Chapter 2

Stretched out on his bunk David was not really sleeping. He was reliving the last week. The whole crazy thing had began not seven days ago. Hard to believe! If only Mickey had come with him directly he wouldn’t have done it, he would have refused. Instead, she had decided to reserve some of her holiday to take later on, to visit parents in America. So David had gone alone to Rome one week early to work on Caliban, get ready for the annual cruise.

The Italian boatyard, about ten minutes from the airport on the banks of the Tiber river was a really nice place to be. There in a well fitted machine shop, big sail loft, lumber yard, everything to be found under one roof, he was able to work as the mood suited him, not even necessary to rent a car since the place had a restaurant serving decent food. Maybe it had been another mistake to bring Caliban to the Mediterranean in the first place three years ago, but it was what Mickey wanted.

Not him, in the beginning he had been almost indifferent. He had always loved the North Sea, trips to Guernsey and the flats of Holland, the Scylly islands and Ireland to the West where he had journeyed with his uncle. Mickey was just the opposite, she never stopped complaining—that the North Atlantic was always too cold.

"I want to swim. I’m not like you Brits. When I put a foot in that water I think it’s going to fall off." Well it was her boat and he was a reasonable human being. So he had consented and the trip down around Brittany, its incredible tides and shallows, picturesque ports, New Rochelle and its amazing lock, then through the Canal du Midi; it had all been terrific.

He now agreed with her. Once in the Med the climate was marvelous and if you had one holiday a year, you didn’t want to spend it freezing in the North Sea listening to gale warnings in the Outer Hebrides. Last year they had cruised to North Corsica before sailing on to Rome to winter the boat, sheltering in this safe boatyard on the banks of the placid Tiber river just four miles from the sea.

This year’s cruise would push them east, through the Straits of Messina, to Malta and Greece, the Aegean with its fabled islands. Then—who knows where? If they could get that far in a month they would winter in Rhodes.

There was a big downside. Every year a cut-off point arrived just when the two of them had mastered the lovely ritual of living aboard. Always there came a time when the boat was just about perfect and everything worked. You knew where everything was and the hand instinctively went to the right locker for the flour, best white wine, the genoa winch, the bow mooring line.

And even worse, like all sailboats Caliban hated being left alone during the winter, and showed it. Boats were like people and had personalities to match. On his own, he (Caliban was an improbable HE) turned into the most annoying, recalcitrant child. Arriving at the marina a week ago, David couldn’t still the thought that he might as well have rented the boat for an entire year, to a derelict and homeless tramp.

Horrified, he had dropped his gear on the pier. His first sight of Caliban showed the jagged mark of sharp rat’s teeth on all of the cockpit lockers. And inside there was rat shit over everything. Damn! He had even paid a sailor to run the engine once a week and keep an eye on things but obviously it hadn’t included rat catching. Two new fenders were missing and there was a big new nick on the forward topsides where a neighbouring yacht had come in too fast and banged. Naturally the alternator had packed in completely, so obviously the engine hadn’t been run in months and both batteries were dead flat. David groaned. There was the radar reflector swinging loose on its fitting and clattering against the mast every time the wind blew. Incredible!

All week Caliban was to rebel at this negligent treatment in the most quixotic way. A pump would work for ten minutes and then it would stop, then start again the next time—no rational explanation. David was short tempered, spoke his mind and had a big fight with the marina manager and stalked away, swearing he wouldn’t pay one lira to a sailor who left his boat in that condition. But it wasn’t just that; it was Caliban being stubborn, and trying to tell him something he didn’t want to hear.

So there was nothing wrong with the yacht that working from six am to midnight for a week couldn’t cure. Lots to do, and since he enjoyed the work he immediately changed into old dirty jeans and began without even unloading his stuff. From the shore he inspected his topsides just below the waterline, what he could see through the murky river, happy to notice not too many barnacles in the almost fresh unsalty water. He debated, a hard choice but decided to save time (and money) and skip a year of bottom painting. Just pay for a quick two hour lift in the hoist, a hose down with pressure, enough to do a quick scrub but half the price of an in-and-out haul. There’s always the question of time as well as money when you have four weeks annual vacation one of which has to be used up with maintenance. He could hardly sleep that first night so busy was he ticking off all the jobs he would have to do; and the next day he was up and working at dawn.

David was completely and utterly happy doing these boat chores, but of course he didn’t know he was happy. You never do. If you had asked him he would have complained mightily about all the work he had to do in such a short time. But no one asked him. He got on with the job, stopping for salami sandwiches at lunch, but eating a good dinner in the small restaurant every night and drinking a whole bottle of wine. He missed Mickey (since she was always a big help with little ticklish jobs which took a fine hand and patience) but not all that much. If she had come along he might have had to do all sorts of cultural things in Rome (worse luck) none of which interested him in the slightest. Better to concentrate and get the boat ready. He decided then and there—‘no way was he going to stop work and visit that great imperial city,’ and tried to work out in his mind how he could actually prevent Mickey. Time was growing short and he didn’t want to waste one single day of sailing, one single day of his precious holiday. Screw Rome and all sight-seeing! Tourists! He loathed tourists.

The small marina was delightfully pretty. Across the yellow-brown reaches of the Tiber, cows munched grass in a green field stretching away to the horizon. Ugly things did tend to float by, the decomposed body of a dead dog snagged on one of the mooring lines, but a sailor just poked it free and it continued its passage towards the sea.

Another Englishman whom he met in the restaurant, mentioned that during the winter someone had looked down into the turgid water and seen a human head floating between boat and pier. The carabinieri immediately descended on the Marina in force, and skin divers poked around all the moored yachts finding a sunken black plastic bag with the other severed parts. "Grisly isn’t it? Has to be the Mafia," said the Englishman cackling knowingly. "Dismemberment is a favored system of execution for backsliders , Ha ha! Frightening enough to do the job.

David shuddered and decided to mention nothing of all this to Mickey. He looked over the side at the brownish water. There were enough condoms floating by his boat to make him think that the Italian birthrate was plunging (which it was).

Before turning in at night, he lay back on his bunk and studied charts and pilots. A current flowed through the Straits of Messina which sometimes reached six to eight knots, enough to keep Caliban in irons, locked in one place not going forward or back. Have to work that one out before leaving. It was better to stay in port and wait for the right tide at a small place named Scylla, (which sounded only halfway familiar, David not being literary, decided to ask Mickey who would know about such things).

Christ! He couldn’t wait toget under way. Mickey was coming down with pilot books and all new charts, so let her figure the whole passage out. Just the sort of thing she loved to do.

There was a large new Italian power cruiser tied in front of Caliban on the river, occupying an enormous double space. It was vast and luxurious and had warps the size of a man’s wrist. The new teak glistened and shone. Two weaselly looking sailors and a smart looking captain lived aboard. Every day the sailors scrubbed it from stem to stern, some of their dirty water slopping all over Caliban. David protested weakly but finally gave up. They were in the habit of looking down at his small boat with such scorn that it reduced him to shamed silence. Sometimes when he was too tired to go to the restaurant, David made himself eggs and bacon and smelled wonderful odours wafting down from the big yacht which loomed so far above him. Another annoyance, the crew always watched television at night, noisy game shows. The idiotic clamour kept David up and he would have liked to complain, but he didn’t know enough Italian to make himself understood.

One afternoon the owners came down to inspect, two hard types in silk suits and both with wizened brown faces, Small men they were, one paunchy and bald. the other thin and rather fit with lots of crinkly gray hair. They had girls with them in high heels who giggled as they stepped aboard the big yacht, uncaring that they were about to mark the new teak deck with ugly black smears. But of course, there were sailors to clean up after them. Soon the women had their clothes off and were sunbathing on the top deck. Gazing up at the bridge David could see the high mounds of bare breasts and tanned elbows hoisting glasses of red Compari. Dressed in sparkling white clothes, the sailors bustled around serving food and drinks.

Late in the afternoon, one of the owners, the smaller skinnier one, came out on his aft deck wearing loud plaid shorts. He glanced down at David, bare to the waist, enjoying the sun and oiling his windlass. "You ‘merican?" he said looking at the Stars and Stripes flying on their mizzen mast. He spoke with an accent which David recognized from many films, as being real New York.

"I’m not American but my wife is. It’s her boat."

"Cute little ship," said the fellow. "So where do you go with it?…..gotta be cheap to run, know what this baby here costs me every day? You wouldn’ b’lieve it if I tole you."

"Haven’t got the foggiest," said David who on principle despised motor-yachts? and all those who sailed in them. He detested their large generators which rumbled through the night in quiet anchorages. He loathed their large plastic dinghys lowered by machines into the sea which then towed noisy water skiers, the wake of which made dishware and wine glasses eap off the dining table; even further, often swore that one day he would hang a steel cable across the water to another like minded sailboat and together, decapitate all of them in one fell swoop. He reviled all sailors of large power cruisers who without even looking behind, on entering harbour, laid many cables of heavy anchor chain over the anchors of other boats thus preventing all departures. They hogged the radio waves and the phone lines and most available marina space. His throat filled with bile and he turned his back on the shining new yacht with the catchy name—‘Our Good Thing!’ each letter a different vulgar color.

"I know all about you snobs in sailboats," said the voice behind him knowingly. "So whyn’t you just come aboard and have a drink? You’ll kill yaself doin’ all that work alone. My sailors’ll be happy to give you a hand."

"Thanks," said David, and wise to most Americanisms, "thanks but no thanks."

"Where you goin’ this summer, east or west?"

"East," said David, looking up. He pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his forehead. The man leaned on his elbows, looking down at him with vast good humour.

"Gotta big crew?"

"No, just myself and my wife and that’s the way I like it? we like it."

"See the point," said the American. I guess two people can handle her pretty easily? Jeezus! I got three full-time employees when we go on cruise."

"Him," said David. "Not her, this boat is a him."

"So just you and your wife—you got it made, pal. You must be a pretty good sailor, scares the Hell out of me."

David, not averse to an occasional brag, looked up at the large expensive yacht and cleared his throat. A second man, the fat partner, now stood at the rail and observing him haughtily. This one wore a Hawaiian shirt with surfers cascading down a wave, and his belly stuck out underneath showing a large swathe of pink skin.

"I could take Caliban to New York and back, by myself," said David calmly, "without even turning on the engine if I so desired, and maybe I will someday when I can afford it, well not New York, some place more interesting." The second man now said something in Italian to the first one and they both stared down hard at Caliban, raking her from the stem to stern with their gaze.

"Sounds good to me. Like I said, whyn’t you come aboard later on and have a look round. I just bought this big fella and maybe you could show me something about how to run her. My name’s Johnny, Johnny Lazzari and this is my business partner, Emilio Tondiglio."

David introduced himself, looking up at the striped covered aft awning of the power cruiser. The other man grunted and went into the big salon, sliding closed the big smoked glass doors.

"I guess you have to work for a living, that’s always the bad news," said Lazzari, "whaddya do for a living when you’re not sailing?"

"Ha!" said David"?Sailing,". "I only wish, I almost never sail. I’m a solicitor, a lawyer, very boring work having to with buying and selling property in London, I think you Americans call it real estate."

"So you only get to see this baby in the summer time. Wife feel the same way about the boat as you do?"

This made David think. Did Mickey love boating as much as he did? She seemed to, but then she had begun to make noises about how they maybe ought to start thinking about having a family. He paused and stared down into the oily water "How does one ever know?" he sighed to Lazzari who seemed to be making clucking noises of sympathy.

"Yeah" said Lazzari. "those little comforts women love so much, hot tubs and jacuzzis. We gotta jacuzzi and you’re welcome to use it."

David glanced at his watch, close to four o’clock already, two more hours work and then he wouldn’t mind one bit hoisting a pint or two or better still, something even stronger. And it was always interesting visiting other boats to have a look at the frenzied market of new navigational aids, (even though there was no way he could afford them). He gave another glance at the big power cruiser and made a wager to himself that there was probably nothing ‘Our Good Thing’ lacked. A huge radar, almost the biggest he had ever seen was swinging away on a mast on the upper deck, here, in the marina?to what purpose he couldn’t imagine.

"Suppose I come aboard about six-thirty when I finish this job."

"Suits me," said Lazzari. "Whadja you say your name was?"

"David, David Hutchings, junior partner, ‘Gillingham Weinstein and Forsythe.’ Anytime you want to buy your little pied-a-terre in Belgravia I’d be happy to handle it for you."

"I’ll remember that—My wife is nuts about London. I’m going to show you stuff aboard that’ll knock your eyes out. You’ll love it—like state of the art everything."

David locked up his tools and took a quick shower on board, letting the cool water wash away the sweat of the day’s work. A great satisfaction, the more than ample supply of fresh water aboard, a hundred and twenty gallons, a lot for a cruising sailboat. There was never any need to stint on taking showers, or washing clothes, doing dishes, the problems afflicting most smallish boats. At which point his mind jumped to his real intent, shadowy but always on the edge of his consciousness, a trip around the world.

With water streaming down his body, he almost forgot to soap himself up—paused, frozen in concentration. ‘So if they carried sixty gallons of diesel fuel, forty in the main and twenty in the wing tank, it would necessarily follow that with maximum use of fuel, let’s say 1700 revs per minute with the boat going at five mph, eating up three quarters of a gallon an hour, even better why not drop to 1500 revs, when they did about four mph instead of five, that would give them a cruising range of almost five-hundred miles out of sight of land—even if they NEVER raised any sails. That would take them right through the doldrums, big, dull, no-wind girdle which circled the equator. ‘Must make a note and put it in the log,’ he said aloud. (Complex mental calculations occupied a lot of David’s free time and presented him with a vivid fantasy life, of which Mickey was completely unaware. Moreover, up until now—it had been a completely harmless occupation.)

David often wrote down these calculations, statistical, boring, in the back of the log, and if Mickey had once looked she would have known what his real intentions were and they could have then discussed it. But like many young couples, the present, just surviving in a tough economic world, that and having fun on weekends, took up just about all of their free time.

Their first meeting had typically taken place during a singles club ski week at Val d’Isere. Busy with separate careers, perhaps they had each begun to feel a little desperate, that they would never find someone to love—and who would love them.

David had reluctantly allowed himself to be dragged there by office colleagues. "You need another interest, old son, you’re never going to meet girls at boat races, all sex hungry blokes just like you," said his friends. "Skiing, that should do it. Girls go there just hoping to meet guys. Believe me friend, it works." And the meeting had taken place as predicted, on the ski slope where Mickey had helped pick him up and arrange him when he naturally fell off the T Bar, arms and legs splayed in every direction. She had handed him his hat and shook the snow out of it.

"It would help if you pointed your legs in the same direction. Then, if you feel like you’re going to fall, you just do it? Fall! No disgrace. " Mickey was dressed in a great purple one piece outfit with red trim. Big black wrap around goggles covered her face. She escorted him to where the piste began and pointed him downhill. " Use the snowplow if you can, that way you won’t get into trouble."

"Meet me after skiing," said David, "if I survive this day I owe you. I’lll buy you a drink and if you’re really good I’ll let you teach me how to use these bloody things," and tentatively he pushed off down the hill, legs firmly arranged in a tight ‘V’. He knew she was watching him and waved a ski pole in salute.

So it began. The exact moment they fell in love they had been sitting on a drab leather couch in an unheated room of the rented chalet, where they were not forced to listen to the uncomfortably loud music. Their heads were turned silently, looking through a glass door at friends hopping around in the nearby bar and rapidly getting falling down drunk.

"I have a confession to make which is not politically correct. I loathe most pop music and I hate dancing," said David, "but at the same time it has to be said?I’m a rotten dancer, you?"

"I both dance and ski," said Mickey, since I truly only enjoy uncompetitive sports. But what I would really like to learn is how to sail a boat."

"No!" David was awestruck.

"Yes," said Mickey. "Sailing puts in one basket everything I adore—the sea, wind, sun, and being on your own.?Nature," she said portentously, turning to him, sure that he would understand that vague term. But he could only stare at her as though he were regarding Eve, the first woman, and one created just for him. His mouth fell open.

"Nature," he repeated. "Nature, Yes, I guess so."

There it was, the same dream, to go down, down to the sea in ships, out of sight of land and all that it is known and understood, to be utterly and totally dependent on one’s own resources and the vagaries of wind and weather. (Of course they had both read old Joshua Slocum’s classic describing his trip around the world in a thirty six foot sloop he had built himself back in the 1890’s).

(Mickey) "Remember the part where he puts the tacks on the deck when the pirates come aboard during the night to rob him and instead they all jump overboard. Where was that?"

(David) "Somewhere in Central or South America, maybe Tierra del Fuego. I like the way he was able to self-steer just by setting the sails a certain way. I tried it on my uncle’s boat and it works. The man was an absolute genius. If I ever had the time I would build a boat like that, just for fun. I think someone once did and made the same circumnavigation."

"I have never been on a cruising sailboat," Mickey said sadly, "but I was great on a Sunfish last year in the Caribbean."

" A sunfish! I’ll take you sailing on a real boat the very next time I go to see my uncle," said David. "Not to worry, you’ll love it. The Hamble river is beautiful."

They had leaned towards each other, a magnetic pull ‘stronger than Sex’ (Mickey thought, though maybe it was Sex after all. Shared fantasies are such a powerful aphrodisiac). He kissed her then and his whole body was shaking, trembling. And they went to bed together that very first night with great passion and tenderness. Mickey lay in David’s arms in the grey snowy light of dawn and watched him sleep. His ever present glasses lay on the night table and in slumber his face lost its reserved composure, and he seemed childlike, vulnerable, (most unEnglish as she would say later to her friends).

They spent the entire vacation together, sometimes in bed, hardly ever on the ski slope, but never out of each other’s sight; and when they returned to London, they drove down to Beaulieu in February and looked at the yachts in the icy water, tall black masts spikily dissecting the white winter sky.

"When Spring comes we’ll go sailing. My uncle likes me to take the boat out, mostly by myself, like exercising a horse. I make a list of whatever needs doing for that year. In recompense I have to paint the bottom when we haul, it works out perfectly for both of us so I’m not complaining."

"I’m good at painting, so I’ll help you," Mickey had said, tightly gripping his cold hand.

David was a junior solicitor in a large London office and hated every moment of his day. First there had been the long grind at university, and then finding the right firm in which to do his articles before getting admitted to the ‘bar’. When he had reached the very end, found the desirable firm, passed the exam with flying colors—negotiated good money; only then he discovered that the Law itself, especially property law, bored him to tears.

Whatever you needed to be a big success, David then knew he didn’t have the ‘knack’, and it had also come to him then that with this attitude he was never going to make full partner� where the real money lay. Until Mickey (and then Caliban), his whole life up until that moment—had been altogether pointless and without meaning.

They had married somewhat reluctantly since neither of them were particularly drawn to domesticity. The consolation prize � they collected enough wedding presents from family in England and America, to make it almost worthwhile.

But doing his sums, his real sums, David had come to realize that the best years of his youth, the most significant, had almost passed by and he hadn’t had one moment to himself—to do, really do the things he liked until, until Mickey, out of love for him, it had to be that?bought Caliban with an inheritance from an aunt in America. And she even thought it was her idea (though by that time David had a long library of possible boats, if and when the opportunity to buy ever arose). It did. What a bonanza, a gift from the Gods.

Newly christened Caliban had been dismally neglected. The bilges had floated with beercans. The sails were in a torn bedraggled state. The grey and pitted fibreglass hull had been blistered with osmosis, a smallpox like condition which needed instant correction—and took most of David’s first annual vacation after the purchase, alone with a rented, costly, and noisy sandblaster. After that, many layers of stinking glass resined strips to paste on, a laborious process which made his lungs feel like smoking sixty cigarettes a day would be healthy in comparison. The good and reliable Perkins engine had been rusted to a point almost beyond any possible ministrations. And so on and so on—in fact, the boat added up to what David Hutchings wanted most in the world; a yacht needing total restoration. The old Nicholson 38 was exactly what he most desired, coveted, needed—and the price was right.

When all the endless paper work was signed, sealed and delivered, they anchored Caliban, free, nothing to pay! down on the Hamble river where David’s uncle had an attached cottage on the water—plus a double mooring, and, not too far from a good boatyard. Every weekend for two years Mickey and David drove down and lived aboard, working, doing all the restoration and repairs themselves to save cash.

At the same time, David was able to hoard some of the good money he was beginning to make, never mentioning to Mickey� that what he was really intending, was to quit the Law entirely, sail the Med and eventually go round the World. He didn’t even have to ask, he knew that Mickey would be game, well, he thought she would, though she seemed, unlike him, to like her job working as a graphic artist designing websites or some such silly occupation.

Their own yacht became the receptacle of all hopes, dreams—and cash. Axiomatic of yachtsmen throughout history. David said to all of his friends, "What’s the difference between a boat and a toilet? Don’t bother answering because I’m going to tell you anyway. In a boat you flush down money—and shit?" Holidays were always spent on Caliban, exploring the Solent, cruising to Falmouth in Cornwall, once venturing as far as Ireland.

After those first days of intimacy they had never returned to discussing their dreams and Joshua Slocum’s historic cruise. Once David had bolted upright in the middle of the night scaring Mickey half to death—‘Suez, Port Said, Dar es Salaam’, he said quite clearly, before falling backon his pillow.

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