My Best Mistake

I was wrong.  There, I said it!  

I made a mistake, and it’s had profound implications on our life choices.    

But when I discovered last year that one of the major reasons for me wanting to sail around the world was based on a mistake I made when I was 16, I couldn’t have been happier.

You see, one of my favourite parts of our new lifestyle is the strong sense of community that exists between fellow sailors, particularly those who are long-term cruising.

Part of it is the coming together of like-minded souls, of course.  When you leave behind the normal trappings of day-to-day society (jobs, mortgages, commuting stress etc), you’ve immediately created a major difference between yourself and your friends and family.  And it’s only natural then that you’ll automatically have something significant in common with the other long-term cruisers you come across.  

Plus of course, you’ve not just left a lifestyle behind, you’ve actively chosen a new lifestyle, and that’s giving you plenty of common ground too.

But there are other factors at play also, not least of which is need.  You really need to create a connection with your fellow cruisers, for both practical and emotional reasons.

On a practical level, you’re going to need help from other cruisers as you make your way around the world. They say that long-term cruising is just fixing things in exotic places.  And in our case, so far, there’s been more of the fixing, and less of the exotic! 

But that’s OK, it’s par for the course.  

A small part of the engine bay: Visible are alternators, Inverter, Fuel pump, Fresh water pump, Cooling system, Hot water system, Bilge pumps, Sump, Oil Extractor and much much more. Every single one of these systems has gone on the blink in the last 12 months alone. And this is only a tiny fraction of the systems on board.

Boats are in a constant state of entropy, based largely on the harshness of the marine environment, but also on the sheer number of systems we have on board.  Whether it’s our power generation (wind generator, solar panels, diesel generator, engine alternators), our plumbing (fresh water pumps, salt water pumps, toilets), our propulsion (engines, sails), our deck hardware (anchors, windlasses) - and the list goes on and on – there are literally hundreds of independent, complex systems, with thousands of components, all just waiting to fail at any moment.  And fail they do.

Now when you’re in Sydney, or Brisbane, or somewhere else in the First World, all you need to do is find a competent tradesperson, and a supplier of parts, and have deep pockets of course, and you’re on your way.   Sure, things will usually always take longer and cost more than you want to get fixed.  But get fixed they do.

When you’re anchored in a bay in some godforsaken island in the middle of the Indian Ocean though, and a pump fails, or your sails rip, it’s a different story entirely.  

In an ideal world, your extensive spare parts inventory will have exactly what you need.  But Murphy is never happier than when he’s on a boat, and so of course, you’ll have carried all the spare parts you could ever think of for your engine, apart from the very one that’s gone on the blink in the middle of nowhere.

And even if you have the part, do you really have the expertise to diagnose and repair it?  

So you jump in your dinghy, and head over to the neighbouring boats to introduce yourself, and ask if, by any chance, they happen to have a spare whadjamacallit on board, and lo and behold, often they do.  

Not only will they be happy to offer it to you, often they’ll insist on coming back with you to help install it.  In exchange, you offer them copious amounts of beer, of course, and payment for the part (some of which can be worth thousands of dollars).  But most of the time they’ll refuse payment, and instead ask you to order a replacement part to be mailed to their next destination.  The beer always gets a yes, naturally. 

If you’re smart, you’ll also order one of those parts for yourself, and add that to your inventory, knowing full well that now you’ve bought it, you’ll never need it again. But at least you can now pay it forward, when some other poor soul finds themself in the same predicament.

The emotional need is very real too, of course.  Jen and I love each other more today than ever before, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather spend the next 6 years cooped up with in a tiny space.  But you need a social outlet or you’ll go stir crazy. There’s only so many times Jen can pretend not to have heard my stories before.  And after the thousandth time saying “Ooh, look, a dolphin!” it’s likely to cease being much of a talking point.

Most cruisers follow a similar route around the world, driven largely by the prevailing trade winds making it easier to sail in some directions than others.  So it’s not at all uncommon to sail into an anchorage in Mauritius (for example) and see three boats that you last saw in Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka months or even years before.  

The relationships that you form are surrogates for the those you’ve left behind, but can often develop into just as deep a bond, forged over thousands of miles, destinations and common experiences.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve known about this aspect of cruising, and proactively looked forward to it as one of the real highlights of our impending trip.

This knowledge has come in part from the extensive reading I’ve done over the years, but also from an especially formative experience I had as a teenager.

I learned to sail with my dad, when I was 14 and he was in his early 40’s.  After 6 months of lessons, Dad bought a 28-foot boat, and the following year, we went on a 2-3 week cruise on the West Coast of Scotland.

The Crinan Canal on a sunny day (there’s not many of them)

It was a wonderful experience, as father and son forged a close bond, brought together by our “Boy’s Own” adventure navigating the sometimes treacherous waters of the Inner Hebrides, and dodging the inevitably fickle Scottish weather.  We navigated our way through strong currents, thick fog, intense rain, (very) occasional sun, and even working our way through the beautiful Crinan Canal, which involved lots of hard labour opening and closing lock gates in the rain.

And although we got along famously, I remember with particular fondness the occasion when, having worked our way through the canal and arrived at Crinan, we anchored in the bay around the corner, got in the dinghy and made our way across the bay to have a drink with a fellow cruiser who was anchored nearby.

I was only 16, so no doubt I was drinking a Coke, but I remember Dad sharing a few whiskeys with this like minded fellow, and swapping stories about our respective journeys long into the night, before we jumped back in the dinghy and rowed back to our floating “home”.

It was the epitome of the cruising lifestyle, and right there, I got the bug.  Something that has built inside me for 30 years, until now, when we are finally out there, doing it for ourselves.

And as we’ve prepared ourselves over the last few years, I’ve leaned on this experience often, and regularly found myself introducing ourselves to strangers on neighbouring boats in and around Sydney.  

Often, it’s simply been a case of wanting some more company, or because we’ve recognised that the boat in question was a world cruiser and we wanted to pick their brains.  And occasionally, it’s been because we were in need of a spare part or some help fixing something.  

I’ve told the story of my experience in Crinan to Jen many times, mostly to reassure her that approaching these strangers was perfectly normal – although Jen is pretty sociable, she was somewhat dubious about the etiquette of just rocking up with some beers in the dinghy, and inviting ourselves on board.  But we’ve almost always received the warmest of welcomes, and made some great friendships along the way.

It was a poignant moment, then, when Jen and I flew to Scotland last year to spend some quality time with Mum and Dad, and we found ourselves retracing some of the steps that Dad and I took on that inaugural cruise three decades ago.

We stood on the shore of that very same bay in Crinan, me, Jen and Dad, and I told Dad of the profound effect that that visit to the neighbouring boat had made on me, thirty years ago.

Dad looked at me blankly. “What are you talking about?” he asked. I reminded him of our passage through the Crinan Canal, how exhausted, tired and wet we were, and how we’d rowed across to the stranger and shared a few drinks.  

He looked at me like I was mad.  “That was Cully, our next door neighbour from back home, and I ‘d arranged to meet him there” he said, incredulously.

“Oh”!