to play professionally and gets out his guitar every so often. The deckhand who joined us this week was once lead in a grunge rock band for fifteen years before he found a love of tallships.

These are all people having fun; there is one man I know of, however, who plays for a living, busking on the main street of Airlie.

My first acquaintance of Ron wasn't on the streetside; I met him at a public BBQ one afternoon, when my brother contributed food to his evening meal.

"I went to Lifeline," said Rob, "and they gave me all this meat." 'All' was right -- certainly the charity knows what kind of food to give to the homeless to store unrefrigerated in this clime.

Homeless he was -- or, if homelessnesss is a state of mind as well as being, he was not homeless at all. And in his state of mind, the whole world is his home.

( His various homes. )

"They can probably hear you laughing all the way in Cid Harbour," said Ben shortly after he began working on Coral Trekker. We were in Tongue Bay, the other side of Whitsunday Island.

Last week we were once more in Tongue Bay, at the top of Whitehaven Beach, when I climbed the rigging after the skipper told me to put a cork in it. Being up there is excellent; the view at the best of times is beyond par, and that night there was a full moon and clear sky.

I lay on the end of the yard, hanging on with a leg, and listened to music on my iPod, callously abandoning Ben to wash the dishes. When he came up to find me he was understandably cranky. It didn't last long. One comment, and then I was laughing.

Nearby was a charter vessel crewed by some friends of mine. She heard me laughing and began laughing as well -- and I could not stop laughing, louder and louder. Soon the whole anchorage was full of boats laughing. One man began singing. A-wim-oh-weh.

I laughed until I was weak and nearly fell off the t'gallant; only Ben hanging onto me kept me on the rigging. They probably did hear me in Cid Harbour that night.

( Sometimes quiet is nice ... )

Three days off, and what do you do with them? Return to the islands you make your living in, naturally. It's either that or end up in the bar every evening, drinking it up, and so when Ben mentioned he was going out for an overnighter in his catamaran, I chose to go with him.

Being out there on a different boat made all the difference. Places I normally shrug my shoulders for because of their familiarity became new again -- and sailing in a little catamaran, slipping across the waves, was a novelty.

Coral Trekker needs gale force winds to make her go; under a comfortable wind speed she'll do the fastness of a knot, maybe, and it would take you half the trip to get to the islands.

We often get the complaint we don't sail enough in her.

Off we went in La Luna. She's a delightful little cat; phenomenally fast and responsive. We sailed almost straight off the beach he had her in, and weaved in and around anchored yachts at will. And there I'd thought my yacht was responsive; she makes mine own feel like a lump of lead.

That she's low in the water and open made me want to swim more. I spent half the time swimming or snoozing in the reflected sun, where normally I eschew the water and sit in the shade.

Two days of that and my skin is ever more so tanned. The difference between regularly exposed parts of me and the unexposed is striking now.

( And ... another difference. )

Ben and I were on the wheelhouse of Trekker one night, finishing off our drinks outside of the view of the customers, when I looked over the aft. There was a dinghy not very far away, going with the tide.

"That's not our tender floating away, is it?" I asked.

We looked again, and hopped on down to deck level. I kept an eye on it the whole time, and that's when I noticed the red glow.

"Wait, Bob's --"

Ben jumped in after the tender before I could finish saying that Bob was smoking his cigarette in the dinghy. I could hear their voices after he finished swimming his way to the rescue.

( Unnecessary rescues and the necessary ones. )

"You have three days off this week," said a fellow co-worker. "The activities officer off Reef Odyssey's going to fill in for you."

Three days off? I didn't ask for time off. Maybe they were getting ready to shuffle me off seeing that the big boss thinks I do drugs and am a pisshead. Maybe all sorts of things.

By sheer coincidence I'd seen the latest Wheel of Time book in the local store as I walked by, and seeing that it's been over ten years of following the series, I succumbed and bought it, stashing it for reading upon the trip. I began it the Friday, and the next morning the captain saw me esconced in the galley with it.

"You'd better not read that the whole trip," he said. "I'll throw it over the side if you do."

Duly warned, I proceeded to read it the whole trip, all other things shunted aside. Even the Friday, when I was supposed to go move my yacht away from where she was a bit too close to some other vessels.

( Why my captain does have a point. Or two. )

The past week has been different, as all weeks are, to that of the week before. There were ten people staying for a six day voyage. Despite being horribly hung over from the night before I began perkily enough, ready to think positive of all things. This quickly changed.

As soon as they were settled on deck the women of the bunch began complaining of how the boat looked so much smaller than what they had expected. And when they were actually belowdecks! The wails of horror that the boat wasn't akin to something out of "And He Built A Crooked House" with cabins exponentially big! My god, the shock that they were actually on a yacht and not a cruiseliner!

So I began by being pissed off at them all, and this didn't change the whole six days, for they would complain about everything under the sun. Beer not being icy, wine being all consumed, not enough bedrolls for two each, that they had to ask someone before going for a swim, and on.

( Fun, fun, fun. )

It was nearly midnight when I returned to my boat. Three people trailed behind me, and yet I was the first to see her ... lying on her side in the mud. I guess the idea of sitting in the water hole in amidst the mangroves was not such a hot idea.

A local chap had been in there before me, with a big ferro yacht. He let me know that when he moved, I could have it; at low tide all he'd had to do was step ashore, and because there was a hole in the mud which his keel slipped comfortably into. He was away from the worst of the weather -- what better place for me to put my yacht into while I was away working and worrying about whether she dragged anchor or started pounding?

The night after the fellow moved I was ready to get on in -- and had five helpers to do it, with myself being the most disorganised of the lot. I hadn't even had lines out to tie to the mangroves! Seeing that my skipper had been on board for this it was more embarrassing than it would have been otherwise.

( So we went to sleep standing up. )

The cook clambered up the bowsprit and I realised I was going to do that: climb to the very tip of the yacht, balance carefully, and tinker with the sail while trying not to fall off. A week later it was me tere, fitting the sailcover on in strong winds and ploughing into a vigorous chop, with the trial cook I was training staring at me with big eyes.

These last three days were truly the only ones where the skipper and I were the only crew aboard. When paid work started for me I began to train another ... whom I took a misgiving to after one look and when she opened her mouth.

Now, she was a perfectly amiable sort of girl, and good in the galley -- washing up came out clean and she could cook and on deck she was a quick learner. It was just that she never shut up. Ever.

This sort of thing I deal with okay when I can get away from the person -- but from her I could not! She followed me around, babbled nonsense, and had unfortunate verbal tics.

"Cheers, big ears!" she would reply to any request -- if not "no" just before she complied. But really, the offensiveness of her coming up to say "penis rooter" at me randomly took the cake.

She had warned me she would do it ever so often, but at intervals of 15 minutes it entered the realm of excessive.

She got the boot. There was an argument with thet skipper and he is the one to okay new crew. I got the okay.

Here was an underhanded benefit I had: my ycht. When he found out that I became more than okay -- he was, on more than one boozed occasion, going on about how he would help me in any way he could. Being a woman solo sailor gets me instant credibility, and it is amusing that people put so much stock by it.

The next trip I was training someone again, but this time a skipper in training as well -- a husband and wife team. A galley not my own, and I was driven around the bend by the woman putting everything away in the wrong places and not washing up properly. The man's inability to anchor and go up to a mooring made me wonder whether he added bumfph to his resumé too.

Days are full; I wake at 6:30 to catch the weather report, begin breakfast, and it keeps on until I go to sleep at night. Amidst burned pots, burned food, improvised upon dishes, and the occasional cosmetic surgery to the meals I bungled, I am in a constant state of dish washing. Passengers at times hang around and offer to do things. Some even run the water and do the dishes!

The really fun part, though, is sailing. The yacht I was working on was only 16m or so, gaff rig schooner -- learning the lines on her, how a gaff rig works, all that -- excellent. Reading the theory never got me far. I have even learned the distinction between schooners and ketches, something which eluded me all of my yachtie life. (And it wasn't that one had even masts and the other had uneven masts -- the schooner has its main mast to the aft and the ketch has the main mast to the bow.)

My skipper is that classic yachtie solo sailor type for whom sailing is something profound and shows distinction of character. I guess yachties like to think of themselves as something other than wandering bums. It's funny when he gets the booze into him and he starts laying into the guests.

"You just have to keep your head. As soon as you lose it that's when things go to shit. If you keep your shit together and do it right the first time you live, otherwise you've got no control, and if you don't have control, you die." A great believer in shipboard disclipline, he is.

The best part is that he has long hair. It only took me three days to suggest braiding it, and now he sports a couple of neat braids ending in a neat pile at the nape of his neck, rather than the haphazard knot he was sporting. He also has a long beard. My suggestions of braiding this also has gotten me long looks from him -- a champion of the meaningful look. One day, however, he will be drunk, and I will be with beads, and he will awaken with a look he has never sported before. I'll have to tie myself down to the deck that day, or perhaps make a break for the rigging and the top of the mast.

Passengers have had a ball watching me do his hair. ("Yes, he's my bitch, sit down!" one evening...) Much laughter has resulted from the whole event. Everyone has suggested I do his beard as well. I cannot resist such force of suggestion.

The Whitsunday area is very lovely. I am jaded, however, and a lot of it feels like a lot of the other lovely places I have visited in my life -- only those were better since they didn't have a hundred other yachts in the anchorages, without the other hundred people on the beaches and walks and doing all the same things. Everyone wants to go to Whitehaven beach, and therein lies a problem -- you can only really go there in good weather.

Whitehaven beach is a long expanse of silica sand, a big glowing white strip you cannot mistake. Everyone peeps "Whitehaven!" when they come on board, and if there is some wind you get a roll in there -- and a roll means nauseated people. Even when the roll is so tiny I barely even shift as I walk on deck. But you have land people aboard. The past trip was mostly strong wind warnings, and in spite of this everyone piped "Whitehaven". So, just to show them, we went to the most sheltered part of it -- Tongue Bay -- and watched their green faces when they found out we had to stay there a couple of hours before the tide came up enough for them to go ashore. It was then a unanimous decision against.

It's funny how people just don't realise how long it takes to go between places on water, even when steaming along at 8 knots on a large yacht. They don't realise a lot of things, like when we say that you have to pump the toilet a lot or it gets bogged that this is not merely a suggestion. That it takes time with marine loos -- it's not a button press and you walk away. Or that you have to sit down if you are a bloke, or piss goes everywhere and cheers, yours truly has to clean it up and then go back to food prep. Some guys appear to have the idea that they would not be men if they sat down, that we are calling them girls saying that they've to sit. I am going to present men with sponges and tell them that if their dick is clean enough that they don't have to wash their hands after pissing then they can just wipe up their urine as well. Maybe that will sink in where all else fails.

Two weeks upon the first schooner, Windjammer, and now I move to another yacht -- Coral Trekker. At least now I won't have people trying to get past me, or people seated nearby as I cook and watching as I botch things and then have to quickly fix it all up. At least the end result they all see is edible and tasty, but if you were watching me scrape the pot you would be inclined to think otherwise. Burning pots is my specialty.

Despite being told when I started the job that the skipper would make sure I was in for mealtimes so that I could do the cooking while at anchor. This is utter tosh -- instead I am peeling, cutting, and boiling while the yacht is pitching away and sometimes while at a 45° angle. I am used to these things, but it's somewhat misrepresentational of reality, and makes for interesting times when the pot pitches off the stove when we heel just that little too far. All in a day's work. Back to it for me, to cook for 19 people.

You can't walk down the main street of Airlie without coming across "Help Wanted" signs. They're only there for a day before they are gone -- help presumably gotten -- but some other store pops up quick enough with a similar pasted sign.

There are plenty of jobs to be had in Airlie.

Years ago there was a segment on some news show of a couple of Sydneysiders, a brother and sister, who couldn't find work. They made much of the fact that they had looked and weren't finding and so couldn't be, in all earnest, be called dole-bludgers.

Come the hotelier of one of the islands around here -- he contacted these newspeople and offered them jobs. The brother and sister said no. Why? Quite simple, really: appearance.

I was in one of the employment agencies when I was shown the Hayman Island standard employee contract. It looked about as stringent as the Woolworths one, but better: they put down what you could and couldn't wear on the island, where you could wear certain things, hair length for men, and the death knell for me: no piercings, except for one in each ear, and very discreet at that.

( Eventually, I get a cool job. )

Twenty-two rapes occur in Airlie every week. That's twenty more than what occurred monthly on the university campus I used to attend. That's more than what occurs at Schoolies' Week. I am sure it raises the Australian national average all by itself.

Yet you wouldn't think it were so if you were to go for a stroll down Shute Harbour Road -- it's all happy younglings and bright fashion stores and fast food outlets. Then, nestled in amongst these, you see where the hubbub of youth congregate come sundown: the nightclubs.

When I went to university you couldn't go to the toilet without finding stickers in the cubicles advertising you to be careful at night. They would go on to implore you to use the campus guides for women after sundown, or to use the campus shuttle buses where offerred. All for your safety -- and with no mention anywhere, on campus or without, of the attacks on women. Or even of the systematic abuse endemic to the colleges. The options were there, but they didn't tell you why.

( It's oh so quiet. )

The first sight of home was from the bus as we wound our way towards Airlie. Or -- I saw my family's catamaran, for theirs is an unmistakable red. It was only then I saw my own yacht, which is a nondescript white. I could see the bullets of wind as a mass of white water moving across the bay. The gale warning my father had told me of was in full swing.

As soon as I stepped off the aeroplane I could feel the wind. Had I note been holding on I would have been blown away to the side, over the barrier. It was raining. My umbrella, when I ventured to take it out, nearly went for a world voyage without me!

The swell across from Hamilton Island was so that the ferry was thrashed. One of those catamaran ferries, which don't normally feel the swell, and with that odd half-roll which confuses those feet used to a mono. Spray covered the windows and waves beat against the sides. Quite thrilling, really, if one does not own a yacht one fears for and worse -- has to get to in a half-metre wind-driven swell.

( Smelly welcomes and dinghy adventures. )