Sophie, Dog Overboard : The Incredible True Adventures of the Castaway Dog (9 page)

“It wasn't comfortable,” says Jan. “But you didn't care when you were out there.”

“It was a bastard,” says Dave, reminding Jan that they had to step on a milk crate to get into bed. It was above this space, up on the front deck, that Sophie sunbaked later that afternoon alongside Bridget and Jan. The Griffith women sat around in wide-brimmed hats, Bridget in a bikini, reading novels and doing crosswords, while Dave flipped through newspapers and looked over his map books, always learning about the marine area that was so much more accessible to him now that they had
Honey May.

Later, Dave put steaks and sausages on the barbecue and Jan opened a bottle of wine she'd brought from her fridge at home. But this wasn't another big night. The mood was mellow, and so was Sophie, even in her enthusiasm. She had already sniffed around the boat a bit with Bridget and, having acquainted herself with the space, stuck pretty close to the family. As people moved in and out of the kitchen, preparing the meal, she sat on
the top step but didn't go farther inside: her paws would slip and slide on the polished floors.

Sophie was very lively and seemed to be invigorated by the salt air. But she didn't seem to be in any way perturbed by being somewhere so unfamiliar. As they ate, Bridget and Jan on their deck chairs and Dave leaning up against the railing on the front deck, Sophie sat between them, looking back and forth and waiting for what she knew would come: meat scraps and maybe a potato skin or two.

When it came to bedtime, not long after the sun went down, Sophie had to be coaxed down to the cabin. In theory she was sleeping on the floor alongside Bridget, who of course invited her up to share the bed for the night.

The next morning, as coffee brewed, the family got ready to jump off the back of
Honey May
for a swim. The moment Sophie realized what was happening, as first Dave, then Bridget plunged into the water, she started barking wildly, overexcited at the realization that her turn must be coming next. Jan needed to give her a little bit of gentle encouragement to take the plunge, but Bridget was treading water below and calling to her. She jumped. And she was ecstatic. She swam around and around in circles making her way towards Bridget and then Dave, her head stretched above the waves, mouth firmly shut to avoid taking in water.

The sun was up over Scawfell, its palm trees and boulders were starting to sparkle and the tips of the
reefing coral were still visible as the tide was coming in. The risk of rips and swelling tides, as well as stinging and even lethal creatures, was far higher here than when Sophie ran into the waves off the beaches off Mackay, but the Griffiths weren't too concerned: the water in the bay was so clear and crisp and they swam in it all the time. It felt very safe. And Sophie was having the time of her life paddling about.

“Sophie!” Bridget yelled out to her and Sophie would paddle over to her, head stretched far out of the water, mouth scrunched up in zeal to get where she wanted to go. Bridget's tongue was practically hanging out like a dog's as she giggled and splashed Sophie.

“You lunatics,” Jan teased as she floated about on her back.

Sophie huffed and puffed through her nose, swishing around Bridget, and Bridget did somersaults in the water and sang out, “Isn't this the bee's knees, Tucker?” Sophie moved her legs strongly, swerving around between Dave and Bridget.
Absolutely
, she seemed to be thinking.

The Griffiths were in for fifteen minutes or so before they decided it was breakfast time. Jan was already back on deck and towelling off, getting ready to prepare the meal.

“Come on girls,” she said, looking out at Bridget and Sophie still swirling about. Dave swam over to the boat and readied to hoist himself up the ladder. Bridget ignored them and Sophie followed suit, moving round and round in circles, ready for another game. Jan went
below deck and put the kettle on and started bringing out eggs and bread for the barbecue.

“Bridge!” Dave called. “Sophie's going to be exhausted.” But Sophie wasn't showing any signs of tiring. Dave went to grab Sophie to help her back up the ladder to the boat. Just as she had refused to budge from the car on the day of Bridget's departure to university, now she was refusing to cooperate with Dave and leave the ocean. He had to pretty much haul her up the ladder. Her eyes reproached him for cutting short her fun.
I'm a water dog,
she seemed to be saying.
Leave me be.

The success of Sophie's first boat trip was a huge relief for Jan and Dave, who had worried that they'd acquired two incompatible but very much loved elements of their move into retirement: the freedom of an ocean cruiser and the responsibility that comes along with the joy of a dog. They'd worked hard to create a later life that encompassed them both and they wanted to enjoy the tropical paradise in which they'd established their family home.

The purchase of
Honey May
was not a light decision. Dave had had small boats throughout his life, and grown up around the ocean. When the children were younger, he spent every Sunday sailing off Mackay with mates on their catamarans, while Jan and the kids barbecued with other families on the shore. And when the Griffiths bought their beach house at Louisa Creek, forty minutes from Mackay, when Matthew and Ellen
were teenagers, Dave bought a small catamaran; he'd really wanted a cruiser for a long time.

In the years leading up to the family's investment in
Honey May
, Dave spent much of his spare time educating himself: he read about navigation systems and engines and asked other skippers in the marina about operating boats and reading tides and charts, the weather and ocean channels. He taught himself to drive a boat and to maintain it. And he and Jan discussed whether investing in a machine that many people might consider a luxury, was justified. When they finally went ahead and bought
Honey May
, Dave was overjoyed. His only moment of worry had been on that morning, more than two years ago now, when he thought Jan was having second thoughts about the boat. But that turned out to be the joyful day that Sophie came into their lives. And now, Sophie, like the rest of the Griffiths, was learning to love the open ocean, thanks to
Honey May.

When Dave planned a trip on the boat, he checked the forecasts vigilantly, studying several websites and taking notes. The Griffiths wouldn't go out if the weather was predicted to be anything less than perfect.

“You're always nervous,” Dave says of being a skipper, remembering his first times taking Jan, then the kids, and then friends out on the boat. “There's a little sticker everywhere saying,
you
'
re the driver, you are responsible
. You're standing up on the flybridge and looking at thirty-odd foot of boat in front of you and it's scary. Jan wouldn't come with me for a while.”

Dave saw it as part of his role as skipper to teach the rest of the family about the boat, and the magical but dangerous environment they had the good fortune to be able to explore. “He creates this experience every time we go out; he really loves showing people the ocean,” Bridget says.

As Dave would drive the boat out of the headland, he'd point out ripples and swells in the ocean surface, and symbols on the GPS system. The aim was to familiarize everyone with hazards such as boulders and rough or shallow areas. “Oi, Luke,” he'd call down to the main deck often and point out a rip or a rock, or sit up on the flybridge to teach them to read the sky and the ocean and to absorb the sense of concentration that it took to skip. “It's all very well to have everything on auto but you don't just then go downstairs and read a book,” he says.

From their very first few trips he would make sure to bring Jan, Bridget, and Luke up to the wheel to give them a rundown of the throttles and levers and monitors, drumming into their heads that the main thing to remember about steering a boat was that, unlike a car, the back always moved first. “You can read all the books you like but at the end of the day, it's only practice that will do it,” he'd tell them. Dave wanted to inspire his children to learn to drive the boat so that it really was a family venture, and to make sure that Jan, who admitted to being a nervous Nelly on board, felt competent herself, and didn't have to rely on him. It was Dave's
dream for the boat to be a second home, and the effort was always worth it when the family was out on the water watching the fog roll in over the saddle of an island's mountains, dropping anchor to fish or jumping off the back of the boat to swim in a secluded bay.

Out on the ocean, Dave would often look back to Jan, who would be huddled behind him with a cap on and often a raincoat, looking out across the wheel, taking in the sea air with lips in a satisfied purse. They'd hold each other's gaze for a while, acknowledging,
We
'
re doing it, sweetheart. We
'
re living the life.

In the winter, when Jan wasn't trying to will away her seasickness—sometimes it could be so bad she'd have to spend an hour hanging over the edge—she'd be squinting and craning her neck on the lookout for whales, which the family had seen many times, and which Jan describes as “a spiritual experience.” Jan and Bridget would gasp and exclaim, “Oh my God,” Jan with her hands over her mouth, Bridget with mouth wide open as they saw in the distance the whip of a blue tail. “Even from far away, when you see one of them jump straight up in the air, and come down in a huge waterfall, it's the most incredible thing,” says Jan. “Sometimes you feel that they know you're there and they're performing.”

None of this magic was ever lost on the Griffith kids. On their first trips out on the boat, as they moved beyond the headlands, Jan would say to Bridget, “Aren't we the luckiest sons of guns in the world?”

“This is so cool,” Bridget would agree, and snap a photo of a mussy-haired Jan against a cloudless sky, or turn the camera on herself and pull a silly face. Bridget would bring her Brisbane city friends up to Mackay for boat trips, and Luke and his girlfriend Heather had their boat license, after hours and hours of driving around the harbor and parking the boat in and out of her narrow berth.

None of it seemed to be lost on Sophie, either. She was as much a water baby as Bridget and Luke. In the months that followed that first trip, Sophie got her sea legs and accompanied Dave and Jan whenever they went on the boat. She became a sea dog even more quickly than she'd taken to luxuriating on the leather armchair after Bridget left. She no longer sulked when she saw towels and straw hats and Jan's green canvas picnic basket being stashed into the back of the Nissan—she followed Jan and Dave around with glee. The sound of paws skipping along behind them on the carport became the sound of their pre-trip preparation.

For day and overnight visits, Jan would load up
Honey May
with meat for the barbecue, cans of Diet Coke for Jan's seasickness, avocadoes, fresh lettuce and canned vegetables for Jan's Toowoon Bay salad (corn, peas and beets all from cans, with mayo on the side, based on a Griffith family joke about the sort of cooking Dave was raised on. When Dave would be home alone for a few nights while Jan visited one of the kids in Brisbane, Ellen and Bridget would tell Jan, “Just leave him a can
opener. He'll be right.”). And when the Griffiths swiped their members' card to the marina gate, Sophie knew the drill: her lead was still on but the path down to
Honey May
was like an Olympic doggy run.

As they got out deep into the ocean, Sophie was always at one of their sides, eager to explore but most happy just to be with her crew. While Jan or Bridget sunbathed at the front of the boat, she lay beside them, the ocean breeze in her fur. She always assumed the same posture: nose raised in the air and mouth open, gulping in those sea odors and watching intently as the big sea birds circled overhead. Sophie accompanied the Griffiths on day trips north, up and around Cockermouth Island or over to St. Bees, where the family would stay with Sophie onboard or in the tender, as dogs weren't allowed on shore.

Just as Sophie liked to wake Jan and Dave on land, she would begin her days on
Honey May
by trotting over to the door of their cabin around eight in the morning, already extra eager to get going: she knew something about the adventures that lay before her in boatland and they were even more exciting than the garden and air conditioning-based adventures back at home in Mackay. On
Honey May
, Jan and Dave would wake immediately to the sound of her paws outside the door to the lower cabin—though she would never descend the steps because of the slippery polished floors. Boater Sophie was a little less mellow than at-home Sophie.

While her sleepy owners stirred and got into their swimming gear, Sophie would jump into the small dinghy at the back of the boat and hop around, panting, occasionally barking, barely able to contain herself for the prospect of Jan and Dave motoring around the island and jumping in for a swim. She'd bark and she'd wriggle around. She loved being on the dinghy—even more so than being on
Honey May
. Perhaps it was the proximity to the water, the possibility of swimming. As Dave started the motor, Jan, in her floppy hat and sandals, would have to clutch Sophie—her hands sturdily grabbing Sophie's shoulders—until it was safe to let the wriggling pup free to jump out of the dinghy into the ocean where she could swim happily alongside them, head in the air, knowing there was an out if she needed it, unlike in the swimming pool.

Other times, they'd moor between islands, often out near Scawfell, where they'd spend the night, barbecuing and playing cards as the sun went down and dropping fishing lines in the water during the day, much to Sophie's delight. If Dave was ever too reserved to express his enthusiasm for this idyllic lifestyle, Sophie made up for it. Jan just had to look at her on the boat to be reminded that the nausea was all worth it.