The Long Hitch Home Read online

  Every year one of the world’s most difficult yacht races, The Sydney to Hobart, sets off, as its name suggests, from Australia’s most populous and renowned city, Sydney, for Hobart, 630 nautical miles away across the treacherous waters of the Bass Strait. It begins the day after Christmas with most competitors arriving in time to enjoy the New Year celebrations in Tasmania—although many fly back immediately after arriving to celebrate in Sydney instead. With more competitors sailing to Tassie than back to Sydney, I decided to try to hitch a ride on one of the sparsely-crewed yachts heading to the mainland after the race.

  The alarm clock rang in the bedroom I was sharing with Emily at her family home, heralding the New Year with a ghastly electronic shriek, rousing me as if I’d been prodded awake by needles. I groaned, hit the snooze button, and closed my sluggish hangover-heavy eyes. In what seemed like seconds it was tormenting me again. I turned it off. Could I really be bothered to get up and traipse around the marina first thing in the morning? If I wanted a yacht though, I had to get cracking. Looking over at Emily, whose curly locks spilled over the downy pillows, I snuggled in for a final departing hug, her warmth and beauty tempting me to stay.

  Minutes later I was driving away from the forested slopes of Mt. Wellington, down through empty tree-lined streets, past Victorian and Georgian properties dripping in character, towards the city center’s waterfront heart, Sullivan’s Cove—the landing site used by the British when founding the city in 1804. Located here is the main marina, Constitution Dock, where a flotilla of racing yachts was berthed, their gently swaying masts visible from afar. I left the car by a small park and began strolling toward them past a cobblestoned area of former Georgian sandstone warehouses, once used to store grain, whale oil and wool, now converted into galleries, cafés, craft shops, pubs, and restaurants. From the marina itself ran multiple piers where row upon row of racing yachts were berthed. These ranged in size, modernity and value, reflecting the different racing divisions—and wallet size of the owners. It was a beautiful sunny morning, making for a dazzling display of light on the water’s surface. Skipping across the marina was a cooling salty breeze, creating a symphony of pinging sounds from the yachts’ taught halyard lines that blew against the hollow aluminum masts along which they ran. Accompanying this were the lonely cries of gulls overhead, the fluttering of official race flags, and the faint lapping chop of the ocean against the yachts’ brilliant white hulls.

  As I gazed at the myriad vessels, an agitated excitement enveloped me; a euphoric realization that this could be it: if I found a place on a yacht then my hitchhiking adventure would begin. Once more I would enter that sacred realm where I feel most complete—being on the move. Already the torpidity of London was fading from my spirit. But logically speaking I didn’t feel too optimistic of getting a ride. After all, the place was awash with world-class yachtsmen, whereas I had practically no experience, having done but a basic sailing course some eight years earlier and next to no sailing since. There was no shortage of yachts to ask though. It was a numbers game, I figured. If I asked enough people, then I’d be in with a chance.

  Despite it being New Year’s Day, a surprising number of people were up and about, tinkering with their yachts, displaying no sign of being worse for wear from a heavy session the night before. Strolling down the pier I approached a man on the first yacht to my left.

  “Excuse me,” I said, with a buoyant smile, “I don’t suppose you’re looking for crew for the return leg to Sydney?”

  “No, we’re from Tassie. We’re not sailing back.”

  I thanked him and moved on to the next yacht where a bronze-skinned, white-haired man in his sixties was pottering about on board a sleek medium-sized yacht.

  I greeted the yachty, and asked if he was looking for crew to sail back to Sydney.

  He looked me up and down.

  “Yes.”

  Bloody hell. I hadn’t been expecting a positive response from the second vessel I approached. His matter-of-fact reply left me stumped, and I paused, tongue-tied for a second, struggling for a coherent response. He came to my assistance.

  “Have you sailed before, and more importantly do you get seasick?”

  I proceeded to exaggerate my previous experience and assured him that I didn’t get seasick. This was untrue. On the first day of my sailing course I’d spent a good while throwing up over the side. I wouldn’t be letting that inconvenient truth throw a wrench in the works. After all, my sickness hadn’t lasted more than a couple of hours, so I hoped I’d be okay this time. I’d need to be. It was a four to five day sail to Sydney and we could be in for some exceptionally rough seas. The previous Monday had seen winds of fifty knots hammering the yachts as they made their way to Hobart. The going had been so rough that even veteran wave rider and seven-time world surfing champion Layne Beachley, who was crewing on board a one hundred foot supermaxi, came down with such severe seasickness that she was confined to her bunk from the first day of the race until the last. I hoped I wasn’t asking for more than I could handle.

  “We leave in an hour and a half from the Sandy Bay Yacht Club after the winners’ presentation. Can you make it there in time?” asked my potential skipper.

  I hadn’t been expecting this either, having assumed that no one would actually set sail today. I figured most people would head back some time after New Year’s Day, giving me plenty of time to pack and say goodbye to Emily, whom I wouldn’t be seeing now for several months. But I wasn’t about to turn down what seemed like a tremendous stroke of luck, so I gave a resounding, “Yes.”

  After the briefest of introductions—his name was Tony, and the yacht’s, named in honor of his wife, Eleni—I bade my new skipper goodbye for now and turned on my heels to make a hasty trip back to get packed and say my farewells.

  Tony called out after me.

  “If you’re not there in time we’ll leave without you.”

  My heart pounded in my chest as I ran to the car. In my excitement I fumbled with the door lock, dropping the keys on the sidewalk. I struggled to find the right one and then had similar panic-induced difficulties with the ignition. I floored it all the way back to Emily’s, the car’s tires letting out a screech on the hot asphalt as they came to an abrupt stop outside her home. I was in a real hurry, but instead of rushing inside, I sat still for several seconds, let my heart settle and gathered my thoughts. An excited smile crept across my face—I was about to sail over six hundred nautical miles across a stretch of notoriously difficult ocean and start my hitchhike back to England.

  The good times were about to begin!

  Emily was still curled up asleep when I arrived, wrapped in the fluffy duvet which she had rearranged so that it was around her head like a huge shawl, leaving only the round of her face visible. I smiled at her tenderly, then gently rocked my sleeping beauty to consciousness, her big blue eyes looking up at me through the sea of covers.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news, darling.”

  She guessed. “You leave today.”

  “In about,” I checked my watch, “an hour and fifteen minutes.”

  In what is without doubt the quickest and least thought-out packing I’ve ever done for such a vast trip, I threw everything I had taken with me to Australia into my backpack, stuffing it down with brute force. There was far more than I needed, or had intended to take on the journey back, having planned for Emily to carry superfluous items on the plane with her. There was no time for this now. It all had to come, essential or not. I’d work out what could be offloaded later. After a brief, though fond, farewell to Emily’s family, we jumped back in the car and headed for the yacht club in nearby Sandy Bay.

  The place was packed in readiness for the official winners’ presentation. The competitors were all seated at a patio area outside the main clubhouse with views across the marina, where a small purpose-made stage had been erected for the event.

  Taking a seat behind some media cameramen covering the action, we settled in with a c
ooling drink to watch the proceedings, sheltering beneath a parasol from the now-roasting sun. It was only when Tony was presented with an award—a wooden plaque with a cross-section of a yacht—that I realized he’d won his race division. Photos followed of him and his winning crew posing with the trophy.

  When proceedings came to a close, we approached Tony, who introduced us to the crew. Other than Tony, only one of the racers, Albert, a twenty-one year-old engineering student from Sydney, was returning to the mainland on the yacht. The rest of the original crew were flying. The new team that I’d be joining consisted of Steve, a burly and bearded sea dog in his forties from Brisbane, and Jessica, a blonde Swedish girl in her thirties, currently living in Tasmania.

  Minutes later I was being shown onto my floating home for the next few days by Albert, while Emily waited on the pier. She looked upset. After stowing my backpack down below I went up to console her.

  “Don’t worry Ems, I’ll be home before you know it.”

  There was no time to chat, and so with some tender parting words and a warm last embrace, we said goodbye.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Departing in Style

  The sail out of Hobart takes you through the vast sheltered estuary of the Derwent River, which gradually widens past oyster-clad rocky coves, sandy beaches and picturesque penguin-populated islands, on its way to the cold treacherous waters of the Tasman Sea beyond.

  Less than twenty minutes sailing and already Hobart was disappearing from sight, with the towering summit of Mt. Wellington now my final visual reminder of the city. Steve passed around a huge container of sunscreen while Tony, currently manning the yacht’s huge blue helm wheel, gave us the low-down on the coming day’s routine.

  “We’ll be sailing in rotating shifts of three hours; Albert and Steve on one, Jessica and Jamie on another, with me fluctuating between the two as necessary. You’ll either do a single night shift from midnight until 3 a.m., or a double from 9 p.m. until midnight, and then 3 a.m. until 6 a.m.”

  This meant we’d be getting no more than three hours sleep at a time. I was still pretty tired from last night’s session on the sauce and this morning’s early start, so hoped I’d get the single shift.

  “Jessica and Jamie are on the double tonight.”

  Shit.

  Before reaching the Tasman Sea we put on waterproof jackets, and Tony handed around seasickness tablets in readiness for the bumpy ride to come. It was just as well. When we rounded the final headland and hit open ocean, conditions changed dramatically. Huge dark swells appeared from nowhere, lunging the yacht up and down. No longer sheltered from the wind, the sails took the strain, with the yacht heeling to one side.

  “Pull in the main sheet,” shouted Tony.

  To capitalize on its propelling effect we hardened up the main sail further, hauling on its chunky line, then locking it in place on a tighter angle to sail closer to the wind. Explosions of water erupted against the hull as we sliced into oncoming freight train waves, covering us with spray as the wind lashed our faces.

  To our immediate left, rising vertically from the ocean floor were the beginnings of some of the most striking coastline in all Australia—the fortress-like cliffs of the Tasman Peninsula, some reaching a thousand feet. Many of the ominous gray rock formations that make up the cliffs resemble chimneys, and have acquired appropriate monikers: organ pipes, fluted cliffs, totem poles. The waves smashed against their unyielding bases, creating bursts of brilliant white.

  Further up the coast the towering cliffs flanked the entrance to a bay that led to an infamous former penal colony, Port Arthur. For the convicts transported here from Britain, glimpsing the forbidding surroundings of their final destination for the first time must have been terrifying. They were sent to the end of the world from which they knew return would be all but impossible. 2

  By late afternoon Jessica took a turn for the worse and was sick over the side of the yacht. Despite feeling sorry for her, I couldn’t help but be pleasantly surprised with my own lack of sickness so far. It was to prove short-lived.

  In the interests of staying alert and awake on my first night shift, I decided to heed Tony’s advice and get my head down for a couple of hours before it commenced, and so shuffled into one of two narrow sleeping sections at the stern of the yacht. With a low roof just above the bed, it was a tight fit, although not uncomfortable, and came complete with a thin mattress enclosed by a netted section that prevented you from falling out due to the yacht’s steep angle and frequent bumps.

  In what seemed like minutes, but was actually a hiatus of a couple of hours, I felt someone tugging at my foot.

  “You’re on in ten minutes,” said Albert, who clambered back on deck.

  Crawling out of my little den, I stood as best I could in the cabin, holding onto the railing of the stairs to steady myself as the yacht lurched violently back and forth. Putting on the waterproof jacket, pants, boots, and gloves that Tony had supplied me with took the best part of ten minutes to achieve. I knew from experience that the longer you spent below deck in an upright position the more likely you were to get seasick, and so from now on I decided to sleep fully clothed in my waterproofs. By the time I emerged into the cool evening air and clipped my chunky safety harness to a big metal ring on deck I was feeling queasy. With my arrival, Steve and Albert headed below to sleep. Jessica was already on deck and looked like she was feeling better after grabbing some sleep in one of the other bunks. She sat perched on the elevated side of the yacht, angled out of the water by the wind’s force on the sails. I clambered up to join her while Tony manned the helm.

  Being summertime it was still light, although by now there was a low golden sun. I stared at the glowing cliffs in an attempt to take my mind off feeling nauseated. The thing was, I didn’t want to admit to myself that I was downright seasick. The moment I did, I knew there would be no return. But with the churning seas showing no signs of abating, and having no option to lie down, it didn’t seem likely the feeling would subside. As day slipped to night and true darkness enveloped our world, I began to feel progressively worse, the turbulent motion building inside of me until I could take no more. In an act of defeat, I stumbled to the other side of the yacht closest to the water and began retching into the sea. I continued until my stomach had nothing left to give. An overriding desire to lie down saturated my consciousness. The first opportunity was hours away, and if conditions got no better, I had at least four more days of this to go. Not that I was wholly downcast. A colorless image of the tedium of my existence in London flashed before me—I might be feeling sick now but at least I was feeling something.

  The second shift of the night followed a similar pattern to the first with the sickness only departing when, exhausted, I finally crawled into bed at its end.

  I awoke the next morning for my 9 a.m. shift to far calmer seas and a stronger constitution. Sticking my head up on deck, I was greeted by a gentle and renewing breeze playing its way across the idyllic surroundings of one of Tasmania’s most iconic and photographed locations, Wineglass Bay. This stunning bay curved, as its name suggests, into the graceful arc of a wine glass, and was framed behind by undulating green hills, thick with bushland and dotted with the occasional rugged boulder. Along the shore stretched the whitest sands, lapped by waters the color of unblemished turquoise. It was the most idyllic spot to have woken to, and the perfect place to stop off for breakfast.

  “Who wants a cup of tea?” asked Jessica to all on deck, before heading down to get the kettle going on the yacht’s nifty little stove. We had a leisurely breakfast of small individual boxes of cereal, eaten direct from the packet, which we poured milk into to save on washing up. The sailing was pretty easy going for most of the day, with much calmer waters than the one before, and it wasn’t long before the final rocky headland of Tasmania was disappearing behind us and we were sailing into the “paddock” of the Bass Strait—a notorious open stretch of water separating Tasmania from mainland Australia. Despite i
ts reputation, we were lucky and encountered propitious weather, so much so that we hoisted the yacht’s huge billowing yellow spinnaker sail—apparently an uncommon thing to do because of the high winds endemic in the area.

  For the rest of the day we saw no land or other vessels, bestowing a liberating feeling of the desolate, as if the outside world had ceased to exist, accompanied only by a jellyfish drifting idly by, or a sea-bird gliding overhead.

  When night arrived, Jessica and I took it in turns handling the helm across the expanse of darkness. We were treated to some of the most magnificent stars I’ve ever seen, a layered drape of dazzling complexity and awe, whose intensity seemed to burn holes in the cold charcoal-black atmosphere. Every so often the glorious silver arrow of a shooting star would streak across the firmament, its tail lingering for a split second in the wake of the matter disintegrating into flashes at its head. And my spirit would soar.

  Jessica and I chatted for most of our nocturnal shift, and even discovered we’d both taken salsa lessons—something Emily had cajoled me into of late—from the same person, “Super Mario, the million moves man,” but on different sides of the planet. Jessica was extremely keen on salsa and even ran her own dance parties in Hobart. Literature was another common ground of interest, with Jessica considering writing a book, a fiction of some sort, although sadly she hadn’t worked out much beyond this. It was an enjoyable shift, made all the more so by knowing that it was, for us at least, the only one of the night, and when it came to an end we would sleep until dawn.

  By early morning the landmass of the world’s largest island, and the only island that is also a continent, was apparent, not by sight but by smell. I’m not suggesting that mainland Australians stink—although there are probably plenty of Tasmanians who would subscribe to this—but rather that the distinct aroma of bushland and forest drifted across the water a good hour before the continent itself came into view, appearing on the horizon amid a vivid sunrise of orange and angry pink.