Crossing the Ditch Read online

  I’d spewed my guts up all day.

  I kept on scribbling down as many questions, thoughts and preliminary concepts as I could, with the pen hardly able to keep up with the words bursting out of our mouths.

  Medicine, ocean currents, sleeping arrangements, provision storage, whales, toileting – the brainstorming went on and on and before long the cloth was almost black with writing and sketches.

  “What do you think this kayak is going to look like?” asked Jonesy.

  “No idea.”

  In the few white spaces still left on the paper, we started sketching different concepts, the most attractive being a traditional kayak with covers that slid over each cockpit, similar to those on fighter planes. As we consumed a bottle of wine and a few more beers, our confidence grew and our ideas became more and more outlandish.

  Without us even realising, the rest of the pizzeria had closed up and the waitresses were mopping the floor.

  “Must be time for us to go,” I said, maybe stating the obvious.

  “Yep, sure is,” Justin replied as he signalled for Libby to bring the bill. He signed for the pizza, left a small tip, and without me realising scribbled a note with his phone number on the back: “Call me.”

  On the way home in the car, Jonesy received a text from her, saying how cute he was and how much she wanted to see him. All in all – great night.

  Over the next few days, Justin mulled and mulled over the idea and finally came to a conclusion. “I’m in,” he told me over the phone. “The main reason is that I’d struggle looking back at this and always wondering what could have been. Although the cons outweigh the pros 10 to one, I just can’t let this opportunity go. Besides, I’m not going to let you have all the fun, mate.”

  After some more brainstorming sessions we realised it was time to start conducting some research and answering all these questions that we’d raised. This process would end up taking 13 months.

  How do you describe Larry Gray? In the early stages of approaching sea kayakers, his name always crept into conversations. He was by far the most experienced and skilful kayaker in Australia, and his resume could fill volumes of an encyclopaedia, with his exploits taking him to untouched coastlines on almost every continent. Descriptions of his grace when paddling sounded more like people talking about an opera or a ballet than an adventurer.

  Whenever anyone was describing Larry, they’d normally start with his kayak mastery, then quickly move on to his wildly eccentric personality. Take this: the first time he saw Sydney was when he and his best mate left their home town, Mallacoota, a Victorian coastal town near the New South Wales border, for a bit of a paddle north. A few weeks later they pulled into Sydney Harbour and slept on the steps of the Opera House.

  Not long after that, they decided to keep paddling to Papua New Guinea. Larry lived up there for a while, before moving to Greenland to learn the art of kayaking in the country where the craft had originated more than 4000 years ago. Kayaks – or qajaq, to use the original Inuktitut term – were developed by indigenous people living in the Arctic regions who used the boats for hunting on inland lakes, rivers and the coastal waters of surrounding oceans. These first kayaks were made from stitched animal skins – such as seal – which were stretched over a wooden frame made from driftwood the Inuit fishermen had collected.

  With a few thousand years of knowledge and expertise to tap into, Larry discovered more than a dozen ways to roll a kayak, paddled strokes that had never been seen in the Western world before and mastered the intricacies of kayak design. He brought this knowledge back to Australia, and started designing and constructing a kayak he called the Pittarak, named after a fierce Greenland wind. It is now Australia’s premier sea kayak.

  We knocked on Larry’s door not knowing what to expect. Jonesy and I were wearing suits to make ourselves appear more grown up and more professional – we’d agreed right from the start that in all these initial meetings we’d get dressed up, in the hope that people would take us a little more seriously. The door creaked open.

  There was Larry. The first thing that struck me was that the clothes hiding his tanned skin seemed redundant. His baggy T-shirt and faded jeans draped over him uncomfortably and his eyes and hair had a wild look about them. As we engaged in small talk, Larry’s pig-dog (it’s a dog, but looks more like a pig) ran between his legs and before it had time to escape, Larry clenched his legs together, flipped the dog over and started bouncing it playfully on its back. We were a little surprised, to say the least.

  “Larry, stop bouncing the dog,” came a female voice.

  “Oh, Mary, he loves it though,” Larry replied with childlike enthusiasm.

  He proceeded to explain that the pig-dog was scared of cats and he was trying to toughen it up. As the bouncing stopped, the dog snapped at his hand, drawing some blood. “Good boy – you’ll make a great guard dog one day,” was Larry’s laconic reply.

  Before we sat down to have a chat about our plans, Larry was distracted by the video-editing gear in his office. He showed us some clips from one of his many Greenland expeditions, during which an iceberg collapsed on him and he nearly died, a bearish-looking bloke taught him the art of a “professional trundler” (someone who rolls big rocks down big hills for fun), and he had dinner with a 70-year-old local woman who tried to seduce him, with her husband looking on with pride!

  We sat down in his half-renovated kitchen and Larry immediately put into context what the Tasman crossing meant to him.

  “The Tasman represents one of the last great firsts of Australian adventure,” he told us. “It’ll go down as one of the greatest kayak crossings of all time. Any paddler worth a grain of salt has dreamt about it, but no-one has got round to it – for a number of reasons. The biggest one is fear, because the Tasman has a reputation as one of the most unpredictable, violent passages of ocean in the world.

  “Here’s an idea for some training for you guys,” he said with a mad glint in his eye. “Why don’t you both jump in a coffin when an east coast low comes across, and I’ll push you out off Bondi. Two days later I’ll pull you out…if you’re alive. That’ll give you an idea of what you’re going to experience out on the Tasman. Oh…and it’ll make great footage too.”

  We sat there stunned.

  “Do you guys actually have any idea what it’s like to be stuck in a storm at sea?” he added.

  Larry went on to describe the most frightening experience of his life. He was off the coast of Greenland back in the 1980s and the yacht he and the other paddlers were in got hit by a Pittarak. Throughout the night they received knockdown after knockdown. He described what it was like hearing a breaking wave approaching from 300 metres away as it steamed towards your vessel.

  We sat there, eyes glazed open, listening to these remarkable stories.

  “So have you given any thought to what your kayak is going to look like?” Larry asked eagerly.

  “We’ve got a few ideas…” I began.

  Before I had the chance to go any further, he couldn’t control himself. He was starting to get excited and began muttering. Mumble mumble mumble. We strained to hear him. “…there are so many different concepts that you could run with…” Mutter mutter mutter. “…but first…what’s a kayak?” he rhetorically asked.

  It was slightly agitating as he was clearly speaking to himself and it was hard to decipher what he was saying. Answering his own question, he replied, “At the end of the day a kayak is a small human-powered boat. It typically has a covered deck, and a cockpit covered by a spraydeck. It’s propelled by a double-bladed paddle by a sitting paddler.”

  After Larry gave this definition of what a kayak is, we discussed for a few minutes other factors that might be taken into account. Could we use a sail? Many of the greatest kayak adventures of all time had used sails, but for some reason we were against using one.

  In 1928, Franz Romer embarked on the first Atlantic crossing in a Klepper kayak, from Portugal to Puerto Rico. In doing so, he was
undertaking the first notable transoceanic kayak expedition. As this expedition relied predominantly on wind power, Franz’s adventure was aeons ahead of its time and truly unique: the concept of taking to the ocean in the smallest of crafts – a humble kayak.

  Over the next 50 years, a handful of transoceanic attempts were pursued, mostly in Klepper kayaks with slight modifications to the design. Dr Hannes Lindemann used his Atlantic crossing in 1956 to explore the way humans cope with mental strain under extreme conditions. He overcame feelings of panic and suicidal despair by self-hypnosis and a system of “psychohygiene” that he’d developed. Two-and-a-half months alone on the waves, with inadequate food and barely room to stretch his legs, gave him an opportunity to test and improve his methods.

  The recommendations that the World Health Organization makes to seafaring nations are based partly on knowledge acquired by Dr Lindemann on his Atlantic crossing. NASA medical specialists also showed an interest in Lindemann’s experience – that a human may “fail” sooner than the equipment he uses, whether it’s a boat or a spacecraft.

  There seemed to be a lot of deviations from Larry’s definition of a kayak. For instance, many of the Alaskan aboriginal paddlers, like those on Kodiak Island, used single-bladed paddles and even paddled from a kneeling position, but their boats still seemed to be called kayaks.

  Did a kayak need to be Eskimo rollable (righting a capsized kayak by using a funky hip swivel and paddle manoeuvre)? Kleppers were impossible to Eskimo roll, as was the kayak of Andrew McAuley, who had attempted to cross the Tasman in 2007. So maybe not. If you could stand up in a kayak, did this make it not a kayak? Most recreational paddlers could stand up in their kayaks anyway – Larry could do a headstand on the deck of his!

  We began to discuss whether a cabin makes a boat not a kayak. Our answer was found by looking at ocean rowing boats, as they all have cabins. We joked that if that meant they weren’t “proper rowing boats”, then the Atlantic was yet to be rowed, and maybe we should have got out there in a scull then!

  A comment made by numerous people after our Tasman crossing, including Paul Caffyn – the first person to kayak around the entire coast of Australia – was that because our boat wasn’t a stock-standard kayak, she wasn’t a kayak. But what’s stock-standard? Who’s to define this? If we were to roll out two, 10 or 50 boats identical to ours, would that make her stock-standard? By making a double kayak into a single – which Ed Gillet, who paddled from the west coast of the USA to Hawaii in 1987, and Andrew had done – doesn’t this compromise the stock-standardness of the kayak? Most kayak designers around the world have patented certain aspects of their designs, which again would take away from a boat’s stock-standard nature, wouldn’t it?

  Larry had initially seemed quite eccentric to us, but once we got stuck into the practical issues he certainly knew his stuff, and we immersed ourselves for the next few hours discussing what exactly a kayak constitutes. Losing track of time, we suddenly realised it was 2am.

  We ended up agreeing on a fairly liberal definition. As long as it fitted our risk profile – in other words, if we could fit everything we needed to fit in – and we had two paddles and a couple of enclosed pits to paddle in, that was good enough for us. We left Larry’s place in awe of what he’d done in the past, and the thought occurred to us: Who were we to think we could kayak across the Tasman?

  4

  “You’re Going to Kill Yourself”

  We were both dreading telling our parents. We’d thought about that moment for weeks, and on D-Day I couldn’t think of anything else. What would be the best way to tell them? Just do it bluntly? Or should I craftily engineer a conversation in which I’d tell them the only thing that made me happy was adventuring, and get them to join the dots? I got some comfort from the thought that they might just dismiss it as “another one of James’ stupid ideas”.

  It was time. At dinner one night, over a bowl of spaghetti bolognaise, I mentioned to my parents I had something important to tell them. Then I blurted it out. “Mum, Dad, I’m planning on kayaking to New Zealand unsupported.”

  Before I could expand or elaborate, mayhem erupted at the table. Mum started crying and Dad yelled, “You’re going to kill yourself, you bloody idiot, it’s impossible.” In between sobs, Mum, who’d always been so supportive of me, crushed me by saying: “It’s a one-way trip…you’ll die. I know you want to inspire people, but it’s sheer madness. You don’t know the first thing about the ocean.”

  I left the dinner table with questions flooding through my mind. Was I going to kill myself pursuing adventure? Did I take too many risks? Was I acting in an obnoxiously arrogant, selfish way?

  The following day, Justin received a phone call from my dad.

  “Hello, Justin, John Castrission here,” Dad stated matter-of-factly.

  “G’day, Mr Cas…what can I do for you?” Jonesy cautiously replied.

  Dad went straight to the point. “I need your help. James has got this stupid idea – he wants to kayak to New Zealand. You need to help me talk him out of it…he’s going to kill himself.”

  “I’d love to, Mr Cas, but I’m the other guy going with him,” Justin said quietly, waiting for an onslaught similar to the one I’d received the previous evening.

  “Don’t be bloody stupid, Justin,” said Dad. “You’ve got your whole life in front of you – don’t waste it.”

  “That’s exactly why we’re doing it now.”

  There was no understanding on either side and no common ground.

  One set of parents informed; one to go…

  Justin waited patiently for a couple of weeks for his parents to come to Sydney from their house in Indo before telling them about our plans. Arriving in Kensington, they sat in their main bedroom keen to hear about how uni was going and what Justin was doing with his life.

  Unfortunately – from their point of view – he was doing something much more dramatic with his life than they’d imagined.

  “Mum, Dad, I’m planning on kayaking to New Zealand,” he announced.

  Tears immediately began to stream down Justin’s mum’s face as his dad quietly walked out of the room. “No, Justin, no,” his mum spat out as she drummed her fists against his chest. “Don’t do it – I don’t know how I’m going to handle it.” She obviously didn’t mean it, but in the heat of the moment, she sobbed, “If you go, never call me Mum again, and if you don’t come back I’ll kill myself.” To Justin, the fists bounced off harmlessly enough, but her words were like daggers – his mum was his biggest idol and inspiration, and to be hurting her like this tore him up. Reduced to tears, Jonesy stormed into the lounge room, where his dad was lying fast asleep on the couch.

  After we returned from the Tasman, Justin asked his dad why he’d just silently walked out of the room that night and gone to sleep. A man of few words, he replied, “I knew the grief I was going to go through with your mother over the next few years and I was getting some rest before the storm.”

  Looking back at our parents’ reaction to our Tasman announcement, I guess the issue of who was being the more selfish was a complicated one. Was it them, for not allowing us to be the people we wanted to be? Or was it us, for pursuing our dream, regardless of their fears for our safety?

  I started doing bits and bobs of sailing with Andrew, a mate I used to play rugby with, and a few other guys. They’d done a couple of Sydney to Hobart races and seemed to know their stuff. When he was at the helm one day a couple of weeks later as we were sailing around Sydney Harbour, I started quizzing him about the Tasman. After a few succinct replies, he smiled. “Mate, you’re best to get in contact with clouds.”

  I looked skyward.

  “No, you twat – Roger Badham. His nickname is ‘Clouds’,” he laughed as some of the other crew had a wry giggle.

  “Oh,” I replied feebly.

  A couple of days later I gave Roger a call, and although he sounded hesitant, he offered to cook us dinner down at Wollongong where he lived and have a
chat. His home was hidden in the dense bushland just up the hill out of the Gong. If he’d wanted, he could have had 180-degree views of the ocean, but as he’d spent his life studying it, he covered up the vista with billowing tropical trees.

  Again wearing our suits, we knocked on his front door. He trundled out in an old pair of shorts and a Team New Zealand polo shirt he’d brought back from the recent America’s Cup. At first, he was quite reserved and he might as well have told us what he was thinking – his body language seemed to say it all: Who are these two crazy kids? They’ve got no hope.

  As we gave a quick summary of what we planned to do, Roger peered just above his spectacles and stared at us. When we’d finished, there was silence. Justin and I glanced at each other uncomfortably, not quite knowing what to say. As I was about to blurt out something like “Um…does your mum call you Roger or Clouds?”, he muttered, “I think you’re flaming mad.”

  I’d known it was a bad idea going down there to see him. Now would come the lecture and the “best-of-luck-with-it-all” speech.

  Beginning to smile, he added, “In fact, I think you’re f***ing insane. But…”

  There was a brief pause as he flipped through the first draft of our risk management document, more for effect than to take in what we’d written. “The Tasman is a dangerous place. I’ve got no idea why anyone would want to endure the hardship of taking her on in a kayak. But now that I’ve given you that disclaimer, I’m right behind you. I’ll help you with the passage planning and weather forecasting.”

  This was fantastic. I had to control myself – all I wanted to do was jump out of my skin and yell with glee. Roger was a critical member of the team we’d need to cross the Tasman.

  He shuffled over to his chart table as we followed him, smiling ear to ear, like he was the Pied Piper. Circling his hand on the map, reminding me of the Karate Kid’s “wax on, wax off” movement, he began: “The Tasman Sea encompasses the body of water between Australia and New Zealand, some 2000 kilometres across. It’s a southwestern segment of the South Pacific Ocean. She was named after the Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman, the first recorded European to encounter New Zealand and Tasmania. The British explorer Captain James Cook later extensively navigated the Tasman Sea in the 1770s as part of his first voyage of exploration.