Casting Off (4 page)

Those three days were my introduction to the boat and how everything worked. I’d spent a reasonable amount of time on yachts by then and I knew to expect a run-through from the skipper on
the use of various equipment like radar, autopilot, the man-overboard system, which rope controls what, where the switches are for the navigation lights, and so on. On
Kingdom
there was a
fair bit more to the induction, especially where the saucepans were concerned:

‘The washing-up has to be done in a specific way,’ Steve said. ‘First wash with salt water, then rinse with a minimum of fresh. And remember which foot pump controls which
tap.’ I nodded. The list continued.

‘Always fasten doors open on their catches.’

‘No metal implements to be used in the saucepans.’

‘No hot saucepans to be placed on the work surface.’

‘Pans and lids are to be placed separately back into their original plastic wrapping after use and stacked in precise order inside each other before being returned to the
cupboard.’

‘On deck, handles stay in the winches but must point forwards at all times.’

‘All ropes must be folded into “elephant’s ears”.’

‘Everything on deck – cushions, dan buoy, spare fuel tank, even the barbecue, has recently been reupholstered in special weatherproof fabric. There is a second set of covers to go on
top of the cockpit cushions. These are not waterproof and must be removed in the event of rain.’

The rules seemed a bit anal to me but Steve always had a reason or a story behind them. If I ignored them all, we’d be sitting on soggy cushions, drinking salty tea stirred with rusty
spoons while doors crashed loudly every time a wave hit. Keeping the winch handles pointed forward saved shins from bruising, covering everything prevented UV damage and rusting and not coiling
ropes made them less likely to tangle. The multiple pan rules were because Steve had lugged an entire non-stick set back from the UK in a suitcase one year and he wanted to keep them as long as he
could. It made sense but crouching on the floor, unpacking and repacking pans and lids out of and back into plastic bags became my least favourite chore, followed closely by dashing out in the rain
in the middle of the night to remove 16 fleecy cushion covers that were tied and velcroed on to metal frames.

Although I was coming from a British summer, my body was in no way prepared for the heat and the strength of the sun, which was so fierce it burned through my factor-30 sunscreen in 20 minutes,
even on partially cloudy days.

The first morning, I asked Steve to put suncream on to my back. I sat down at an angle on the seat next to him and handed him my Piz Buin. He started to rub it in, sliding his hands all over my
back, touching every inch. My first thought was
That’s a thorough application
, but when it continued for a lot longer than it should have done and progressed to shoulder kneading, I
said thanks and twisted away.
Stop being such a prude
, I reasoned with myself.
He’s just a very tactile person. It’s not like he’s groping you. He didn’t flirt
while he was doing it, didn’t mention it afterwards, just asked you to put some cream on his back in return.
I wanted to keep the mood on the boat light and I didn’t want to come
across as standoffish so, despite my discomfort, I said nothing.

For the three days we’d been on our way to Miri we’d had a fishing line strung off the back of the boat but had no bites. At possibly the worst time for it – less than three
miles away from port, while we were doing 7 knots with our largest and trickiest-to-handle spinnaker sail up – the reel started screaming. Steve sprang into action and donned his cod piece.
It reminded me of something a Tudor might have worn: a belt fastened around his waist, and down the front, over his groin, was a plastic plate with a sort of spout sticking up and out from it, like
a hollow strap-on penis. Steve took the fishing rod out of its holder on the back rail and slid it into the spout, gripping it with one hand while he reeled in the line with the other. He had to
plant his feet wide on the deck to keep his balance. It was ridiculously phallic.

I stood ready with the enormous gaff hook while Steve, hand still on groin spout, struggled against both the fish, which was fighting for its life, and the drag of the boat.

‘When I lift him out of the water, you put the hook through his gill,’ he said. ‘It’ll probably come out of his mouth.’ Nice behaviour for a vegetarian.

After an epic struggle, I saw the fish’s silvery back break the surface of the water. It looked huge and angry. Steve kept pulling it in, bit by bit, until it was close enough for me to
reach. I leaned out from the back corner of the boat, swallowing back my squeamishness. It took a couple of goes before I managed to hook the gill. Fortunately the spike didn’t come out of
its mouth. While I held it wriggling on the hook, Steve fetched a knife. I turned away when he killed it.

I’m not sure who was more excited about the catch – the skipper or the cat. Layla appeared, yowling, and Steve danced a jubilant jig in his codpiece, showing off. He was the hunter,
the provider of food, the man. He weighed the fish – 5.2lb – and said he thought it might be a Spanish mackerel.

We had only one and a half miles to go before we hit land and we were still sailing under spinnaker so the fish was hung from the back rail, a noose around its tail, while we took down the
sails, hung out the fenders and moored up.

Once we were settled, Steve put some potatoes on the barbecue and started to cut up the fish. According to an illustration in his book of fish species, we’d caught a bluefin tuna. He cut
off the head and tail, then sliced through the backbone to make steaks for the barbecue. What we weren’t eating that night went in the fridge. Layla licked pools of blood from the teak deck
and nibbled on hand-fed titbits of sushi. She was in cat heaven.

Back in London, I had had a fantasy of what life on a sailing boat would be like and, specifically, what meals on a yacht would consist of. I imagined breakfasting on tropical fruits, lunching
on fragrant rice piled high on banana leaves and dining on fresh fish we had caught ourselves that afternoon, just before sunset, and blackened on a beach fire built from driftwood. I’m a bit
of a daydreamer like that. Also, from a practical point of view, it made sense to me to eat a lot of fish if you lived on the ocean. So I was fully prepared to relinquish my five years of
vegetarianism for pescetarianism and give this tuna a go. And I was pretty impressed with Steve for catching it, reeling it in and knowing how to kill, gut and prepare it. I didn’t think
anyone I knew back in England would have had those kind of real-life skills. Still, I felt a bit anxious about eating it.

Steve was proud to cook me my first fish in half a decade – and a fish that he’d caught himself, with his bare hands (and a codpiece). He laid the folding cockpit table with knives
and forks and chilled white wine. He carefully lifted four foil-covered packages from the barbecue and set them down on the plates. He sat opposite me and made sure I had butter for my potato, that
I had salt and pepper for my fish. His mood was infectious and, while my mouth wasn’t quite watering, I was looking forward to my dinner. I wanted to like it. I peeled back the foil, loaded
my fork, put it into my mouth and chewed. Steve, who hadn’t started eating, watched me expectantly, blue eyes fairly twinkling with anticipation.

‘So, what’s it like?’

I didn’t want to be rude but there was no getting away from the fact. ‘Tastes like canned tuna.’

It wasn’t, it turned out, a bluefin tuna, a delicacy the world over, particularly in Japan. It was, more likely, a skipjack or, possibly, a mack, which, someone would later tell me, goes
into cat food.

I ate the potato, left the fish and stayed a vegetarian.

S
o who are the other crew who are arriving for the race, then?’ I asked Steve the next morning as I bobbed about in the small inflatable
dinghy, scrubbing the yacht’s sides to get her camera-ready. ‘All women? Is that by coincidence or by design?’

He laughed. ‘Design, daaarling. No, I don’t really like having other men on my boat, telling them what to do. Egos can get in the way. I find it easier with women.’

‘OK,’ I said, thinking back to his advert that I’d answered. Had it specified female crew? I couldn’t remember.

‘Tomorrow we’ve got Claire and her cousin arriving, who Claire says is a “hottie”.’

‘What’s her name?’

‘Not sure.’

‘And where do you know Claire from?’

‘She crewed in a race I did a while ago. She had a bit of a thing for me. But she’s not really my type.’
Maybe the cousin will be your type
, I thought,
and that
will take some of the pressure off me
. I was thrilled to have a bigger crew. I’d never sailed with fewer than three people before joining
Kingdom
– and across the Atlantic
we had a boat of 20 – and I am firmly of the opinion the more, the merrier.

Lizzie ‘the hottie’ lived up to expectations – long, wavy blonde hair, smooth skin with not a freckle or a scar, long limbs, full lips, the clearest eyes I’d ever seen.
She was everything I wanted to be but was not. Quieter than her cousin, once she warmed up she was full of jokes and had a dirty sense of humour. She was jet-lagged, having flown from Scotland to
Singapore to meet her older expat cousin Claire. Claire had high, Scandinavian cheekbones but the blonde hair was where the family resemblance stopped. Tall and strong, she looked like she could
hold her own with the male crew on the racing boats she sailed in regattas in Thailand and Singapore. ‘Medium build’ was Steve’s unkind way of describing her. A successful lawyer,
she was a natural organiser and knew a lot about yacht racing. For Lizzie, who had just finished her studies to be a vet, it was her first time on a boat.

It was the night before the race week began and there was no organised event so we took a taxi into Miri town centre. As I stepped off the boat, Steve handed me the head of the tuna we’d
caught in a plastic bag.

‘Is that for the bin?’ I asked.

‘No, we’ll find someone to give it to.’

I was incredulous. ‘Find someone to give it to? Who’s going to want a fish head?’

‘It’s a delicacy out here. They love it. They’ll make a curry out of it or something.’

I walked with Claire and Lizzie to the car park to find the taxi we’d ordered. Claire was carrying the rubbish to throw into the big bins and I had the fish head bag. None of the Malays we
passed were eagerly eyeing it up, licking their lips or seeming about to snatch it off me and toss it into their curry pot and I felt too embarrassed to offer it to anyone. When Claire went to
throw the rubbish in the large bin, I passed her the head. Gone. Embarrassment over.

We got into the taxi, girls in the back; Steve, who had caught up, in the front.

‘Where you wan go?’ asked the driver.

‘Do you know a good restaurant in Miri?’ Claire asked. ‘Good local food? Sells beer?’

He nodded and started the engine.

‘Where’s the fish head?’ Steve asked me, twisting round in his seat.

I blushed, although possibly no one could tell through my sunburn. ‘Erm, in the bin.’

‘What? Why? We could have given it to the driver.’ He turned back to the driver. ‘You like fish head, yes?’

The driver took his eyes off the road to look at Steve briefly then returned his attention to his driving. He didn’t speak.

‘For curry? Soup?’ Steve persisted. ‘Mmm, very tasty.’

Still nothing from the driver. Either he was as revolted as I was at the idea of a fish’s head floating about in a spicy stew or, more likely, his English wasn’t that good. Whatever
the reason, nothing more was said about the head.

He had, however, understood enough to drop us at the Ming Café. I know it is the title of an esteemed Chinese dynasty – and some pretty expensive crockery – but the word still
made me chuckle. The waiters and waitresses wore black T-shirts with the café’s slogan printed in bad English on the back: ‘I pissed in Ming Café.’ And what was the
top item on the menu? Fish head curry.

Food etiquette was not the only aspect of culture – and life – shock I would experience. The regatta, which started the next day, with its frenzied whirlwind of activity – what
with the regular briefings, the events, the dinners, the moving from town to town, the meeting of new people all the time and trying to remember their names, their boats’ names, which
categories they were in and who their crew were – would turn out to be a good stepping stone between my old life in London and my new identity as a traveller and cruiser. Its ordered
structure was familiar, even if the Borneo setting and the people I now lived with were not. And I had little time to wonder what I was doing here. We were so busy, I just had to get on with
things.

Steve had suggested we do a ‘shake down’ – practise sailing together as a team – the next morning, before the first race. He was very patient teaching Lizzie how the boat
worked and even more patient when she and Claire were both very sick in the fairly choppy seas. We managed one hour of shaking down and throwing up before limping back to the shelter of the
marina.

It was already dark when we got to the pre-race dinner that night and the hall was stunning. Built of wood in a style based on the traditional Borneo longhouses, where an entire community lives
in one large shed, it had a high vaulted ceiling and was full of round tables which, in turn, were full of mainly white people in loud Hawaiian shirts. A white-haired man in the loudest Hawaiian
shirt in the room whistled and beckoned us over. ‘I’ve saved you some seats,’ he shouted across the hall.

‘That’s Ron from
Blue Steel
,’ Steve said. ‘I bet he’s saved places for us because he knows I’ve got a crew full of women.’
So women are
currency here
, I thought, sarcastically. I knew Steve well enough by now to know that he had a tendency to be a show-off – and what better way to draw attention to yourself than by
making an entrance with three younger women? The
Blue Steel
crew didn’t seem at all slimy and were just friendly, older chaps excited to be on holiday, drinking, partying and racing.
They were Canadian Ron, the captain, who lived on his boat full time and made his living from picking up backpackers and taking them on sailing trips around Thailand and Malaysia. He was tanned and
always holding a beer can across his skinny body. Big John was a Teutonic giant, quick with a joke and always ready with a story to tell. Also from Canada, he was a builder by trade but should have
been a cowboy. Posh Simon was younger, in his thirties, and knew Claire from the racing scene in Singapore, where he lived with his wife and daughters. And Trevor was an Englishman who’d
taken advantage of the tax breaks the local government offers foreigners to retire to Malaysia and spend their pensions there.