Out of the Doldrums – a short story by Des Molloy

“Hi ya Robert, cousin Janna here!  I was up in the Bay over the weekend, and went to drop in on your dad.  Where’s he moved to?”

“Nice to hear from you Janna … what do you mean, ‘Where’s he moved to?’  You do know our house eh?  No 50, the one with the lighthouse letter box!”

“And the old ambulance camper in the car port … of course I know your place.  A young couple live there now. Travis and Nina Smith … your dad’s gone, the camper has gone and everything in the shed has gone. There’s no clutter, no whitebait nets … nothing!  Has your dad not said anything about all this?”

“To be honest with you, we haven’t spoken for a while.  About three months after mum’s funeral we had a bit of a barney … and I think he hung up on me … and the phone line has been dead since then!  I haven’t been able to get through to him.”

“I didn’t think to have a  look down in the port, to see if he was living on board Hoiho.  We were a bit keen to get home, the kids were getting scratchy, so we just left it.  You don’t think that he has gone into a home do you?”

“I don’t know, I’ll give Julie a ring in Oz, although I am sure that if she knew anything like this was unfolding, she would have rung me.  It was about four months back that Dad called and asked if I could buy a 5% share of No 50.  I don’t have access to any spare cash so had to turn him down … and he sounded a bit desperate.  He said he needed to pay off a debt.  I think their world trip wiped them out, with mum having her stroke in Turkey and needing specialised care and transport home … I am not sure their travel insurance covered everything, and I know dad had already been part-paying for some of mum’s cancer drugs.”

“Well I hope nothing untoward has happened, I like Uncle Russell … probably my favourite.  Doesn’t say much, but when he does it usually makes sense.  A good bugger!”

A call to his sister gleaned no further information, leaving Robert a bit perplexed and just a little concerned.  Their dad Russell had always been a resolute man … a man in steady control.  Competent and quietly confident, he was a buttress to their boisterous mother’s flighty effervescence and sometimes manic enthusiasms.  Together they’d made No 50 Gully Rd a haven of joy for their offspring, and all the tag-along neighbourhood kids.  It was the hub.  However nothing in life remains constant, and slowly all the children grew up and moved away, the young parents aging into Gold Card ownership and ultimately to infirmity.  Russell was a concrete placer and finisher.  He loved the earnest nature of the work.  Every operation from the arrival of the ready-mix truck to the final broom finishing and expansion-joint cutting was honest. Placing, vibrating, screeding and floating were all physical team-operations. Russell enjoyed the banter, he enjoyed the gentle aches of tendons stretching and muscles pulling, all the while challenging the aging process.  Louis L’Amour would have described him as being of a ‘spare’ frame.  He was 1840 mm tall, as befitted someone born on Waitangi Day … in Russell.  He was wide, but not thick … neither physically nor metaphorically. With a shortish full beard he now looked like Ernest Hemingway in his middle years … weathered of course, from the life of an outdoors worker.

Robert knew that his dad hadn’t handled the earlier-than-expected passing of his beloved Monica, all that well.  It had been thought that there would be possibly a couple of years to be worked through, farewells able to be made … hand-over plans expedited.  The sudden stroke in Ephesus on their ‘grand tour’, and the succeeding fatal blood clot a month later put an end to that.  Robert knew that his mum had been the family manager and dad was the engine that powered it all.  It wasn’t that Russell was a luddite, it was just that he needed no technology in his life, and Monica was so good with it all.  Monica was an accountant so computers, spreadsheets, data bases and pivot tables were all just grist to the mill for her.  Internet banking, family Zoom meetings, WhatsApp messaging and the like, were all in her realm.  “You don’t get a dog and do the barking yourself!” was Russell’s mantra. He had just four cards in his wallet … library card, driver’s licence, Super Gold Card and a simple chip-less BNZ Debit card.

Russell had known that Monica had set up for most bills to be paid automatically but only half-heartedly took onboard the details, just as she wouldn’t have been all that interested in whether the Blakes’ floor slab was to be a U2 floated finish or a U3 trowelled finish. “Each to his own” he’d often muttered.  Monica had the ‘smart’ phone and a couple of computers.  Russell’s world had no need for any of these accoutrements.  “You’ll need to know all this, when I’m not here!” had been a chat that was always batted away, presuming that there would be time later.  There wasn’t.

The weeks that followed Monica’s passing held Russell in an almost breathless fog.  It was like there was a band of steel around his chest.  He struggled to breath without effort and sleep was virtually impossible.  He didn’t know how to relate to anyone.  This wasn’t a role he had trained for.  For friends, it was almost as though he was holding a banner aloft announcing his state of bereavement.  The same platitudes were offered time after time, his responses were rote … stilted and shallow.  Robert stayed a week, Julie two weeks.  Without them he would have struggled to feed himself or keep up a pretence of coping.  On the rare occasion that he ventured out and encountered a stranger, he tried hard to stifle annoyance or show resentment that ‘they’ couldn’t see his grief.  The banality that ‘time heals’ couldn’t be embraced yet.  Time needed to pass, before time could heal.

Robert and Julie rang every week, checking in and monitoring his pathway into widowerhood and solitude.  Russell didn’t ring them … he didn’t know their numbers.  They only had cell phones and whilst he knew their numbers would be in Monica’s contacts list, he didn’t know how to access that.  He’d tried Directory Enquiries for both of them without success.  He’d resolved to own-up and ask the next time they rang, when the landline phone service was terminated … cut off!  “Bloody Monica … so proudly paperless!”  Russell knew that she had the bills arriving via email, but that was a world he’d not embraced and now had no one to enlighten him.

This was just after he’d been a bit short with Robert.  Russell knew that he should to be more proactive with his life but could see little point, often just curling up in a foetal position for hours on end reflecting on what had passed.  The future held no appeal and the present was purgatorial.  There seemed to be no reason for him to wake … and start another day … just like the last one.  His darkest, most scary thought was “What if this goes on for years and years?  What if I make old bones?”  Inaction became Russell’s staple.  He had no work to go to.  He’d been replaced by the young Baxter twins when he and Monica left on their trip to satisfy her desire to see the antiquities of the ‘Old World’.  Russell had been wryly pleased to see that it took two to replace him.  The days were now repetitive and boringly similar.  His torpor remained with him like a cloak for week after week, groaning into wakefulness each morning with a “Bugger!”

Russell didn’t believe in a deity, especially not believing that the hand that you’re dealt in life is somehow allocated to you by a ‘higher power’.  Life had been good … and now it wasn’t.  The saying ‘shit happens’ ran through his mind.  It seemed that he was on a roll, a losing streak.  First Monica passed away, then in the absence of bills-in-the-letterbox, debt collectors started arriving.  All Life Insurers Pty Ltd, also known to Russell as the Robber Barons, declined to reimburse for the monies outlaid in getting Monica home to NZ from Turkey.  In a distressed state, Russell had seemingly neglected to dot every ‘I’ and cross every ‘t’ and missed completing vital information fields, that were deemed mandatory, and their omission rendered the claim invalid.  By the time the ‘heavies’ arrived in person, there was also penalty interest to be paid and the demands were beyond what Russell could gather up.  Clearly, the only asset of value was the house and the only good thing to come out of the whole distasteful business was that the house sold quickly, realising enough to cover the debt and leave a small residual to be managed.  There wouldn’t be much in the way of an inheritance for the kids though.

Two smaller assets remained, both constants in the family life for many years and now central to Russell’s.  The ‘Merc’ had been a purchase made just before their wedding in 1982.  It was a 1948 long-nosed Mercury ambulance.  These had been common in New Zealand’s emergency medical transport world through the period up to about 1960.  Ford-powered and bodied in Oamaru by Tempero, theirs had still been in the Timaru St John’s livery when it came into their possession.  Rudimentarily fitted out when they got, it became a hobby in succeeding years for Russell to fill in his spare time with.  In the early years of their marriage they had a boarder, Doug, to help pay the mortgage and Doug was a joiner.  Together they converted the back of the ambulance into a well-thought-out, functioning camper.  In later years Russell replaced the thirsty side-valve Ford motor with a turbo-charged Nissan LD28 diesel paired to a five-speed gearbox, and the last decade had brought what Russell thought of as the icing on the cake.  Electric power-steering and boosted brakes completed the project, making the old girl as easy to drive as the current fleet of hired white ‘maggots’ waddling around the countryside with their ubiquitous grey nomads at the wheel.

Hoiho was their other recreational indulgence.  She was a Schuyt, an 11 m flat-bottomed Dutch sailing barge.  This oddity came into their ownership through happenstance.  A family tramping weekend saw them holed up in the Cobb Valley’s Fenella Hut for a day with a couple from the Netherlands who were attached to the Dutch Embassy in Wellington.  They were taking a break in the Kahurangi National Park, avoiding what was unfolding at work back in Wellington.  All hell had broken loose because the Ambassador had been outed as being blackmailed for inappropriate behaviour with underage girls … something he had reticently admitted to in the face of irrefutable evidence.

“They’ll quietly get him swapped out … but God knows what we’ll do with his boat that is on the way.”  It transpired that the man in question was an avid sailor and of such seniority that he had a generous relocation allowance for his posting to the Antipodes.

“We’ll buy it!” interjected Monica, setting in play a keystone to future family summer holidays.

The purchase was cheap, the embassy wanting no publicity.  Relocating it to Golden Bay was a bit of an expense, as was the renaming.  It was Robert who wanted the yellow-eyed penguin name.  He been studying them at school and when he saw a photo of their pending purchase with its side-mounted lee boards he exclaimed “It’s got flippers … we could paint them yellow and call it Hoiho!”  Well, they didn’t paint the ‘flippers’ yellow but they did go through the quite expensive process of renaming her.  Poseidon, Neptune and Tangaroa were all appeased appropriately, as were the four winds.  The tacky tradition requiring a virgin to urinate in the bilges was amended when eight-year-old Julie flatly refuse to ‘wee in the boat’.  A liberal dosing of red wine to commemorate the spilt blood of sacrificial virgins from years’ past was deemed sufficient.

Moored in the outer harbour of Port Tarakohe, Hoiho was now Russell’s principal residence. The Merc was his secondary residence, used when the sea conditions precluded rowing out to the swing mooring.  Both were comfortable enough … ok, but lonely.  At the three-month milestone, he reflected that he was doing all right, in the circumstances.  He was feeding himself, he was getting exercise by taking the marina’s courtesy bicycle to town a couple of days a week to join the coterie of old duffers at the ‘departure lounge’ bench seat outside the book shop opposite the coffee provender.  The conversational interactions were never all that stimulating … often almost a verbatim repeat of the previous assembly, but they were collegial and non-judgemental.  They were his support crew, his sometimes mute crutches, to help him along.  The problems of the world were never solved, but that was of little consequence.  Of import was the best coffee in town and the sunny location.  Beards were de rigour and Gold Cards presumed.

The community support for his loss was almost universal and Russell ‘almost chuckled’ at the sight of the harbour master strutting along the hard towards him.  “I must be progressing to normality … I’m pissed off just looking at the obnoxious cockwomble!”  This was a favourite descriptor from Monica’s London-born dad, and was British slang for a person, usually male, who is prone to making outrageously stupid statements and/or inappropriate behaviour, while having a very high opinion of their own wisdom and importance.  This fitted Tom Courtney down to the ground.  He was a barrel-chested gnome of a man with a Trump-like ego. Behind his back all-and-sundry knew him facetiously as IKE – I Know Everything.  His bombast was never respected.

“Last day tomorrow to renew your mooring rights!  I’ll be collecting daily dues after that and non-payment allows the Port to slap a lien on your non-yacht until the debt is discharged.  And one other thing … mooring rights do not allow for overnight camping.”

Russell made no response, just leaving the utterances to stand as a soliloquy.  The words has irritated him though.  The smug bastard needed his self-importance knocked askew.  A possible solution came to him, popping into his consciousness almost as though it had been waiting there in the wings, ready for the opportunity to bring confusion and bewilderment to the self-important minor maritime official.  

Russel took the marina’s bicycle and cycled across to The Egret Cafe in Pohara, reassured when he spotted that his yet-to-know-it conspirator was on duty and seemingly not busy.

“Hi Mandy … am I right in thinking this is your last shift and in the morning you and Phil are heading off to the Nelson Lakes, then north to Wellington?”

“Aye, on the bus at 9.30.  We’re having a few beers here at the end of the night, but still want quite an early one.  We’re packed and ready to go.  Is it a Puhoi Lager for you?”

“Yes please.  Do you know Tom the harbourmaster?”

“Short guy … bit of a dick?”

“That’s him, I want to bring a bit of uncertainty and mystery into his smug little world.  I take it you guys drive.  I’ll refund your bus ticket.  I want you to take my camper away tonight and sometime in the next couple of weeks leave it in Picton.  It is full of diesel, so you’ll be able to roam a bit.  Have you driven a diesel?”

“Aye, me da’s big SUV.  Don’t start it till the pig-tail light goes out, and don’t rev it out in the gears.”

“Ideally I would like you to drive off, and out of town no earlier than midnight.  Camp somewhere up the valley … maybe Urewhenua Bridge.  I’m going to sail out at the same time and when Mr Pomposity arrives in the morning he’ll find no sign of either Hoiho or the Merc … and there will be no one to tell tales about where, why or how?  So tell no one about this.  I’m sure you know ‘Loose lips sink ships!’

And so it was that on that still, moonlit night, Russell cast off from his swing mooring and with the three-cylinder Lombardini diesel just off idle, Hoiho quietly exited the port and headed off out into Mohua/Golden Bay.  Once past the breakwater the slight slapping of the sea against the hull brought back the familiarity of the nautical world. Russell enjoyed sensing the return of muscle memory as Hoiho seemed to come to life with a shudder and a groan.  Russell loved the feel of the tiller resting against his side, his dominant right arm controlling their passage through the shimmering waters.  For a period they motored down the reflected golden lunar pathway laid out in front of them.  Russell knew where all the mussel farms were and kept well north of them as he curved away beyond Separation Point.  He found himself singing and recognised that the simple act of trying to put one over Tom Courtney had lifted his spirit and for once he was imagining the day to come with some joy.  The joy he was envisaging came from picturing the WTF reaction of the pompous little twat.

The choppiness off Separation Point where Golden Bay meets Tasman Bay brought back a family anecdote which always raised laughter when recalled.  The event that passed into folklore happened on a lovely afternoon with a moderate nor-westerly breeze making for a great day to sail into a summer break in the Abel Tasman.  Monica had the kids in the cabin with her, making them lunch, when Russell decided that the time was right for a gybe.  He was confident of his own competence in doing this without help.  He prided himself in the speed that he could manage the swinging boom, set both sails appropriately and swap over the lee boards.  He knew that to the outsider this looked like a confusing explosion of physical activities … ropes flying, winches whizzing, sails flapping.  At the time, he had a ZZ Top homesteader-style beard that he was most proud of.  In the wake of the event, Russell blamed a rogue wave and a big gust of wind simultaneously corresponding with him frantically pulling a halyard through the self-tailing winch, bending close as he took up another ‘bite’.  Spectacularly, his beard wound around the winch spool instantly immobilising him, trapping him away from the tiller, leaving Hoiho totally in the hands of the elements.  His humiliation was compounded by the lack of a really sharp knife on board and with Monica needed on the tiller, most of the freeing was done by 10-year-old Robert.  The mixture of crying kids and laughing wife topped it off.  Dignity was not restored until a pair of scissors shaped a new look.

In the middle hours of the night Russell could clearly see that he was off Totaranui and he motored in to the sandy bay and anchored, dowsing the navigation lights that he had put on after rounding the point, and settling down for some sleep.

So began the next phase of Russell’s story.  He still had no work to go to, no lawns to mow, no project in the garage to tinker with, nothing to maintain on the house.  He was still adjusting to the solitude and inactivity.  With Monica there had always been ongoing interactions, talking, touching, laughing, planning.  The emptiness of his days were still a bit of an issue.  He’d always been a proponent of “If you’re busy, time flies!”  Now, he mainly had the sea and hills to gaze at.  Often he’d note that the sun had hardly moved in the sky, yet he seemed to have watched the progress of a jelly fish for ages.  The Abel Tasman National Park was an area he was quite familiar with due to the numerous summer holidays spent cruising from bay to bay, the kids revelling in being almost feral Robinson Crusoes.  Sometimes they would beach Hoiho and remain in a spot for a week or more. The memories brought on some maudlin thoughts but also many happy recollections.  At times Hoiho had been Joshua Slocum’s Spray, other times it had been Batman’s adversary The Penguin’s home base.  The magic of the twinkling, stirred-water bioluminescence never failed to send the kids to bed in good cheer.  In the now, some days he remained moored, others Russell would raise a sail and see how it moved him.  There never was a destination.  He’d told Mandy and Phil to leave the Merc in the ferry terminal carpark and to put the key under the driver’s seat, locking the doors when they left.

Finally, Russell started to write up the journal of their lives.  When she was still quite able … before they went on their ‘final’ adventure, Monica had bought a 12-pack of 1A8 exercise books.  “Make a 50 mm notes’ margin on the right on every righthand page, write on every second line … and only on those right leaves … leave the left page for later commentary and the like.  You’re not doing this for us, it is for our grandkids and their kids.  Show them the lives of an ordinary family.  Promise?”  This became a cathartic therapy.  Routine chores on Hoiho were quite minimal and once Russell got into the swing of writing, he found the days passed in a reasonable time frame.  Most mornings he would swim around the boat, sluice himself off with fresh water, have breakfast and do a two-hour stint of writing.  He’d then lunch and often do another hour before deciding if he needed to move to another idyllic spot for the night.

When a three-day window of suitable weather presented itself, Russell departed Torrent Bay, hoisting both sails to make his way across the wide Tasman Bay, making his first evening’s anchorage in Okiwi.  Being a flat-bottomed sailing barge, Hoiho was very much an inshore vessel, so conditions for sailing were monitored carefully, the marine forecast on RNZ National being the oracle in Russell’s mind.  He never missed the 4.00 am broadcast on his decades-old Panasonic transistor radio.  He was ok with sailing solo but did miss delegating the lowering and raising of the lee boards to the kids.  For them, once they were strong enough to operate the pulleys, it was a game. “Flipper up!” and “Flipper down!” were their calls as Hoiho went about or tacked.  Intuitively they knew when to raise the windward lee board and to co-ordinate lowering the all important lee side ‘flipper’.  Russell always enjoyed the feeling through the tiller as he fed out the sail.  He could feel the lee board arresting sideways slippage, and ensuring that they cut through the sea and didn’t just skid across the top in the direction of the wind.

Russell had the requisite charts and the Navily Anchorage Guide to make the voyage through to Picton and the Waikawa Marina, safe and enjoyable.  The challenging French Pass shortcut was motored through at slack water with no sign of the Jacobs Whirlpool … nor was an overfall experienced.  The Merc was easily located in Picton and put to good use ferrying provisions to Hoiho.  Waikawa was quiet and a nice spot to catch up with a bit of journaling as the days since Torrent Bay had all been focussed on sailing or motoring.  The weather packed a sad for nearly a week, but this didn’t worry Russell in the least as he had no schedule and was enjoying the sophisticated delights of a quirky downtown café, often breakfasting there, sometimes even staying for lunch.  

A few things happened in Picton.  Firstly, he realised that he was starting to find getting through each day less of a chore, and he was even thinking about where he might go.  Originally, all he could think of was getting the minor win over Tom Courtney.  Now he was looking at the charts and assessing the possibility of making it down to Dunedin in the two months he adjudged remained left in the sailing season.  Once that embryo started to gestate, he even pondered about a subsequent road trip in the Merc up to the North Island so he could find Robert and family.  There was also a momentary interaction with a cyclist, that would later unfold into significance.  Although the moment was truly only a moment, it warmed Russell’s heart.  Leaving his café, he held the door open for a delightful-looking woman in stretchy sportswear.  Windblown and with a glow of perspiration, she was tall and not young.  In the fleeting interaction, for a second he thought it was Jamie Lee Curtis incognito, she had that same sort of angular, unusual face and lean body.  Her face seemed to light up and smile with her eyes, as she nodded her thanks.  Outside was her bike.  In a glance Russell took in that she was a bike-packer not a tourer.  He knew this because of the sometimes detailed and intense conversations with Golden Bay’s most notable and quite dull cyclist.  Lightly and tightly packed, the silver dual-suspension mountain bike was distinctive with its frame triangle filled with a bespoke carry bag.  A short carrier behind the seat supported another bag and a small bag in front of the handlebars completed the set up.  Clearly she travelled light. “About to board the ferry!” Russell mused before getting back into the Merc and going back to Hoiho to pen a bit more of what he now called The Magnus Opus.

“Hi Julie, sorry to ring so early but I have just managed to get in touch with Dad’s mate Stumpy, who is one of his crew on the bench of old duffers.  Hoiho has gone from the port, and there is no sign of the Merc.  None of the crew know what is going on.  When Dad hadn’t turned up in town for morning coffee for a couple of weeks, Stumpy dropped in to see if he was OK.  He has been living on Hoiho for a couple of months, a bit depressed.  Seemingly the house was sold up from under him.  Not even that prick of a harbour master knows where he has gone.  He was just missing one morning.”

“God Robert, that is awful ... now I feel bad about not trying harder to get through to him.  Did he leave in the barge or the camper?”

“I tried asking the cops, but they say that as he is an adult, seemingly of a sound mind, he is allowed to roam where and how it suits him.  They can’t and won’t put out a APB for him.  According to Stumpy no one knows how he left.  He hadn’t mentioned selling either … and I’d be pissed off he did sell.  They’re our birth right.”

“So how do we track him down?  There must be two of them if Hoiho and the Merc disappeared on the same night.  Gas stations have CCTV cameras … but the fill up could be anywhere in a 600 km range … and we’re not the cops … and we don’t know when.”

“OK, let’s think about it for a day, and I will ring you tomorrow at the same time.  In the meantime I am going to ring Awaroa Lodge and see if Hoiho has been spotted in the Abel Tasman.”

“Try the water taxi companies too … and maybe Golden Bay Air.  Hoiho is quite distinctive with her brown sails.” Brief family updates were exchanged and the call terminated, Russell muttering –

“Dad, dad, dad … mum would be so angry with you.  Now, how do we find you?”

Of course, Russell was blissfully unaware of the family concerns taking hold far away from him.  The weather came right and with full tanks of water and diesel he motored out of the sounds and started chunking his way down the East Coast.  For a few days a gentle southerly blew, necessitating tacking into the wind, something that he enjoyed because of the challenge. Two nights were spent sheltering in Port Underwood before a tailwind took him quickly down the Kaikoura coast, Hoiho seeming to hoist up her skirts and fair fly along, heeling over impressively for a flat bottomed vessel, leaning against the lee board, both sails full, Russell attentive on the tiller, a churned up, snowy-white wake trailing behind.  The landward scenery was spectacular and several broaching whales were encountered.  With a warm glow of excitement he sailed into Kaikoura’s Keen Bay and dropped anchor.  This had been his biggest blue water sail yet.  Coming ashore by the archetypal old Kiwi pub, The Pier Hotel, he treated himself to a pint of the local offering from Emporium Brewing.  He was then able to learn that the northbound Coastal Pacific train paused every day to pick up passengers at 10.00 am.  Overcoming the financial rort of $150, he enjoyed nearly three hours of luxury rail travel the next day, and was reunited with the Merc in mid-afternoon.  A night in her preceded a meander down the coast.  Kekerengu’s Store made for a lovely morning break, the waters that he’d recently sailed through, now providing a vivid azure seascape to look out over.  He was the most content he had been for a couple of years.

The Pier Hotel, in its location at the end of the port’s pier was ideal for Russell … a place where he thought he would be able to position the Merc looking out to the moored Hoiho, catch up on some more of the Magnus Opus and look for another way to relocate her further south.  To his surprise and delight, Jamie Lee Curtis’s bike was outside and he could see her at a sunny table inside, giving him the once over as he parked.

“Hello … I remember you from Picton.  I presumed you were going north on the ferry.  How’s it been?”  Russell was quite keen to hear her speak.  In fact he was quite keen for a conversation.  He’d occasionally interacted with people since the sailing began, but no actual conversations had been had for a few weeks.

“I remember you too, because I saw you get into that old van.  Was it once an ambulance?”

“Yes it was.  I’m Russell … late of Golden Bay, now not sure where I am from.  Possibly of no fixed abode.  You?”  He hoped he wasn’t babbling.

“Well I’m Bridget, and I am originally from a wee town in Northern Queensland gazetted as Seventeen Seventy … written in letters, but universally known as 1770, written in numerals.  I still own the family home there, but have worked and lived in Cooktown for many years.  I’m having a small sabbatical and have ridden all over the North Island and a bit of the top of the South.  When you saw me in Picton, I had just finished the Queen Charlotte Walkway.  I would have been a bit of a sight eh?  You probably pegged me as Sweaty Betty!”

“I hope you don’t mind me sitting here, I haven’t actually talked to anyone for a couple of weeks.  I am harmless.”

“Me neither, ditto … and it is fine.  I‘ve treated myself to a couple of nights here, while I plan my next bit of the ride.  I have about three more weeks, and fly out of Queenstown.  Man, you should see the views from my room upstairs.  It is at the front, opening out onto the balcony and has stunning views over the bay to the mountains.”

They both then laughed at her innocent utterance that could have been taken as a salacious invite.

Later, when he thought back to this first meeting, he marvelled at how easily and quickly they gelled.  They did retire upstairs, not into her room but to a table on the balcony where they spread out Bridget’s maps.

“There is great mountain biking up in the Hanmer area.  The Forest Park is cheap as chips, and you can ride up either of two passes, Jacks or Jollies into a wonderful hinterland.  You could camp at the historic Acheron cobb building, or go up the Rainbow Road to Lake Tennyson.”  Russell than suggested that she take the Merc, wander along the inland Kaikoura Road through Mount Lyford, Waiau, and Rotheram to Mouse Point and up to Hanmer to make it a base for exploring on her treadlie.

“You can have her for 10 days or so and if you bring her down to Lyttleton you can leave her in the main street, then have a look around the Banks Peninsular.”

“But how will you get there?”  At this stage Bridget didn’t know that Russell and Hoiho were connected.  She then amused Russell, by asking if they were paddles on the side to help it along and were they powered.  He noted that she was easy with being laughed at, seemingly enjoying the fun of the moment.

And so another leg began.  Bridget trundled off in the Merc and Russell, after a night at South Bay, began sailing along the Canterbury coast.  There were no formal marinas or moorings along the way, but he found places to anchor at Gore Bay, Waikuku Beach, and a couple of others that he wasn’t sure of their names.  Lyttleton was reached two days before Bridget was due.  He enjoyed the village-feel of the town, and was happy to explore a bit on foot, usually with his current exercise book under his wing … looking for a café in which to while away an hour or two.  Life was almost good.  He wasn’t spending much, way less than the pension, so wasn’t eating into the kids’ nest egg.  He was also looking forward to seeing Bridget again.  He found this an unusual sensation.  He had enjoyed their short time together, so there was no reason to not think that he wouldn’t similarly enjoy their next meeting.  He was glad he had got there first.

Bridget arrived a day later with effusive tales of her adventures.  She had loved camping out in such a deserted area.  She’d got to Lake Tennyson and revelled in being the only person overnighting there.  She’d also been thinking about her remaining weeks and what Russell was up to.

“You know how you’re heading south.  What if I brought my bike with me and sailed with you for a leg … then rode back to get the Merc, while you sailed on, and we sort of leap-frogged each other?”

Russell thought for a moment, pretty much breathless with surprise.  He could instantly see the opportunity for more of what he had intuitively enjoyed back in Kaikoura.  The simple interaction with a nice and interesting person would take the voyage to another level.

“We could do that if you want.  I am going to Akaroa next for a couple of days, then down to somewhere near Ashburton, then Timaru.  It would be a hard grunt for you riding out of Akaroa to come back here … and how would we find each other?”

“I’ve got gears … and these legs once ran against Cathy Freeman!  You’d just text where you were and I’d get Google to guide me there.”

“I don’t really have a cell phone.  I still have Monica’s, but I don’t know how to open it or use it.  I never needed to”

After the initial shock that someone could be a functioning adult without a phone, Bridget asked Russell to get it and she had a go at enlivening it.  It still had some power and the entry code turned out to be a simple 1234.  For Russell this was amazing.  They put extra juice into it while having an evening beer at a bar overlooking the harbour.  She then set up a simple texting link to her phone and showed him how to make it happen.  More in-depth phone tutorials could wait till later.

“Morena big brother … any news?”

“The Knaps’ water taxi people saw Hoiho in the Abel Tasman three weeks back, but couldn’t say for sure if dad was at the helm. I have been trying the commercial marinas, although that is not his style.  Waikawa are checking.  He might have been there a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve been thinking about the Facebook Community Noticeboard groups.  Have you time to join some?  If you do Motueka, Nelson, Murchison, Reefton, Greymouth, Westport, Wanaka and Queenstown, I’ll do the East Coast ones down to Dunedin.  They might take a couple of days to activate, then we send a photo through of the Merc, asking if it has been seen.”

“Good idea, that might get us to know if dad is driving it and has maybe sold Hoiho … or more likely we’ll learn that some random stranger is driving it.”

“I’ll also check to see if there isn’t a special interest group for old vehicles on Facebook too.  My turn to ring tomorrow!”

The sailing, biking, sailing, leap-frogging regime worked extremely well.  Russell loved having the companionship of Bridget who turned out to be a PE teacher, and she really had run against Cathy Freeman in a 400 m race, albeit when she was 30 years old and Cathy was only 15.  It was at a regional summer show on a grass oval, and Cathy still won easily whilst Bridget filled 8th place, first local.

“I was still pretty quick though, and even now can see off most of the girls at Cooktown High.”

“Well running was never my thing … I am pretty good at placing concrete though!”

Bridget was found to be suitably well co-ordinated and quickly came to understand the action and reaction of the elements they were dealing with.  The wind and the sea were explained, not as adversaries to conquer, but as aids to their voyage.  She was a natural, and even OK with the privations of a small sailing vessel.  Hoiho seemed happy too, with no gear breakages and record distances were achieved when Bridget was aboard.  Russell was now really enjoying his days.  He would quite happily wave Bridget off on her bicycle and herald her return in the Merc, because it signalled another few days together.  There were back-stories to be learnt, aspirations to be declared.  Russell had parked all his aspirations when Monica got ill and only now were some beginning to peak out from under the cloud of gloom.  Maybe he could get over to see Julie and the kids in Melbourne?  Maybe he could get a yacht there and sail up to Cooktown?

Meanwhile, the family sleuths were starting to get feedback on social media.  The Merc had been spotted in St Anaud, Picton, Hanmer and Lyttleton.  Some of the feedback was confusing to Robert and Julie, because a young couple were driving in St Anaud and Picton, whilst an older woman with short hair was at the wheel in Hanmer and Lyttleton.  Most recently it had been seen in Ashburton.  Hoiho had been photographed in Akaroa but no one could be seen on her.

“I don’t know if there is any connection between the two, but they both seem to be heading south at much the same rate.  I am taking a week off and going down.  I’ll hire a car in Christchurch and follow the feedback south.  Whoever is sailing Hoiho won’t be sailing in the dark, so has to park up somewhere every night. I’ll find them.”

“And get the silly old bugger a simple cell phone, and show him how to use it.  Tell him too that his mates from the bench seat are worried about him.  Pete’s mum heard through Stumpy’s brother.”

Finally Port Chalmers was reached.  Bridget headed off back to Shag Point where their last onboarding had been.  Russell was always in awe how she never blanched at the thought of substantial hills, for her it as just something you ‘got over’ … a bit like The Takaka Hill he mused.  A day was spent arranging for Hoiho to be lifted out onto the hard, where she was to be suitably stored for the winter.  Bridget was back with the Merc for their last night on the water, and Russell had laid in all the ingredients for his only culinary speciality.  This was a Moroccan lamb dish with a couscous salad, matched to a bottle of red wine.  In the calm waters of the marina he was happy to break out some candles to provide ambience.  This was to be their last night together, their last supper as Bridget titled it.  In the morning the mighty Merc would take them up the Pig Route to Queenstown for a late afternoon flight.  

The French-trimmed rack of lamb, that he’d marinated overnight in yoghurt, garlic, cumin, coriander and sweet paprika, was superb, with just the right amount of colour to the flesh.  Exquisitely tender and flavoursome, the lamb was complimented by the couscous salad with its enlivening elements of currents and pine nuts, zest of lemon and coriander leaves. The whole evening was a delight, Russell couldn’t have scripted it better.  In his heart of hearts, he hoped this wouldn’t be their last supper … that it would be the first of something more.  He wasn’t quite sure what that more might be, and hopefully looked for a sign from Bridget after they both drained their wine glasses and looked at each other over the detritus of the meal.  He scarcely dared to breath.

“That was wonderful, I don’t think I have ever had a nicer meal, and I know that it was cooked with aroha.”  There was a tremulous pause and a slight quaver in her voice.  “See, I have absorbed a little of the indigenous Kiwi culture.”  She then reached out her hands and paced both of them over Russell’s.  “It wouldn’t take much for me to sta …”

“Woah dad!  What’s up?” a voice bellowed, a split second before a pair of size 11 boots landed on the deck with a resounding thud.

The Merc

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A Schuyt – Dutch sailing barge.

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