Her beauty and her terror!

When the dogs and I don’t feel like a long walk, we amble five minutes up to the Green Hill fortress.  I think of it as the top of TI with panoramic views of a seascape that has captivated me for almost 20 years.  Every time I mount the rise of Green Hill and gaze over the expansive ocean, Dorothea Mackellar’s words spring to mind.

I love her far horizon

I love her jewel sea

Her beauty and her terror

     And I have to stop.  There’s no wide brown land for me!

     I am oh, so familiar with the beauty and terror of this sea, especially the way it can snap from beautiful to terrifying. 

     It was beautiful the day Tony and I sailed from TI in our seven metre, six-eighths steel, 46 hp Perkins fishing vessel, Parledee.  There was the faintest breeze and a few cottonwool clouds, the kind young kids draw, on the horizon.  The water was glittering in the morning sun exactly like a great, liquid sapphire.  The islands, Wednesday, Tuesday, Double and Naghir, were a shimmering, dreamy green. 

     We were headed to Stephen Island where there were big mackerel to be caught.  Tony and I toasted our good fortune with cups of instant coffee. The day before, I was rinsing the grounds from the Bodum and it slipped from its steel frame into the TI harbour.  Had I been superstitious, I’d have considered this an omen.  But Tony and I, and our dreams, had been lulled into a false sense of good fortune by the auto-pilot and the gentle, pulsing rumble of the Perkins. Ain’t love and wise investment sweet?

     The next day, we were riding an angry ocean, a bucking bronco of a thousand different greys.  All we could do was hold on.  The auto-pilot was stuffed and the engine had been playing up (always the bloody impeller!).  I curled up in the focsle, bit my nails and prepared to die. I didn’t care what Tony did behind the wheel.  And I didn’t care that we’d made a really bad investment with a fishing boat that was far too small for the unpredictable and violent sea of the Torres Strait.  BECAUSE WE WERE GOING TO DIE!

And the next day, things calmed down and I nursed a couple of bruised finger stumps as we found anchorage on Darnley Island.   

     A week later, a low formed in the Coral Sea or Gulf, always one or the other, and the Torres Strait was besieged by raging winds and mountainous seas.  Our life became a ritual of checking anchor, drifting, finding new anchorage (or motoring into a squall till it passed) and then finding a part no longer worked or was burnt out.  And so on and so on.

     On the good, calm days, either something broke down or the current presented problems – it could stop our boat in its watery tracks.  I remember moving anchorage from the village at Darnley to a spot further east, a fifteen minute steam.  After half an hour at top speed, it appeared we hadn’t moved at all.  We took bearings and continued.  We weren’t making any progress.  The current was moving against us at the same speed we were travelling. 

     We met up with other boat owners and compared stories.  It turns out, our experiences with faulty engines, dodgy freezers and the elusive safe anchorage, were normal. 

     I started to hate the ocean, with passion.  She was a nasty, vengeful maiden, never at peace.  If she wasn’t raging, she’d be the reason something would stop working, so I thought.

     We spent a lot of time on anchor (when it held) and I started to think about my predicament.  I realised a life at sea - calm-one-minute and mad-angry-psycho the next, and the omnipresent need to repair something that was broken or have a part air-freighted up at top dollar - was not for me.  

     Tony and I settled back under his parents’ house and eventually sold Pareledee in favour of a trailer boat (no anchorage worries, thank you very much).

I continue to be captivated by the sea, but I much prefer experiencing her beauty and her terror from the solid, safety of Green Hill fortress.