Uncategorized – The Pilots of the Caribbean

2020: The Year that Wasn’t

We left Alter in Preveza, Greece in October 2019 with the firm belief that we would return six months later. We travelled to Haiti to replenish our coffers flying on contract for the local airline, Sunrise Airways. We have both come to love Haiti but flying for Sunrise was not the ideal farewell. Cap Haïtien was our only destination. It is only 25 minutes flying time from Port-au-Prince, and our schedule of up to eight sectors a day was unrelenting. We spent most of our time off in our apartment staring at the opposite wall, trying to find the energy or inclination to do anything else. When we did find the energy, we visited old friends and explored some of the sights that we had previously missed, including one of Port-au-Prince’s iconic Gingerbread Houses: a post-colonial mansion that was built at the turn of the last century.

Then Covid-19 happened. SARS and MERS had both come and gone with little damage and, at the time, COVID didn’t appear to be much different.

We returned to the UK in February at the start of the global pandemic and a world that was inexorably changing. We had booked a short skiing holiday in Valtournenche, in the Aosta Valley. We hadn’t skied for two years and were keen to get back on the slopes. But before we left, while we were staying with Nicky’s sister in Wales, the pandemic began to swell. It flooded the province of Lombardy in Italy and seeped from there via the surrounding provinces into the rest of the country. We considered cancelling. But decided to go ahead and boarded the flight to Turin as planned. On arrival, we joined a long queue that snaked towards a cluster of medical staff who checked everyone’s temperatures and collected contact forms. The Italians were riding Europe’s first wave and were paddling furiously, trying to stay ahead of its curling tip and prevent their winter holiday season from drowning. Most skiers had chosen to stay home leaving the towns of Valtournenche and Cervinia bereft, with many restaurants closed and a curfew that brought an eerie calm to the evening streets. Residents were in shock, their hopes fading like mountain mist. Some stopped us in the streets to thank us for coming.

When the ski slopes closed we went snowshoeing.

On Sunday 8 March, the ski lifts operated at reduced capacity, with blocked-off seats and social distancing in the queues. Then, when it was clear that the wave was really a tsunami, the Italians finally did what they had been desperately trying to avoid, they closed the slopes.

EasyJet cancelled our return flight to the UK on the morning of our departure and muttered vague promises of evacuation flights from Milan, the epidemic’s epicentre. We declined and took the last flight out of Turin on Ryanair, who continued to honour their published schedule. At Stanstead we were greeted by empty hand sanitiser dispensers. Nobody seemed vaguely interested that we were coming from the heart of the pandemic. It was a strong indication that Britain had rolled up its trousers to its knees, pulled a knotted handkerchief firmly down over its head and was preparing to paddle into the wave without a lifejacket.

I left for South Africa shortly afterwards to start a two-month contract flying in the DRC and Nicky returned to Wales. In a world where plans were fast becoming meaningless, Nicky intended returning to Greece to go hiking in Corfu before we met up at the boat in May.

But Covid had a schedule that didn’t involve us. Countries began to close their borders and lock down their citizens. I reached Kalemie in the DRC the day before the Congo closed its borders and cancelled all internal flights, leaving me without much flying to do. I settled in for an indefinite stay. Nicky’s planned hike became impossible, so she moved into her sister’s Airbnb to wait out the pandemic.

My two-month contract stretched three and then four. It was eventually four and a half months before a new crew could replace me. With no flights between South Africa and the UK, or anywhere else, getting back to Nicky in the UK was a challenge. Fortunately, my boss agreed to drop me off in Lusaka and the Zambians let me remain in transit – without going through the mandatory 14 days quarantine – while I waited for an Ethiopian Airlines flight to London, via Addis Ababa.

Post-apocalyptic empty walkways at Heathrow.

During the four months, Nicky had decided that we needed a more permanent home, somewhere that we could always go to in times of crisis. The boat was supposed to be our home, but neither of us could get there. She wanted something more tangible. South Africa was too remote and neither of us wanted to return there permanently, so we decided to take advantage of the Brexit withdrawal agreement and move to Europe. But where?

Our first instinct was Spain. We flew to Granada to spend some time there and see if we liked it. We landed in Malaga and joined a crush of people choking the passageway to the arrival hall. Most were wearing masks, but I’ve seen more social distancing at a Rod Stewart concert.

The crush of people that greeted us in Malaga.

Grenada greeted us with temperatures in the forties and mandatory mask-wearing indoors and out. It was a bit like walking about in a large sauna with a shopping bag over your head, so we often escaped to the coast or drove up into the mountains, where it was a few degrees cooler.

We both loved Granada, and very nearly made an offer on an apartment in nearby Salobreña. But after a month it didn’t feel like home. More importantly, it felt like it might never be.

So, after making a list of all the places that we might want to live: France, Italy, Greece and just about anywhere in the world apart from Chad or North Korea, we decided to move to France. It was already August and under Article 34, we had to be resident and make an application to stay before the end of the year. There wasn’t a lot of time to spare.

We rented an apartment in Carcassonne, a city on the Canal du Midi that we had visited a couple of times previously. Properties closer to the coast tend to be more expensive and we didn’t want to be too far from the sea. After Nicky had examined every property for sale in a five-hundred-kilometre radius, we found a village house that, for me, was a coup de foudre. It wasn’t perfect for Nicky, with little outside space. But other than that it was exactly what we were looking for: somewhere small that we could lock up and leave whenever we wanted to without the property beginning to deteriorate the moment that we locked the door.

Perhaps the best part of the deal was that we bought it from an English couple who had renovated another property three doors down and would therefore be our neighbours.

Having Paul and Tan there to show us around and introduce us to our other neighbours made our transplant almost painless. We quickly discovered that we had a lot more in common and have become firm friends.

And then, finally, in July 2021, Covid restrictions began to ease. By then France had vaccinated us and we were able to consider returning to Greece and the boat.

Winter Refit

Buying the boat was a bit like getting married and then being separated before the consummation. We’d spent years searching for her before becoming acquainted, making a commitment and spending a chunk of our savings on her. And the day after we met her for the first time, we abandoned her in Marseilles with a promise to return two months later. There was no honeymoon. There wasn’t even a wedding night.

She is an Ovni 435 and her name is Alter. We’d considered changing her name, but the two options that we wanted, Nomad or Nomade (French) were already taken, so we decided to keep her as Alter. Patrice, the previous owner had chosen the name because of its Latin roots, which mean “the other (of the two).” He meant it to invoke the idea of an alternate or different lifestyle, something that we, and many sailors, also hanker after.

We used the months before our return to make lists of exactly what it was that we wanted in the way of repairs and renovations. Theoretically there wasn’t anything to do. She had recently returned from a twelve-year circumnavigation, Patrice had spent months sprucing her up for the sale, touching up the paint, cleaning, and doing many of the little jobs that are often overlooked at sea.

But there is always something to do on a boat. She was twelve years old and, with age comes wrinkles. All the taps and water fittings had succumbed to verdigris and needed replacing. The anti-fouling had to be redone, anodes needed changing, the countertop around the sink was damaged; we wanted to fit fans, a gas alarm, an isolation transformer, replace the stern gland and we had our eyes set on a feathering propeller, to give us an extra knot underway and help with maneuvering in close quarters. The list grew longer by the hour.

The stove was original, and still worked, but we coveted another. In our endless trolling of sailing magazine articles and drooling over the latest equipment, we’d read countless reviews. Yachting Monthly had done a comparison of some of the popular marine stoves and one stood head-and-shoulders above the rest. They could all boil a kettle, or heat up a pressure cooker, but few had acceptable ovens. All but one were awful at making toast, either burning the edges while leaving the middle unscathed or not managing to burn anything at all. We’d set our sights, and a chunk of our budget, on the GN Espace Levante (a British product, despite the name). In the test it was the only one that produced perfect toast, but also demonstrated its consistent heating by baking a batch of shortbread. It was twice the price of any of the others, but we thought it a price worth paying. It joined the growing list.

When December arrived, instead of packing the skiing gear and heading for St. Anton, we filled our suitcases with working clothes and our sailing gear that had been in storage since the sale of Amajuba, our previous boat, and headed for Marseilles.

We’d chosen an airbnb in the town of L’Estaque for our base. It was only about two kilometers from Port Corbières, where Alter had been waiting patiently for our return.

Before we could start work, we had to go shopping for tools and other essentials for the boat. The list seemed infinite. Although Patrice had left us his full spares inventory, there was still a lot we needed, and wanted to make the boat our own. We began our quest at the massive Leroy Merlin up the road, where we started to amass a collection of tools. We also needed taps, shower fittings, hoses, clamps, stainless steel screw, nuts and bolts, straps, glue, paint brushes, overalls, gloves, masks and a plethora of other items.

Our first task was to complete an inventory of everything on board The lazarette lockers yielded an Aladdin’s cave of treasures. They are so voluminous that it took three months to discover a third gas bottle at the bottom of a locker. And once the inventory was done, we measured everything to make sure that the new taps would fit, the pots and pans we wanted were not too big for the cupboards and other details like the exact size of the work surface to ensure that the chopping board would fit.

Nicky had hunted for bicycles online and found exactly what we needed. We both enjoy mountain biking but there was not enough room for full-size mountain bikes on Alter. Most sailors who have bikes settle for the foldable ones with small wheels. Although they are adequate for getting to the shops, they are not suitable for long rides off-road. So, Nicky found a folding mountain bike, made by Montague, with 26-inch wheels that was designed for paratroopers. We located a dealer in France who had two of the correct size in stock. They were the first of our orders to arrive.

They were relatively expensive, and we were concerned that they might not be all that we hoped for, or that they might not fit in our equipment room, but they turned out to be perfect. They gave us mobility around the boatyard, particularly for trips to the nearest loo, which was about a kilometer away.

We tackled one of the most challenging tasks first. The soundproofing in the engine compartment was looking tatty. Its black covering was peeling off making a mess of the engine. We had ordered a lead-lined commercially spec’d material to replace it. When soundproofing is fitted to a boat, it is done before the engine is installed and there is consequently room to do the job. Removing the engine was not an option, so we were left with a crowded space that had very little clearance between the engine and the sides. Behind the engine, access was through a small hatch in the aft cabins. It was a job for a non-claustrophobic contortionist.

We pulled out all the old soundproofing and then set about ticking off all the other tasks while we waited for the new material to arrive. I had decided, perhaps a little optimistically, that we would be able to do all the work ourselves, but as some of the more challenging jobs approached, I began to have my doubts.

The first task that exceeded our confidence was the isolation transformer. For a start, it was twice as big and four times heavier than I imagined. I designed and made the mount, which is probably so over-engineered that it will be there long after the boat has ceased to exist. But when it came to the wiring, I chickened out. I realised that the consequences of making a mistake could be catastrophic.

The washing machine proved tricky too. I imagined botching the mounts only to have the entire thing ripping itself off the bulkhead in a heavy sea. I put my tail firmly between my legs again and we arranged to have it done by the local boatyard. It didn’t go as smoothly as we hoped.

Our new skew washing machine waiting for its new façade.

The mounting was very strong, but the machine was not straight. Nicky has an eye for detail, but even my forgiving eye could see the slant. And then when the cupboard door went back on, the opening was too small to open the washing machine door. Unfortunately, we were not there when they rectified that problem. Let’s just say that when Nicky and I saw their solution for the first time, we were horrified.

So, the cupboard had to be removed and we found a carpenter to fit a new façade.

While this was going on, it was winter in Marseilles. Most of the boatyard was closed and we lived our little world, layered against the biting wind. Our hands split from the cold and stung from the turpentine and spirits that found its way into the cracks. Our backs ached from wedging ourselves into lockers to fit anti-slip mats, from lying flat on the cabin sole to clean out the water tanks and from wedging ourselves upside down into cupboards to fit conduits or to reach water fittings.

Fitting the new taps and the water filter.

We worked ten hours a day every day, returning to our little apartment shattered and fulfilled. Each day meant a little more done and a little less to do. By the end of January, the bulk of the work had been done, but the list still stretched to the horizon.

We went back on contract for two months to help pay the bills, and returned to the boat at the beginning of April. We intended to launch in the middle of the month. The stove and propeller had yet to be delivered and there was a mountain of work still to do. Nothing went smoothly. The propeller was not going to arrive before our launch, so we drove to Fréjus to collect it. DHL managed to get the stove as far as their depot near the airport, but all their promises to deliver to the boatyard were false and we had to collect that too. And a week before we were due to launch, we found that the radar wasn’t working.

Our online shopping was waiting for us when we returned to France.

It transpired that it had been hit by lightning at some stage and the PC board had to be replaced. All of this was made more complicated by the fact that Nicky’s and my French, is normally limited to ordering meals and exchanging pleasantries. Our learning curve soared when we began discussing the intricacies of radar, installations of AC systems and debating the problems of running a business under the weight of the French tax system with people whose English was no better than our French.

The launch date slipped while we waited for parts for the radar and sought help to get the propeller installed. Our efforts had been thwarted when the old one refused to budge. (We subsequently added our own blowtorch to remove reticent screws.)

On the day before the original launch date, we went shopping, because the rental car was due back. As with many other things, it was a last-minute adventure. We were still filling our trollies when the store security began herding us to the exit. Nicky piloted two overladen trollies while I ran back and forth, scooping stuff off the shelves, avoiding the security guards, trying to get the last few things on the list.

The following morning we returned the rental car and moved out of our apartment and into the boat. It was almost a relief because it meant that there would be no more quick trips to Leroy Merlin or lightning expeditions to Ikea.

Living in a boat on the hard stand is a little like living in the second story of a caravan. We couldn’t use the water system, nowhere for it to drain to, or the toilet. Dish washing was done under a nearby tap and the toilet and showers were still a bike ride away, making it just a little inconvenient when the call came in the middle of the night: head torch, ladder, unlock the bike, pedal, loo, pedal, lock, ladder and back to bed.

Getting to work was easier though. After we had cleaned the hull with a borrowed pressure washer, Nicky got the short straw and started painting the first of four coats of black anti-foul while I changed all the anodes and epoxied the rudder.

We set a new launch date for the 30^th April and, despite it being two weeks later than planned, the deadline came at us like a runaway freight train. The isolation transformer was hooked up, the propeller and stern gland fitted and the radar repaired all within days of launch.

The new four-blade Maxprop feathering propeller.

And then, with one day to go, everything was done. We arranged to have the boat lifted into the slings the following night so that we could paint the last patches of anti foul where the pads that had held the boat in place had covered the hull.

We spent the time in a bit of a daze, tidying, securing, and not daring to believe that we would soon be in the water and on our way. But we were two weeks behind schedule and that meant that our leisurely cruise down the coast towards Antibes was merely a dream. We had to cross to Corsica as soon as possible in order to get to Marina Balistrate in Sicily. Our flight to Wales for our nephew’s christening was only three weeks away.

Lake Kivu

When the UN contract in Haiti came to an end a little over a year ago, we headed to Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo to fly for Monusco, the UN Peacekeeping Mission that has been trying to separate Congo’s warring factions for the last twenty years.

Our job is the same; the destinations are different. Instead of Port-au-Prince, Cap Hatïen and Santo Domingo, we shuttle to Kalemi, Kisangani, and Entebbe in Uganda. Occasionally we fly to Beni, about two hundred kilometres north of here, where sporadic attacks by an Islamic militia hamper international efforts to contain the Ebola outbreak.

Coming into land with Mount Nyiragongo in the background.

Goma huddles up against Gisenyi in Rwanda, on the shore of Lake Kivu. To the north, Mount Nyiragongo, an active volcano, smokes ominously, a constant reminder of the 2002 eruption that drove a swathe of molten lava through Goma and into the lake.

The city is five-thousand feet above sea level. Daily downpours in the rainy season wash away the film of sulfurous ash and keep the air cool. When the sun dips toward the horizon, it dapples the clouds crimson and the mountains guarding the edges of the lake fade to purple.

One of the best places to watch the sunset is from the bar of Hotel Linda. Fishing boats venture out for the evening catch: three boats tied together side-by-side with long poles protruding from their flanks, like the antennae of an enormous insect. It’s a tranquil scene, but danger lurks under the still surface of the lake.

You’d think that a volcano, armed rebels and the threat of Ebola would be enough for one region. But the three of them are dwarfed by the biggest danger of all, the lake itself.
Lake Kivu is part of the Rift Valley that tries to cleave the eastern third of Africa from the rest of the continent. The lake has an average depth of eight hundred feet, and a surface area of one thousand square miles.

Brackish springs deep within the lake release water rich in carbon dioxide. Because the water is saline, it’s heavier than the fresh water above, so it stays at the bottom. Pressures of over forty atmospheres ensure that the carbon dioxide remains dissolved in the water. In some places the bacteria that live at the bottom of the lake feed on the carbon dioxide, turning it into methane.
To the south-east, near the Rwandan shore, there’s a white structure that looks a bit like an oil rig. Rwanda is extracting methane from the water for power production. But the volume of methane is increasing faster than it is being used, and the water can only hold so much methane. When the pressure of the gas equals the pressure of the water, the dissolved gas will bubble and surge to the surface, forming a toxic blanket, displacing all the oxygen.
In 1986 something similar happened to Lake Nyos in Cameroon. The lake released a large cloud of carbon dioxide from its depths, suffocating almost two thousand people, and more than three-thousand cattle. Lake Nyos is a fraction of the size of Lake Kivu.
There, a solution was found to prevent it from happening again. Vents were installed to allow the gas to bubble out of the lake at a controlled rate. But a similar project for Lake Kivu might run into tens of millions of dollars, money that the Congo and Rwanda don’t have to spare.
A major disturbance, like a volcanic eruption, might trigger an overturn, with all the gas effervescing out at once, possibly causing a tsunami.

As in 2002, the volcanic eruption would send people fleeing to the lake shore. Those that avoid the lava, and don’t drown, will be suffocated in a gigantic gas cloud. Two million people might die.
Fortunately, it only happens every thousand years, or so. But the last overturn was about a thousand years ago. It’s almost due for another one. Scientists predict that the next overturn will only happen towards the end of this century… or when the volcano erupts. And nobody’s quite sure when that’s going to happen.

Haiti

The alarm went off at two the following morning for our our five fifty-three flight to Port-au-Prince. We made our way, bleary-eyed, to the airport and found ourselves in a sleepy departures hall with all the shops firmly shuttered and not a cappuccino in sight. With Hurricane Matthew making its way steadily through the Caribbean, we checked the weather channels to see if it would make landfall in Haiti. It was veering towards Haiti’s south-western peninsula and was expected to arrive within forty-eight hours. We began to wonder if we would get there before the airport closed. But boarding commenced on schedule and we were soon on our way.

I had an aisle seat and Nicky was in the middle, so when we started our descent, there wasn’t much for us to see. I craned to get a view of the island, but could only glimpse patches of green, white and blues: the indigo of the Caribbean and the lighter blue of the sky. Reassured that the hurricane hadn’t arrived, I retreated to my book.

We touched down just before nine and emerged into a tropical clammy heat that felt like West Africa.

Neither the airport buildings nor the arrivals hall dispelled the notion that we might be in Africa. But the posters advertising Caribbean beach resorts just north of the capital gave away our real location. We were met by the base manager, Patrick and driver Sanley, who drove with a nonchalance that belied both the traffic and the state of the roads.

Dusty, garbage strewn roads with potholes that stretched all the way across and beyond provided a battleground for a helter skelter of cars, taptaps and motorbikes that weaved in amongst each other in seemingly random trajectories.

Port-au-Prince hugs the foothills of Kenscoff, the cloud-shrouded mountain that overlooks the city, and hugs them hard. Its many foothills are precipitous, growing in stature and steepness as they near the mountain, turning the twelve-kilometre journey from the airport to the crew house into a thirty-minute rollercoaster ride.

In its place was a voluminous six-bedroom house, situated in Belvil, a gated suburb, and one of the sanctuaries where wealthier Haitians, and UN staff, retreat from the mayhem. It seemed deserted, its doors ajar to take advantage of the breeze. We were shown up to our room, where we dropped off our luggage before exploring our new home.

Despite the obvious lack of a swimming pool, it was more than we’d ever expected from a crew house. Apart from the six bedrooms, there were two lounges, one with a television and the other on a lower level. The kitchen was a good size and seemed well equipped, if a little dated. When I had a closer look at the four-burner gas stove, I let out an involuntary shiver. It was wretched. The sort of wretchedness that eventually accumulates when something hasn’t seen a scourer since it was born: last century sometime.

The rest was typical of a crew house: stale food in the cupboards, bottles of water stacked haphazardly outside an empty cupboard in one corner and dirty dishes in the sink. In contrast, the garden was beautiful with a profusion of tropical flowers and a scattering of coconut palms. In one corner, a vine covered pergola looked like a good spot for Sunday lunch.

‘Where are the other crew?’ I asked Patrick.

‘In their rooms.’

Nicky and I looked at each other. ‘Here?’

Patrick looked at me strangely. ‘Yes.’

‘But it seems so quiet.’

Patrick shrugged.

One emerged a few hours later. He seemed to by a nice guy, but he soon retreated to the darkness of his room. The other didn’t emerge from his bat cave until the following day.

So once we had unpacked, with no-one to talk to, Nicky and I rolled up our sleeves, boiled up some water, dug out all the cleaning stuff that we could find and began the long and arduous process of dismantling the stove piece by piece and giving it the first thorough cleaning of its life.

By the time we put the kettle on, our first day in paradise was drawing to a close. And Matthew had yet to make landfall.

Sold

fs6b8726 Only when we had accepted our new job and resigned from our old, did we begin to absorb the reality of our decision. Nicky hardly slept for the first two weeks; first from excitement, then from fear. Shortly before we were offered the job in Haiti, she had learned that she had a benign tumour that was growing and needed to come out. Nicky is not good with general anaesthetic. The first time she was wheeled into an operating theatre, she had a look on her face that I’ve only seen on one other occasion: it was the same look I’d seen on my father’s face the last time I saw him. Somehow, he knew he’d never see me again. Nicky’s surgery went well, but she was on light duty for six weeks afterwards.

Mercifully, it took only three weeks to sell the house. During that time, it transformed from a home into a show house, ready at a moment’s notice to welcome a prospective buyer. Living in a house that has nothing out of place, with all the surfaces (including the desk in my study) neat and uncluttered, is not something I want to do again. But Nicky’s attention to detail and Precious (our housekeeper’s) diligence worked. Prospective buyers fell in love with our house and before long we had accepted an offer. Then began the task of sorting through two lifetimes worth of possessions and deciding what not to keep.

I am a hoarder by nature, keeping any little thing that might one day be useful. Getting rid of most of it proved a challenge. Nicky is much more practical about material things. Her standard question became, “Have you used it in the last six months?” If the answer was “No,” the offending item was added to the growing pile of items to be sold, given away or discarded.

fs6b8709 Slowly the house began to empty; the books went first. A house without books is a desolate place; but the sight of empty bookshelves helped a little towards breaking our connection with our home.

Nicky’s car, Florence, was delivered to her new home; mine was sold to a friend. Bank accounts were streamlined, debit orders and subscriptions cancelled, visas obtained, vaccinations administered, boxes packed, Land Rover loads full of stuff moved into storage and currency was ordered. Meanwhile, Nicky was nearly recovered and Precious and I were knackered.

But it was only when the sign outside the house changed from ‘For Sale’ to ‘Sold,’ that the enormity of it all finally hit us. We were living in someone else’s dream house. We told ourselves that it wasn’t the same without the dogs, that we would find another house somewhere in France and make it our own. It was a refrain that we would often repeat, like the chorus of a lament.

In the days before our departure, we had to prepare for, and pass, a flight test on an aircraft that we hadn’t flown much in the previous twelve years, find the time to say goodbye to our friends and organise all the last little things that, no matter how hard one tries, are never completely organised.

fs6b8714 On the last day of the month we closed our suitcases, threw the final orphaned odds and sods into a plastic bag to be stored with understanding friends, said a tearful goodbye to Precious, who was off to her new job, and drove to the airport for the long flight to New York and on to Port-au-Prince.

In all the commotion, it hadn’t passed our attention that something called Matthew was brewing in the Caribbean, but we hadn’t had much time to digest its implication.

For Sale

When Ricky left a message for us to call him. We knew something was up. We took a deep breath and set off for Tasha’s, where we ordered cappuccinos to steady our nerves.

He didn’t disappoint. He had just signed a contract to provide an aircraft for MINUSTAH, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti. He wanted us to go as the crew because he knew that, as a couple, we were prepared to be away for longer than most pilots. Air tickets between Haiti and South Africa are expensive, so he wanted us to go for five months at a time, with two months off to follow. We countered with four on and two off. Ricky agreed. He wanted us to leave almost immediately, but we had to give three months notice to Comair, so we settled for a start date of the 1^st October.

Bubbling with excitement we headed for the iStore to look at upgrading our computers for the new job. I’m not prone to verbosity, preferring to keep my counsel most of the time. Nicky is normally the extrovert, splashing her 7,000 words about generously and even using some of mine. But suddenly I felt the need to use my daily allocation of 2,000 words all at once. The poor salesman probably didn’t want to know anything about us and I’m sure he didn’t care. But when I let him have the full 2,000 words about our new job in Haiti, how excited we were, and what a huge adventure it would be, he took it on the chin, played along and shook up a cocktail of enthrallment, even though we left empty handed.

A few days later we went in to work to hand in our resignations. They knew why we were there – we hadn’t kept our intentions secret. Between us, Nicky and I had been with the company for almost twenty years and it was not without the occasional lip wobble that we handed in our notice to the Chief Pilot and fielded questions from the curious corridor lurkers.

They say the most stressful things in life are losing a family member, changing jobs, moving house and getting a divorce. We’d just lost Max, resigned from our jobs and were about to put the house on the market. We clung to the hope that the stress from the first three wouldn’t lead to the stress of the fourth.

The Blizzard

About a week after Max died, we escaped to the Lowveld, where we stayed at Ashbourne Lodge, owned by Rob and Dawne Topham. Rob is a gregarious guy and reminded us both of Carlo, our larger-than-life ex-boss. When we told Rob of our desire to jump off the hamster wheel, he gave us an allegory that has stayed with us.

‘Most people,’ he said, ‘spend their lives sitting in front of a warm fire with a glass of red wine. They are comfortable, secure and content, unaware of the blizzard outside. Every now and then one of them gets up from the fire and opens the door. Some come straight back. But those that do venture out, when they return frostbitten and draggled, have the most incredible stories to tell.

It’s tough,’ he continued, ‘to get up, pull on warm clothing and step away from the security and comfort of the fire. It might end up in failure, but it’s worth the risk.’

And so when Ricky called, we knew that we had to step out into our blizzard. When I emailed Rob to tell him, he replied:

‘Fantastic. Collars upturned, balaclavas on, huskies tethered….then get ready for the first person to say, “Hell, you guys are so lucky!” Well done. Now…UN Peacekeeping! Nicky…long skirt, leather sandals, burn your bra, and don’t wash your hair until Michaelmas. Brady….bell bottom denims and a ‘Ban the Bomb’ pendant! Please send a photo when you have your kit appropriately assembled.’

I’ll post the photo when I find a pair of bellbottoms!

Adventure

We found our perfect boat at the Southampton Boat Show. We were visiting Nicky’s sister in Portsmouth and, by chance, saw posters for the show. After some optimistic tire-kicking at the Discovery and Oyster stands, we stumbled across the Allures 45, an aluminum yacht from the French Garcia yard. It was love at first sight. She was everything that we

wanted, but at a price we couldn’t contemplate. A boat is more like a car than a house; it starts to depreciate as soon as it gets wet for the first time. So, although we could afford it, we couldn’t. And it ruined us for all the other boats that we looked at. We began to shift our expectations.

What Coyote had kindled, we realized, was not necessarily a desire to sail around the world, but a yearning for adventure. In our dreams, the yacht was more a means of getting from one place to the next than an end in itself. Another worry was that while we were saving for our dream, the rand was falling faster than a greased bowling ball down a mineshaft. Our real earnings were decreasing and expenses rising. If we didn’t change something soon, we might never be able to buy the yacht. Even more frightening was the possibility that we might succumb to some arbitrary disease, get hijacked, run over by a taxi or, horror of horrors, wake up one day to find that retirement was looming and we had never even tried to set sail.

So, at the beginning of this year we began to cast our nets. The first efforts were tentative: we talked to our old boss (or his son who had taken over when Carlo succumbed to cancer). He had a prospect, but nothing came of it. It was after we returned from our skiing holiday in Austria in March that we were motivated to increase our efforts.

Airline rosters, these days, are designed to sweat the assets – necessarily so because of the current economic climate. The trouble was that we were the assets. In the four weeks after our return, I flew one hundred hours, the maximum legally allowed, and spent twelve nights away from home. It was the last straw. I was exhausted, living to work instead of working to live.

Max was still with us then, so our efforts were muted, scared we might find a job we couldn’t refuse, but had to. Then one night Max had a seizure; and two days later another. When they started getting closer together, we took him for an MRI and found that he had a lesion on his brain. The vet said that we could manage his condition, but that the seizures would continue and he would most likely develop stomach ulcers from the medication. He was already pushing sixteen, so we made the impossible decision to let him go. We were devastated.

d1010015 Three weeks later, we were still rudderless without Max, unable to accept the freedom that his passing had bequeathed us. Then Carlo’s son Ricky phoned us with an offer we had no reason to refuse.

Home

But we weren’t going anywhere, for a while anyway. We had two dogs: Bella, a Lesser Dane who more than made up for her la max-and-bella ck of stature with her outsized personality, and Max, a pit bull, or a boxer, or a bit of both with something else thrown in. We have no offspring of our own, but Max and Bella were our children, canine perhaps, but undoubtedly children. As much as we yearned for adventure, we could never leave them behind.

So we took a practical approach. If we wanted to sail the world, we thought, learning to sail might be a good start. Then there was the little matter of my crippling seasickness. Nicky suggested that I do a sailing course to test the water, so to speak. It went very well until a night exit from Durban harbor found me downstairs wrestling with a harness. After I managed to subdue it, I emerged from the companionway and promptly threw up.

We decided to buy a learning boat anyway; we weren’t going to let a little regurgitation get in the way. Our learning curve was more of a learning cliff. We had so many mishaps on our first few outings that we were convinced that Sea Rescue were put on standby every time we slipped the mooring lines.

But learn we did, enough to rent a yacht in Greece and sail the Aegean for two weeks unsupervised Aegina 2012 . That holiday convinced both of us that we were making the right decision.

But when would we go? The kids were getting older, approaching their natural demise. Would we be ready?

Cruising is all about money – or the lack of it. There is no magic number, no right amount. Some people go with little more than the boat they own and enough to buy their first meal, relying on their resourcefulness to get by. We weren’t that brave. For others, no amount is enough; they spend their live
s pursuing the elusive ‘right amount’ and never set sail. Those who did have the balls to go always seemed to regret only one thing: that they hadn’t left sooner.

We spent a good deal of time trawling for the right cruising boat, dreaming of sailing out of Port Elizabeth and turning right, past Cape Recife and into the blue.

Before we knew it, Bella was gone. She had made it to twelve, a nonagenarian of a Great Dane. Max helped to fill the void, but we were heart-broken. Our airline roster beat time away like a metronome on speed. Suddenly Max was fifteen, and we started looking guiltily towards the horizon.

Into the Wild

If it weren’t for Coyote, none of this might have happened. We met him at Ponta do Ouro in Mozambique, where he had tied up for a while to work as a diving instructor. Coyote was about forty then, and had, since he was a teenager, only stayed in one place as long as his visa allowed. Coyote had enough skills to make himself needed wherever he went. He had worked on crab boats, oyster boats and many other things that float. His ambition was to save enough money to buy a catamaran and sail it to the Andaman Sea. There he would charter the boat to discerning divers and live the life of Reilly.

We weren’t exactly couch potatoes. We used our spare time to the full, skiing once a year, diving at every opportunity and travelling the world when we could afford it. And neither of us were tied to desks. Our office was the flight deck of a 737, flying for a regional airline. But there was no escaping suburbia; no avoiding the daily grind to and from work, dodging Johannesburg’s taxis that barge and shove like nightclub bouncers.

It was over some fajitas and a pot of re-refried beans that everything changed. He sensed our interest, knew of a boat in Nosey Bey in Madagascar. It was an epiphany, not quite like the one on the road to Damascus, but still an epiphany. We didn’t buy that boat, but for the first time in a long time we looked beyond the horizon.