Eventually, we arrived in Puerto Naos in the Canary Islands. Safe harbours, good anchorages, and easy access to shore were our priorities. We had been lonely, because we’d been off the usual sailing routes. The cruisers we did meet were all going into the Mediterranean.
Friends were made quickly and lost even quicker. But once we arrived in the Canary Islands, we were back with the bulk of world’s wanderers. One of the first friends we made was a Dutch couple, Dennis and Natasha, on the yacht
Frodo
. It was now February 2004.
The Dutch are incredibly resourceful, and Den and ‘Tash were true professionals of their race. But, it took us a little while to figure out where they were from. As we anchored next to them, Den was on deck and gave us a friendly wave. We had just been sailing, which meant we craved beer, wine, food and rest.
‘Fancy a beer later?’ Noel shouted over to Den. He gave a big thumbs up sign and an even bigger grin.
That’s the great thing about sailing: imagine pulling into a supermarket car park and calling over to a stranger, who is sitting in their car, and inviting them over for a drink; you’d be locked up, viewed as a lunatic. On a boat, however, this was considered perfectly normal.
Not long after, Den and ‘Tash came puttering over.
‘Welcome aboard,’ we said in unison, ‘come on down and have a beer. They’re not cold though. We don’t have a fridge.’ Den just grinned a massive toothy grin and ‘Tash politely said thanks, she’d have a drop of wine.
As I organised some biccies and dip in our galley, I looked at them both. With her blonde hair and fair skin, ‘Tash was obviously Dutch. However, Den had blond streaks, a deep tan, and an Australian accent.
‘So’, I said pointing at Tash, ‘You are obviously Dutch’ (the Dutch flag flapping on
Frodo
helped), ‘but where are you from? You sound Aussie,’ I said to Den’s enormous grin.
They explained that they had done much land travel, and most of the time they spent working, living, and exploring Australia. This was where they had learned English, hence the accent.
Quickly, we fell into a deep and rewarding friendship, and they would become an integral part of our lives for many years.
I had always wanted to be taught how to make bread. ‘It’s easy,’ said ‘Tash one day, shrugging her shoulders (it turned out that to ‘Tash
everything
was easy!). ‘I’ll show you,’ she said.
The following day, they puttered over, ‘Tash armed with bread making gear, Den armed with a spear gun. It’s here Noel is going to tell you of his adventures that day:
Dennis is a professional fisherman and is generally good at all things aquatic and can swim like a dolphin. All of which makes him somewhat of a burden, when we are not sitting in the cockpit having a beer and being sensible.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ he said, one morning. ‘Let’s go spear fishing; there’s a spot just over there that ‘Tash and I found, ‘s not bad, what ya reckon?’
What I reckoned was that a coffee and maybe a calm observance of the not yet completed sunrise would be a lot healthier. But you know how it is, one doesn’t want to appear too lazy and actually the sun had been up for hours. I was on my second coffee and a simple splash round the rocks seemed fairly reasonable. After all, I used to be quite good at it only thirty years ago. Heavens, where was that Scotch?
“The Spot,” turned out to be a mile down wind of our anchorage. As we were in our dingy without the motor for the return journey, I was already beginning to have my doubts.
‘Ah well, yes, okay we’ll go on, just round the corner you say?’ Mutter, mutter, stroke, stroke, waves are getting bigger. ‘Where is it again? How ‘bout you bail, and I’ll keep rowing. Better still, you row, I’ll bail… What’s that?, we’re here,’ pant, pant, ‘jolly good, piece of cake. I’ll walk home.’
We dragged the dinghy up the beach. I proceeded to sort my stuff out. Find flippers, snorkel, fit prescription sunglasses into goggles (so that I can at least see something), try to walk down beach with flippers and goggles on. Ignore laughing local brat’s gestures in my direction. I reckoned I would show this Dutch bastard. How do you hold this spear under water again? I think it’s better if I walk backwards.
What’s this then? Dennis was coming back? He already had a fish! I was still practicing my snorkel breathing!
Half an hour later, I’d speared a three-inch whale, while Den had added another three fish to the larder. He swam over.
‘Listen, there’s an octopus over here under a rock, if I go down and lift the rock, you can spear the critter.’ He then dove down fifteen feet and started heaving on this rock. I went down and started prodding. Ink came out from Octopus’s hidey hole. I swim back to the surface to breath. Aqualung man was still heaving on rock. I took a quick, frantic grasp and then dove back down to return to the fray.
Where’s Den? He must have gone to the top for air, arhh well I’ll do the deed. Jab, jab, I couldn’t see the critter for all this ink, but I was prepared to put on a good show. Jab, jab, shit I need air, shall return after a few hours on oxygen. ‘Never give up,’ is the Parry motto.
At the surface, I was met by the horse dentures of the grinning Dutchman.
‘Pass me some amphetamines and I’ll get the bludger. I’ve got him on the ropes. I reckon one more heroic dive and we’ll be eating like lords tonight.’ I shouted between gasps.
‘Before you do that,’ said Den, ‘can you get this off me? This thing’s giving me some gyp.’ The bastard lifted his hand to reveal the octopus wrapped round his arm with his tooth-like beak snapping at his arteries.
I was stunned. Apparently, while I was on my first search for air, the quarry had bolted twenty metres to another rock with Den in hot pursuit. With no spear, he only had his hands to grab the beast, and then he returned to the surface to have a laugh watching me doing the jab, jab bit. You just can’t trust some people.
We travelled through the islands of the Canaries and headed for the Cape Verdes. We started to get in the swing of on board life, which was a good job as the Atlantic Ocean was looming. I looked forward to a few weeks at sea, away from dreary constraints of land life.
All was well until dusk, when we were three hundred nautical miles from the Verdes.
THUD
. ‘What on earth was that?’ In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
Mariah
stopped dead in the water. A tingle of fear crept up our spines, the ocean around us bubbled crimson. Noel and I stared in disbelief. As the wind re-filled our sails, we slowly glided forward and watched as an enormous great whale turned to face us at our stern, his tail high in the air, flapping, agitated.
‘We’ve hit a whale, and it’s coming back for us!’ I cried. We’d heard a couple of horror stories of whales hitting back. Frantically, we checked the bilges, started the engine, and hit full throttle. It was the first time I had looked at our grab bag thoughtfully. Relief flooded the adrenaline as the whale vanished. We believe the impact mortally wounded the beautiful creature. We were shocked and saddened. We pulled in our trolling line and vowed to never fish ever again.
Luckily,
Mariah
was strong; there was no physical damage. Too easily this could have been fatal for
Mariah
. Every tap for the rest of the journey had us jumping out of our seats. We were glad to reach the Cape Verdes and finish that leg and put the incident behind us.
The Cape Verde Islands lie just over eight hundred nautical miles southwest of the Canary Islands, where by far the largest income was foreign aid. They didn’t have much there, except, maybe cholera.
We, in convoy with
Frod
o
decided to take enough food and water for a brief stop, and then gather ourselves together to traverse our biggest ocean yet: the Atlantic.
The Verdes was barren, poor, and quite bleak; however, lively, happy children brightened the landscape. Rowing ashore, we were bombarded with kids of various ages and sizes, asking us to be the one to keep a watch over our dinghy. For this they wanted twenty cents per day. We agreed to pay fifty cents. A tall, lanky lad got the responsibility of our dinghy, but he insisted on showing us where to purchase diesel in town. His Portuguese was too hard for us to understand, so he came with us, even though we were paying him to look after the dinghy! He helped us carry the diesel; of course this cost more, only cents, but it was all a bit strange.
Supplies were few and far between. Pens were like gold for the kids. I was almost trampled by the girls who saw I carried pens and pencils for gifts. One of the first little girls I gave one to took the pen as if it was made of silk, placed it in her palm, and literally gasped. My heart went out to them, and I planned to get back to
Mariah
and take every pen I could find to give them to all the girls on the island. However, I looked across to Noel and feared for his life. About fifty lads pawed at him, shouted, begged, and tugged at his clothes. He had loose change to hand out and the beach became a riot. He tried to be fair, but of course, as the larger change went he was left with small denominations. One boy came up to me with a look of despair; he showed me the twenty cents he had been given and I looked back at him, wondering what he meant. He violently threw the money on the floor in disgust. His actions infuriated me and I said, ‘Well, if you don’t want it, I’ll have it back,’ and I made to reach for it. He quickly snatched it back. What were we to do? We couldn’t give them everything we had. The girls around me had been so different: gentle, giggly girls, patiently waiting to see if they would receive a gift. The boys had been violent, tough, and a bit scary. I didn’t go back to shore with more pens.
We anchored at our last island, Sao Vicente and the capital town of Mindelo. It was here that we checked out. The other islands were so small and non bureaucratic, we could cruise between islands and not worry about officialdom. The HF radio was brilliant, because boats in front of us would give us the information we needed, where we could anchor, the laws of the land, and where to buy good supplies.
This island was a little more tourist-y, but for the more adventurous travellers. We met crew that had been dumped off by one boat and were stuck on this island. The story was odd, and we decided we were happy with just the two of us on board; we didn’t need to take a stranger who had been dumped by a captain.
‘Tash and I went ashore together to do the shopping. We left Noel and Den doing the last minute mechanical touch-ups before crossing two thousand miles of Atlantic Ocean.
As we had entered the last of the Verde Islands, our steering gear had stopped working. We had hand steered the last five miles into the anchorage. When we left the Cape Verdes, we were due to be in heavy winds for three weeks. The timing was incredible: if the steering gear had broken just ten miles later, we would have had to sail for three weeks, across the Atlantic, hand steering. It would have been too hard to turn around against the wind and waves. Imagine driving your car, at a slower speed perhaps, but for two weeks without stopping once, and just doing this with two people. To make a cup of tea or to have a pee, and just a walk around was necessary to enjoy and survive the trip. At sea the failure would be near impossible to fix and only then on a calm day. We thanked our lucky stars.
Tracking our supplies down was an interesting challenge. I chose the best fresh foods I could, the price for them was shown to me on a calculator (my Portuguese left a lot to be desired). I knew the prices were inflated; they always were for foreigners. They thought I was rich – if only they knew! Perhaps in comparison to them I was, however, my lifestyle was simple and cheap. We had no incoming bills. We bought gas and diesel when needed and purchased local foods. Noel and I worked when we could and lived with few luxuries – our lifestyle was the luxury.
Purchasing food in a local, foreign market was a bit like a badly scripted play. I played my normal role, but while viewing the price of my goods, I feigned shock, despair, with lots of shaking of the head. If this didn’t reduce the price, I handed back the shopping – this time I had to hand it back, pick out each item and ask its worth individually.
I was shown an inordinate price for some bananas, I put them back, and then the price came down. This occurred for every single item I had picked up. It was tedious, but I had become used to the charade. The final price was almost half the original, and I knew they had still over charged me.
I put away the groceries with a bionic effort to stow everything on board. I had to ensure that it would all stay put in the roughest of conditions. The murky depths hid the water line on Mariah, and I thought it would be a miracle if we made a decent speed.
The day of departure loomed, and I was anxious and fighting thoughts of,
Why am I doing this?
Later, after days of delay due to weather, I wanted to go. I was full of excitement for the challenge – which lied in endless views of sky and sea, and in bottomless depths that were unexplored by man – the great Atlantic Ocean.
For four years, I had lived on a wooden boat with my husband.
Mariah
was my home, and I loved her as if she were a living being. She moved as if she was alive, and after all this time on board, I could understand the old sea shanties of viewing material vessels as living things.
Thinking about the miles before us, I started to question our medical supplies – our first aid on board was more than lax. When I did my senior first aid certificate, my instructor made a joke that the bandages I kept after the course would probably double as our first aid kit. He was a little too near the truth. We didn’t tell too many people we were going around the world with a few band-aids and aspirin! We’d coped thus far, so I just chucked in some extra strong painkillers and resolved not to worry any more about it.
Dried food would be our staple diet again: pasta, lentils, pasta, rice, pasta, chickpeas, pasta… so powders and sauces that could alter these bland foods were stock-piled. Fresh foods, tried and tested for their longevity, were hunted down. Finding dense, heavy cabbages was a great coup. I stocked up on flour, eggs, and yeast for cooking bread and muffins once the packaged supply was gone. Tinned food by the tonne was pushed, shoved, and cajoled into any space available.