Power down

Another day in paradise

It’s a snippet of a song that continually circulates around in your cranial space. We’re sailing around the Pacific and I’ve suffered a few. One was Leonard Cohen.

“There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything), that’s how the light gets in.”

I last heard Anthem being picked out by a guitar-toting friend in the Marlborough Sounds two months ago. A lifetime.

That was good too, because all the way from New Zealand I’d been humming Peter Skellern.

“You’re a lady, I’m a man, you’re supposed to understand.”

That song was the last one we heard on RNZ Saturday Night as we cleared out of Napier. A good song as songs go, but a fortnight is a long time.

Today it was Lou Reed, but sung by Leonard Cohen.

“Oh, it’s such a perfect day, I’m glad I spent it with you.”

There’s no such thing as a perfect day, but we’ve gotten pretty close. On a day when reports said there was snow on our block north of Dunedin, it was hard to imagine. We were sitting in dappled shade under a tree on the beach of an almostuninhabited tropical island. White surf generated a soft background roar as it reared and subsided out on the reef. The water was a deep blue over the coral, and an impossible aquamarine – the colour of lemonade ice-blocks – over the sand. Fluffy cotton wool clouds in a clear sky spoke of the trade winds which whispered in the palm fronds overhead.

We rowed and surf-skied with the snorkeling gear and a picnic through to a sheltered western beach. Which we had to ourselves. No airbrushing, photoshopping or the mellowing of memory required. It was about as perfect as life gets.

Which was just fine, considering how hard we’d worked to get there. I’d had to wake my better half every two hours, day and night for four days on end and three more days in bits and pieces, to tell her it’s her turn to steer. It leaves you in a state of tiredness and stress which few first-world folk ever enter.

Every tactical decision was ours, as were the consequences. There was just us and the resources we’d brought with us in our little spaceship. A game of strategy, like chess, with a touch of Macgyver (the original version) when needed. Living with a capital L.

There are some… drawbacks. But then Sir Peter Blake, Sir Edmund Hillary and Burt Munro aren’t remembered for whether they vacuumed, showered or changed attire, or how often. Nor are many books written lauding those activities. Certainly my own death-bed pride will be in achievements like the one we’ve just accomplished, rather than whether I changed daily. But I digress.

Paddling the surf-ski out over the coral reminded me of another such day, 53 years ago. I was paddling the family catamaran-canoe around the rocky southern shore of Kaikoura. The same sense of freedom, self-determination, self-reliance. The same joy in soaking up the visual surroundings, the texture, the moment.

As always in this game, there are people to meet. Happy hour – 4.30 to sunset, more or less – is when boaties like us congregate to yarn in a cockpit somewhere. On this day there was a husband and wife from Lord Howe who have spent 30 years taking their small boat all over the planet. There was a couple with a little girl about to turn one, and yet another here for their 14th season. Two more had guided their small boat into more planetary ports than I’ve had hot dinners.

There are few degrees of separation – everyone has mutual acquaintances – but the real commonality is their uncommonality. Everyone is interestingly different.

We rowed back to the boat, planning the morrow. A quick torch-light tour around the deck, a check of the anchor gear, a quiet cuppa and a (fought-to-thedeath-as-always) game of Scrabble. I got up two or three times during the night to check we were still where we should be. That’s part of the self-reliant game we’ve taken on – no biggie.

Two weeks later and I can report several days and places which top that one. If you don’t go, you won’t know.