ICE AND DARK
In an extract from her book, Melanie White captures the mental highs and lows of working on a superyacht
Much of my experience in the Arctic was clouded by hard work and tunnel vision. How were we going to get the calories in? How could I best help hoist the mainsail while hoping whatever was in the oven wouldn’t overcook? It was a balancing act. I went down like a sack of spuds more than once while walking on deck over hatches hidden by snow. We’d hammer ice off the lines with rubber mallets, working buried under layers, with just a pink nose and squinted eyes exposed.
The world glistened with grace, though. The sparkles were hidden in inconsequential acts, like tasting eight varieties of smoked salmon at Eide Handel supermarket, or eating cinnamon kanelsnurrer in the coffee shop while pouring words onto the page on the odd day off. For me, it almost always included food or nature.
Even that which could have been considered a mundane task began to morph into a routine that felt enjoyable. Fuelling up was one such task. To fuel up, most boats would go out of the marina and turn left, and just a five-minute motor under the bridge would get you to the fuelling station. Almost all bridges in northern Norway were built for the coastal ferries to fit beneath. We’d motored under two southern bridges on our delivery to Tromsø with barely a metre to spare between the top of the rig and underside of the bridge. George would be winched to the top with a radio in hand calling distances to Murphy at the helm.
Once in Tromsø, though, we didn’t even have a metre to play with. Our rig wouldn’t fit under, and so we’d exit the marina and turn right, looping around the mainland to the other side of the bridge. A five-minute journey for most took over an hour of motoring for us.
We took the journey often on crisp, bright Saturday mornings with the radio on and a cup of tea in hand. It was a gift. I’d gladly untie the fenders on the side deck while watching nature flit either side of me: gigantic white peaks and azure blue skies.
The entire trip was comfortably a three-hour outing. It could easily have felt a tedious task. I could see where we had started less than a kilometre away under the bridge, but I wouldn’t let my ego grumble about wasted time. We returned the way we came, turning our back on the marina to circumnavigate Tromsø again. Never entirely completing the circle, the bridge would reappear to break the circuit.
I can vividly retrace the route with my eyes closed. Despite the variety of the job, I figured it best to collect as many glimmers of beauty in these routes, especially when they became ordinary.
But it wasn’t always so easy to find those sparks. Whenever I felt a glint of happiness, an overbearing ache would niggle deep inside. A voice would whisper you shouldn’t be this happy, and its ugly head would dive down, its tentacles wrapping around me. A sea monster, dragging me silently under the waves.
Behind Ocean Lines: The Invisible Price of Accommodating Luxury by Melanie White is available from Amazon, Blackwell’s and Whsmith. It is also available as an e-book from £6.99