"What a great way to see the world." I've heard this so often over the past year, and each time I've been amused. Sailing is a great way to see not so much "the world" as the water - lots and lots of salt water. But it certainly was an unforgettable year.
I left my job as a newsreader/reporter at TV3 in the autumn of 1999 with one ambition in mind - to go sailing around the world.
Friends told me I was mad, and I had to concede they might be right, especially as I knew something most of them didn't - I couldn't sail.
Still, it was now or never, a risk I knew I had to take, or regret for the rest of my life. So, a little daunted but a lot determined, I headed for New Zealand, where the Americas Cup was being hosted in Auckland. The "City of Sails" had attracted hundreds of foreign craft of all sizes, right up to the hundred-foot, luxury super-yachts that are the playthings of the world's richest people. I soon found out that crewing on yachts can be a hobby or a job. As a member of a crew delivering a yacht, you may be paid, unpaid, or even end up paying your own expenses. This depends entirely on the skipper or owner - though also, to a small extent, on your experience. Each individual skipper sets the terms for the trip, and there are no rules. It generally depends on what he or she can afford rather than on the need for crew - many smaller yacht-owners have no qualms about sailing great distances with as few as one other person to help.
However, the "right place, right time" holds truer for crewing than any other job. If you are sitting in a port, ready to go and a skipper is looking for crew, you're on. Many crew get their first delivery by flying to busy marinas, such as Palma di Majorca, Newport, or Antigua, and simply hanging around until someone badly stuck passes by. Happily, I discovered these opportunities are open equally to women and men, the key being your "sea-legs" - do you get seasick, can you steer a yacht, and will you take orders from the skipper.
I very quickly realised in Auckland, with so many experienced sailors around, that I was severely handicapped by my meagre sailing history, so I got a land-based job and began racing with a local sailing club. I still had to convince someone to take me on his boat, and when I approached the skipper of my first boat, he laughed at me. Scraping through a trial coastal trip by substituting enthusiasm and energy for experience, I was included in a crew of six for the passage to the tiny South Pacific island of Tonga.
The trip took nine days, during which I wasn't allowed to shower or wash my hair, and got very little sleep. Two hours out of every six were spent on watch, the remaining four spent bashing, rolling and bruising around in my bunk trying to convince myself I was comfortable enough to sleep. Usually with little success. The yacht, Serenity, was a solid 52-foot Sparkman and Stevens that has competed in the annual Sydney to Hobart race for the past 10 years, and I was happy to rejoin her two months later for the return trip to Australia from the South Pacific, this time from the island nation of Vanuatu.
In the intervening weeks I spent my days working in Auckland on a 100-foot classic yacht, Sapphire, cleaning and sanding. The money saved then paid for the next passage. On both Serenity passages I paid just enough to cover expenses, amounting to a little over £150, and also paid my own airfares to and from the other end of the voyage. However, I had racked up over 2,000 precious blue-water sea miles, and was now ready to try to get paid to sail.
Delivery crew on big boats (the superyachts) can command a standard fee of a hundred $100 a day, and that's tax-free. Onward flights at voyage end are also paid for by the boat owner. There is the further option of getting a job as permanent full-time crew on a super-yacht. So you work for your sailing and you get well paid, very well paid, again in tax-free US dollars. The minimum you can expect on a big boat is $1,500 per month as a deckhand or stewardess, and skippers often get up to 10 times that amount. All expenses are paid, food served up three times a day and even crew uniforms provided, so that other than paying for beers, your money is all yours to save. The more sailing experience you have, the better your chances of getting a crew job. The professional crew industry is currently growing, with more millionaires in the world able to afford the extravagance of a million-dollar luxury yacht to play on for a couple of weeks a year. Here, though, sailing becomes very chauvinistic, and women will usually only get positions as a stewardess (a sort of sailing chamber maid - cum waitress) or as a cook. A woman will have a tough time convincing a superyacht skipper to take her on as a deckhand. When "The Boss" is on board his yacht, the crew work 24 hours a day and attend to his (these beautiful vessels are almost invariably owned by men) every whim and whimper. Even when free of guests, yacht crew are tied to the boat and have little of control over their own lives. It's often said the boat "owns" you.
The best way to get on boats is, ironically, to be on boats. I landed my first paid delivery through people I met while hanging around in Port Villa, Vanuatu waiting to set sail for Australia. Though the money on offer wasn't in the super-yacht league, the yacht herself was a beauty, and hard to turn down. Mariella is an 80-foot Fife yaul, built in Scotland in 1938, and she looks every bit the classic. Cream hull, long graceful lines and varnished wood everywhere. And she has showers! Her 110-foot main mast is made of two trees spliced together and is so thick you can't wrap your arms or legs around it, which I discovered on my climb to the top of it to fix something. Her owner wanted her delivered from Australia to the Mediterranean, and with no autopilot the skipper needed six crew to steer her all the way.
We sailed around the north of Australia from Cairns through Darwin, then west across the Indian Ocean via the tiny Cocos Islands to the Seychelles, then on up the Red Sea to Turkey. This was my ambition realised. I sailed a classic big boat across an ocean, and got paid to do it! I was sailing around the world.
If this all sounds glamorous, romantic, and exciting. . . it is, sometimes. But it is also hard work, involving long journeys, the length of which is out of all proportion to the number of places visited or the length of time spent there. It may take three weeks to sail to a new destination, through the most awful weather conditions, and you may spend less than a week on land before heading off again out to sea. Those journeys can be arduous, frustrating, and often just plain boring. However, there is excitement, and when it comes it is pure and passionate. Each place you have landfall feels like your own discovery, and each beauty witnessed feels like your own private beauty. And while I did see more water than world, the bits I saw were precious pockets largely undiscovered and unsullied by tourism.
In a world suffering a cockroach-like infestation of back-packers, sailing is a very special way to travel, cutting out the need for an airport or a ferry, and allowing you to reach otherwise inaccessible destinations. One village I visited in Vanuatu hadn't seen a foreigner in two years!
Above: reporter Gillian Ni Cheallaigh, as she appeared on TV3, and in snapshots from her sailing adventure around the world
The Hardships:
Cooking in a big swell with a pot of boiling water threatening to heave over you any second
Not sleeping
Eating fish thrice a day
Eating pasta twice a day
Not being able to get off the boat (seems obvious, but actually only sinks in after a couple of days or when some bad weather hits)
Not being able to wash on many smaller boats
The constant risk of death or injury, however slight
The Joys:
Schools of flying fish startled into flight by your approaching hull
The twinkling clutter of stars on a clear night
Dolphins playing in the bow wave of the hull
If you're lucky, whales (these can also be a hazard if you bump into them sleeping near the surface at night, as they will breach the hull and sink you)
The phosphorescence of tiny plankton washing over the deck with the waves at night Sunsets and sunrises with colours everywhere
The innumerable shades of blue the sea possesses
