Long distance travelling is so often characterised by distance covered, time elapsed, average speed – almost Olympic ideals. But when relying on sail, on tides, on wind (and potentially an unreliable 40 year old diesel engine), travel is measured by more subtle and intangible means. In fact for the first five days of a planned fortnight sailing trip in northern Australia, we didn’t move from Gove Harbour, Nhulunbuy – the north eastern corner of Arnhem Land (except when the anchor slipped during a tropical squall). A broken alternator bracket forced the Sailing Yacht Manureva into an extended layover in Nhulunbuy, only to be ‘flooded’ with subsequent associated mechanical difficulties that were resolved (and perhaps compounded in equal measure) at the hands of ‘Frank the Frenchman’, a sailor living on his yacht in the harbour. He was just one in the array of global sailors who had made Gove Harbour their temporary home (aside from us) – Germans, Alaskans and other international flotsam and jetsam.
One of Frank’s first comments: La nuit porte conseil (the night brings counsel) was a hint that his true talents may have rested in less practical worlds. Initially, I thought that as a mechanic, he made a pretty good philosopher. It may well have been the other way round...

The Manureva in Gove Harbour, Nhulunbuy.

And so after five days moored before the lights of Nhulunbuy’s Rio Alcan Bauxite refinery, drinking Bintang beer (Indonesian for ‘star’ apparently) and overhearing the discussion between ‘Frank the Frenchman’ and ‘Pete the Polyglot’ skipper (Start ze donk! and Ze alternateur iz not exzited!) we finally weighed anchor and our 53 foot, 26 ton teak ketch left Gove Harbour. To a newcomer, sailing appears to be the ultimate pursuit of exactness, where everything has a name, a precise measurement and an explanation – all except the outcome. Therefore it shouldn’t really have been any surprise that rather than head east across the Gulf of Carpentaria to Cape York and then to Port Douglas, we set sail west bound for Darwin. Apparently it is good sailing practice to have charts (not to be confused with maps) for an equal distance in the opposite direction to that which you plan to go. In the absence of those charts, we at least had enough Bintang to go in any direction from the Gove Peninsula.
Following a pre-dawn departure, daylight revealed the ceaseless, eternal movement of wind and water - humbling reminders of our yacht’s ephemeral passage. So too - along the shoreline of the ancient northern Australian landscape, there were reminders of brief human incursions over time. From the sea there were only occasional glimpses of indigenous Australian life, which is apparently wonderfully preserved further inland from our nautical gaze. Arnhem Land itself was only given that name in 1644 by Abel Tasman. Arnhem – far from being the exotic indigenous name I had always assumed it to be, was the name of the Dutch East India Company ship, which in 1623 carried its Dutch crew under Capt Willem van Coolsteerd (another polyglot skipper no doubt) across the same coastline that we now travelled.
Similarly the Colonial British Empire left its name on the map of northern Australia, notably the English Companys (sic) Islands, Cape Wilberforce (to which I had an obvious attachment) and the almost mystical colonial British settlement of Victoria, which lasted for 11 years in Port Essington in the mid 19th century. More recent additions to the Arnhem Land landscape - the bauxite refinery, the small settlements, even the grand lighthouses of a treacherous coastline, have lasted better than the colonial outposts.

From Nhulunbuy to Darwin, via Cape Wessel (unmarked NE tip of islands), the Goulburn Islands, and the Coburg Marine Park (including Port Essington). (Source: Travel NT)

Our own briefer experience of the region amounted to 440 nautical miles and seven days at sea from Nhulunbuy, west to Darwin. For an often interminably leisurely activity, with a ‘stately’ pace averaging 5-6 knots, changes are surprisingly swift. Our first night at sea, initially anchored in the Wessel Islands north of the Gove Peninsula, turned into a pitch-black escape from rising seas and unprotected moorings, navigated more by the sound of waves crashing on nearby rocks than any visual aid on a moonless night. The rolling conditions remained on our second day, and unable to short-cut through the famed ‘Hole in the Wall’ passage, we motored north-west around Cape Wessels with only a headsail raised.
The dramatic shredding of the headsail mid-afternoon in increasing southerly winds, was little warning of our imminent passage into the sudden confused collision of opposing storms and tides, over the shallow, lightly discoloured waters of Cape Wessels. As the winds headed towards 60 knots, the waves headed over our stern and the tropical deluge headed everywhere, we headed north - away from land and the distant lighthouse (and further from Darwin), but safer with the steep breaking waves directly behind us.
As we moved from the confluence of wind and water, seas and nerves settled, but for much of the following three days the Manureva pitched, rolled and yawed - as the boating text on-board would have described it - in 30 knot breezes. The less formal description would be that we were bashed around uncomfortably for around 200 nautical miles in the Arafura Sea – particularly uncomfortably when motoring overnight. As our sleepless overnight passage neared its dawn, it was only half in jest that our increasingly ‘Churchillian’ skipper and I evoked Arthur Hugh Clough’s poem Say not the struggle naught availeth, particularly the final stanza:
     ... And not by eastern windows only,
     When daylight comes, comes in the light:
     In front the sun climbs slow, how slowly,
     But westward, look, the land is bright.
The ultimate lift in spirits came some hours after dawn, with the courageous cooking of bacon and eggs on toast by one of our crew in the rollicking galley below deck – served memorably to the strains of Mozart’s Horn Concertos over the boat’s speakers (almost Wagner from the helicopters in Apocalypse Now).
Upon reaching the Goulburn Islands, we finally sighted land and gained enough lee to raise the self-furling genoa (which means more to me now than it did when first suggested to me) – just in time for the winds to ease. Fortunately our remaining nights were spent in quieter bays, with pre-dawn starts using the engine, followed by the hoisting of sails and opening of Bintangs for quieter days also. My fishing career even improved, as one morning while alone at the helm, a flying fish flew onto the stern deck and remained there as my prized catch, though not such a prized lunch.

The genoa easing us west into the sunset.

A happy skipper with head and main sails raised.

Finally, when describing a crew, it is perhaps less a matter of who they are (‘Pete the Polyglot’ skipper, Art, Kirsten and myself), than why we would join a skipper and two other strangers aboard the confines of a 53 foot boat for a fortnight – longer for those who had sailed to Gove from Bali before my arrival. When the boundary of your existence is the gunwale and stanchions marking the edge of the yacht from the horizon of endless water, your world becomes the teak deck and those who inhabit it. There were also reassuringly periodic visits from Australian Customs and Border Patrol planes and patrol boats, confirming our identity, destination, customs clearance, capacity to turn the radio on and cargo (steadily diminishing supplies of Bintang).
While at the helm at 3am in an unwelcoming Arafura Sea, with sleep impossible below the shuddering deck (in the maelstrom of projectiles in the galley), that question – “Why join the voyage?” had been all the more focussed. If there is a simple romance in learning to sail (my endeavour for the fortnight), it is far more complicated than the desire to see the stars at night reach the horizon (another’s endeavour).
Perhaps regardless of what we sought, we came to understand the words of ‘Frank the Frenchman’: What I’ve learned from my life, iz zat you cannot make deadlinz on a boat.

Sunset from Port Essington over the Arafura Sea, before the stars reached the horizon.