Kijana (9 page)

Not long after casting my line I hooked a red emperor, but Josh made me put it back in the water so he could film me reeling it in. All this mucking about caused the bloody thing to come off the hook and disappear. We accused Josh of plotting its escape because he was a vegetarian. The mood aboard was great. I was getting on with Mika and Nicolette better than ever.

We hung around the area for a few days, getting up when the sun rose and going ashore to explore the rugged beauty of the island. I started to become convinced our previous problems had stemmed from the bad weather during the first stretch of the trip.

We departed Snapper Island and continued north towards Lizard Island, a distance of about 100 miles, with the intention of doing some diving on the nearby reefs. The wind was blowing from the south-east, giving us a good run at a comfortable seven knots. If we kept up our speed we would arrive the following evening. I couldn't wait.

The mere mention of Lizard Island brought back such good memories. The island lies 20 miles off the Queensland coast, which means it is well clear of any muddy river water that affects underwater visibility. This makes the island one of the world's best diving destinations. The waters are packed with marine life, and minke whales make their annual migration past the island, providing a spectacular sight.

As the sun dropped below the horizon and the night sky began to spread out, we followed the shipping channel to pass between two small reefs about a mile apart. The reef closest to land could be seen by the flashing lighthouse on it, which made me confident we were on course to go straight between the reefs.

As we got closer I could make out the exposed reef at least half a mile to our right. Directly ahead was the flashing light on the left reef, which was strange, I thought, for it appeared that the reefs had shifted. Either that or we were heading on a wrong course. I decided to play it safe, asking Nicolette, who was standing near the autopilot, to change course a further 15 degrees to the right, in case we were caught in some current, which was pushing us closer to the left reef.

We were moving fast, so I rushed down to the chart table to check our position. I had a feeling there was some current, but how long we'd been in it unnoticed I was about to find out. The GPS took a little more than a minute to provide our coordinates, which showed we were close to the left-hand side of the channel, which was a little too close for comfort.

I was calculating all this in my head as quickly as I could, but as it turned out, not fast enough. As I headed up the companionway to change the course further to starboard I felt a subtle vibration that could have been mistaken for a normal creak or groan of a wooden boat. But it was enough to force my body into complete shock.

My heart and limbs snapped into action. It took only seconds for me to clear the stairs and realise we hadn't turned enough to the right and were skidding up onto the left-hand reef. Had Nicolette changed the course in the right direction, I wondered.

‘Get the sails down!' I yelled. Everyone looked at me, momentarily stunned by my shouting.

‘Just get the FUCKING sails down as quick as you can!' I screamed. ‘We're in serious fucking trouble.'

The crew sprang into action. They still hadn't realised what I was on about until moments later the inevitable crunching of reef meeting keel got louder and
Kijana
ground to a halt.

‘We're on a reef,' I announced, for the benefit of anyone who didn't know by that point. The boat felt very strange. All around us was water, but the usual movement of sailing over the waves was no longer there.

‘Someone check the bilge. Make sure we're not taking on water,' I barked.

The sails, which were still up, were forcing the boat forward but she was obviously stuck. Each wave that approached from behind lifted up the stern slowly then dropped it onto the reef, sending a shudder through the rigging. The wave would continue its path along the boat, lifting the bow as it passed. I knew that the water ahead became shallower as the reef slanted upwards towards the surface of the water, while behind us lay the deep water. The seesaw action caused by each passing wave slowly edged
Kijana
further onto the reef, decreasing our chances of ever getting off.

Josh was torn between getting the camera to film the disaster unfolding, and helping to get the sails down. I'd always told him whatever happened, he had to film it. Even if someone got hurt, I'd told him, the others could help them. His job was to film.

He faced a difficult split-second decision. Every second the sails were up we were losing hope of ever getting off. When the tide went down
Kijana
would be smashed to pieces as she lay on her side on the exposed reef. If the boat was going to go down we needed to film it, but was the footage worth losing the boat over?

Despite what I'd always told him, I was glad to see him unwrapping the mizzen halyard to drop the sail. He knew how to take orders but he also knew when to break them. Beau and Nicolette were desperately trying to pull down the mainsail, while Mika was in the cockpit letting the yankee sheet free.

I started the engine and, without giving it time to warm up, slammed it into reverse at full revs. The motor screamed and sent white water streaming all around us, but
Kijana
wouldn't budge. I tried again, to no avail. I left the wheel and grabbed a radio in each hand to send out a pan pan on HF and VHF. In the marine world this is the emergency call one step below a mayday. A mayday means ‘grave and imminent danger' and can only be used if a boat is sinking. For all other distress, the pan pan must be used. No one answered the call, so I handed the radios to Beau for him to continue.

‘Try the higher frequencies,' was all I could suggest.

Darkness had descended and we were struggling to see anything. To add to the chaos, Nicolette saw one of our dinghies floating past. Its rope had got caught in the propeller when I'd rammed it into reverse, and snapped.

‘Someone get in the other dinghy and go and get it,' I yelled. ‘Everybody else, start dumping anything heavy over the side.' I figured that if we lightened the boat, maybe it would be enough to lift us off the reef.

Nicolette climbed over the safety lines to get into the small dinghy. This dinghy only had oars because, of course, the one drifting away had the motor.

The dinghy began to disappear into the night. ‘Someone keep their eye on it,' I said, as if we had a crew of 20 sitting around doing nothing. Nicolette began rowing into the darkness while Mika strained her eyes to see where the dinghy was.

Josh had by now grabbed the camera and was pointing it at me. ‘Has anyone answered Beau?' I asked.

‘Yeah there's some guy, but the radio's fucking up and keeps going to channel 16 every time he replies and Beau misses what he says,' Josh replied.

‘It's an emergency. Tell Beau to talk on 16 and plot our position to exactly where we are.'

I was frantically getting the chain ready to throw the stern anchor out to stop us from moving further up the reef when another idea struck me. I thought if we could get enough power by going forward I might be able to steer the boat around and at least point it in the direction of safety. My reasoning was that the motor was not as powerful in reverse as it was in forward, so the only movement I was going to get would be forward. It was risky, and could rip the guts out of the boat, but it was our only realistic option. It would take only 20 metres to turn around and if we weren't fully stuck by then there was a chance we could get off the reef.

I couldn't wait any longer for Beau to plot our escape route, so I opened the throttle and pulled the steering wheel hard right, hoping the channel wasn't too far away.

The next wave picked us up and I sensed some slight movement forward. I hoped I hadn't imagined it. The next wave definitely lifted us, with the bow starting to swing to the right.

‘Come on,' I urged, sounding like Lleyton Hewitt. ‘Keep going.'

With the whine of the motor rising and dropping with each wave, we slowly ground a path over the reef, until we were facing east and the waves were side on.

‘We're moving!' I yelled with excitement, but it proved premature. We kept turning until we were facing the open water, but I couldn't straighten the steering because the rudder was dragging hard against the reef. With the steering on its hard right course we kept turning through south, then west, and all the way through until we were pointing north-west again, in almost the same direction we'd started from. It was painful. Not to mention the damage I knew we must have been causing by dragging the hull over the coral.

The wind and waves were growing bigger and the shallow reef was making them very messy. Mika was up the ladder trying to find not only the lost dinghy but, more importantly, Nicolette, who had drifted from sight.

‘Can you see her?' I asked.

‘I thought I did but now I can't,' she yelled back.

‘Does she know how to start the outboard?'

‘No, I doubt it.'

I suddenly realised I had a bigger problem on my hands than a boat stuck on a reef. There was no way anyone could row both dinghies very far, especially into those rising waves. Unless she started the outboard she would be blown either onto the crashing reef at its shallowest or past it altogether and out into the Coral Sea. And that was if she had caught the bigger dinghy at all!

With all the bad luck stacking up against us, I resigned myself to the fact that a search plane would hopefully spot her drifting up the coast and, apart from being scared and sunburnt, she'd probably still be alive.

‘Just keep trying to find her,' I yelled towards the front of the boat, hoping Mika could hear me above the engine.

‘Josh,' I shouted, ‘turn every light on.' Even though we couldn't see her, I knew that somewhere out there she could see us.

‘What's going on with the radio?' I demanded.

No one answered. I was clinging to the hope that someone would arrive to throw us a line and drag us off. I knew it was wishful thinking, as we were about 15 miles from Cooktown, the closest settlement, and few boats would be near the reefs at night.

‘Josh, what's bloody going on with the radio?'

Josh stuck his head out of the cabin and announced that a fishing trawler was heading towards us. At last, something was going our way.

Mika jumped into the cockpit, still searching for Nicolette. Beau was manning the radio and constantly talking while Josh passed the updates on to me. Beau had also plotted our most recent position but the reefs were so small that the charts gave no indication if there were any channels nearby for us to escape through. I really thought this was going to end in disaster.

Amid the absolute frenzy of activity, I couldn't help thinking of everyone back home, especially those at the office who'd put the last two years of their lives into preparing our trip. I had let them down.

There was no sign of the trawler so my only option was to go forward again and try once more to turn around. All it would take would be for us to land on one sharp reef outcrop and jam the keel, and we'd be stuck forever.

This time I decided to turn left instead of right. I had no alternative. I swore and cried as I revved the motor and yanked the steering wheel to the left. I didn't care that I was losing it. I would do anything to get off that reef in one piece. I asked Mika if she believed in God. She thought about it for a moment, and slowly replied, ‘Yes'. I yelled out to Josh: ‘I'm gonna pray Josh, and whoever or whatever it is you believe in, please pray as well.'

I grabbed Mika's hand despite our recent turbulent history. She stood up while I revved the motor, and looked up at the starry sky. If it hadn't been so serious, I might have been disgusted at how corny the scene looked. But I didn't care. I was resigned to the fact that our only hope was out of our hands.

The next wave lifted the keel slightly off the reef. The furiously spinning propeller began to move us forward while I fought the wheel to continue turning us left. The more we moved, the more the wheel moved, until we had some momentum, passing west, then south-west, then south. I could feel the entire keel dragging on the reef as each wave moved us forward.

I battled the wheel to straighten up our course until I could feel the rudder turn. We were facing south, directly into the wind, and on course for open water. I quietly said to Mika that this could be it. I didn't want to raise my hopes again. All I had to do was keep the boat facing into the weather. If I veered too far to the left or right the wind would want to push the boat side on and we didn't have enough speed to correct it. It was akin to walking a tightrope.

I steered dead into the weather so the bow broke the waves right down the middle. I feared that any second I would feel the keel snag and stop us dead. But it never came.

‘I think we're picking up speed,' I yelled to anyone who was listening. We hobbled about 30 metres until the bumps and scrapes petered out. It was the most amazing feeling to be back in deep water. I wanted to stretch out and feel the space around us.

‘We're off, Mika!' I shouted, almost laughing. ‘We're fucking off ... Tell Beau to get on the radio and let the trawler know.'

It was a miracle all right. We'd been marooned for 40 minutes. We could have been smashed to pieces on the reef, or waited for the tide to go out and our lovely ship to die a slow, painful death. Someone was on our side, for we'd been given a second chance that we definitely didn't deserve.

Beau and Josh looked like they were about to collapse with relief, but we couldn't relax just yet.
Kijana
was heading south but Nicolette was still somewhere out there being blown north. She'd be able to see our lights getting further away and either she was motoring towards us or rowing into the weather and being beaten backwards.

I dropped the revs so we wouldn't get too far away and began to think what to do. Beau told the trawler that
Kijana
was safe but we had a crew member missing and could they look for her. We had to stay in the area so she could see and catch us, but there were bits of reef lurking all around us. I didn't fancy going through that whole ordeal again. The other option was to anchor. But I feared that if the wind got stronger and the anchor dragged, we could find ourselves back on the reef.