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| Day 115 |
31 July 2000 |
| Gulf of Carpentaria |
| "Points of Contact" |
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The Gulf is beautiful today, a wide expanse of pale blue sea
with clear skies overhead. We have no land in sight at dawn, and
there is very little sea life evident. The occasional sea snake,
some jelly-fish and a few gannets are all that keep us company.
How much more pleasant it would be if only we were going the
other way, or going this way in the other monsoon. We would be
sailing quietly along, rolling gently with the swell on our
quarter, making our miles swiftly and for free, instead of which
we are noisily burning diesel fuel and jarring hull and rigging
on every wave.
One of the most pleasant jobs in Duyfken's watch routine is
lookout. The crew on watch rotate this role, along with
steering, staying an hour at each before being relieved. In good
conditions the lookout is posted on the forecastle, the raised
deck at the bow, but motoring to windward like this the bow is
covered in spray most of the time, so lookout is kept from the
poop, the high part of the stern.
The job consists of continually scanning the horizon. Whenever
the lookout spies something, anything at all from a floating log
to a tanker, he or she reports it to the officer of the watch,
indicating the direction of the object in the ancient notation
of points. There are 32 points in a complete circle, so each
point is a convenient 11.25 degrees. This sounds ridiculous
until you start to use the notation, when it begins to make
sense. There are eight points in each quadrant, or quarter
circle, which makes it an easy matter to estimate the single
point divisions by successively dividing the angles in half. The
lookout of the original Duyfken probably reported his first
sighting of Australia by saying, in old Dutch: 'There is land,
one point on the port bow.'
But it's not reporting things to the navigator that makes
keeping a lookout so enjoyable. It's the fact that you can stand
on deck doing nothing but staring into the great infinity of the
sea and the horizon, meditating on whatever subject delights
you, and still feel, at the end of the hour, that you have
performed a vital service to the safety of the ship and your
fellow seafarers.
Our unscheduled stop at Gove was an unexpected opportunity for
the crew to ring home and talk to friends and family for the
first time in a few weeks. I suspect a good deal of time on
lookout today is spent going over these conversations and
savouring them anew. This is certainly true for me. I spent an
enjoyable hour reminiscing over a telephone conversation at
least twice that length to Michelle back in Adelaide, to whom I
got engaged a couple of weeks before Duyfken left Fremantle.
Michelle tells me she doesn't read this journal. Says she's not
really interested what kind of terrific fun I'm having.
Ports of call with telephones were a luxury Jansz could not have
even dreamt of and, though all of us are many miles from home,
we feel we are traversing home waters, in contrast to Jansz, for
whom these same seas represented the edge of the known world.
It's a platitude to say the world has got smaller over the
centuries, but out here it is as big as it ever was. Standing
lookout from the tiny wooden expanse of Duyfken's deck the dome
of the clear sky is infinitely huge, arcing over a vast horizon
marred by nothing except waves for its full 32 points. We could
be anywhere.
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Peter Manthorpe
Master
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