Verity and I took the four-hour drive from Adelaide to Robe, in the southeast of the state of South Australia, to assist skipper Alex as crew for the final leg of our voyage from Adelaide to New Caledonia and back. I was secretly glad I had missed out on the Shipwreck Coast leg until Alex showed me photos of the wonderful Port Fairy and a mother and baby koala he had spotted in the township.
Courtesy of Alex Seidel
Courtesy of Alex Seidel
I was dreading crossing the notorious Southern Ocean on our way to shelter in Antechamber Bay on Kangaroo Island. There were few vessels in this stretch of the Southern Ocean, and the voyage from Robe to Antechamber Bay, which would take us 40 nautical miles (75 km) offshore, was predicted to take 17 hours. We would leave just before 7 am and arrive at midnight. The boat had been newly repaired, and Alex was looking forward to this long stretch of ocean. He raised the sails, and there was a favorable wind of fifteen knots. The boat raced happily across the waves. For Alex, it was smooth sailing, but for me, it was like a roller coaster, so while Alex stayed active at the helm, I lay on the sofa, put my head on a cushion, swaddled myself in a blanket, and allowed myself to be rocked into a deep slumber. It was rocking severely, but more rocking meant more speed, and the sooner we arrived at Antechamber Bay, the better.
“The Winds are so favorable that I think we will be in Antechamber Bay by 8 pm!” announced Alex.
A squall arose, and the sail started flapping violently. Alex glanced outside as his attention was arrested. He went through the door to the stern and returned in frowning.
“The head has torn off from the gennaker!”
He donned a lifejacket, attached his tether, and went outside, along the side of the boat, towards the front. He wrestled with the sail in the middle of the squall, bringing it down and securing it to the side of the boat with ropes. Verity and I looked at each other, each wondering what we should do. The windows were covered with droplets of rain, and we could see Alex secured to the rails on the side of the boat with his bright yellow tether. I retrieved the life jackets from the cupboard, and Verity and I donned one each. I knew putting on the life jacket was the first step but I wasn’t sure what to do next. After what seemed like hours, Alex returned inside.
“I think I managed to secure the gennaker. I’ve replaced it with the jib, which means we’ll slow down a bit. We should still arrive well before midnight. ”
“I’m not sure I’m confident in rescuing a man overboard,” I said. “We had better do some more drills.”
“Plenty of time for that. We’ll practice that some more next time. By the way, you’ve got your life jacket on upside down.”
He showed me how to put it on the right way around, and I examined the sides of my life jacket.
“Open it here,” he explained. “It should auto-inflate, but if not, pull this cord. This is a whistle, and this is a light.”
Our roller-coaster ride continued. Suddenly, a massive wave slammed into the front of the boat, shoving the bow underwater. We gazed through the windows covered with rain droplets. Alex’s face darkened and he peered through the window to the front of the boat.
“The Seagull Striker is damaged!”
“What?”
We repeated this sequence about three times and I still couldn’t understand what he was saying. He rose to leave the cabin again.
“Make sure you are tethered,” Verity urged.
“I promise I will.”
Alex grabbed the tether, cinched it to the rail, and made his way to the bow.
Meredith Stephens
I continued to peer through the window at the bow and rehearsed in my mind the steps for rescuing a man overboard. Eventually Alex walked back towards the cabin door, and Verity and I checked to see he was tethered as he made his way along the side of the boat.,
“It’s too risky to continue under sail. We’ll have to motor.”
He furled the jib and lowered the mainsail, and we started motoring to Antechamber Bay. Our estimated arrival time would now be midnight, and we would periodically ask, “Are we there yet?”, like young children on a family trip.
The next morning, Alex rose before us, and from my bed, I could hear us motoring towards our destination, Wirrina Cove. Once we reached the shallow waters of Investigator Strait, again named by Matthew Flinders, the ocean became bumpy again but less violent than the waves of the Southern Ocean. The rhythms of the sea always send me to sleep, so I lay as before on the sofa, rugged up, with my head on a cushion, peering outside at the horizon. Several hours later, Alex called out to say that we were near our destination, Wirrina Cove. I walked outside in a daze, with my slippers still on, now that I felt safe that the rocking motion had subsided. I walked towards the bow and felt the shiver of excitement approaching land. The boat hurried into the marina, and I caught sight of a dolphin. She headed towards Alex’s berth, guided us in, and disappeared.
‘Throw out the fenders!” Alex urged me.
I threw both fenders out on the side of the berth we were close to and used my weight to push against the pole that I could sense we were about to collide with. Alex secured the ropes to the cleats. We were home on terra firma! We had completed the round trip from Wirrina to New Caledonia in just under two years. The floors of the boat were grimy. The sheets were dirty, The cups in the sink were unwashed. I did the minimum so we could make a quick exit for our drive to Adelaide. I did not feel the urge to clean the boat, so I just washed the cups, unloaded the fridge contents, brought out the laundry, and swept the floors. We exited the marina where Katie was waiting for us in my car in the car park. We loaded the car and enjoyed the blissful ride in the car back to Adelaide.
“Do you remember Gilligan’s Island?” I asked Katie.
“Of course!”
“Which character in that show resembles Alex?” I asked.
“Not Gilligan!”
“Of course not.”
“There are two possibilities,” chimed in Alex.
Of course, I thought there was also a character who was a skipper in that series, but that was not the one in my mind.
“The professor?” asked Katie.
“Yes! "I replied.
Alex’s comments about the Seagull Striker were the reason I noticed this similarity. Alex’s use of nautical terms was second nature to him, but to the rest of us, they were like the words of a foreign language.
“This word is interchangeable with Gull Striker. By the way, the one below is called a Dolphin Striker because it protrudes downward, while the Seagull Striker protrudes upward.”
“Oh no! Is this because they strike unwitting seagulls and dolphins?” I asked.
“Of course not! It’s just an image,” he reassured me.
Alex held firm on the country roads leading to the metropolis of Adelaide and then wove to the suburban streets to his home. He cracked open the bottle of sparkling wine that he had been saving for the completion of the voyage. The cork flew into the lavender bush in the courtyard. He poured it into champagne flutes, and we celebrated the completion of this voyage marked by several torn sails, an engine failure, a fallen mast, a broken steering shaft, not to mention a damaged Seagull Striker.
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The Seagull Striker and the Southern Ocean
by Meredith Stephens
BIO- Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her recent work has appeared in The Blue Mountain Review, Agape Review, Mind, Brain & Education, Fresh Words- an International Literary Journal, The Muse, and The Font- A Literary Journal for Language Teachers. In 2022 she won the Michelle Steele Best of JALT award for Extensive Reading
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