Sea Change - Ian Dickens

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queue of people came to my door for an audience.

      They issued long diatribes about individuals who had created political mayhem over the past couple of weeks and complained and whined and demanded that action be taken. It was true that certain people seemed to be behaving in a less than helpful manner, but even as the earnest beseeching went on across the desk, I had an urgent desire to giggle uncontrollably. This was all suddenly very silly and spectacularly unimportant.

      I still had to make one last visit to the ad agency over in Knightsbridge and, with a couple of hours to spare before the warm white wine moment of departing speeches in a boardroom packed with awkwardly shuffling staff, I strolled away from the slowly crawling traffic and meandered through Hyde Park. Drawn towards the placid peace of the Serpentine, I sat on a park bench at the water’s edge and reflected on the year that had just past.

      It was a year ago that I had decided on a major change and now the moment had come when the salary stopped, the Club Class travel and grand hotels were over, the company car was no more and the expense account a thing of the past. I had no more need of a suit, a briefcase, a diary or a secretary to manage it. I had no politics to fight, no battles to win, no meetings to attend, no e-mails to collect or mailbox messages to respond to.

      As twenty-one years of sitting in an office came to an end, I sat in the warm September sunlight and felt more content than I had felt in years. For an hour I sat there, oblivious to everything else in the world as the traffic hissed through the trees, the inbound jets to Heathrow lowered themselves out of the sky and a group of young children from a playgroup excitedly fed bread to the ducks. Serious workers were at work, leaving the park for American tourists, pensioners leaning on their sticks, lovers walking hand in hand, a well-heeled rider and her horse cantering through the sand and the odd rower out on the lake showing off to an adoring partner. We were each content in our own world and happy to be able to have the time to simply watch the afternoon unfold.

      That was it. Being a ‘grown-up’ was finally over. Now I could seriously go to work and start playing.

      The task of preparing the boat began in earnest and more crew came to join Ellie as London became our new home. I lived on the boat during the week, going home at weekends to be with my family. On board we lived like gypsies, grabbing whatever bunk might be available and falling asleep to the gentle slap of the passing tide in the River Itchen. Shamrock Quay, at the back end of Southampton, is not a glamorous marina and, nestling under the building work of the city’s new football stadium, we went about our daily tasks, fitting in with the other jobbing workers who made their living from boats at this functional, practical yard.

      The daylight brought with it a heavy damp dew, which made a perfect alarm call. By 06.30 most of the crew had stumbled over the rough yard in a half-dressed, half-awake, yawning stumble and queued to get the hot water. Lines of steaming naked bodies emerged unselfconsciously from the cubicles and, as we towelled ourselves dry, the tasks for the day were discussed.

      While one person was planning to go deep into the bilge, another would be hoisted high up the mast. Another would be off on a sail-repairing course while another couple, in a different classroom, would consider the complex issue of global routing.

      Spanners and pliers were not the work tools for most of us and we set about learning the workings of our boat with a splendid cack-handedness. Fingers were sliced open, hammers dropped from the top of the mast, vital bolts plopped into the oil-laden foul bilge water and the bravest soul took a first nervous screwdriver to the flushing mechanism of the two heads, or on-board lavatories.

      In between bouts of manual labour I went off to meetings that discussed provisions and drew up a shopping list for fourteen people’s breakfast, lunch and dinner over seventy days, with no fridges to store it all in. I learnt how to service and repair the on-board diesel generator and main engine after a day of lectures in a lathe-turning, oil-smelling fabrication shed, and returned to the boat clutching a certificate of competence that meant as much to me as any advertising award.

      More lessons on fixing followed at a two-day first-aid course. I could hardly believe that it was me snapping the stethoscope shut and deflating the blood-pressure collar, injecting apples with a series of practice syringes and learning how to stitch a wound using sutures on a mortally wounded ripe pear. In between the laughter prompted by a series of dreadful bodge jobs, the Army medic giving the lectures offered some sobering advice.

      ‘If anyone receives a serious blow on the head and damages their skull,’ he said, aware that the class had pencils poised and were ready to frantically scribble down the solution ‘you might as well not bother.’

      The nervous new sailors looked at each other and the colour drained from the upturned faces as he continued. ‘Unless a helicopter is within thirty minutes’ flying time and the patient can be stabilised, then basically they are dead meat. That’s it, lecture on head injuries over.’

      And just to make sure we were completely up to speed, he reminded us that for about ninety per cent of our journey a helicopter would be way out of range. Suddenly I wanted my crew mates to take the greatest possible care. On the training races we had already seen two crew airlifted from the deck of Liverpool and flown off to hospital in a coastguard Sikorsky. One of our own crew had got her fingers caught in a shackle when a line released suddenly and her screams could be heard on boats a quarter of a mile away.

      A fully powered-up sixty-foot sailing yacht carries awesome loads, and I shared the dangers with the rest of the crew as we ate supper that night. Anne had already asked the crucial question and, in seeking the answer, I had established that there were two body bags on board. But out in the tropics, where the heat is intense, burial at sea for the soul that got it wrong was the probable answer.

      Thank heavens Ellie was on board with her A&E nursing skills and I hoped and prayed that she remained undamaged throughout. If she got hurt, my two days of learning would be brought to bear and, quite frankly, the idea terrified me. I vowed to keep a special eye on her and pad her bunk with cotton wool if necessary.

       5

       HARD GOODBYES

      My last weekend at home was supposed to provide plenty of quiet time for just each other, but it never really materialised. We had a mound of paperwork that needed sorting – this was the last chance for eight thousand miles and at the bottom of the large pile was a final draft from the solicitor. No matter how practical it all was, seeing the title ‘Last will and testament’ still brought me up short. There, in black and white, were all the details that would ensure a trouble-free handover of everything that related to me, should the unthinkable happen and the Army lecturer’s prophecy came true.

      We changed the subject quickly and moved to the huge world map taking pride of place in the mission control centre of the kitchen. Holly and Michael joined in, their fingers pointing at the stopovers where they would be on the quayside and we would be reunited as a family. The Galápagos stop was already booked and the long journey via Amsterdam, Curaçao, Guayaquil and Quito, with an arrival time of 23 December, already promised a Christmas like no other.

      From there, Mike’s finger trailed left, across huge areas of blue, traversing the Pacific to the edge of the map, before picking up from the opposite side and continuing left again, past the Far East, over the Indian Ocean, to finally pause on the small island of Mauritius. The idea of his spring half-term holiday seemed too far off to be real and the May arrival time was worryingly distant for all of us. The journey continued again, heading up to the more familiar seaboard of North America and ending with an excited jab at the black dot marking New York. If Mauritius was a distant thought, then the next summer holidays were a lifetime away.

      Through the kitchen window I could see my turbo-powered, metallic paint-clad, alloy-wheeled, air-conditioned director-style car with its leather seats and CD changer. But not for much longer. I had no need for it and it represented a massive bucket of travel vouchers that would get the family

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