What Floats Your Boat?

I vividly remember the first time I stepped aboard a yacht. Clambering down a barnacle-encrusted ladder attached to the Broome (Western Australia) jetty at low tide, the deck of the cruising yacht was strewn with unfamiliar equipment. Young and naive, I’d finished high school a few months earlier, embarking on an adventure into the unknown.

After boarding a Greyhound bus from Perth with nothing more than a backpack and a head full of dreams, I’d been camping out in a tent in the dunes behind Broome’s famed Cable Beach.

A friend mentioned a couple looking for crew to help sail their yacht through the Kimberley, bound for Darwin. Salivating at the prospect of an adventure into the unknown, I leapt at the chance. Little did I know then that this was to be a defining moment that would change the course of my life. It mattered not that I had no clue about sailing or navigation. Nor the skill required to safely negotiate an ocean where tidal streams whip the ocean into whirlpools and leave reefs exposed where once there was deep water.

Port and starboard were unfamiliar concepts. Nautical terminology even less so. Bow. Stern. Athwartships. Midships. And what on earth was a windlass? Completely isolated from civilsation, days blended seamlessly into the next as we voyaged northwards, sun-kissed Kimberley landscapes to our right, night skies ablaze like fields

of sparkling diamonds overhead, trails of shimmering phosphorous left in our wake.

For a handful of memorable days we rafted up to other yachts in Crocodile Creek, scrambling up sandstone cliffs to swim in freshwater rock pools beyond the reach of apex predators the waterway was named after. Twice a day our yachts floated upon a land-locked pond as the river receded over the horizon. For the first time I laid eyes upon famed Kimberley rock art galleries, posing unanswered questions of the people who roamed this land for eons.

We’re all seafarers now

Stepping ashore in Darwin six weeks later I remained mostly clueless about how to sail a yacht. I had however developed an unquenchable yearning to learn which morphed into a career sailing faraway seas. I did emerge from that sailing expedition with an intimate appreciation for freedom. The freedom that comes from living simply. The freedom of waking with the rising sun. The rhythm of tides. Twinkling stars upon a painted ocean. The harmonic whooshing of a hull cutting through the sea, whales breaching, seabirds plunging into the sea, phosphorous-streaming dolphins darting like star kissed torpedos. I understood the magnificent freedom of raw wilderness.

Fast forward 30 years and the freedom of voyaging upon the ocean is within reach of us all. Holidays afloat have become attainable for all with approximately 30 million people taking a holiday on a cruise ship in 2019. The cruise industry generated $134 billion in 2017. That doesn’t account for

the hundreds of thousands of yacht charterers, small ship voyagers, freighter travellers, canal boaters, superyacht passengers and private yacht owners taking to the water. Whatever floats your boat, there is likely to be a holiday to accommodate your desires.

All have one thing in common. Freedom. Freedom from a world becoming ever smaller as we’re connected globally.  A world we have unlimited access to at the touch of our screens. A world where we are digitally watched, tracked and followed.

Afloat upon the ocean, cruising allows us the freedom to disconnect. To savour the beauty of nature. To taste the salty tendrils of the sea as it settles upon our lips. Sucking in lungs full of air untainted by civilisation rarely feels more freedominducing or invigorating than when upon the sea.

Freedom remains unimpeded

At the time of writing our freedom has been curtailed with international and domestic borders temporarily closed to travellers by land, sea and air. As much as I long to feel the wind in my hair, to sail over the horizon again, we remain rooted to the shore with the privilege of travel tempered.

Sustained by memories of travels past and buoyed by future plans, I’m taking the opportunity to pause and reflect. But so too to savour the luxury of time to plan my next adventure afloat.

So, for now I’m entertaining myself with dreams of destinations I’ll to explore when our freedom resumes. Having sailed much of the Pacific Ocean, Australia and New Zealand, I’m yearning for adventures afloat further afield. The lure of the Eastern Mediterranean beckons. Lining the shorelines of the Adriatic and Ionian Seas, I imagine long, leisurely sun-kissed days afloat in Croatia, Italy, Greece or Turkey.

But Australia too remains high on my travel wish list. Since that first foray into the Kimberley I’ve returned many times by road and sea. I long to return to her wild shores once more. Despite Broome’s expansion into a mini resort town, the ancient landscape remains little changed. The rock art has a few more seasons of weathering under its belt. Tides still retreat and return twice daily. Beaches are revealed then concealed. Freedom remains unimpeded. The lure of untamed seascapes are stronger than ever.