The Backpacker (27 page)

I looked into the distance to catch another glimpse but it was gone. It was only then that I noticed just how dark the sky had become.

THREE

Being at sea is a bit like being in the desert; when the weather changes you get warned in advance because of the amount of unobstructed space. Nothing creeps up on you at sea, unless of course you're too preoccupied with a big fish to notice. If we'd have taken time to look up at the sky that morning we would have seen the clouds boiling up in the distance. As it was we didn't even realise that the sun had been blocked out; it was the first time we'd been in shade in two weeks and that there was no longer enough light to see the corals.

Rick looked at me from the dinghy and then looked skywards, the smile he'd been wearing as we watched the fish swim away instantly disappearing. All of the muscles that were used to hold the grin suddenly relaxed and his whole expression dropped an inch. I didn't need to be a meteorologist to know that the sudden appearance of cloud, plus the alarmed look on Rick's face, equalled bad weather.

Dave looked up too and frowned, making an O-shape with his mouth. ‘This looks bad... ' I heard him say, before a roll of thunder in the distance obliterated the rest of the sentence. He pulled the remaining oar out of its holder and started to paddle them back in, canoe-style.

Within minutes the wind began to pick up and it started to rain.

‘We've got three choices,' Rick said as we crammed into the small radio room-cum-galley. I think he must have been talking to Dave more than me because he started to use technical terms that I'd never heard before. Dave was nodding, so I assumed that he recognised the vocabulary and I just nodded anyway. ‘We can stay anchored here and hope that we don't get torn off the anchorage. If we do break free we're going to get battered on the rocks, guaranteed. Or we can look around the island for a beach and moor offshore. That way we can take the dinghy and paddle in if the boat breaks loose. At least we won't be on it.' He took a deep breath. ‘The problem with that is we don't even know if the island's inhabited.'

‘Why do we need to do anything?' I asked. ‘Maybe it's not a bad storm.'

Rick leaned across me and flicked a switch on the radio. It buzzed and crackled with static, nothing else. He switched it off as though my question had been answered. ‘There's nothing coming through, John. Either all of the radios on all the boats in the vicinity have broken down, which is very unlikely, or that's a typhoon and it's buggered all reception. I've tried every channel and there's nothing.'

Dave looked sceptical and leaned back against the stainless steel sink. ‘Typhoon?'

‘Either that or a very bad tropical storm.' He reflected for a moment and added, ‘It's not strictly typhoon season, but weather patterns around here can be pretty weird. I've seen it before.'

I leaned against the ladder that led up to the deck as the boat rolled gently. ‘Number three?'

Rick looked blankly at me.

‘You said we had three choices. What's the third one?'

He puffed out his cheeks and exhaled. ‘We put up the sail and head off to Bali; try to ride it out, get in front of it. It looks like it's coming from the north-east so that should suit us, seeing as how we want to go south.'

I sat down on a rung. ‘I don't know, you two are the experts, I'm only here for the ride. You decide.'

‘Dave?'

Dave shook his head, thought for a moment and said, ‘I think we should go for it. At least then we'd be moving along. You know what it's like in a boat without forward motion.'

I didn't know, but I guessed from his expression that it wasn't a pleasant experience. I pictured a person riding a bike, and the ease with which it's done providing one has forward motion. As soon as you stop pedalling, the bike tips over. I supposed that a boat in a storm was a bit like a push-bike.

‘What time is it?'

Dave checked the clock. ‘Twelve.'

Rick put his hands flat against the ceiling. ‘OK. We'll try to make it to Bali. John, you get the life jackets out; they're in the bedroom beneath the bed. Dave, how's the GPS working?'

‘Seems OK.' He turned on the stool and started to fiddle with some knobs.

‘I hope so. With so much cloud cover we won't see the sun or the stars.'

There was a flurry of activity and noise as each of us went in different directions. Dave went to the controls while Rick ran out on deck to untie us. I heard him curse as he went up, and then the sound of his footsteps thumping above my head. Rummaging around beneath the bed I pulled out a crate full of life jackets and put one on. It stank of mildew so I took if off again, intending to wash it in the sea, when I heard Dave say something that left me cold.

‘Oh no... '

It wasn't a loud ‘Oh no', but it was the way he said it that was so ominous. Not full of alarm, but the sort of ‘Oh no' you express when you hand in an exam paper to an invigilator, realising too late that you've added up a sum incorrectly.

I sat on the bed waiting for Dave to say, ‘Oh! That's OK then,' but all I heard was the sound of the anchor chain dragging against the side of the boat.
Drrrrr
. I willed him to say something more, and he did. This time he just said, ‘No... ' only softer than before, as though he'd been winded and didn't have the breath to say the other word.

When I staggered out of the bedroom, holding on to the walls to stop me from falling over as the boat rolled, Dave was sitting on the stool with his back to the equipment. His legs were slightly apart and he was looking at the floor, his hands on his lap, one on the other's palm as though holding a dead bird.

‘What's up, Dave?' I asked, putting one palm flat against the low ceiling. ‘Has the GPS gone wrong or something?'

He sighed, looked up at me with sad eyes, shook his head, then looked back at his dead hands. ‘Worse.'

‘What then?'

He looked up again. ‘You'd better get Rick down here.'

When I got outside I was shocked to see how quickly the weather had deteriorated: the day had turned to night and the sea was a mass of white foam, whipped up by the howling wind. The nearest island was no longer visible through the torrent of rain that hammered down horizontally in sheets, and I couldn't even see the top of the mast. The sail wasn't up but we were already moving quickly through the water, just under the force of the wind on the side of the boat.

I slipped my way along the deck towards Rick, who was by the wheel, blinking the rain out of my eyes and taking slow steps so as not to fall overboard. We were already leaning over so far that I could have touched the surface of the sea just by crouching and putting my hand through the rail. ‘Where are the life jackets?' he bellowed, still concentrating on the compass.

‘Forget that,' I shouted, ‘Dave's got a problem. He wants you to come downstairs.'

He looked up. ‘What problem?'

I wiped the rain from my face. ‘Don't know, just come down.'

He threw the anchor back over the side and followed me back along the deck. When we reached the hatchway the anchor must have got a hold in the reef because we were thrown to one side and I had to hang on to the doorframe to stop me from falling.

Dave was fiddling with the buttons again when we got back inside, but it was immediately obvious to me that he was just trying to look busy.

‘What is it, Dave?'

He picked up a chart, shook his head and put it down again. ‘I don't know. We're... not where I thought we were.' He buried his head in his hands. ‘I don't fuckin' know.'

‘What d'you mean?' Rick leaned closer, standing behind him.

Dave picked up a pen, went to point at the chart but put it down again. ‘The reading I'm getting, the co-ordinates. Man, they're not what they were last night! I don't get it... ' He picked up the pen again, pointing at the chart that was laid out on the desk top in front of him. ‘Last night, the fuckin' same as I've been doing every night for the past two weeks, I checked our position. We were here,' he dotted the location, ‘Kangean island.'

‘So?'

‘So now when I turn on this piece of shit, it gives the co-ordinates as here.'

Rick looked closely at the second dot. ‘Damar? But that's twice as far! It can't be right.'

‘Watch.' Dave pushed buttons while Rick observed, occasionally saying ‘OK' or ‘Yep'. The co-ordinates came up the same as Dave had suggested so they did it once more. Again the satellite told us that we were about twice as far east as we thought we were.

‘It's wrong,' Rick finally asserted, standing up straight. ‘Has to be.'

Dave shrugged. ‘I suppose it's possible. If it hasn't been used for years.'

I tutted. ‘How can it be wrong?' They both looked at me as though someone new had walked into the room. ‘You tested it in Singapore and it gave the right co-ordinates. And what about the first place we went to, Bangka?' I felt my voice rising in anger.

‘Could have been anywhere, John,' Dave said evenly. ‘No one ever told us that that was Bangka, we just assumed it was.'

‘But Rick, I thought you said that you'd been using traditional methods as back-up?'

‘Yeah, John, I did for the first day, but this stuff seemed so accurate that I gave up. There didn't seem any point.'

‘We could be anywhere then.' Dave and I both looked at Rick.

‘No, not anywhere.' He leaned down and pointed at the chart. ‘I've been sailing east, I know that because we've sailed into the sun every morning and away from it at night. So we're not anywhere, we're somewhere along this line, from Sumatra to... well... '

‘New Guinea?' I exclaimed, drawing a mental line on the map. ‘For Christ's sake!'

‘No, course not. We can't have sailed that far in two weeks. Christ, the wind's been good, but not that good.'

‘Why not?' Dave presented the chart to Rick, ‘We've been sailing twenty hours a day.'

Rick shook his head. ‘No way, it's not possible, not in this thing. I say we're exactly where we think we are and we keep heading south. Within the next ten to fifteen hours we'll be in Bali.'

The boat suddenly lurched to one side, sending us all against the far wall. Cups fell off hooks and smashed on the floor, and the charts and pens were all thrown through the air, landing on top of us. ‘Shit, the anchorage has come loose.' Rick pulled himself off the floor and clung to the ladder. ‘Look, we can't drift about out here, we'll be smashed against the rocks. Wherever we are we've got to move. Everyone on deck.'

Without another word we took out the life jackets, followed Rick's instructions and went up on deck to get the sail up. One by one we emerged onto the deck and stood, open-mouthed at the sight that loomed up above us. For a moment we were paralysed, like three rabbits caught in the beam of a car's headlights. Rick shouted at me, ‘Move it!' but I just stood, blinking the rain out of my eyes, transfixed as the cliff face came into focus through the mist.

FOUR

The next ten minutes were mayhem. Everyone shouted at the tops of their voices, either giving instructions or replying to them. Rick was still shouting for me to get a move on and stop staring at the wall of rock that was moving closer and closer, and if the bottom of the boat hadn't hit the rocky seabed I think I would have stared forever.

There was a deep, grinding
boom
, and I was thrown headlong into the steel handrail that ran around the edge of the boat, my feet lifting off the deck. I put my hands out in front of me to lessen the impact but they missed the bars and went through the gaps. Tilting my head to one side, I landed on my shoulder. It was a bit like a rugby tackle, and if I hadn't been wearing the life jacket, with its built-in polystyrene shoulder pads, I'd have probably broken a shoulder blade.

My arm went elbow-deep into the sea as the boat listed over, pivoting on its keel which had come into contact with the seabed, acting like a fulcrum. I gagged on seawater, spluttering and blinking, but I just couldn't get up. Holding out a hand desperately, hoping that someone would grab hold of it, I shouted for help, writhing on my back, supported only by the handrail.

Dave was holding onto the other rail directly opposite me, hanging, his feet flailing wildly in the air, trying desperately not to let go. The bar that he was holding was bending under the weight, designed for aesthetics and not as a swing. His feet scuffed against the deck but couldn't get a grip. He looked like a mouse on a treadmill, running but getting nowhere. Bizarrely, I laughed at the sight.

Rick was clinging to the mast, his stomach and face flat against the cold steel so that, from where I lay, only his two disembodied arms were visible. He shouted something but it was lost in the sound of the boat scraping against the bottom. Both of his arms were wrapped around the pole in a morbid sort of hug, one hand still holding his coffee mug, as though it was the most precious thing on the boat.

Just when I thought the boat couldn't lean over any further without us all drowning it juddered violently, sending vibrations through my body, did a sort of kangaroo hop in which I was pressed further down, and then swung back upright, rocking from side to side. Rick immediately unravelled the sail so quickly that he looked like a film in fast motion. ‘Dave! Quick, get the anchor up!' he shouted over his shoulder. ‘Now!'

Dave pushed himself off the deck and started to run around in circles like a headless chicken.

‘Dave!' Rick screamed, jabbing the air with his finger. ‘The fooking anchor!'

First going one way and then the other, Dave ran to the end of the boat, did a double-take, realising he'd gone the wrong way in all the confusion, and came back to get to the anchor.

As I picked myself up off the deck, one hand still on the rail, I looked up at the rock face towering above us. I remember this clearly because we were so close that I could see every nook and cranny, and I could actually see a bird nesting in one of the rock fissures. All I could see was the bird's head sticking out, the rest of its body hidden in the rock-face, but I remember feeling mocked by it. I felt as though we were being laughed at, and I really wanted to throw a stone at the bloody thing and knock its head off. My attention, however, was drawn away by Dave, who was shouting something to Rick. I steadied myself and looked round.

Dave was holding on to the rail with one hand and holding up a length of chain in the other. ‘It's gone, Rick!' he shouted, as a wave struck the side of the boat and he momentarily disappeared from view.

Rick ran past him and fixed the sail, and Dave jumped behind the wheel to stop it spinning as the wind caught us. Within minutes I looked back to see the bird but it had gone, along with the cliff face, hidden once again behind the sheets of rain. Rick and Dave swapped positions again, Rick continually nodding as he glanced down at the compass, then up at the rain ahead, while at the same time spinning the wheel around in his hands, before giving it back to Dave and coming across to me.

‘You OK, John?' he gasped.

I shook my head but said yes. ‘Jesus, Rick, what's happening? I thought we were going to die or something.' We both grabbed hold of the mast, bodies going up and down, side to side in perfect unison as the boat rose and fell. ‘What was that noise, did we hit the bottom?'

He took one hand off the mast and pulled it across his face to wipe away the rain. ‘Yeah, I think so. Shit, we could be in trouble here, John.' He shot a quick look, first aft, at Dave, and then forward, as if checking on our course. ‘I'm gonna go down and check if there's any damage,' he said, ‘but really we need to dive over the side to see how bad the keel is. There's only so much you can check from inside, but at least I can see if she's taking on water.'

I loved the way he spoke when we were on the boat. Those little terms like, ‘taking on water', and referring to the boat as ‘she'. So comforting, I thought. My mouth opened to ask a question, but suddenly there didn't seem to be anything worth asking, so I closed it.

‘You're bleeding,' he said, looking at the bottom half of my face.

As soon as he said it my lip started to sting, and I ran the back of my hand across it and found it smeared with blood. Shocked at the sight, I ran my tongue over every tooth to check that I hadn't lost any. It wasn't a bad cut, just a split lip, caused, I think, by the rough material of the life jacket as it rode up when I fell. I nodded and pressed on the cut with my thumb. ‘Is there anything you want me to do?'

‘Just hang on. And keep your life jacket on,' he said as an afterthought, before staggering off.

I watched as he unfurled the rest of the sail. The wind caught the canvas and we shot forward so fast that it felt like we were engine-driven. As he came back down the boat to go below, he came back to the mast. ‘John, sort out your valuables and put them in a plastic bag: passport, any money. It's just a precaution, but if we do lose our shit at least we'll have something to get by on. I'll do the same now, and I'll tell Dave to do it as well. Just wrap them tightly in a bin bag or something, so that they're waterproof.' He turned to go.

‘And do what with them?' I asked.

‘I'm going to keep mine in my shorts, I suggest you and Dave do the same. If this thing rolls and we get thrown out, at least we'll be carrying some ID.'

I was astonished at the change in the tone of his voice. Not half an hour before he was saying how easy it would be to sail to Bali, and now we were discussing what we should do if the boat sank! I opened my mouth to speak and he read my mind.

‘Look, we're not going to sink or anything, don't worry. By tomorrow morning we'll be propping up a bar in Kuta, laughing about all of this. Don't worry.' He slapped me on the arm and went down through the hatch, leaving me to worry.

When anyone says ‘don't worry' twice in the same sentence, alarm bells start ringing in my head. It's like in the films, when a soldier has been shot twenty times and is lying on the battlefield, in a pool of blood. His buddy is pouring water into the wounded man's mouth from a canteen, saying, ‘Don't worry, bud, you're OK, you're gonna make it. Don't worry.' We all know he's going to die, not because he's full of holes but because his mate told him not to worry.

Rick's head disappeared through the hatchway and I took one last look around me before following him. Dave was squinting ahead, nervously snatching quick glances down at the compass. The sea was in turmoil around us: waves were breaking in every direction at once, some we rode, the boat clearing the water to at least half its length before crashing down, a fan of water arcing out from each side, while some hit us side on and exploded into the air, blown by the wind, to cover the whole deck in heavy spray.

I put a thumb up to Dave but the space between us became a wall of whitewater as a wave broke against the side of the boat, obscuring the view for a few seconds. I noticed that Dave had attached a piece of rope, about five feet long, as a safety line, directly from the steel handrail of the boat to his waist. I considered doing one for myself. The only problem was that I didn't really have a job, so where was I going to stand and tie myself on to? I felt a bit useless so I decided to go below to sort out my valuables. Apart from anything else I didn't even know how to tie a knot!

When I got down below I wished I hadn't bothered. Rick was standing in the middle of the galley, ankle-deep in water. I stopped on the bottom rung of the steps, as though afraid to get my feet wet, and stared at the sight. ‘Fuck!'

There was a long pause as we both hung on to the sides and watched the water swill around. Every roll of the boat sent the water over to one side, splashing against one wall where it peaked before going back along the floor and slapping against the cabinet doors on the other side. Some of the doors were hanging off their hinges, the rusted old screws having broken free after years without maintenance, and everything that hadn't been fixed down, including all of those things that had but were too old to withstand the beating, was rolling and floating around on the floor. Maps, books, charts, pens, pots and pans, fishing gear; the whole lot rolled or floated to and fro with the boat's movement, rattling and clanking as it went.

‘It could be water from the deck that came down the hatchway,' Rick said, causing me to look up. I shook my head. I knew Rick was lying, just by the way he stared at his feet while speaking. ‘The hatchway was loose, we forgot–'

‘Rick, we're sinking aren't we?' He looked up as though noticing me for the first time, then went into the bedroom and started to look for something under the bed. I followed. ‘Rick. We're sink–'

‘These boats can't sink, John, they've got buoyancy built into the hull.' He heaved something out from under the bed and came back into the galley. ‘They can roll over but they can't sink, don't worry.'

‘Stop telling me not to fucking worry!'

He seemed slightly taken aback at the anger in my voice. ‘All right, sorry. But the last thing we need to do is panic.' He threw something onto the floor. ‘I've had a quick look around and I can't find any damage to the hull. The only way to find out if it's cracked is to pump out the water and see if it comes back in again. Do you know how to use a pump?'

‘Course I fucking don't.' I looked down at the equipment and then back at him. ‘I thought we just threw a switch and it pumped out automatically.'

‘Yeah, but the battery's fucked. Everything's soaked, you'll have to do it by hand.' He took his hands off the ceiling and walked over to the radio.

‘Me? What are you going to do?'

He sat down on the stool and put on the headphones. ‘I'm going to send out a mayday.'