From Life to Lunch, from Dreams to Disaster

I sleep reasonably well when Turtlebones is anchored. Restful, but different from the sleep I get on land. Most experienced sailors sleep with a certain amount of anxiety. Knowing, as we do, that no matter how idyllic it may seem, things can, and often will, change during our slumber.

Those who sleep like a log, don’t after awakening to find their boat isn’t where she was left, even if nothing tragic happened as a result.

So, for me, sleep at anchor is a simmering, semi-conscious, or maybe, sub-conscious state. Alert, to some extent, for changes in the boat’s motion, sea-state, or wind strength. Odd noises rouse me, and more often than not, prompt a quick deck check, without which sleep isn’t easily resumed.

This morning it was the cackle of birds and frantic splashing nearby that got me up. Just metres away, a wild life and death struggle was unfolding between three natural adversaries – two playing offence, and one emphatically on the defensive. 

Under attack was a large, tightly-packed school of small blue fishes. They moved skittishly, but in unison, as if controlled by a singular brain. A vast cloud of aquatic life, desperately trying to evade two groups of predators. Employing the traditional strategy of the weak party – safety in numbers.

From below, brigades of much larger attackers, slashed through the blue mass. The black and silver invaders scattering the peloton, gobbling up its slowest members, even forcing some skyward in desperate bids for survival. The marauders, equally motivated, rocketing into the air, inches behind, hungry mouths open. 

From above, squadrons of sea birds – ever the opportunists – hover somewhat awkwardly, then dart down smartly.  Skimming the water’s surface, and hopeful snaring one of the small blue fish during their fleeting attempts at flight. Others settling for the scrap missed by the marauders in their haste – dismembered bits of tiny blue fish, littering the surface.  

The scene played out for nearly half an hour. A shifting battlefield as hostilities gradually subsided in one area, only to see new a skirmish breakout nearby.  More birds arriving with each outburst, despite what seemed like an ever-diminishing number of servings on offer.

With the marauders full and content, it was over. The birds scattered. The tiny blue fish – the base for so much of the planet’s food-chain – can, I imagine, go about their business, replenish their slightly depleted numbers, until the next hungry horde happens along. And, the age-old cycle repeats.

While it may be tempting to assign emotions tags like cruel or brutal, nature’s processes aren’t gratuitous, just necessary.

Still, our human desire to personify is not easily contained. And, we sailors are among the chief culprits. Our accounts of the sometimes subtle, and occasionally harsh, lessons the sea dispenses so relentlessly are crammed with imagined human traits and impulses. How else to explain it all?

Looking through the binoculars, as we approached Fakarava’s southern pass from a few miles away, I could see the masts of several sailboats lying at anchor inside the lagoon. A thin strip coral beach and an irregular line of palms sheltering them from the ocean surf pounding the outer reef.  

A low white arch was also visible on the beach. As we came closer, I realized it wasn’t a building. It was the gentle curve of an overturned hull, washed up on the beach. Someone’s dream now abandoned – bleached by the sun. We can only speculate about the circumstances – storm, human error, mechanical breakdown or some combination of factors – that led to her demise.

For those of us who live on sailboat, these sites are sobering and sickening all at once. Anchored, was we subsequently were, with the hulk in view, you can’t help but think, “there but for the grace…”  It’s impossible not to reflect, if only a little, on how terrible it would be to lose the boat that is our home and everything aboard in such remote part of the world.

Chris who anchored next to us came by to chat. He confessed that the sight of the hulk was so troubling he had to move down the beach. Was that why the space was free when we arrived?

For me it evoked memories, still vivid 25 years on, of friends from Sweden who wrecked in San Blas Islands of Panama

That night, tucked in behind a reef, we noticed lights where they shouldn’t be. Immediately we knew it was a boat in distress. My friend John and I, set out across the reef motoring and at other times dragging our dinghies. The closer we got the worse things looked.

Long story short; the boat Lady Allie Cat was holed and unsavable. We carted her forlorn crew, Allie and Alf, back to John’s boat. And, at first light began the grim job of salvaging what remained of their belongings. The boat was on her side, constantly bashed by waves, and coated in leaking diesel fuel. 

I’ll always treasure sharing their tears when we retuned with the wedding rings they presumed were lost for good.  Sickened by the sight of the wreck, and maybe suffering a tad of survivor guilt, we left as soon after.