Chapter 13: Cocos Keeling

 

Suka departed Christmas island and steered for open ocean along the bold coastal palisades, as a flurry of squawking sea birds continuously swooped and wheeled around her - as if ceremoniously bidding her farewell. Then oddly, when she had sailed miles away - with the shrunken island squatting over the taffrail - a few times low flying boobies nearly drove their beaks into the sails, discovering the billowing barricade only at the last moment and veering sharply away. From this odd behavior I imagined that these birds had traveled from their cliff-side nests to the off-lying fishing grounds so many times, as had their primogenitors, that the route had been ingrained into their chromosomes. Watching where they were heading seemed no longer a requirement.

Once clear of the island and its moiling volley of seabirds, Suka's canvas gladly scooped the steady 15 knot trade winds blowing in from the south-sou'west. During the next three days the sky remained a staunch ocean blue, and ol' Sol imbued us with its heartening warmth. Yet despite the fine weather and the pleasant sailing, the mood was not one of ebullience. Undermining the favorable sailing conditions was a sort of mental aridity that typically affects sailors of small yachts bound across the Indian Ocean. We were entering a region of irrefutably vast distances between ports, and one infamous for greasy skies, violent weather, tumultuous seas, and precipitate gales. And as if matching our demeanor, the seas darkened imperceptibly with the passing of each day. The farther we sailed into the Indian, the vexatiously blacker became the water.

A gradually slackening wind mitigated our daily runs, which were: 165, 153, and 134 miles - these with the help of a 20 mile-per-day current. And on the evening of our fourth day from Christmas Island the sky smeared ominously. At dusk a convergence passed overhead with strong quartering winds spiked with rain thrashing us furiously as we shortened the mainsail.

Traveling at hull speed, Suka now stood within 40 miles of the Cocos Keeling atoll, so the time was at hand to decrease her speed. Groping about in the hyper-blackness of the storm-dreary night, we dowsed the double reefed mainsail and frapped it tightly to the boom. This slowed the brig somewhat, but the furious wind only increased further until the brig was again charging ahead like an enraged steed, now while flying only her tempest-stiffened jib. At least I had finally learned that in a quartering blow she much preferred her mainsail furled altogether and her sail area carried well forward.

Standing on and off would have been difficult in such boisterous conditions, so we needed to bleed speed in order to arrive at our landfall at dawn. The prospects of crawling onto the spume-swept and heaving foredeck was anything but appealing, but the jib had to come down. So, stooping low and grasping the coachroof handrail, I crept forward and dowsed the uncompliant jib. Then after un-hanking it, I opened the forehatch and crammed the sodden Dacron down into the forecastle. I did not bag the sail, in case we should need it later in a hurry. Running bare poled before the fury, Suka responded nimbly to her self-steering rudder, and held her course acceptably true, plus and minus 10 or 15 degrees yawing port and starboard. The reduction in speed had eased her laboring and freed her crew to retire to the sheltered cabin.

And so we endured the long night, Jenny lying in the lee canvassed bunk and I on the port settee. With my feet braced athwartships, I stared at the sat-nav display, which was the only illumination in the ship's otherwise dark interior. Generally, I was awaiting a navigational satellite pass. At 15 minute intervals I would climb the companionway ladder, slide back the hatch and peer all around. Seeing nothing but murky, disheartening conditions, yet gaining the reassurance that Suka was tending herself like a warrior, and that the horizon was free of ships, I would retire below and close out the storm, and await the time when Jenny and I would trade places.

When a satellite first appears, it does so near the horizon, and our little machine would sound a beep, indicating it had acquired a signal. As the space probe reeled into the sky and arced slowly across the heavens, our black box steadfastly listened to its transmissions, and when the orbital vehicle disappeared over the opposite horizon our machine would begin computing our position, based on Doppler-shifted satellite data as perceived.

Midnight the box beeped its heartening message, and within 20 minutes produced our position coordinates, which Jenny then plotted on the chart. The fix indicated that we were 20 miles off-shore Cocos Keeling. As a check, I switched on the RDF and confirmed the relative bearing to the atoll's aero beacon, broadcasting a staunch signal at 305 kilohertz.

With the sat-nav system, the satellites sometimes bunch up and other times space themselves widely. After a 4 am fix, the computer predicted a five hour interval void of satellite passes, this at a most inopportune phase of our passage. The gap left us to find the atoll using our own resources, so after grappling into bulky foul weather gear I clambered into the utter darkness outside, and resolved to sit in the cockpit and keep a sharp lookout ahead for land. Rain pelted down in slanted sheets, which reduced visibility practically to zilch. Overhead, impermeable clouds obscured what we knew was a nearly full moon.

An odd noise seized my attention. I crawled aft to investigate, secured as always when outside and underway with my safety belt carabinered to a fore-and-aft jack line. The noise led me to the trolling generator motor, which had broken free of its mount (a solid bracket of stainless steel) and was now dangling precariously over the water by its safety lanyard. Glad to have fitted this lanyard, I hauled aboard the generator, the trolling line, its shaft, and prop; and after untying the lanyard I piled the sopping tangle into the cockpit well. Thus, Suka scudded along bare-poled before the blow, her crew eager for dawn.

At first light the companionway hatch before me slid open a few inches, and out came a half spilled, steaming cup of coffee. A short while later the mate emerged dressed for a hurricane.

With the first diffusion of a purple-grey dawn illuminating the dismal, storm-wracked seas, we made the deeply reefed mainsail then proceeded ahead in earnest, seeking the atoll. The shortened canvas sprinted Suka ahead into weather so thick that visibility was but a scant few hundred feet. Racing toward a deadly coral reef that we knew must be close, but that we could not lay eyes upon, imparted a most unsettling sensation in the pit of the stomach. One fact was brutally certain: the island and reef would appear only when we had drawn dangerously close to it, and when it did, we would need to jibe the mainsail with the utmost haste. One hang-up, one error in sail handling might hasten Suka onto the destructive lee shore. With this in mind we rehearsed the jibe several times.

As Suka sped onward into the scud, Jenny steered while I clung to the main mast, scrutinizing the cloudy nothingness ahead. Hours passed, until eventually we began wondering aloud if we had inexplicably missed the island. Was the RDF indicating a reciprocal bearing, and did Cocos Keeling somehow now lay astern? We contemplated the awful thought of having missed the atoll, and now having to proceed another 2,000 miles to the next landfall.

An amorphous tinge began materializing dead ahead, and within moments an echoing rumble of surf dynamited our misgivings. "There it is!" we both cried. Jumping to, Jenny speedily shifted both the boom preventer and the boom vang to windward, and when she had ducked clear I spun the wheel hard a-lee and sheeted the mainsail taut. Suka jibed, and with that we gazed at a tumult of thundering surf and a line of coconut trees a few hundred yards off the port beam. We each let out a whoop of delight.

Cocos Keeling

Cocos Keeling is a necklace of palm-studded, sandy islets interconnected with barely submerged coral reefs. The dirty weather made one islet appear much the same as another, and complicated the task of finding the lagoon's entrance. Coasting along the various islets, several times we thought we had found the northern terminus. As we were contemplating turning westward, another group of coconut trees away to the north would materialize from the low lying scud. We sailed on, and finally the dense clouds lifted barely enough to reveal various more distant landforms. Taking compass bearings, we surmised our location - however inconclusively. Eventually we sighted a small, lighted beacon. The chart indicated this as the turning point we had been searching for, but the scud lifted again and revealed yet another palm grove standing away to the north. This sent us into confusion once again, until we realized these trees indicated a disconnected islet lying off-shore the main atoll. So indeed it was time to turn westward.

Dousing the mainsail, we motored cautiously around the island, watching the water shallowing and its color changing from that of sordid black to the vibrant, tropical cobalts and aquamarines. Because of the rapidly fluctuating visibility, the heavy wind, and disquieting seas we were reluctant to enter the pass. So while Jenny piloted at the bowsprit, I eased Suka toward the outer, windward reef. Then we lowered the anchor into five fathoms of water so clear that we watched the plow settle onto the white sand between swarthy coral heads.

The clouds lifted to reveal the compelling sight of six yachts lying safely within the lagoon. Outside the atoll, where Suka had found protection in its lee, our impromptu anchorage was boisterous, yet it was the best we dared hope for.

Before long, a small dinghy came running before the tempest and torrential downpour, bobbing precariously in the chop and heading our way. Soon the intrepid Irishman Tommy Baird climbed aboard and asked if we needed help. From aboard his yacht Ni Singa, he and his wife Lynn had noticed Suka lying motionless outside the reef but alarmingly close inshore. They had logically assumed we might be in trouble. Obviously Tommy would not be bucking the head winds and vicious combers back to his yacht, so he graciously offered to pilot us in. We made his tender fast astern, and deemed the three of us as rescuing each other.

Local knowledge was all we had been lacking, so with Tommy piloting at the bow, I powered into the pass. Against cutting headwinds Suka moved at a crawl, but soon she lay safely to her bower in the company of the other yachts fronting Direction Island.

Tommy had indeed saved the afternoon, and when we later learned that he could not swim, we were even more impressed that he had come to our aid in such imperiling conditions. (Several months later, though, his inability to swim nearly cost him his life, and I was to play a minor role in his rescue.)

With water, water everywhere, our hands and bare feet were shriveled like blanched prunes. Inside the cabin, everything even remotely within the hatchway's splash zone was soaked. But this was of little concern; for the first time in 24 hours we could relax, and suddenly we felt deeply fatigued. It was time for a well-deserved nap.

Our new-found friends Tommy and Lynn were preparing to depart the following day, so that evening Jenny pulled over to Ni Singa to wish them bon voyage and to present them with a freshly baked carrot cake.

That night the storm abated, and the next morning broke bright and clear. An Australian quarantine officer, bedecked in the appropriate uniform minus shoes and socks, boarded Suka. Perfunctory greetings aside, he interrogated us coyly as to whether we were familiar with Australian quarantine regulations. As we had not come here seeking employment with the agency, I failed to see his meaning. But to carry the burden of conversation, I assured him weakly that we were.

"Why, then," he asserted, "did you go ashore yesterday, prior to being cleared by myself?"

I explained that Jenny had rowed over to Ni Singa with a farewell cake, but that otherwise we had remained aboard.

"You were observed leaving your vessel," he alleged. And after a few more ill-founded salvos along the same lines, the little general focused his fusillades on our having anchored shoreward of the yellow buoy prior to our quarantine inspection. Actually we hadn't noticed it.

"You're very lucky," he stormed. "The previous quarantine officer used to require you offenders to re-anchor beyond the buoy before granting pratique." And with that he begrudgingly scribbled our clearance, tore it from the pad, and dispensed it onto the salon table. We felt as though we were newly initiated inmates of the Cocos Keeling penal institute.

"Obey the rules," he scowled, handing me a sheet of regulations, most of which pertained to sanitation. His parting words were: "Last year two boats were towed out of here for noncompliance." He left to crack his whip elsewhere, and subsequently we rarely saw "the warden."

As per instructions, Jenny and I paddled to the nearby patrol launch to meet with the immigration officer. Expecting the worse, we were pleasantly surprised when this gentleman proved most genial. Cheerfully, he processed our paperwork, stamped our passports, and even offered to bring us any supplies we might need, or to deliver mail on his daily run from the air base across the seven mile wide lagoon.

Direction Island

Free to go ashore, we paddled across the strikingly transparent water and landed on a lovely sand beach. Direction Island was uninhabited, and its highest point of land was perhaps ten feet above sea level. To give an indication of its size, we spent the next hour wending barefoot around its perimeter. The interior, a pervading coconut grove, was carpeted in soft humus that imparted to the feet a decidedly hedonic sensation. The green canopy overhead suggested the feeling of being in some well-funded arboretum, and the recent rains, including some five inches the previous day, had lent the plants all the more verdure. Exotic flowers blossomed, and their sweet fragrance added to the redolence of the rich, humid air. As we strolled along, little bright red hermit crabs, each toting a white sea shell of a home, scurried from underfoot.

Absorbing the reverberations of the surf thundering onto the outer coral shore, my thoughts turned to our voyage's conception. As I had read those pages of how Maurice and Katie had endured the hardships and experienced the joys of their world sailing voyage, how I had envied them. Now Jenny and I were indeed living those very dreams. We too were supremely happy.

Three weeks were slipping by hardly noticed, and we had all but lost ourselves to Cocos Keeling's tropical ambiance. Sometimes at daybreak we would sit on the warm beach listening to the palm fronds rustling in the ever present trade winds, and the surf rumbling onto the nearby outer reef. This was a place where idle reverie was the order of the day, and where the civilized world was so distant that its meaning lay obscured. Life's impetus here ambled at a rudimentary and genteel level.

Besides sauntering about the island while absorbing its serenity, we spent hours each day snorkeling the lagoon's warm and remarkably pellucid waters, admiring the aquatic life.

The crews of all yachts present had spent many a long day in the solitude of their passage making, so in the evenings we often congregated at the beach-side portico for a fish fry and potluck supper. The girls would bring dishes prepared aboard, and a person could only marvel at the banquets that came from galleys that had been so long without reprovisioning.

Our seafood cuisine was the product of our almost daily spear fishing forays, as together the few avid snorkelers among us would venture aboard our dinghies far out into the iridescent lagoon. Spear guns in hands, and wearing face-masks, snorkels, and fins, we spent hours exploring the underwater reefs.

Reef sharks, five to seven feet in length, were our ever-present underwater companions. These white tips and black tips are scavengers, and although capable of dismembering a diver, they were timid. When one approached a diver too closely, an aggressive jab of the spear gun would usually send it scurrying. Even so, they were keenly interested in our speared prey, and whenever a diver shot a fish, he would need to remove it from the sea quickly.

Occasionally a massive grey shark would appear on the scene. This is a more bellicose species, not so timid as the reef sharks. Even so, the grays seemed interested only in our intended speared catch, but these sharks were so large and intrusive that we didn't dare shoot a fish in their presence. According to the Polynesians, "You can steal a fish from a white tip or black tip two or three times, but from a grey shark only once." In the presence of a grey, whenever a diver was about to pull the trigger on the piece de resistance, the mammoth would move in for the filch; and truthfully, none of us found it pleasant rubbing shoulders with the beast.

Our spear fishing technique, in the absence of the insidious grays, was to prowl about the coral heads, keeping the swim fins wholly submerged so as not to play the part of a sea-going washing machine - a disquieting act that sends the fish scattering. Nor was the prey stared at, as this too is construed as aggressive behavior. Rather, the swimmer acted disinterested, largely ignoring the fish but watching from the corner of the eye should one disappear discreetly into a hole in the coral. At this, the diver would nonchalantly approach the hole, inhale deeply, and descend. Hovering at the hole and aiming the spear gun into it, the diver waited - and this is the aspect of the sport that can test even the most stout of lung. If one could endure long enough, the fish would eventually become curious and present itself, and this was the appropriate moment to squeeze the trigger. The barbed spear was affixed to the gun with a long cord, allowing the diver to swim vigorously to the surface for a long overdue breath of air. Then submerging hand over hand down the line, he would commence wrestling the fish from its hole - and usually the impaled prey would demonstrate remarkable strength and reluctance. After procuring the fish, the snorkeler would bolt for the surface, wheeling around full circles while ascending cork-screw fashion, so as to discover the whereabouts any reef sharks and fend them off.

The fire into the hole technique is not without its dangers. Tremendous moray eels, capable of inflicting vicious lacerations, inhabited some of those holes within the coral. Should a diver accidentally shoot one, as I did one day, the situation could become indeed grim. Jim McCane and I were out diving in the expansive lagoon while Jim's wife, Liz, paddled the dinghy behind us. As one of us divers would surface with an impaled fish, Liz would grab the spear, unwind its tip, and remove the fish into a large bucket then re-thread the tip onto its shaft. Provisioning another shore-side barbecue scheduled for that evening, we had collected seven or eight hefty specimens. By then the reef sharks were prowling about feverishly, drawn to the action. Catching sight of a fish disappearing into a hole perhaps 15 feet beneath the surface, I dove. Suspended, I waited in front of the hole for the fish to reappear. Eventually it presented itself, but only partially, and by then my next breath of air was vitally overdue; so after squeezing the trigger I vaulted for the surface. After hauling myself down the taut line, I began wrestling the spear, which shuddered resistively. Eventually, though, the pierced fish drifted up the shaft, dead - yet my line resisted, and the visible length of spear continued trembling. It seemed that I was engaged - not with the fish - but with some unseen creature beyond. Suddenly the spear broke free and a Brobdingnagian moray eel, dark green in color, some eight inches in diameter, and of an undetermined length, presented its gaping, fangsome maws. At this I retreated post haste, now all too aware of the situation's gravity.

A southerly bluster beset the region, and confined everyone aboard their respective homes for a few days, riding out the gale while standing anchor watch. Suka's CQR was holding none too secure, pun intended (CQR = secure) and when I swam down to inspect the problem, I found that the anchor's half buried plowshare had refused to bite. Instead, it had been skimming slowly through the fine sand, as indicated by the trail it had left. Back aboard, while Jenny stood at the helm I weighed, unshackled the CQR from the chain, and replaced it with the Danforth, which then took much better purchase in the poor holding ground.

Throughout the day the propeller of our wind driven electrical turban sounded like a Cessna revving its engine prior to take off. The charging meter registered a cheery 10 amps, with the occasional burst to 15.

The blow gradually subsided, but as the beach-side barbecue area was still receiving a thrashing, the evening gatherings took shelter in various yachts. At the appointed hour that afternoon I switched on the ham radio to listen to conversations with distant yachtees. Richard Molony, his sailboat Nikki anchored out beyond the quarantine buoy because of his two cats, mentioned he was planning on attending a gathering aboard Suka that evening. Jenny and I had no idea we were hosting a party, but it sounded like fun, which indeed it proved to be.

The following day the gale subsided, the sky plastered a staunch blue once again, and the yachting populace began venturing ashore. The morning became one of Frisbee throwing, laughter and leaping with abandon into the sea, and standing around sipping fresh coconut juice. In our insouciance, little did we know that our friend Leen Verkaik, single-handing aboard his home-built steel ketch Why Not!?, had suffered a dismasting, and would endure the next two months plodding under jury rig to the Mascarene Islands.

Oblivious to Leen's plight, the seafaring denizens of Cocos Keeling were finding life grand. "This," I wrote, "is among the world's most exquisite tropical islands. We have found paradise, and merely being here is enough to induce the crusty sailors to go troppo, as indeed we have."

Inevitably the prevailing mood began losing its luster, though, as we contemplated the foreboding prospect of forsaking the atoll's protective womb and putting out into tempestuous seas. The next landfall was in the Mascarene group, its nearest island 1,970 nautical miles across the bellicose Indian Ocean. We viewed our leaving Cocos Keeling with as much enthusiasm as if we were about to leap from the edge of paradise into an inferno.

Ned and Mary Lynn were the first of our bevy to set sail. A few days out they radioed that the seas were very rough. The following evening Ned reported that M'Lady had sustained a knock down. Their Tartan 30 had survived intact, but the rogue wave smashed in their dodger, and ripped free their emergency supplies capsule and the spare fuel and water jugs. And as though their life raft had considered the situation life threatening, it had wrenched free of its mounts and inflated itself. When Ned went outside he found the raft being towed astern by its long painter, ready for boarding.

According to Ned, fortunately both he and Mary Lynn were belowdecks when without warning the wave had hurled the sloop into the air and tossed it onto its beam ends. Ned happened to be dining from a can of red beets, which of course splattered the walls, curtains and ceiling. Items flew from shelves, out of cupboards, and even up from beneath the disjointed floorboards. Assorted containers of foodstuffs opened, and the contents spewed forth as if seasoning the disarray. A portion of the onerous wave had forced its way inside, soaking their belongings - strewn from stem to stern - in an admixture of sea water, bilge water, and no doubt a hint of beet juice. Onto all this Ned tossed their deflated life raft.

Several days after the misadventure, when the seas had slackened and the two of them had managed to rectify their disordered home, Mary Lynn adamantly informed her husband that, "I'm going to sail around the world with you only once!"

Ned reported the seas were subsiding. Nevertheless, his descriptions of the knock down did little to encourage the departures of those of us who lay safely at Cocos. Moreover, our locally strong winds and blustery conditions only reinforced the general incertitude. A partial joke had it that nearly a dozen yachts were for sale - cheap - for any buyers brave enough to come to Cocos Keeling and sail them away.

Jenny and I motored Suka across the wide lagoon to fill her fresh water tanks at West Island. As we were returning to Direction Island, Quark and Distant Star departed. Two days later, the first of September, Crypton departed in the company of the Texans, Jake and Nancy Claridge aboard their cutter Mestizo.

Suka stood ready to go, and for several days my mate had been anxious to quit this hiatus in our journey. In fact, she was almost to the point of cajoling me, but I remained irresolute, empty of resolve. Something inside me warned against setting out, and for two days I battled a premonition of impending doom. I could not reason with it, and was so full to the brim with a sensation of foreboding that I was almost sick with dread. Finally it occurred to me that I was wrestling, not a portent, but fear itself: good-for-nothing fear. Omne ignotum pro magnifico - everything unknown is (taken as) grand.

That afternoon we weighed and nearly rammed Mam'selle, when Suka's reverse gear failed to engage. In view of dreadful events to befall Gordon, my sinking his ferrocement boat here probably would have saved his life, but of course this is 20/20 hindsight (See page 93). I managed to steer clear, and at last Suka sailed out of Port Refuge and deftly came to grips with the ill-disposed realm of big seas driven by the boisterous, 25 knot trades. We were on our way.