Young Man and the Sea

It was close to 3 in the morning when it suddenly hit me. Actually hit me. Fairly and squarely in the face. Like a wet fish, because it was a wet fish, with wings on it. If you’re hit in the face with a wet fish in the black of night way out in the south china sea and no ones there to laugh do you make a noise? I’m not sure on the protocol. All I could think of saying was ‘oh’, and sat down to shine a torch at the little fella flapping about by my feet. I mean you got to hand it to him, he’d come a good 30 foot or so, right over the bow, down the full length of the boat and I dare say he might have made it off the stern and back into the water too if my face hadn’t got in the way. He had to be just as surprised as me by the whole thing I guess. I mean one minute you’re flying gracefully through the air, content in the knowledge you’ve successfully evaded some preditor or other, the next you’re on a sail boat bound for Singapore and your wings have stopped working. Dems the breaks I spose.

Koh Samui to Singapore was going to take six days straight with no stopping, and since there were only two of us on board there wasn’t much chance of me pulling my usual sailing trick of holding some random rope, looking busy, cracking a beer and stareing into the middle distance. Actually that’s not entirely true; our shift patterns meant that Ashley the Skipper and I were rarely awake at the same time so I had quite a lot of freedom to absent mindedly look to the middle distance, except in sailing parlance we call it ‘on look out’. “Hold your course and whatever you do don’t sail into another boat or an island or anything” were my instructions on my first night shift as Ashley went down to bed. It was, I don’t mind admitting, a rather edgy few hours; ‘Please God don’t let me sink this lovely, shiny, expensive yacht on my first shift. Ok, ok, focus, focus, any lights? Do we see any lights? Anywhere? Behind us? No? nothing. Nothing at all…..hours pass….is that a light? Could be, no, no it’s a star…am I thinking this or saying it?’ When I did finally see a light on the horizon I locked on, got me compass out, took a bearing, licked finger and held aloft, and waited, poised, to see if evasive action was required. And waited, and waited. Nearly an hour later we passed the fishing boat to port side, narrowly missing it by about four nautical miles or so. My next night shift I brought up a book and a head torch.

The highlight for me was the 5:00am – 8:00am shift, strange as it may sound. The sunrise is not something I’ve often been priviledged enough to observe, what with having been afflicted with acute lazyness from an early age, but when you’re on your own in the middle of nowhere with a 360 horizon and she rears her head over the sea its enough to knock your socks off I tell thee. ‘Your missing the best part of the day’ I heard my mums voice come through the duvet of time as at 8:01am I collapse face down into my bunk.

Singapore, when it came, came full on. The Singapore straights is the 2nd busiest shipping lane in the world apparently and I can quite believe it, s’kinda like a oil tanker motorway. We hit it at around midnight with the skyscrapers of downtown sparkling in the distance. ‘Lights, lights, omg lights everywhere, we’re surrounded, what are we going to do?!’ Luckily Ashley didn’t trust me anywhere near enough to allow me to have any responsibility other than tea making during our passage through it. Shrewd judge of character that Ashley.

Quite a lot like ‘Lost in Translation’ I kept thinking as I walked round mall after mall of Prada and Gucci, Channel and Versace. With me playing the role of the dry, witty, sardonic Bill Murray character at once confused, perplexed and amused by all he sees and Singapore playing the role of the Asian uber city chasing its tail to keep up with its own image of the western values of commerce and hyperreality. Its quite a police state really; undemocratic, civil liberties coming pretty far down the list, just under ‘make money and keep schdum’. You know even chewing gum and oral sex are illegal in Singapore. (Individually I mean, getting caught doing both at once doesn’t bear thinking about!) Well my rebellious streak’s a mile wild and I don’t know if it was the enhanced illicit nature or what but I never enjoyed a Juicy Fruit so much.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Sasquia the Dutch maritime lawyer hooked me up with a job crewing on a dive boat on Tioman island off the Malaysian coast and I’ve been there ever since. I fill scuba tanks, pull ropes what need pulling and mix fantastic rum cocktails and in return I get taught how to endanger my life in new and exciting ways underwater. I’ve not worn shoes for weeks and I shower only rarely. These are the good times.