Friday 17 September 2010

Life and death on Pitcairn Island

On 15 January 1790, nine of the now infamous Bounty mutineers, accompanied by eighteen followers from Tahiti, in a story now known and told the world over, cast their weary eyes on the mysterious and hidden island, abandoned centuries earlier by Polynesians, and since that time only once identified and charted by a passing British Navy sloop, HMS Swallow, in 1767. Pitcairn Island, named after the fifteen year old boy who spotted it on board the Swallow, was, however, incorrectly positioned and charted longitudinally by three degrees, owing to the ship’s ill equipment, and in subsequent years, even Captain Cook failed to relocate it. Searching for the perfect hiding place and a new land that would provide them with both sanctuary and happiness, the Bounty mutineers sought and finally found their refuge on Pitcairn, where they would remain, according to more respected historians, for the rest of their lives, starting a new chapter in the island’s history that continues to this day.

Now, some two centuries later, we, after completing our very own epic passage of the Pacific under sail, would finally set our own weary eyes on the very same isolated and beautiful island that those that came before us did all those years ago. Unlike our predecessors, however, who would go on to confront a completely new and formidable quest in the island’s disconnected unknown, we would instead be greeted with the warmest of welcomes from the very people descended from the island’s pioneering settlers, who awaited our own impending arrival on the banks of Bounty Bay.

Only a few hours after hitting the hay sleepy from my usual 12-4 night watch, an early all hands wake-up would draw me from my bunk and realert me to the fact that today was the day we had all looked forward to for so long. We had sailed almost three thousand miles from the Galapagos alone and the reward for our efforts was plain to see on the horizon as I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes in the glorious morning sunshine and grabbed my camera to capture the moment that would remain with me for a lifetime. Pitcairn Island looked beautiful, its cliffs rising defiantly from the waves that crashed relentlessly against its shores. The lush vegetation spanning its length, and craggy black volcanic rock slopes that enveloped almost its entire coastline contrasted heavily against the curious Uluru red sands covering its raised southern plateaued edge. It looked and felt somehow different to any island I was yet to see and as signs of habitation became visible, I became excited at the prospect of meeting the people that occupied them. I felt invigorated to be somewhere so uniquely cut off from civilisation that all the madness of the rest of the world dissolved away into miles of ocean. Only sailing had ever brought me this sensation and I felt humbled to experience it yet more strongly than ever before. Ahead of me lay an island paradise of pure escapement that only a handful of people in the world would ever have the privilege to explore. Although not a sovereign nation, with its population of only fifty people, Pitcairn is the smallest and most remote jurisdiction in the world.

Not only is there no airport or harbour on the island, but the limited anchorages nearby can prove extremely hazardous in poorer weather conditions. The time we would spend ashore would, therefore, be governed by what the heavens threw at us, but thankfully our luck was in, as we would bask the following days in almost relentless glorious sunshine in contrast to, as the islanders subsequently informed us, the previous weeks of unforgiving rain and wind. Unrecognisably to a Brit close to the Tropics, we were in the midst of the southern hemisphere’s cooler winter months. God only knows how hot it gets there in the summer time.

The only way to actually get onto the island after setting down anchor or heaving to is by being collected by the residents themselves. The waters surrounding Pitcairn are treacherous at best, and the islanders, knowing their home so well, are the most suitable people to navigate their way through the waves into the tiny sanctuary of Bounty Bay and the jetty. The islanders’ sailing vessels are known as long boats, owing to their shape and size, and talk was extensive on the Picton many weeks before, of the resounding clunk these boats reverberate against the side of ships as first contact is made in the unyielding waves. Indeed bets had been placed as to the exact time this clunk would resound announcing our official arrival on the island. The islanders’ perfect handling of the long boats, however, in spite of the waves was evident, for it came almost silently alongside bobbing up and down next to us before it was made fast starboard amidships. The absence of the clunk was almost a disappointment as a part of me was secretly looking forward to the long boat unashamedly and paint strippingly smashing against us, even though I half expected to find myself, in subsequent weeks, repainting the external damage incurred.

As I took a first glimpse at the occupants of the longboats, numbering perhaps something in the teens, an all hands call to stow sail was cast. The islanders, a curious mix of Polynesian and European heritage, immediately embarked the ship, greeting the Captain and crew, and started unloading the hold of its Pitcairn bound deliveries.

A few days before our arrival, I had finally deciding to do away with footwear while at sea, in spite of the risk of slipping, a risk brought back to my attention a couple of weeks earlier on night watch when my shipmate, Dave, suddenly skidded in the most hysterically funny but disconcertingly painful to watch kind of way, while standing perfectly still at muster. My feet were therefore pretty sore adjusting to the new no shoes policy when I finally returned to deck after a good twenty minutes of standing on foot ropes heaving and busting up sail. I immediately joined a chain of people unloading items from the hold. Next to me in the chain was Pawl, a Pitcairn character I immediately recognised from the TV show, Tall Ship Chronicles, journaling one of the ship’s previous voyages around the world. Pawl is, to coin a phrase, built like a brick shithouse and watching him on the TV show some time earlier had made me laugh out loud, as I remember him deafeningly booming out “come on, ladies!” in his reverberatingly deep voice on a few occasions to male shipmates faffing around on the ship, in the exact way my games teacher used to foghorn the lads putting in little effort during bleak, wet and windswept football matches. In reality, Pawl’s heart is even bigger than his build and along with his partner, Sue, they are two of the most genuine, fun loving, open and welcoming people I had the opportunity to spend time with on the island, going out of their way to make sure we all enjoyed ourselves to the utmost. Indeed this mentality would ring true of all the islanders I encountered, keen to share their unique way of life with us as best they could, and in the days that followed I found myself feeling increasingly humbled by their boundless hospitality. I even felt a little star struck after meeting Pawl having recognised him from the telly!

For the stay on Pitcairn, the crew was split into two halves meaning that one of the already existing three watch groups had to be broken up and divided amongst the other two. This, of course, was my own 12-4 watch which caused some upset in our Thriller plans. These eventually were cleared up as best we could, with me managing to a secure a swap to the other watch containing the more core of the Thriller group. With the island’s population numbering that of the ship, having two thirds of the crew descending upon its shores as we did in other ports, would swell their resources and homes to thronging point, and reducing this to half the crew would work best. After successfully swapping, I formed part of the port watch and would be the first to go ashore for a couple of days. So as not to disappoint starboard watch, however, they would first be taken onto the island for an hour or so to be given a flavour of things to come.

As we waited on the ship, there still remained a few deliveries to be unloaded with which port watch busied themselves. This included a hefty supply of cement. Back in Lunenburg, I had played a pretty central role in loading the 50lb bags of cement we had already bagged up into the hold. These were, in part, packed beneath the steps at the entrance of the hold and had to be jammed in cunningly so there were no gaps whatsoever. As if I was in some kind of heavy duty live action game of Tetris, I wrestled for ages with bags and bags of this cement to pack it perfectly in the limited space available, hoping like hell that I would never have the misfortune of confronting it ever again. Sure enough however, a few months later, here I was kneeling under the same set of stairs unpacking the very bags of cement I had so lovingly installed at the start of the voyage. So neatly packed, getting the fuckers out proved almost as difficult as getting them in there in the first place, and I sniggered at my luck of getting the same hapless task twice in row. By the end, I felt strangely attached to the heavy bags of pain I had lifted, pushed, packed and massaged so many times, but was only too happy to let them bugger off and fulfil their destiny on Pitcairn Island.

Eventually, starboard watch returned from their little sojourn, invigorated and completely psyched about their short time spent on shore. The smiles on their faces as they approached in the long boat were unmistakeable. But finally it was our turn to go to the island ourselves for a whole two days of fun. Gathering our belongings, the first challenge was to board the longboat waiting alongside to deliver us to our destination. The key to this was timing. It bobbed up and down continuously like a demented yoyo, and patiently waiting for it to rise to its pinnacle to hop on sometimes took an age, as the rising vessel would often suddenly change its mind half way up, and descend rapidly into the trough of a smaller wave before jerkily rising its way back up again. Eventually with all of port watch having successfully jumped their way on board, we sped away leaving the ship, our sole home for the previous month, behind. The atmosphere was electric as we approached Bounty Bay, with the foam of the waves splashing virtually everyone on board but particularly those on the starboard side (I sat to port after a helpful and delightfully accurate warning by a returning shipmate).

As we unpacked our bags from the longboat onto the small jetty, Meredith, my Pitcairn accomplice, and I meandered our way through the welcome party to find Vayne and Charlene, our hosts for the stay. Due to the small size of the island and large absence of sealed roads, there are no cars, but instead the island’s inhabitants get around on large red quad bikes. Packing our belongings onto Vayne and Charlene’s weapons of choice, we each hopped onto the back of their respective vehicles and sped off up the steep incline leading to their home. As we made our way up, I looked around and familiarised myself with the tropical lushness of the island, contrasted with the curious host of red quads roaring their way up the hill, each one adorned with a Picton Castle crew member on the back.

We arrived at our hosts’ home remarkably quickly. It was graced with the most magnificent terrace and stunning views over the ocean. The sensation of being on dry land and in someone’s home, after months of sailing through ports and staying only in hotels on shore, was fantastic. The Captain told us to expect we would do a lot of eating while on the island, and he was not wrong! It was an awesome bottomless pit of delicious food which more than appeased my similarly insatiable appetite. In many ways, the ensuing accident was a blessing, as I would likely have left the island weighing something north of 100kg had it not intervened. Vayne and Charlene were both excellent hosts, laid back, welcoming and gentle, and kept us more than happy in their company with excellent food, comfortable beds and that most hallowed of onshore privileges, hot showers!

After stuffing my face with a double decker bus sized slice of banana cake accompanied by some sumptuous Pitcairn Island honey, which Vayne had harvested from his own hives at the bottom of the garden, we went on our first island outing with two of Vayne and Charlene’s five children, Jayden and Tereka, who had since returned from school. The kids were completely crazy and a lot of fun to hang out with. I will never forget one of their twin girls, Tereka, and her fearlessness on her much loved bicycle. As we made our way along one of the island’s many mud tracks, which all, rather quaintly, are adorned with signs pointing to the numerous places of interest on the island, a joke Meredith and I cracked was overheard by Tereka as she cycled ahead of us. “Don’t make me laugh while I’m riding my bicycle!” she screamed in hysterics, as she sped out of control off the mud track and straight into a ditch alongside us. Somewhat concerned about her safety, we found her lying on her back in the ditch with her bike beside her, still giggling her head off before getting straight back up and continuing her way up the path chortling loudly to herself.

We then made our way up to perhaps the island’s most beautiful lookout, Ship’s Landing Point, an outreaching vegetated pinnacle above seemingly endless cliffs below. The children hopped around the cliff edge full of energy leaving Meredith and I reasoning with them to calm down and step away for the sake of our own sanity. Little did I know that it would be I that would confront the very fate we feared so badly for the children, only a few days later.

That evening, after a delicious buffet dinner with family and friends of Vayne and Charlene and some shipmates too, we made our way down to Pawl and Sue’s place, as we had heard there was a gathering underway. A welcoming whale’s tooth filled with tequila was an inescapable entry requirement (indeed it would be rude not to), and after another couple, I retired to beer, while other shipmates continued their merry way in downing the spirits. Dancing, darts playing and general tipsy cheerfulness ensued as I returned to my bed weary from a full day and evening of excitement.

The following day, we all met up at lunchtime to head down to St Paul’s Pools, for me Pitcairn Island’s most magnificent spot. Certainly one of the world’s most spectacular natural swimming pools, the raised cliffs of the island descend to create a trough and pool protected from the ocean’s crashing waves. Every now and again, a wave would blast against the outside of the protected area sending jets of water like a Jacuzzi through small gaps in the rock straight into the pool, and a wave of water would intermittently flow over a lower sectioned side of the natural wonder into the calmer basin. It was, for all purposes, a stupendous and completely natural wet and wild water park. The snorkelling and swimming was simply amazing and it is without a doubt one of, if not my most favourite spot so far visited on the entire trip. Photos in the album below go some way to document the stunning setting.

After another simply sumptuous evening family buffet, we all headed up to Andrew Christian’s house and the island’s only bar and nightclub, known as Paratai Heights, delightfully open for business during the Picton Castle’s stay. Andrew’s house is the most elevated on the island and enjoys spectacular panoramic views out to the ocean. More drinking and dancing followed and even the Captain made an appearance, dancing vivaciously with many of the locals including Pirate Pawl himself. It was great to see the Captain in such a relaxed setting, really letting his hair down with the locals. Indeed he has been coming to Pitcairn since the age of 19, having established long lasting relationships with almost all of the residents.

Following a gentle morning, the time was already upon us to head back to the ship and allow starboard watch onto the island. We really didn’t want to go, and begrudgingly got back on the longboat just after 1pm to return to the ship and its maintenance. That afternoon at least, ship’s work was cancelled, and special anchor watches commenced both in the evening and throughout the night to ensure the ship’s position didn’t become precarious. On my watch, I was privileged to behold the most spectacular moonrise from the ocean just off the eastern coast of the island. Blood red and colossal, I could not work out what was appearing before me at first, until the moon’s unmistakeable shape became clear in spite of the contrary size and colour. It was a magic moment on a remarkably still night. So still in fact that the lacking wind and waves caused the ship to turn around completely early that morning, rocking me from my slumber, as the Pacific swell swayed both the ship and me laterally in short yet amplified waves for several hours.

Ship’s work recommenced in earnest the next day and my formidable task was rustbusting the superstructure containing the ship’s office and charthouse, before fibreglassing the sections where the metal frame had corroded away completely. I have heard much said about the joys of fibreglass, and having not had much experience of the substance other than a plaster cast for my legs when my Achilles tendons were lengthened many years before (and a subsequent cast for my left arm which I will come to in later blog posts), I was completely naïve about how much the dust makes you itch and wretch for hours.

That night we had our final practice for the hotly awaited and much debated Picton Castle Pitcairn Island concert. To take place just two days later at 7.30pm, this would be the last opportunity for us to all get together and finalise our acts. An almost complete port watch cast would star in our own rendition of Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody with a falsetto solo by the ship’s second mate, Paul, being for me the highlight. This was largely due to his excellent Little Britainesque “I’m a lady!” falsetto style, and also because he repeatedly missed his moment of glory, leaving a deafening silence right at the song’s pinnacle. Coming in late all flustered in a false high pitched voice was pure entertainment, and I really hoped he’d mess it up on the night as it would certainly add to the overall appeal of the performance.

We then did a final runthrough of Thriller. Taking the time to look at the group without participating myself, it was amazing to see everyone doing the moves together in sync. Fellow shipmate, Cherie, was a fantastic dancer and certainly was at the heart of making our little number the success I expected it would now be. I was proud of our achievements, and pleased of the fact that putting it together turned out to be nothing more than a huge amount of unadulterated fun.

After another morning of fibreglassing, it was once again time for us to return to the island for our second instalment of Pitcairn pleasure. Sure enough, the long boat, filled to the brim with sad and disappointed starboard watch faces, arrived alongside to take port watch back to the island in deeply contrasted joy and excitement. That afternoon, I sadly missed the opportunity to visit the school, as class had already been dismissed for the weekend by the time we got there, but an invitation to go “sugar caning” was instead taken up, which filled the rest of the day and allowed us to get our hands as nice and as dirty as ever. That evening, more good times were spent at Paratai Heights with Andrew putting on the usual entertainment for an admirable complement of port watch peeps all taking the time to join the party.

The following day turned out to be a pretty eventful one for the entire island, and certainly a day that will remain vividly in my own mind for a long time. In contrast to the afternoon, the morning was relaxed and spent with Andrew and Niko eating a cooked breakfast and watching DVDs. Shortly before 1, we headed down to an area of the island known as Downrope. This comprises a cliff side walkway leading down to a beautiful beach with Polynesian scriptures carved onto the rock face. I had wanted to head down there on the advice of a shipmate who had been to the island before, and had also heard that a number of other people were specifically planning to check it out that very afternoon. Given the small size of the island, wherever we went, we would inevitably bump into someone we knew.

Andrew dropped us at the top of the cliff and arranged to collect us a little later in the afternoon. Niko and I descended the meandering pathway and made our way around the coast to the secluded beach where, sure enough, a few shipmates and some islanders were passing the early afternoon hours. I chatted to Sue who was sat pensively on a rock while Bob, kitted out in appropriate swimwear, appeared to be having a great time snorkelling in the rock pools on the shore. WT, the ship’s bosun and Chris, the engineer, were further out around the small bay exploring the far rocky edge of the beach. Eventually they returned our way before they slowly but surely headed one by one back up the path, leaving Niko and I on the beach by ourselves. Taking some extra time to enjoy the beach’s secluded charm and kick back to the sound of the waves crashing against the shore, we eventually decided to amble our way back up to meet Andrew as planned.

As I happily and steadily made my way up the cliff’s winding pathway, however, I knew little of the great unexpected that awaited me just around the corner with deadly baited breath. Fate was conspiring to both save and ruin me, and in the moments that followed, I endured the most unnerving accident I expect I will ever have the privilege to survive. On my way up a steep, stepped section of the path close to the top, a chunk of rock disappeared gruffly beneath the trusting weight of my right hand causing me to lose my balance and fall backwards into a plunge down the cliff face which, all things considered, should have cost me my life. In all, I plunged a distance of 160ft/48m. This is the equivalent to taking a dive from a thirteen storey tower block (lucky for some), or, for the Londoners in the house, like falling from the top Nelson’s famous column in Trafalgar Square and landing on the back of one of the surrounding lion statues adorning the pavement below. Indeed this was a height so incredibly high, that if the Empire State Building were eight times smaller, I would have fallen the entire height of New York’s most famed of towering buildings. Truly chilling!

Handy diagram of the line of fall with small yellow man silhouette
at the top of trajectory drawn to scale
. Click to zoom.


My memories of the fall and the events that followed comprise what I feel is a decent overview on the whole but certainly not without large areas lacking clarity. It was, after all, just a tad disconcerting and left me with a little more than a sore finger at the end of it. I know many gaps in the day’s running order will be filled in the coming weeks as I get the opportunity to talk to the people who were with me on the day of the accident. The intricacies of conversations and actions during the immediate aftermath of the fall may have escaped me completely in contrast to certain junctures of falling itself that remain so vivid, I am sure they will be indelibly scribed into the foremost of my memories until the day I actually do die. I have managed to piece together events based on my own recollections combined with circumstance and the accounts of others. I have also had a couple of experiences I imagine one might say are akin to flashbacks triggered by the most surprisingly mundane of conditions, which took me right back to particular moments of the fall, so I am certainly open to more of these experiences if they help to bring further colour and clarity to what happened to me that day.

As far as I remember in the seconds immediately before the fall, I was making my way up the final stages of the path to the top of the cliff. I looked up to see a shipmate just ahead looking down over a ledge onto the path where I was standing. I exchanged glances with Liam and continued my way steadily up towards him. Liam and some others were evidently at the top about to head down to check out the beach we were just coming from, and I was pleased to see him as it was a perfect opportunity to check out their plans for later in the afternoon before the concert. Making my way up a steep stepped section of the path, I reached out with my right hand to steady myself on a rock, which I expected to be well attached. The whole thing, however, gave way almost immediately and all but dissolved in my fingertips to my utter horror. Before I knew it, I had lost my balance completely and was falling backwards into the unknown. Liam had seen my misfortune and bore witness to the sheer panic in my face and the unmistakeable whiteness in my broadened eyes. My heart skipped a beat as I fell back before it recommenced pounding violently in my chest like a drum. Pure fear began to crystallise in the pit of my stomach. The moment slowed down to almost a standstill, and part of me was grateful I was looking up instead of down. But it was no good. I already knew how dangerously high I was. The question begged. Was I really about to fall off a cliff and die?

The answer to my little conundrum came remarkably quickly as I plunged almost immediately onto the all but vertical cliff face beginning an ever rapider tumble along the steep incline, first sliding, and then increasingly colliding along its sides as I progressively fell in gaps in between. I had thought I had shouted when I fell, but this was only in my head as onlookers later confirmed to me that I fell in complete silence. I found this somewhat chilling. The only really clear memory that sticks with me from that section of the fall is my back taking the brunt of one of the collisions, I think at the very beginning as I fell backwards onto the cliff face. This caused me no discernable pain or injury at the time but sent reverberations through the bones surrounding my chest’s air cavity almost akin to being winded for a split second. All of a sudden I felt exposed and vulnerable like never before in my life. Not only was this fall likely to kill me, but it was going to be increasingly messy and bloody as my speed increased and I inevitably smashed into obstacles along the way. My only hope was that something would stop me before it got out of control.

The indescribable fear that had gathered in my head suddenly had to be put to one side to focus on the task in hand. Knowing that falling irrepressibly against a jagged cliff face was likely to shatter the bones in my body was terrifying, but paled in comparison to the shuddering possibility of a deadly blow to the head along the way. The very notion of falling uncontrollably head first and faceplanting a rock somewhere en route that would break my nose through to the brain and smash all the teeth out my skull was my ultimate concern. All of my mental strength went into trying to keep as upright and as uninjured as far as I was able to, and almost a mental instinct prevailed of staying alert and alive and, somewhat counterintuitively, prolonging the tortuous ordeal for as long as possible.

Although I respect that my fate was fundamentally in the hands of gravity and circumstance, I think I was largely successful, or you might say, lucky, in not sustaining any major injuries in the first part of the fall. I don’t think I went head over heels at any point, and my memories of trying to stay upright and slow my descent against the steep slopes of the cliff are backed up by reports from Pitcairn that my line of fall was chillingly clear to discern from the sheer amount of rock, dust and vegetation I had dislodged and scraped out on my way down. Although I had a couple of nice grazes on my right hand and wrist, I think this had been largely incurred by my feet as I also lost, I think, both of my shoes on the way down. I have to accept, however, that in those moments the possibility of an impromptu somersault remains, a memory which my mind may have since discarded for my own good. I don’t mind keeping it that way for now. I certainly remember feeling like I was far from being in control of my own destiny at the time.

Inevitably in an unrelenting fall down a cliff face, it was only a matter of time before I hit something hard that would, if you excuse my French, fuck me up good and proper. But just under half way through my fall and with around 25m left to the shoreline, my ongoing battles and skirmishes with the cliff’s steep slopes and potentially deadly obstacles were concluded as I fell over a ledge which threw me away from the cliff face and into a freefall. By this time, either by my own doing in my futile bid to forge some stability and slow down completely while bouncing down the cliff face, or involuntarily during one of many collisions along the way, I had somehow turned around completely as I remember no longer facing the cliff and instead glimpsing the ocean and shore briefly as I fell. Mercifully, I was not falling head first, and instead remained reasonably upright. Immediately recognising how high I was and with nothing now to stop my relentless plunge to the black jagged volcanic rock below, I realised that, although my chances may have already been slim before, I now really was beyond hope.

The fear that had occupied my mind patiently in the first half of the fall suddenly exploded sending a shockwave across my body before it was almost immediately overwhelmed by raw feelings of disbelief and frustration. I could not grasp the reality of what was happening to me. At this point, I may have closed my eyes completely I was so absorbed in emotion, and I lost all contact with my surroundings other than the feeling of falling, which seemed to fit in rather nicely with the whole ordeal. Fathoming, rationalising and coming to terms with my own impending death during my last few emotional seconds of freefall was something I just could not do. I most certainly was not at peace with “my number being up”. My life did not flash before my eyes. I do not even recall a single word being articulated in my mind. I did not think about anything or anyone. There simply was no time for it. All I felt is what can best be described as an emotionary overload culminating in a fraught and anxious confusion. Before I knew it, and without even bracing for it, I was on the ground.

The impact is, somewhat remarkably, perhaps my most vivid memory of the entire day. It took me completely by surprise, not evidently because I was not anticipating its arrival, but because it did not take the form I subsequently concluded it ought to have taken – namely a bone crunching thud preceding an almost instantaneous and irreversible fade to black. I would not say my landing was soft, but in the heat of the moment I felt no pain in spite of the steadily increasing broken bone count as my descent relented. Adrenalin was in absolute free flow. Still absorbed in my own thoughts, I have no visual memory of the impact, but its texture and timing remain crystal clear. An almost crunchy respite from the freefall, my weight tested the elasticity of my salvationary captor until it gave way completely and I fell another few metres onto a rock below. Little did I know at this stage, but the outermost branch of the outermost Pandanas tree in a group on the shoreline had broken my fall and saved my life.

Illustration of landing at the far edge of the group
of Pandanas trees on the shoreline. Phew!


Recognising my perilous tumble had come to a standstill, I squirmed vulnerably as a cascade of rock, soil and dust crashed to earth in my wake only metres above my head. All of a sudden, the disconcerting sound of falling earth subsided and my absolute relief became clear. I was alive, I was safe and I was conscious. I could not believe it. The fall evidently could not have been as far or as hazardous as I had earlier envisaged, I thought. Little did I realise how wrong I was and how much luck had played its part in my survival. I had landed uncomfortably strewn across a bumped rock, but any attempts I made to move were greeted with searing pain, so I stayed where I was and immediately starting crying for help, albeit exhaustedly after my little afternoon jaunt. I was helplessly immobilised, but not at that point in time in a huge amount of pain if I stayed still. This, sadly, would not last. Although somehow self-assured of not having sustained any potentially and immediately fatal internal injuries (I was no longer in fear of dying any time soon), I had a feeling I had not escaped this one completely unscathed on the bone front. Having never previously broken a bone in my life, however, I was not completely sure what to expect.

Mercifully quickly, two of my shipmates arrived on the scene. One would later come to tell me that he expected to find nothing more than an unidentifiable mess of blood and flesh on the shore looking at the distance and surroundings in which I had plunged, (indeed no-one expected to find me alive), but instead he encountered me awake in what he described as a “typical Hollywood corpse” pose. Liam, who had seen me fall as far as the ledge, had immediately darted down the cliff side to help me, alerting all and sundry en route. Reassuring me that I would be OK, Liam commenced with a few simple tests asking me first to follow his finger with my eyes, which I think I managed to do without issue. It didn’t feel particularly difficult. I recall hearing his requests and complying with them almost as if it were just a normal conversation, although the shock and horror of the situation had certainly left me confused and insecure about what I had just gone through. Suddenly lying smashed up at the bottom of a cliff, trying to understand my completely unexpected predicament, I was stunned to say the least. What the hell had just happened?! The haziness in trying to get to grips with my new disconcerting reality acted in complete contrast to the curious clarity of thought and coherence I reaped from the adrenalin still pumping vigorously through my veins. This was a peculiar paradox indeed. My mind completely alert, and yet still stumbling its way haphazardly through some kind of fraught and restless dream, which I, sadly, knew I would not have the liberty to wake from.

I think by the time I was asked to wiggle my toes, which I, to everyone else’s relief (I already somehow knew I was bashed up but not paralysed as yet), did without problem, Rebecca, the third mate and someone who’d become a close friend of mine came alongside and held my right hand reassuringly. In a steady flow, other shipmates and islanders arrived on the scene. Julie supported my feet to ensure I did not move and agitate a potentially paralysing injury we might not yet have had the chance to identify. Sue came and sat directly above my head to talk to me and keep me occupied. I remember WT also being close to my head but up to the right and Andrew and sometimes Brad being down to the left by my feet.

It is at this point where my recollections become very hazy and I can recall only specific events and not necessarily the order in which they happened. The continual pain, which had long arrived resoundingly and almost intolerably, started to become ever stronger in waves in my arm and back. The adrenalin was running out and a new increasingly agonising reality setting in. Something most definitely was not right and my curiosity about what the hell it was began to burgeon. We could tell that the pain in my back was caused by the uneven rock I had landed on, but in order to assess what was wrong with my arm, my sleeve needed to be cut open. I was wearing my favourite hooded top at the time, and I was initially rather vexed at the fact it was going to be sacrificed. I even privately tried to conceive a way we could take it off without damaging it, but promptly grasped how stupid I was being. There was no fucking way I was going to be able to move that much without paralysing myself. The hoody had to go!

With the sleeve out the way, the injuries to my left arm were then evident to those around me. My elbow was very dislocated and my wrist superbly broken. Although not visible at the time, the bone in my wrist had actually pierced through the skin just beneath the palm of my hand. This had left a pool of blood in the tree above me and an open wound to the fragmented bone that was now threatened by a major risk of infection. Although it was a complete mess, the elbow desperately disjointed and the top of the wrist bone snapped and fragmented into many little pieces, it appeared that the left arm had taken the brunt of the impact in the tree and in doing so had saved the rest of my body. My back, which we would later discover had sustained compression fractures to four separate vertebrae, had survived 95% of the fall unscathed and, somewhat ironically, had actually been broken in my short fall from the Pandanas tree to the ground. The broken vertebrae to the bottom left of my back matched the bump in the rock on which I landed. Just beyond the now broken branch which had relented my freefall lay a dead tree and the open shoreline, littered with sharp, pointed and uneven black rock. I was already falling along a trajectory to my left, and had I ventured just a few feet further, I would have missed the tree completely and no doubt been ground into the bloodied dead mess Liam had expected to see at the bottom. Splat! I was so incredibly lucky.

In a bid to minimise any additional trauma, my arm had been covered with Liam’s shirt so that I could not see the extent of my injuries. I remember Liam reassuring me that all that had happened was that my elbow was dislocated, and could just be popped back in by the doctor later on. Liam did not at that stage want to risk worrying me with the real injury count. Although I wanted to believe him, deep down I knew something else was the matter, as the pain wasn’t just in the elbow. To address this anomaly, I persisted with a continual interrogation of my injuries as I winced in pain. Although I don’t recall this, Sue later told me that she eventually crumbled to my incessant questioning and informed me that my arm was broken.

As more people arrived on the scene, I was asked if I could recall where I was and what I had been doing in the past few days. Abruptly, my mind drew a blank. I knew I was in Pitcairn but the memories that accompanied this were gone. This startled me incredibly, as in my own mind, I had participated in a sequence of events, in which I knew I remained conscious throughout, but which, all of a sudden, I was unable to recall even though I expected fully to be able to do so. Perhaps a natural defence mechanism to protect you when you are at your most vulnerable from traumatising thoughts, my amnesia did nothing to reassure those around me that my head had not taken a knock on the way down. Other than a slightly bloodied nose, my head did, however, escape the incident completely untouched.

I subsequently embarked upon a series of very personal mind games in a bid to reconquer my short term memory. The only scrap of detail I had to go on was a very faint recollection of being on a cliff and a beach but far away from where I was. I couldn’t even find the words to explain this and memories coming into my head were almost immediately snatched away from my grasp leaving me terribly confused. I evidently realised I had just fallen off a cliff given my surroundings and condition, but even the detail of the fall had escaped me. My mind insisted on telling me that the very faint recollection of a visit to the beach and the cliff path had happened long before, perhaps days ago, and I started to try to remember what had happened subsequently and evidently struggled, as the memory I was going on, took place only minutes before. Increasingly troubled by drawing a blank, I tried to think back to earlier events and those too were gone. It was almost as if my concern and stress at not being able to recall events was actually causing and prolonging the inability itself.

In the minutes that followed, I don’t have any clear recollection of exact conversations and actions. It’s a little bit like trying to remember a minute by minute account of a drunken night out. There are quite a few gaps! I recall continually whining and sometimes shouting about the ever rising burden of pain and asking when the doctor was coming with the drugs to help me out. This must have left my friends feeling incredibly awkward and helpless for quite a long time, so I can only apologise for inflicting this upon them. I also recall closing my eyes for a few seconds as it made it easier to deal with the pain, much to the dismay of those around me and I was immediately commanded to open them again. I recognised the need to reassure them that I wasn’t on the verge of dying, and so for their benefit and hence my own, I kept them open, and tried my hardest to remain alert. I do recall a deliciously tempting urge to fall asleep enticing me at the time, however, so their concerns were certainly not uncalled for.

Quite evidently, on an island of fifty people, there are no emergency services to deal with an accident such as the one I had just sustained. The islanders themselves and my shipmates would instead be called in as rescuers, along with Pitcairn’s resident doctor. These are all perhaps the most shrewd and resourceful of individuals and, in any case, I was overwhelmingly reassured to be surrounded by people that I knew and cared about, and not alone at the bottom of the cliff waiting to die. In the meantime, a radio call had been made out across the island and the ship, for anyone idle to make their way to the scene to help in the aftermath. A qualified paramedic on the ship, Shawn, was also ferried over to the island to support.

As we awaited the arrival of the doctor, my short term memory finally came back. I suddenly recognised that the only faint memory I was so desperately hanging onto but whose timing I had completely misplaced, had actually happened only moments before. As soon as I established this simple fact, almost instantaneously like a self-solving jigsaw puzzle, all the other memories that accompanied this slotted themselves into place. Spontaneously, I remembered what I had done that day, the fall, the previous evening, even what I’d been doing on the ship days before. The removal of this preoccupation went a great deal to putting my mind at rest, as, all of a sudden, I didn’t feel quite so lost and almost embarrassed in participating and talking about the predicament in which I found myself. I remember recalling the upcoming concert that evening and joking that the accident could at least have happened the next day, so that I could take my rightful place in Thriller. Perhaps they could bandage me up good and proper so I could still make an appearance, I sniggered. In my own mind, I had thought that my temporary amnesia had lasted a few minutes, at the most, but I was later told that, rather disturbingly, it went on for closer to half an hour. Paradoxically, I clearly remember losing my memory and similarly I recall getting it back but there is evidently quite a big gap there in the middle.

Eventually the doctor appeared to make an initial assessment of the situation. Sadly, the drugs and equipment hadn’t yet arrived and he promptly disappeared up the cliff once again to fetch them. It was absolutely soul destroying to see him go leaving me empty handed, and in the end I must have waited an hour for relief from the pain, but my shipmates and Sue went out of their way to keep me happy and we continued engagement in chatting and joking to pass the time. I had to be patient and grateful for the huge lengths everyone was going to on my behalf. The doctor finally came back with a cast for my arm and, most importantly for me, an IV drip with enough morphine to send an elephant into outer space. Although it did not get rid of the pain completely, the sensation of the drugs kicking in was like an orgasm, and the relative reduction in pain left me feeling exhaustedly happy. With my increased comfort evident, it was time to move, but not before we took a moment to take some great holiday snapshots, I demanded. Liam complied. I remember someone shouting to me that I could have just fallen as far as 150ft, and vaguely celebrating the fact I had survived it. Privately, I expected this number to be significantly lowered, and certainly not raised, given I had escaped with such minor injuries (in relative terms, broken bones are a lot better than death) as well as the fact it was all over in less than ten seconds. I fell quickly and, thankfully, with the help of the Pandanas tree, landed slowly.

Having the time of my life taking it easy here on Pitcairn Island.
The landscape and shoreline around the island is just to die for.

Wish you were here. Love Jimmy.


After a lot of gentle and slightly painful manoeuvring, I was helped and secured onto a split backboard for the journey. After an initial idea to get me out of the area by boat was deemed too risky, the only other way out was going to be a treacherous and difficult journey by stretcher back to the top of the cliff via the path from which I fell. I was not looking forward to having to face the trek up again after what had happened the first time round. I felt insecure and helpless about my fate being completely in the hands of others, but reassured to be surrounded by a load of resourceful tall ship sailors and self-reliant islanders, all determined to do everything they could to help me out when I so desperately needed it most. By this time, there was a large number of people gathered on the shore, all chipping in to carry the burden of my battered weight back around to the start of the path. A rope was attached to the top of the stretcher leading up the walkway to aid with the ascent, and to prevent me from going over the edge again should one of the bearers be forced to drop me. After a short pause, people were mobilised and the climb could begin.

The ascent by stretcher to the top of the cliff was incredible. The way the locals communicated and worked both seamlessly and selflessly together was one of the most humbling experiences, and perhaps the single greatest act of humanity I have ever had the good grace to receive. Where the path permitted, bearers carried my burden along its way, but in certain areas it both narrowed and steepened making the privilege of bearers to the side simply impossible. Although my view of proceedings was obviously restricted, getting a bulky stretcher complete with rescue crew safely along these sections of the path looked like a truly formidable task. I became increasingly terrified that in the sheer dedication in trying to help me, someone else might fall over the edge and meet a fate worse than my own. It was incredibly tense but the crew heaving me up were reassuringly professional and truly inspiring. On the most treacherous sections of the path, shouts would be made up to the line bearers reacting swiftly for support and all of a sudden, the stretcher would be heaved up from beneath and held in place by the line. Someone always stepped in to cover every conceivable position and the important point has to be made that, in spite of the jagged surroundings, my journey up was as smooth and as painless as I might ever have imagined it could be. In all, it must have taken about half an hour, and like those around me, I felt relieved that we had all made it safely to the top. I am forever indebted to these people’s selfless dedication which will certainly never be forgotten.

Waiting for me at the cliff top was an ATV cum ambulance. I was strapped onto the back as others sat in various places to balance the load out. Mercifully, the journey was much quicker than I expected, even though we travelled painfully slowly, as my back would punish me each time the vehicle went over a bump in the mud track, which would reverberate directly up and into me through the backboard. There is no hospital on Pitcairn Island, but a medical centre with limited supplies of drugs and equipment, along with a doctor and a nurse. This would be my home for the rest of my time on the island. Thankfully, as I had sensed, I had sustained no serious internal injuries requiring immediate intervention, but you can only imagine what sort of operation would have ensued had this not have been the case.

After being transferred from the backboard onto a bed in the medical centre, my shipmates were sent out while the medical staff did further diagnostic work. With a calm and reassuring manner, I had every confidence in the Australian doctor, who to his credit, was just about bang on in all of his diagnoses in spite of the limited equipment available to him at the time. Basic x-rays were taken confirming the breakages in my arm, but were inconclusive about the suspicions of fractures to my back. As time went on, I realised my injuries, however, were more serious than I expected. Part of me had initially thought, my arm could be bandaged up, and I would be back on my feet in no time at all. But in spite of the inconclusive radiology, my back was agonisingly sore and immobilised me to the bed. It was indeed broken in the exact way the doctor had feared, although it wouldn’t be until some time later, with clearer scan results, that my misfortune would be confirmed. Given the broken arm was actually a combination of a dislocated elbow and a shattered wrist (as well as an open wound leading straight to it), fixing it would be a complex operation, and so for the time being, I would be stabilised and monitored until arrangements could be made to get me to hospital. Other checks by the doctor also recognised an issue with my right lung. Although I felt no discomfort to begin with, the problem would later become particularly apparent during a flight, after which it would be confirmed that a build-up of matter in the lung cavity had caused my right lung to deflate to about 70% of its normal size.

The concert went ahead a littler later than planned, sadly without me, and I was looked after by different people throughout the evening and night but largely the ship’s doctor and assistant lay in constant attention hardly sleeping a wink. Stuck completely in bed, I would require constant care. The morphine gave me an insatiable thirst in contrast to a completely sapped appetite. Incapable of getting up to go to the toilet, a catheter was fitted, certainly not a pleasant experience but the very least of my worries in the circumstances. My terrifying ordeal had also led to me to empty my bowels so heavily that I wouldn’t actually need to go again for five days. The phrase “shit scared” wasn’t, I discovered, conceived without factual basis! Terribly embarrassing, and yet something I proved grateful for in the time that followed. During those first few days, having to deal with number two nature calls would have been extremely difficult and very painful.

In all, I would spend two days in waiting in Pitcairn and another day and a half travelling to the nearest hospital in Tahiti, about one and a half thousand blue ocean miles away. During this time, shipmates and residents would keep a vigil by my bedside twenty four hours a day, making sure I felt always that I had a loving family by my side. Waking up in pain, I would often open my eyes to see a local or a shipmate sat before me holding my hand and looking reassuringly my way. Locals came with delicious food, gave me loving support whenever I needed it and brought water to my mouth via a straw practically every few minutes. Their unfailing affection went beyond anything I could ever have imagined and was a gesture of kindness that will remain with me forever. My spirits were raised.

I also found out, that evening, that the marks so frenziedly scratched into the cliff face during my descent would remain there, more poignantly, long after the traces of dislodged rock, vegetation and dirt had been eroded away by time and the elements. The cliffside down which I had fallen, they announced, would be named in my honour as “Jimmy Bus' Ass” in light of my death defying tumble down its sides. “Jimmy Bus' Ass” is Pitcairn dialect’s translation for “Jimmy’s taken a fall”, or quite literally, “Jimmy busted his ass”. I felt humbled and privileged that a spot in the world, let alone on Pitcairn Island, would be named in my honour. What a legacy. It was almost worth falling down the cliff for in the first place, and indeed I was later subjected to some gentle ribbing that I had deliberately thrown myself off that particular cliff, having seen that it had not yet been named (in stark contrast to other areas of the island), in order to claim the title for myself!

The following day was a tough one. My vital signs started showing increasingly that the suspect wound in my wrist was becoming infected, so I was plied with high doses of antibiotics. I was eventually stabilised later in the day. A debilitating infection in my wrist, that could railroad my chances of a swift recovery, was the last thing I needed a world away from the nearest hospital. In the course of the day, a steady flow of visitors came to my bedside, including the Captain. In spite of sailing under his command for three months, I had never really had a meaningful conversation with him, so it was certainly an interesting opportunity for a get to know you session. People joked as my heart rate rose discernably whenever he spoke to me.

Compassionate and genuinely concerned, I was under no misguidance that he was going out of his way to secure me the quickest and least painful route to a hospital, although I evidently felt like I was in no hurry, having told him that I was perfectly happy to stay at the medical centre for a few days. I didn’t want to be responsible for shortening and ruining all of my shipmates' time on Pitcairn Island. Little did I know, however, how genuinely worried and concerned everyone was for my welfare. The ship’s carpenter had already built a special cradle to carry me in more comfortably than my bunk should my evacuation have to be made on the Picton Castle. Indeed, the only reason we weren’t already underway was the fact that a French navy frigate, La Railleuse, was, coincidentally, on its way to Pitcairn Island on an exercise and could take me to the nearest airport in Manga Reva, French Polynesia, some three hundred miles away, three times faster than the Picton Castle, in just twenty hours. Efforts were being made to secure my place on the frigate as a medical emergency evacuee. If this could not be done, only then would we risk travelling on the Picton Castle, which would involve three days of painfully unpredictable sailing during which my condition could inevitably worsen.

To everyone’s delight, after suitable diplomatic exchanges were expedited between the UK and French governments, the French were only too happy to come to the rescue, agreeing to take me and another islander who was suffering terrible hip complaints full steam ahead to our salvation. In Manga Reva, a private ambulance flight would await to take me to hospital in Tahiti, as I would only be able to travel lying down. This would be a flight time of almost four hours in all. The French navy vessel would arrive close to Bounty Bay the following morning, with the French delegation planning to come ashore and rescue us immediately. My bags were packed, and I must say, very diligently by the ship’s medical crew, and preparations were made promptly for my upcoming departure. I felt excited and quite honoured that a French navy ship was diverting its path and cancelling its normal duties especially for me, and pleased that the Picton Castle would not have its visit to Pitcairn Island unceremoniously interrupted due to my own misadventure. Thankfully, my fluency in French would also come in handy – a skill that would be imperative in making my subsequent hospital experiences less bewildering. Indeed, over the last few weeks I have found that learning said language has proven to be just about the best thing I ever did!

The following morning, the much anticipated French navy vessel arrived and hove to beside the island on time, and its delegation promptly came ashore. My bags and medical supplies were delivered to them, and I was delicately placed into a stretcher via a bedsheet to be taken out to the awaiting frigate. The prospect of being in constant transit for the next day and a half in my current condition was not too enticing, but sadly unavoidable if I wanted to get better. To be honest, I was actually just so very relieved that my route to the nearest hospital had been secured, and that I would shortly be underway in the most unique and privileged of settings. The goodbyes had already started the day previously as port watch crew heading back to the ship had come in to see me off in anticipation of my departure the following day. Meredith, my Pitcairn other half, trying her best not to, burst into tears and broke my heart as she left. Many of my closest friends on the ship would be leaving in Rarotonga, and this would likely be the last time I would see them. This was terribly sad, but I felt blessed to have made so many new sailing brothers and sisters, who, I knew, would remain close to me for years to come.

As my stretcher was carried out onto a waiting ATV, a huge crowd of people had already lined the streets to say goodbye. I hadn’t expected this at all, but everyone in Pitcairn and all of the Picton Castle crew on the island, numbering altogether some eighty or so strong, had come out en masse to give me a hero’s send off. Some of the girls came and kissed me on the cheek, and others smiled, waved and cheered as they came to wish me well individually. Incredibly touched and with my spirits spurred, I waved to the cheering crowd feeling, somewhat curiously, like the Pope or a royal head of state on a visiting tour. I was then loaded onto the longboat for the last time. The Captain and some others joined me for the journey and as I engaged in an introductory chat with the French navy ship’s on board medic, the Captain placed a Picton Castle cap affectionately on my head protecting my face from the sun. I looked at Pitcairn Island as we sped away thinking back to how differently I had approached it just a week before. My time both on the island and on the ship had been ended abruptly and my fate now irrepressibly turned to confronting a new and entirely different reality. Sadly, the Picton Castle’s doctor would be unable to join me on the passage to Tahiti, and instead I would face the trip alone. A new chapter in my travels and my life had just begun. But my resolve to pick myself up in the face of adversity and carry on the trip I had dreamt of for so long remained as strong as ever.

Although I appreciate this is perhaps my longest blog entry to date, I feel obliged, given its morbid and meandering nature, to provide some of my thoughts on the whole experience now that the dust has settled and I have had some time to adjust to and reflect on its impact. My time and experiences on Pitcairn Island were immense both before and after the accident and even if given the chance, I would not turn back the clocks and take any of it back. I am a true believer that the best lessons in life come from the hardest knocks, and, before I left, I had wanted this trip to be full of challenging, character building and mind opening experiences. If this doesn’t fit that bill exactly, I don’t know what does. At the risk of sounding like I have lived a sheltered life, this whole affair has been one of the toughest tests life has dealt me so far, and, indeed, one in which I had no choice but to participate. In spite of this, I don’t think it has changed me as a person, but it has instead called upon and galvanised intrinsic characteristics, such as keeping a positive spin in life, in order to cope and move forward constructively. I have no regrets. I incurred this fulfilling my life’s dreams and I remain unperturbed in continuing this quest. In fact, my resolve to carry on is now stronger than ever. It is better to die doing the things in life you dream of, than to live spending your life regretting what you missed out on.

And undeniably, I have so much to be thankful for. The simple positioning of a Pandanas tree on the shoreline is reason enough, but to escape from this whole ordeal, a plunge down a jagged cliff face measuring almost 50m in height, not only alive, but in anticipation of a full recovery, in time, is nothing short of incredible. Indeed, I may even be able to rejoin the ship as a passenger and continue my travels in the near future. In your face, cliff! The breaks to my back have incurred no damage to my spine, allowing me to literally walk away from this misfortune without the need of a wheelchair, and if I had to choose just one of all my limbs to break, it would have been the exact one that took the hit on impact saving the rest of my body. So, as a right handed lad with a broken left arm, you could say things turned out just perfectly for me in the end! For the rest of my body, including, most importantly, my neck and head, to escape completely untouched is also a huge reason to rejoice. A fall headfirst would no doubt have been the end of it for me. Even the simple coincidence of a French navy vessel being nearby at the time of the accident on an island that can be absent of visiting ships of any kind for weeks on end is a blessing of circumstance not to be forgotten. I can also not omit to mention the view I enjoyed during my fall, which was as spectacular as it was panoramic and would have been a great closing snapshot to my life as I hastened my way down Pitcairn’s inaugural high speed non-stop cliff plunge express link to the shoreline. It most certainly would have beaten taking a plunge off a non-descript Glaswegian tower block on a cold overcast Tuesday afternoon in November, I later concluded.

These beautiful shoreline views really cheered me up as I tumbled
perilously down the cliff side to my own impending death


In subsequent weeks in hospital, my thoughts were brought back to a visit I made to a cemetery one afternoon on Pitcairn Island. I find graveyards intriguing places to be and strangely enjoy reading the epitaphs and imagining the lives of those who walked the earth before us. Ambling amongst the tombstones bearing the names of previous generations of Bounty descendants, all of a sudden, the unique and intriguing history hidden within the island’s shores opened tangibly before me like a book.

It was at this point that a curious and sad story was retold to me relating to one of the occupants of the graves, who had tragically died some twenty years earlier, on a visit to the island. Shortly before her death, she herself had paid a visit to the cemetery and, in passing, had made comment on the music she, one day, would like to be played at her own funeral. A few days later, the small yacht on which she was sailing around the world dragged its anchor, and was wrecked against the island’s craggy shores. Although her husband was saved, the lady drowned in the tragedy and her body was eventually discovered and retrieved from the water some time later. Due to the island’s local laws on human remains, she had to be buried on Pitcairn and, sure enough, her funeral took place only days after with the very music she had requested played movingly in memorium at the island’s church.

My mind then turned back to my own scenario and the events that would have followed had I perished in my own brush with death. Although I perhaps might not be that bothered about being dead after the event, the thought of my own burial in that very cemetery only metres from this lady, and my own family and friends in the years that followed making the sad and long pilgrimage to my secluded final resting place, cast a gruff shiver down my spine. Thankfully, the shiver was considerate enough not to disturb the fractures to the vertebrae in the lower region of my back. I smiled in relief, not only at the lack of pain in my broken back after such an unceremonious spine shiver, but also and in particular at the fact I had defied the odds and escaped death. The sad scenario I had just imagined was, quite simply and inescapably, not the reality in which I found myself now. Although I would consider myself an atheist without superstitious beliefs, the fact I had consciously kept my mouth shut at the time of the story when the opportunity arose to talk about my own funeral music stuck poignantly in my mind.

Although I have suffered my fair share of pain and anguish as a result of this accident, it has been an eye-opening experience that, with the beauty of hindsight, I feel enriched and educated for. I certainly had no true conception of what real pain was before this. Walking away from an unexpected confrontation with death is something, I feel, which should be seen as a privilege, not a burden. Not everyone else who gets it is so lucky. The loss of the use of practically my entire left arm, and the obligation to learn everything all over again, including all of my left hand, is a daunting task indeed. But I know I will get through it and draw from its experience when times inevitably get hard again in the future. I have often been curious what it would be like to have to learn how to use a limb again, and, in this respect, you can consider the cat well and truly killed. I just hope and look forward to the day I can pick up my guitar and play it once again just like I used to.

The final point I’d like to make is perhaps the most important of all, and relates to the strength and character of those around you. Adversity, proven time again, brings out the best in people. I will always feel greatly humbled by the response of both my shipmates and the residents of Pitcairn Island after I fell. The way everyone worked together impeccably when I found myself distressed and injured was nothing short of inspirational. In addition to this, the efforts of friends, loved ones and strangers alike, all over the world, to put themselves in my shoes and keep my spirits high have kept the smile firmly on my face. This whole episode has been a gentle reminder that life is pretty precious, and it doesn’t take very much at all to snuff it out in an instant. I am finding increasingly that the love you receive and the lessons you learn from the people whose paths you cross along the way are almost as precious as life is itself. However self-reliant one's convictions, both the boundless compassion and the refreshing contrasts to be found in your common man should never be underestimated or overlooked.

Oh, and Pandanas trees. They’re pretty cool too.


Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.

Thursday 9 September 2010

The great passage

The long passage to Pitcairn Island was something that had occupied various locations of my mind long before I even considered signing up to sail the Picton Castle around the world. Watching Tall Ship Chronicles and following the ship’s second world voyage on television, I gasped at the notion of spending anything up to six weeks at sea crossing some of the emptiest and remotest ocean stretches in the world to reach the almost mythical island at which the Bounty mutineers sought refuge all those years ago.

As I became increasingly interested in joining the ship on its latest voyage, the long passage to Pitcairn reoccupied my thoughts, the very possibility to visit Pitcairn Island being perhaps for me the ultimate honour of the trip and the long lonely passage to it a potential deal breaker. Having never sailed before, I struggled to conceive what spending weeks on end in an enclosed space with fifty others would be like. Would seeing nothing but ocean on the horizon for days drive me mad? How would I cope in the situation? In the end, the challenge proved, curiously, to be an attraction and I signed up not still without certain hesitations about the endeavour.

Little did I know at this point that I would soon come to love the time I spent at sea and that although time in port was a great pleasure, I would before long yearn for a return to the sails once again. Having been underway for a couple of months, and familiarised with the routine and workings of life on the ship, the passage to Pitcairn would actually present us with the opportunity to learn more of the older modes of tall ship sailing. The modern GPS trackers and computerised charting technology hitherto relied upon would be covered up in favour of the old traditional methods of dead reckoning and the shooting of celestial bodies to triangulate the ship’s position, and find our way through the boundless waters of the South Pacific to the tiny craggy island of Pitcairn. Workshops in sailmaking and the reappointment of willing watch crew into vocation specific daymen, such as riggers and carpenters, would also step up our learning experience and equip us with yet more skills in becoming competent tall ship seamen.

Our day of departure from San Cristobal was 1 July, Canada’s national day. Given the ship’s key base in Canada and a significant proportion of Canadian crew, celebrations would undoubtedly be unleashed in earnest. Asked to attend said celebrations in Canadian attire on the ship’s hatch at 4pm, the Brits on board formulated a little plan to ensure Canada’s royal head of state could take some time out of her busy schedule to oversee the festivities. None other than Queen Elizabeth II arrived on board on time with myself, her royal consort, introducing her to the crowd as blasts off God Save the Queen, admittedly mostly from Canadians, resounded across the ship. The party kicked off with an interrogation quiz to establish weird and wonderful accomplishments achieved by each of the Canadians on board. This was followed by an improvised, but nonetheless highly successful, sporting tournament comprising curling and ice hockey on deck. Suddenly in the port breezeway, a branch of Canada’s most highly esteemed coffee chain, Tim Hortons, announced itself open.

Tim Hortons, an anomaly of all rhyme and reason, is Canada’s best answer to Starbucks. Although some of their pastries are admittedly rather tasty, their coffee, which many a Canadian would not flinch in killing for, tastes rather like what being kicked in the face feels. The sheer queues that blight every drive through outlet in the country cause more tailbacks than the morning rush hour, and often led me to wonder whether the coffee was somehow laced with crack cocaine to keep driving people back to its offensive taste in droves.

The Tim Horton’s Picton Castle branch was, conversely, a great novelty. Payment for drinks and lovingly prepared treats, known as Timbits, was provided by correctly answering Canadian specific questions. The coffee available, being the ship’s usual brown sludge, was delightfully true to life but was more than compensated by the delicious cakes offered in accompaniment. Celebrations were rounded off that afternoon with a Canadian music disco on the hatch and a heart rendering speech by the Captain, himself, once American, in the process of becoming a citizen of the maple leaf commonwealth.

At sea, the 12-4 watch’s daily toil of ship’s work recommenced in earnest and for me turned to a pursuit known as booty stitching. Not quite a nip and tuck of someone’s rear end as the name might suggest, the task was nonetheless as testing as it was painstaking. The metal turnbuckles which tune and hold the shrouds and rigging in place in turn needed to be greased and covered with canvas “booties” to protect them from the elements and prevent them from seizing up completely. The endeavour involved stitching with two needles piercing through thick and tough material and when the stitching twine inevitably snapped in the process, which happened painfully often, a small part of me would die as the effort involved in obtaining new twine and reperforming a load of reinforcement stitches was frustratingly awkward. After spending a number of hours completing just one booty, I remember sitting there almost hypnotised by the end game, rubbing my fingers along the stitches that had lovingly drew roughly a litre of blood from my fingers during their execution. It was a strange and mesmerising feeling of job satisfaction.

On Saturday, matters turned more serious. In the early afternoon on our watch, orders were cast to switch the ship from its almost perpetual port tack to starboard and the engines were fired up simultaneously. Our steadily south westerly trajectory had instead been shifted north east and in the opposite direction. We were heading back to Galapagos. Although I’d like to have said that this was because the Captain suddenly came to the realisation that he’d left his favourite T-shirt in one of San Cristobal’s many fine drinking establishments, the reason was much more alarming. One of the ship’s deckhands, Paula, had been suffering stomach complaints for some time, and after consultations between the ship’s doctor and local medical experts in Galapagos on the satellite phone, it was deemed imprudent to continue sailing into remoteness towards Pitcairn and instead to return so that Paula could be properly observed. A major and critical risk of appendicitis was cited and so no chances could be taken. We were all worried for Paula’s welfare and were somewhat relieved that we would reach the island of Santa Cruz and Galapagos’ best hospital by Monday morning. Paula would remain under the watchful eye of the ship’s two medical crew 24 hours a day until the problem was addressed.

On Sunday, it was 4 July and already that other most famed of national days in North America. With an admirable complement of American crew on the ship, there was no doubt that it would be marked vivaciously in the middle of the South Pacific. Indeed it felt like the party season was in full swing. The ship’s BBQ was set up on the well deck and a fine array of meat and accompaniments were set out for those attending the party in suitably American themed apparel. These included characters such as Marilyn Monroe, Barack Obama, The Statue of Liberty, Colin Powell and myself, devoid of tools and imagination, as a morbidly obese American redneck. My look was enhanced on the advice of fellow US shipmates by spreading jam and icing sugar all over my overstretched and pillow filled shirt to give the illusion I had been stuffing my face with doughnuts (if only).

No sooner had festivities commenced than a previously advertised swimsuit competition was announced and kicked off with some fine displays on the hatch. Hosted by none other than our latest American addition, Mike Jehle, competitors included two of the bat cave (the younger female cabin) girls sporting “For Rent” bikini boards, Gary the ship’s doctor in a gorgeous lady’s swimsuit and Liam wearing some “Borat” style, over the shoulder, speedos. Needless to say, Liam’s Borat ambitions paid off as he took the title with Adrienne who was beautifully and, dare I say, more tastefully kitted out as a Californian surfer chick.

The next event in the coveted 4 July running order was turtle racing. Not hitherto mentioned in my blog is the fact that along with fourteen lawnmowers and lots of other weird and wonderful delivery requests, we had been asked to bring some baby turtles for the islanders in Pitcairn. These had been picked up by the ship’s engineer in Panama and had been given interim residence in a tote on the ship’s galley house. The request was only for a handful of the creatures, but on the basis that we thought that most of them would suicidedly kark it on the way down to Pitcairn, thirty-two of the little blighters were brought aboard. Furthermore, a miscommunication had led us to purchase fresh water turtles, when the islanders had wanted land based tortoises, in particular for a very lonely pet tortoise already on the island looking for a mate. Needless to say, said tortoise remains lonely to this day and may have to wait until the Picton’s next visit to find the love he so desperately seeks.

In spite of the main top mast staysail’s best attempts to terrorise them to death, being the gargantuan sail that was vigorously hoisted and pugnaciously let down directly above their temporary galley house home almost repeatedly each day, all the turtles survived the journey. Only a few millimetres wide, their little heads already looked like they belonged to old men, and although they were shy at first, they became more adventurous as time elapsed. Their appearance almost gave me the shivers at times. They looked exactly like plastic toys which had been possessed and given a mind of their own.

In the previous few days, an all singing all dancing turtle race track had been put together by the ship’s carpentry gifted crew ready for its Independence Day inauguration. Three of the turtles were selected from the population to compete and the crew each selected the one they would follow to win. The races were somewhat hit and miss with the turtles mostly standing doing nothing, turning around and going the wrong way or trying to mount the sides of the track. Eventually though, one would be filled with beans and race for its little life to the other side of the track causing the shipmates to scream raucously cheering it on. After a few rounds, however, we thought it best for the little creatures’ well-being to return them to their temporary crèche and fellow (non-pedigree racing) peers.

The final celebrations of the day concluded at sundown on the quarterdeck with Jimmy Hendrix’s rendition of the American National Anthem boomed out to “fireworks” consisting of both hand held and fired flares. Canada Day was a tough act to follow, but the Americans on board certainly knew how to give them a run for their money.

On Monday morning, we had reached Santa Cruz and the Galapagos once again. The time we would spend here would heavily depend on Paula’s hospital test results and whether or not she was suffering with appendicitis, a risk deemed very high at the time. Paula and the ship’s medical crew were permitted on the island while the rest of us would remain aboard at anchor in the harbour awaiting further information before we would be signed back into the country. The day was relaxed with ship’s work put on hold and instead a swim call complete with rope swing filled most of our afternoon and kept our minds occupied.

Eventually, information on Paula’s condition was provided. She did not have appendicitis and instead was suffering from an intestinal complaint that would rectify itself in time. This was great news as it not only meant that Paula would not have to undergo the stress of a hospital operation, but she would also be clear to rejoin the ship and continue the journey with us to Pitcairn.

Having only observed Santa Cruz from a short distance for the day, and with Paula and the medical staff aboard once again, it was time to set sail and return to sea. We were already well behind schedule. At every departure when the ship is not alongside or otherwise hove to, the ship’s anchors must be lifted manually by the crew on board using a device known as a windless. It is positioned on the fo’c’s’l head to the fore of the ship. The process of heaving up anchor takes four people on each side of a lever (similar to those old school manually powered rail cars you often see in cartoons). The noise and rhythm of the windlass in full swing is almost hypnotic and saps the energy out of you quicker than a classroom filled to the brim with ADD five year olds on a concoction of artificial colourings and preservatives. On this occasion, however, certain crew and passengers on board other ships immediately around us watched as we heaved, and began to cheers us on. Spurred on with encouragement, we felt proud of our ship as it left the harbour and waves were exchanged with our cheering fans as the sails were set carrying us out to sea. Once again, we were underway.

The following day was my birthday, and a celebration of my survival of twenty seven years on the planet. For reasons you might already know, a huge celebration will be order if I manage to continue surviving all of life’s dangers to my twenty eighth! Having thought I might let this one pass quietly, I was stunned by the fact that all the crew on board knew that it was my birthday, and treated me like a king for the day. That afternoon, I was treated to a stunning birthday treat as a pod of about sixteen dolphins played and flipped in the water – at times only a couple of metres beside us. And with dinner, I was presented with several birthday cakes. Yes, there were loads of them including one with a picture of the Isle of Man iced onto the front. Now, that’s attention to detail!

That day, daymen were also selected from willing crew to step down from standing watches and instead work day shifts to maintain the ship either in rigging, carpentry, engineering or sailmaking. Furthermore, the first workshop in celestial navigation was hosted and heavily attended on the quarterdeck. With our increasing experience and comfort in handling the ship at sea, the time had come for us to take our traditional seafaring skills and knowledge up to the next notch.

On night watch, the winds provided perfect sailing, and we reached a speed of nine knots – significantly above the usual average. At 3am and in heavy winds, I was thrilled for the opportunity to go out onto the ship’s headrig and stow the flying jib. This is the foremost headsail on the ship, bent on and used solely in the Tropics, and is one of the first to be taken in when the winds pick up as it tends to make steering the ship more difficult. Most of the sail handling takes place between the lighter hours of 4-8 when I am off watch, so it can be quite exciting when the weather provides the impromptu conditions for you to have to step in and pull your sleeves up in the middle of the night either aloft or in the headrig stowing sail.

The following day during 12-4 afternoon watch, the ship was hit with the wave of the century. Every now and again, usually at least a few times per day depending on conditions, a massive wave will crash against the side of the vessel, either due to poor steering into the swell or just plain bad luck, causing a mass of water to spray over the side and drench whosoever finds themselves in its wake. This, of course, provides a lot of entertainment for the ship’s crew, in particular during watch changes, when large numbers of people muster close to the “danger zones”.

What was most interesting about this particular wave is that it covered practically the entire deck with a splash akin to Niagara Fall’s plunge pool. As I sat quietly next to the paint locker cleaning up from an afternoon of ship’s work, the pre-warning crash of the wave against the ship’s port side alerted the crew to the impending arrival of an upsurge nearby, however I considered myself safe being all the way over to the ship’s starboard side. I was evidently wrong. Within seconds, I was absolutely drenched from head to foot by an unforgiveable wall of water taking me completely off guard. Looking around to see everyone else on deck absolutely flabbergasted to have suffered the same fate, the ship suddenly pitched back and the water which had gathered on the ship’s raised deck was unceremoniously funnelled straight onto my head providing me with my own very personal and second unanticipated ocean power shower. On the plus side, I could have done with a scrub and this little episode enabled me to put back my next shower date by a whole month.

Beneath the radiant tropical sunshine and forgiving trade wind breezes, the days at sea began to fly by. The ship touched 10 knots, its record speed, during, of course, our 12-4 watch (each of the watches competed heavily to achieve the fastest speeds) and celestial navigation workshops along with noon sightings continued in earnest. Having always wanted to understand how to navigate by the stars, I applied myself to the books and felt rewarded to get my head around the logic and apply it. Having not really considered it in much detail before, it suddenly dawned on me that this was the way all ships and even planes navigated their way around the world until only recent years with the advent of GPS and other navigational technologies upon which we have become so reliant.

A new Picton Castle phenomenon was also born that week after the involuntary actions of a trainee trying to give a helping hand. Every now and again, when handling sails, two people are required to do something known as “sweating” a line. This is where two people must work together to pull the line out and down while a third takes in the slack on the pin. It is a technique that enables you to haul a halyard line (and hence a sail) much further than by a single person simply pulling down on it. Usually the two people stand side by side to sweat the line, but on this occasion, the trainee had stood directly behind the other person wrapping his arms around him lovingly as they pulled the line together. And thus, the phenomenon of halyard spooning, or as the cool kids call it, “Halspo”, was born.

The rules of the game are simple. Points are awarded for seeing the opportunity to sweat a line with your victim before you step into his/her aid wrapping yourself romantically around and gently spooning as you both sweat the line tenderly together. Bonus points are awarded for spooning unusually tall or well-built shipmates. This is where the true Halspo glory is to be found. Perhaps the largest shipmate on board, Ollie, was a triumph sought by many. He, however, to this day remains unspooned. Indeed, doing so would be like trying to wrap your arms all the way around the Eiffel Tower and, if it went wrong, you might risk finding yourself spotted by your peers in an exaggerated and overcompromising position, breaking all rules of respect for personal space, probably much to your own embarrassment as opposed to your victim’s. Quite literally, the stakes are high. Conversely, if you find yourself being the “spoonee”, points are deducted liberally from your running tally, so one must always keep one’s wits about who may be standing in the wings prepped to come to the rescue.

The jokes continued enthusiastically that week after certain night watch members, who shall remain nameless, took it upon themselves to label every single banana (there must have been about a hundred of them) hanging for crew to eat on the Aloha deck. A fellow shipmate, Fred, has the habit of labelling just about every item he owns in thick black permanent marker including the most mundane of his possessions. This is well known to all on board. The crew thought it would be funny (and indeed it was) to label each banana with Fred’s name, just as he does with all his belongings, apart from a few which they were good enough to attribute to some other crew members, including myself. All on board found the joke all the more hilarious after one of the mates took the matter seriously and reprimanded Fred for labelling the bananas, shouting “They’re not your bananas Fred, they’re for everybody!”

The following Sunday was a hotly awaited day, not only because it was our beloved shipmate Julie’s birthday and the World Cup final (which, sadly, we would be unable to watch but would some time later learn of the result), but because a total solar eclipse would be sweeping its way across the South Pacific towards us. Sadly, delays in the voyage had meant that we would not be within the window of totality but should nonetheless enjoy a partial eclipse of around 35% peaking just after 2pm local time. All gathered on the quarterdeck with sextants and even a couple of welding masks to get suitable protection from the sun’s glaring rays, and there was much excitement as the moon made first contact. I was on helm for most of the transition so was witness to much of the fun without actually seeing the eclipse, including curiously looking shipmates adorned with the welding masks looking up to the sky. A generous peer then offered to relieve me from the wheel giving me the opportunity to take some half-decent photos which you can see in the album below. The timing of the eclipse seemed only too perfect with the passage’s growing focus on celestial bodies and navigation.

In the days that followed, the crew became increasingly psyched up and excited about our impending arrival on Pitcairn through various talks led by the Captain and the announcement that a concert would be held in our honour on the island. The only catch with the concert would be that we would be the ones starring in it and hence we would have to consult and dust off all our most hidden of talents to perform to and impress our audience. As Picton Castle crew, we would be amongst the most privileged people in the world to spend as much as ten days on Pitcairn Island living with the fifty or so residents while ashore. Most other visitors would generally get no more than a couple of days to see the sights and experience the relaxed and welcoming local lifestyle given the timetables of passing ships. There is no airport and a supply ship visits the island only once every three months acting as a ferry for residents. It truly is one of only a handful of isolated and cut off inhabited locations left on the planet. This, the incredible history that precedes it, and, as we would discover, the boundless warmth of its people, are what makes Pitcairn Island such a special place to be.

We were told that the islanders were as excited as we were about our impending arrival having spring cleaned their houses and trimmed up their gardens to welcome us as guests. It was at this point that we were each allocated a family with whom we would stay during our visit based on the ship’s best consideration of where each of us would fit in. I would be staying with my shipmate, Meredith, with a local family. We couldn’t wait to meet everyone.

Our thoughts then turned to the concert and how we would entertain our hosts. Along with my 12-4 brethren, I hatched a plan that would be sure to impress and, somewhat usefully, could be pulled out as a party trick to amuse passers-by on any occasion whenever the opportunity arose later on. The whole charade started much earlier in the voyage, while ashore in Anguilla, when a small group of us had danced somewhat drunkenly at a beach shack to Michael Jackson’s 1983 cult classic hit, Thriller. I had agreed with a couple of shipmates after unashamedly getting down to the track, that it would be quite amusing to learn the dance moves exhibited in the famous zombie section of the music video and to just break them out whenever the song happened to be played at other bars along the course of the voyage.

Subsequently in Panama, thinking it would come in handy at some point, I searched for, and successfully obtained and downloaded a series of videos illustrating how to perform the dance moves from start to finish. Sure enough, the videos did come in rather handy! A few adjustments were required to the choreography, but a final series of moves were formulated which would be called up by cue words to enable a group of us to dance in perfect synchronisation just like the zombies. Initially, a group of us on the 12-4 watch had wanted to learn the dance in secret to freak out the other watches one quiet Sunday afternoon, but doing this in the dark combined with the motion of the ship proved too difficult. We agreed instead that we would do this in the light of day in front of our fellow shipmates and instead surprise the Pitcairn Islanders with our talents.

The first practice was held in the salon, and although the other shipmates found it highly amusing at first, with me shouting out the cue words, including, for example, “booty bounce” as a prompt for us to stand side-on to the audience gyrating our backsides amorously, many suddenly felt compelled to join in the fun and be part of the act, with one participant joyously concluding it was the best thing she’d ever done. As time progressed, Thriller practices became part of the ship’s daily routine, with more and more people joining in. In the end, fourteen of us were in the line-up dancing in a triangular formation, just as in the video inspiring our endeavour. Almost nightly, at 2am, we would have a Thriller run through on watch in the dark, repeating the cue words as we ran through the choreography bouncing our booties and breaking into the most animated of hip shakes and “roar turns” in the moonlight. Check out the music video on YouTube and you will see what I mean.

At one point, as we held a practice on the hatch in the early evening hours after dinner, the Captain came out to watch us grabbing one of the ship’s search lights to illuminate the group mid-dance, as Ollie, the documentary maker, filmed us in action. We completed the section of the choreography we had already learned to rapturous applause and cries of more from the Captain. We evidently had an increasing fan base and the pressure was on to impress en masse and in sync in Pitcairn. Thriller was becoming quite the unexpected phenomenon on board.

As the voyage continued, new sails were steadily bent on to increase the ship’s speed and efficiency. The already mentioned, flying jib, was one of the first to be added along with the main topgallant staysail and main topmast staysail both running fore and aft between the fore and main masts and main and aft masts respectively. Due to the fact that these sails were bent on to masts higher up made of wood, they risked damaging and even snapping the wooden masts in strong winds. We would therefore need to act quickly in changing weather conditions and squalls to bring them in promptly. On the after mast, an additional sail was also bent on above the spanker, known as the gaff topsail. This sail left me a little disillusioned as to its value as it looked nothing more than a bedsheet which had blown out of someone’s window and haphazardly wrapped itself around the top of the mast.

The most impressive of the additional sails which were added to the fleet were the stunsails. Talk was rife about when these sails would be dusted off and bent on. Perhaps we would need to wait until the Indian Ocean to see them. But as the winds died down a little, the decision was taken to bend them on one morning as I slept heavily after the usual 12-4 night watch. Stunsails are those which are positioned outboard of the existing sails by attaching and binding extra yards made of bamboo and wood to special latches on the permanent yards. A photo of the stunsails in full glory can be seen in the album below. As with the other additional sails just mentioned, they work best in lighter winds and must be brought in promptly if the weather picks up, as the weaker bamboo and wooden yards are more prone to rupture. Indeed, if I am not mistaken, this did actually happen on one occasion during the passage, although not, of course, on my watch.

As the winds picked up in the second half of the passage, sheets on the royal sails on both the fore and main masts (the upmost of the square sails) parted numerous times, including once on our watch. The sheets are the lines which pull the sails down and out in the corners (i.e. they sheet out the sail), and chafing of the line against its surroundings can cause it to fray and rupture in stronger winds. The problem is easy to fix – you simply cut the frayed section off and retie the line to the edge of the sail. The immediate effect of a sheet parting is that the sail is no longer secured and flaps frenziedly around in the wind like a giant pair of long johns in a hurricane. It’s both amusing and disconcerting to behold. As soon as the problem is observed, someone has to get up there and stow the sail safely before its indefatigable flapping causes any more chafe and damage to the rest of the intact structure.

The final days of the passage were some of the best. Already we had been three weeks at sea, and although we were incredibly excited to be approaching Pitcairn, many of us yearned for the passage to last yet longer. We had already sailed some two thousand miles with about seven hundred left on the clock. For the first time in weeks and on my look out, a ship was spotted on the horizon. It was a non-descript cargo vessel, but clearly a mutual sight for sore eyes, with all crew coming on deck to view the passer-by as it changed its heading completely to sail right next to us and take a good look. I imagine, for them, seeing a tall ship under full sail in the middle of the Pacific is something which doesn’t happen every day.

The next port of call after Pitcairn would be the island of Manga Reva in French Polynesia, only a few day’s sail. This would be the first major opportunity for smaller groups of crew to take the ship’s boats out to sail and explore some of the uninhabited islets nearby. A lot of work was needed to prepare the boats for the outings, including carpentry to make their masts and work to finalise their sails. One of the boats, the Monamoy, required a complete overhaul and so I found myself, for several days, scraping, painting and then varnishing the base of the boat. The varnish was said to last a century and was perhaps the most potent of liquids I am yet to encounter on the Picton Castle. After a few hours applying this stuff, I would be high for the rest of the day, frantically rubbing my head and enjoying life in a strange shade of purple. God knows the damage this stuff caused to my brain but hell for the ensuing mind trip at least, it was worth it.

As the winds died down once again only miles from Pitcairn, we were treated to some of the stillest and most beautiful night watches of the entire voyage. This coincided with the full moon, and I felt compelled to take out my good DSLR camera and experiment a little. You can see the results in the photo album below. During day watches on lookout, I was treated continually to the spectacle of entire schools of twenty or more flying fish hovering across the ocean waves before returning to their watery depths. Many had haphazardly flown their way onto the ship’s decks which I had, to that point, sadly missed out on. But it wouldn’t be long before I would bear witness to the marvel of the misguided flying fish landing midships. No sooner had it landed on deck and we had located its position with a torch, than Chibley, the ship’s cat, appeared on the scene swooping in and swiping it away. Under the spotlight of the torch, she had all the stealth and speed of a ninja cat and disappeared with her prize almost instantaneously. Knowing full well she had left her previous “catch” in the Chief Mate’s bed, I felt it imperative to intervene and get the fish back off her in case she, heaven forbid, gutted it and dumped it in my own. Searching the ship frantically in the dark, I found she had made her way down below and then back up above deck outside the professional crew’s quarters, where she had dropped the fish as a gift, and was loudly announcing its arrival through a series of deafening yowls. Seeing the catch, I grabbed it promptly before she had the chance to take it again, and threw it almost immediately back overboard. She is a temperamental little creature at the best of times, and certainly was not best pleased by my meddling. I was definitely in her bad books for a few days. Part of me regrets having interfered, as it would probably have been the perfect photo opportunity to snap a soundly sleeping shipmate awoken in disarray to the alarming sensation of flying fish flapping up and down their face. Never mind.

Having not had any celebrations for a few weeks and in the mood for some revelry, the 12-4 watch decided to mark the occasion of Christmas a few months early, that being on July 25th as opposed to the well-known date in December. At the stroke of midnight at the start of watch, Christmas carols resounded ardently yet quietly on the quarterdeck so as not to wake our fellow non-Christmas observing shipmates. We also exchanged gifts thanks to our very own Secret Santas. In my case Father Christmas and his elves were clearly cost cutting and minimising all wastage in Santa’s workshop, given the ongoing age of economic austerity. At any rate, Santa had evidently read the letter I had sent to him in the North Pole in anticipation of his July arrival, since his elves had made me the gently vibrating dildo I had always wanted, although I later discovered that it was nothing more than a cunningly disguised plastic cover over an electric toothbrush. I thought it best to return the electric toothbrush to a shipmate I felt might be missing it, but on the pretext that I could use it for Santa’s intended purpose as and when I felt like it.

Christmas continued the next day with a gift the entire ship could enjoy – the first piece of land we had seen in almost a month, namely, Henderson Island. Seeing land on the horizon again was almost entrancing, particularly given Henderson was reasonably large but completely uninhabited. The ship approached the island and we pulled aside less than a mile away to admire its shores as the Captain told us of his visit there in the 70s to cut wood for the Pitcairners. Taking some time to watch the Pacific waves crash against its raised shores, we set off again away from Henderson safe in the knowledge that its sister island, Pitcairn, was now only a hundred or so miles away. We would be there in the morning.

That evening, our first Marlinspike party since the wedding in Lunenburg would be hosted with the theme “looking and feeling good”. Dressed up, drinks were in freeflow as we enjoyed our last night at sea. As the sun set, we adjourned to a party in the newly nightclub themed Bro Cave complete with disco ball and iPhone strobe lights. A single glow stick that was lying around was also broken out and it wasn’t long before the entire thing was split open splattering the Bro Cave and everyone in it with fluorescent green goo. As we continued to party, safe in the knowledge the stuff was non-toxic, certain feathers were evidently ruffled as one of the mates came down and hit the roof providing a mass reprimand demanding all be cleaned up. The party spirit was promptly pooped as a major clean-up operation was unleashed in spite of certain shipmates who were quite blatantly worse for wear!

On night watch, we waited in earnest as the miles to Pitcairn ticked down. Sadly we would not be the first to see it appear on the horizon. As we handed the baton to the next watch at 4am, we were safe in the knowledge that they would have the privilege to spot the island before anyone else, which they did at roughly 5.30 that morning. I went to sleep, as normal, just after 4, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before I’d be up again loading Pitcairn’s deliveries off the ship and, of course, setting foot on dry land once again for the first time in a month. Indeed as I hoped, my time in Pitcairn would prove to be incredible, but little did I know that just days into my stay, I would find myself in the midst of the most unnerving accident I expect I will ever have the privilege to survive. Lasting no more than ten seconds, it would change everything. Instead of continuing my extraordinary tall ship voyage around the world, my fate would inescapably turn to confronting an epic, challenging and painful journey of a whole different kind. It would be one that I would ultimately have to face alone, but would introduce me to some incredible people along the way. My time on the Picton Castle was over. But in the face of adversity, my unrelenting determination to return would remain.


Created with flickr slideshow from softsea.