Nancy Knudsen - Shooting Stars and Flying Fish. Swapping the Boardroom for the Seven Seas

The quotation from Tim Winton on p. 270 is from his novel Breath (Penguin Australia, 2009).

The quotation from Lonely Planet on pp. 18990 is from the Lonely Planet Guide to Mediterranean Europe (Duncan Garwood, Lonely Planet, 2007).

First published in 2011

Copyright Nancy Knudsen 2011

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Dedicated to the countless people we met in Third World countries, for their warmth and generosity, for their wisdom and grace, and for teaching me so much about what matters in the world.

One night when I was ten years old, I sat on a dark beach with my mother, waiting for the moon to appear out of the sea.

Watch carefully, she said. If you see a shooting star, you can make a wish; but if you then see a flying fish, your wish is sure to come true.

CONTENTS

Before the departure

Sydney to Darwin

Ashmore Reef, Christmas Island and Cocos Keeling to the Maldives

Addu Atoll

The Maldives to India

Oman to Eritrea

Eritrea to the Sudan

Egypt and the Suez Canal to the Mediterranean

Israel to Turkey

Istanbul

The Greek Islands, Crete and Malta to Tunisia

Gibraltar to Graciosa Island

The Canary Islands to the mid-Atlantic

Mid-Atlantic to St Lucia

The Windward Islands

Trinidad and Venezuela to Colombia

The San Blas

The Panama Canal

Into the Pacific

The Galapagos

The Galapagos to the Marquesas

French Polynesia

The Cook Islands

Tonga to Fiji

Vanuatu

Vanuatu to Bundaberg

To Sydney

The awakening

C racking, banging, crunching sounds slip into my dreams and Im instantly awake. Ive become used to waking at the slightest unusual sound but this is different, worse, like nothing I have heard before.

Ted and I catapult out of bed and up on the deck into the wind and darkness.

Theres more loud, regular crunching. Fleeting thought: Is that the dinghy hitting the side? No, weve hit something ... stab of pain in the stomach... The reef! Were on the reef.

I realise its my voice coming from somewhere.

The noise is now deafening. Theres a large swell and our yacht is hitting the bottom of each trough with a crashing noise that vibrates through the whole boat. Ted rushes for the engine and it roars into life; were up and away. The crunching has stopped; were free. I start to breathe. Now, quickly get the anchor up ...

But then the engine stops again. Ted starts it. It catches, runs, then fails. The boat is bucking and swaying in the swell, and I realise were drifting backwards again. No! Stop it somehow. Stop it!

Ted keeps starting the engine but fails each time.

Then were at it again; ugly, fracturing grinding.

My God, were going to lose the boat! Ted shouts as the milliseconds stretch into slow motion and his words echo round and round in my head. Were barely eight months into our voyage around the world. This cant be happening... weve only reached the Maldives!

Before the departure

O ne leisurely weekend in January 1996, Ted and I were sheltering from the heat in our small sailing boat in one of our favourite shadowed anchorages in Broken Bay, just north of Sydney. It must have been the middle of the day because the silence was broken only by the shrill of cicadas. I still remember tiny details: ochre leaves floating, insects flitting, two kites soaring high above us, hills rising steeply in the background, and no other boats in sight.

We were reading in the cockpit or at least we were meant to be reading. I was actually watching the way the kites flew, wafting in an unseen breeze as they hunted for prey. A moment came when I glanced across at Ted, my husband and best buddy, and was surprised by what I saw: his face unlined, brow clear, eyes less pinched than usual. He wasnt smiling, but his mouth was relaxed. I kept watching him, warmed by the thought that he seemed, for now, serene and happy. Slowly, he turned a page. I could tell by the heading that he was beginning a new chapter.

Something happened to me with the turning of that page. Teds expression of peace as he started the new chapter shifted something within me. I turned back to my own book, but I couldnt concentrate.

We could stay on the boat, I said softly into the silence.

Ted looked up. What? Did you say something?

I laughed. You never listen. I said that we could live on the boat. We dont have to live in a house.

Which boat?

The one wed be living on.

Live on a boat? Youve got to be kidding. Boats are tough things to live on. For a start, where would you put all your business suits?

Rush of blood to the head. Youre laughing at me. You like boats better than houses; I like boats better than houses. Defensive. Who says we have to live in a house?

You couldnt live on a boat.

What do you mean? Of course I could live on a boat. Id love it.

You work twelve bloody hours a day, six and often seven days a week. Youd never see it in daylight.

Well Id enjoy coming home to a boat at night. And what about the weekends?

He stared at me for a second and then grinned. Right. If you want to come sailing you have to take time off from the company and come cruising with me. For a whole year.

Cruising? Youre a racing sailor. You dont know anything about cruising.

Sure I do. You just put down an anchor every now and then.

Ted, the first time we went for a picnic cruise together we had to keep sailing all day because you couldnt even find the anchor, I said scathingly.

This mischievous denigration of each other had always been a feature of our relationship, a relationship distinguished by laughter. What neither of us noticed at the time was that we had started to argue about whether we were capable of sailing away from our daily life, not whether we would go at all. Maybe I didnt think then that I really would take time off from my company, didnt think that life as I knew it would even let me do that. But a tiny seed had been sown.