Casting Off (3 page)

Then from nowhere a white man, even sweatier than I was and wearing only a pair of shorts, appeared and grinned from me to the guard and back again. It was Steve and apparently I was in the
right place.

In the first half a second of seeing him in the flesh for the first time, two words flashed into my mind so clearly it was as if someone had shouted them.
Small! Bald!
I almost
flinched. Next came
Ugly!
So much for Jane’s theory that me and this shiny, half-naked sailor man were going to live happily ever after.
Never in a million years
, I thought,
awkwardly accepting his welcoming hug. When he pulled back I could see bewilderment in his face as he looked at me. No doubt he was summing me up as
Sweaty! Dirty! Wearing a freakishly large
amount of clothes!

When I was a kid, I loved the Sweet Valley High books. One or two pages into each story, author Francine Pascal would describe what the protagonists looked like. In every book – and there
were a lot of them – the description was exactly the same, down to the barrettes Elizabeth wore in her hair and the fact that Jessica, during a rebellious phase, had painted her bedroom
chocolate brown. No doubt the author reasoned that including a detailed description of appearance and characteristics would help her readers picture the twins in their minds. I’m going to
borrow a leaf from Ms Pascal’s book here.

Steve was English, in his forties and about 5 feet 5 inches tall. What little dark hair that remained on his head was clipped right back to his skull. His tan emphasised the blueness of his
eyes, which were fringed with black lashes that had been bleached blond at the tips by the sun. He had an angular, Roman nose and thin lips almost the same shade as his skin. Unusually for a
cruiser he was clean-shaven. His body was small and wiry and curiously hairless. A tattooed lizard crawled up his right shoulder blade. He mainly wore only short shorts without underpants
underneath. I came to know this because sometimes a ball would pop out if he sat with his legs splayed. His fingernails usually had a black rim around them from tinkering with the engine.

He’d had a traditional English middle-class upbringing: good school, university, job at an established company. Like many an early 90s bachelor before him, he’d driven a sports car
and had a succession of women. He’d sailed for years and had long harboured a dream of living on a boat in a beautiful tropical setting. Eventually he’d saved up enough money to do it
and he’d taken his girlfriend at the time along with him. But after a couple of years they’d split, she left and he stayed on the boat.

I have no idea what colour he painted his bedroom during his rebellious teenage years.

Steve took my rucksack and I followed him through the trees. Suddenly we were no longer in a farmyard but walking along a wooden pontoon, loading my bags into the dinghy and then climbing aboard
his yacht,
Kingdom
, which was anchored a little way off. I don’t know if it was nerves or jet lag but everything seemed to be moving in fast forward.

I followed him down the narrow companionway steps into the innards of the boat. It was boiling hot even though all the fans were on. And cramped. My bags seemed to be taking up all the room. I
turned round and round, not knowing what to do with myself. The confidence I’d felt in London had totally vanished.

‘Drink?’ Steve asked.

‘Yes please. What do you have?’

‘Everything.’ Which actually meant not much, unless I wanted alcohol. I took an orange juice and then, because I was so hot, another one, and somehow started to feel guilty. Steve
was nervously pacing around the boat moving things. Neither of us really knew what to do or say. Maybe a beer or at least vodka in my orange would have been a good idea, I thought. Bit of social
lubrication and all that.

I perched in silence on a blue sofa and looked around, feeling more and more uncomfortable. The interior was made of dark wood, like in many older boats, and that made the space feel even
smaller. To my left were the steps up to the deck; in the centre of the saloon was a large table and the mast, which had a flat screen TV bolted to it. There was another blue seat opposite me.
Cupboards lined two walls and washing was hanging from a line that had been strung up across the room, including a pair of extremely large faded jeans. They looked way too big to be Steve’s,
unless he’d lost an extraordinary amount of weight. Or possibly he just liked the baggy 1990s NKOTB look.

To my left, past one side of the stairs, was the galley, and to my right the forepeak cabin, which was a triangular sleeping platform with cupboards along each wall, and a bathroom. I could see
a shower curtain through the open door.

A tabby cat wandered into the saloon. ‘That’s Layla,’ Steve said. She stared at me with her yellow eyes and settled herself down on the top step. Cats bring out a kind of
broody instinct in me. Dogs I can’t deal with, but cats I like. I always say hello to any I come across in the street. Friends’ pets usually seek out my lap to sit on because they know
I’ll lavish them with attention. One day, a few decades down the line, I imagine the neighbourhood kids will refer to me as ‘the mad cat lady’.

I decided it would be a good idea to make friends. ‘Hello, Layla,’ I crooned at her as I approached, right hand lifted ready to stroke her soft, stripy fur. No miaow in reply.
‘Don’t touch her bum or she’ll bite you,’ Steve advised. I stopped, my fingers inches above her back. I eyed Layla; Layla eyed me. She didn’t look friendly. At all. I
retreated and sat back down on the sofa, sans cat on my lap.

I fidgeted, waited and sweated in my jeans, watching Steve pick things up and put them down again. He seemed vacant, unable to concentrate on anything or finish his sentences.
Why am I
here?
I asked myself for the nth time.
This man is odd, borderline rude. Even his cat is standoffish. At the regatta I’ll have to meet other people and jump ship.
Not a good
start to my adventure. I took off my boots and socks, coat and cardigan, as much to have something to do as to cool down. Finally Steve broke off from his pottering to offer me a shower.

Although I was desperate to have a wash, it felt odd to shower while a stranger was nearby. While the door to the head (bathroom) did close after a lot of rearranging of the shower curtain, the
one for the cabin didn’t. I prayed my small travelling towel would not fall down while I rooted around in my bag for some clothes, painfully aware that I was in plain sight. Despite the cold
shower, the embarrassment and difficulty of trying to find underwear with one hand while the other clutched at the towel was making me hot again. The humidity in the bathroom while I dressed
didn’t help.

Steve showered after me and undressed with his back to me in the cabin, dropping his shorts on to the floor and stepping naked into the bathroom. I noticed he kept the door open, rather than
struggling to shut it. A few minutes later, he walked right past me in just a towel to his cabin at the back of the boat. Easy.
I’ll have to be less of a prude
, I thought.

When he came out he offered me a drink, ‘A proper one this time,’ and I accepted a beer. He finally sat down and we both relaxed. Steve said he wanted to set sail immediately for
Talang Talang, a turtle sanctuary island 50 or so miles away, so that I could wake up to my first morning in a really beautiful place. I got a crash course in sorting out the anchor chain to stop
it from tangling as it came up and then we were off. It was midnight and the hulk of the Gunung Santubong mountain was black against the night sky as we motored out of the river into a flat, calm
sea.

After a while, and another beer, the breeze came up enough for us to sail, so we did. We talked, laughed and drank our way through the night, the awkwardness between us diminishing as the hours
– and the alcohol – passed. Quickly it felt like we were great mates, with a shared sense of humour. We retold each other the stories of our lives that we’d already covered on
email. I learned that Steve was a very sensitive man who had had a clear plan about wanting to live on a yacht and travel. I got the impression that when, in England, he met the girlfriend
he’d later lived on the boat with, he’d found out early on whether she would be interested in a life aboard so that he could have a partner with him afloat. And he wanted that again,
very badly, I realised, as I listened to his tales of disastrous internet dates since. His choosing to sit close to me might also have given me a bit of a clue.

Now is the time to make it clear you’re not interested in him
, I told myself.
Tell him you like someone else. Give him the old ‘it’s not you, it’s me’
line. Anything. Just so everyone knows where they stand.
It would have been the smart thing to do. But, ever the ostrich, I merely shifted my body a few centimetres further away, tried to give
out ‘not interested’ signals and said absolutely nothing.

At some point, probably not long before dawn, I fell asleep in the cockpit and Steve fetched a blanket to cover me. When I woke, about 7am, we were approaching a tropical island: a steep-sided
peak covered in dense rainforest, a few palm trees further down leaning crazily sideways, two wooden houses on stilts and a raised golden sand beach and spit covered with what must have been turtle
tracks. I smiled to myself – this was more like it.

T
his was it – my adventure, my new beginning, my chance to change my life and take it in any direction I wanted to. It was really happening.
Sitting by myself on the deck, I felt one of those odd moments of pure happiness that had been all too lacking in my life recently, a swelling inside my chest that felt as if it could easily expand
beyond the confines of my ribs. I didn’t know this country, this boat or man but I did know that it felt natural just being there.

So far there was sun, there was a gorgeous yacht, a golden sunrise, tropical settings – and now there was yellow sea. That’s right, yellow. Strictly speaking, if this new life of
mine was going to live up to expectations, it should have been a beautiful blue sea. But it was yellow. Not in as disgusting a way that snow can be yellow, I’ll grant you, but yellow all the
same.

Steve and I had left the island with the turtle tracks early in the afternoon on a three-day passage to the town of Miri, where we would pick up our other crew for the approaching regatta. With
no wind, we had motored the whole way, offshore and mainly out of sight of land, without stopping, past oil rigs and into these vast patches of thick yellow water. At one spot the change in colour
was so obvious it formed a straight line on the surface.

‘I’ve never seen yellow sea before,’ I said. ‘Brown, maybe, off the east coast of England, but not yellow.’

‘It’s the palm oil companies,’ Steve said. ‘When they cut down the rainforest for their plantations, the soil gets washed into the rivers and then the seas.’

‘So when we get past the rivers the water will turn blue again?’ I asked.

‘Yes, it should do.’

‘Great.’ Back on perfect-adventure-setting track.

During the three-day passage we fell into a rough routine. We were both awake during the day, mainly motoring along because there was little wind. Steve would be downstairs doing ‘boat
jobs’ while I was on deck, keeping an eye on the autopilot and looking out for ships or big floating logs the size of entire trees that we really didn’t want to hit. Every now and then
Steve would stick his head up and declare it ‘a sailing breeze’ and the sails would come out and the noisy engine go off and we’d sail in blissful silence for a while until the
winds died and the engine had to come on again.

He taught me how to use the radar, how to trim the mainsail to get the best out of the light winds, to tell if one of the rare ships we saw was on a collision course. He was a very experienced
sailor and I was a little bit in awe of him and flattered that he felt confident enough in me to let me keep watch over his boat alone. At night, he’d get some rest while I stayed awake on
watch until 3am or 4am. Then I’d try to sleep but I was usually woken up by the heat and bright sunlight a couple of hours later so I’d invariably doze off in the afternoon as well.
Sleeping at odd times meant missing meals. If we were both awake one of us would cook something, which was a bit of a struggle as I’d forgotten to tell Steve I was a vegetarian before I
arrived and he had an aversion to most forms of carbohydrate, except beer.

‘What do you mean, you don’t eat rice?’ I asked, incredulous. ‘You live in Asia.’

‘I just don’t like the stodge. I need protein.’

As well as rice, his list of foods he didn’t like to eat much of included pasta and bread – basically the main parts of a vegetarian diet, apart from, obviously, vegetables. He loved
meat. Apparently we’d have to work out some recipes both of us could stomach, once we could get to the shops. The boat’s stocks were meat-heavy and so for the first two days, excepting
the tiny plane meals, I ate only one tortilla filled with pinto beans and cheese, a packet of three dry crackers and a salad made of raw cabbage, long-life feta and half an apple.
Good chance
to lose a few pounds, being as how I’ll be mainly living in a bikini
, was my first thought. It was swiftly replaced by painful, gnawing hunger.