D-Day

Day 16

Why break with tradition?

We set off for the port straight after breakfast. Once we had checked if Mr Rogerio was there or not we would head to the Santos office, and in case you are lost or drifted off when we wrote about Santos – they are the company who charter the propellor plane twice a week – we bet all of our bum dollars they weren’t full every time!!

Mr Rogerio wasn’t back from the mountains but Mr Fernando was there, it was lovely to see him again. He told us, with clear regret in his voice, that the first boat booked to sail to Darwin was in February – we thanked him and he promised to ring if anything came up unexpectedly.

I emailed Pete (from Airnorth) on the way to Santos’s office – we could see they’d used the E170 that morning what did that mean for the chances of the E120 for the rest of the week?

Santos were based on the 4th floor of a nicely air conditioned building and a very competent receptionist seemed to understand our request and headed out the back to find someone to speak to us.

My phone rang.

It was Mr Fernando.

A boat going to Darwin had just arrived in port – it was leaving today.

TODAY!!!

OMG – was this it?!

We debated whether to just leave but decided against it – what if the Darwin boat had left already, or was the size of a postage stamp? …and it was a bit rude so we waited for the receptionist to come back. She told us we were in the wrong place and needed to go to the airport and speak to someone named Isobel – she reluctantly gave us a phone number and we thanked her, trying not to look like we really needed to get out of here and could she just hurry up!

…we rushed back to the port, all three of us in shocked disbelief – was this really happening?!   

As we walked across the road to the port Rosa found a plastic whale shark, was it our lucky whale shark?!

There were two older men outside the port office who looked a bit confused when I asked them if they were part of the crew heading for Darwin – no time to worry about that or explain – we headed inside.

There were two men and a women standing around a table with four or five of the harbour officials – we went and sat on the other side of the table and waited for an opening.

It was astonishing that we were allowed to bustle in on a meeting where someone was trying to clear their boat for additional fuel before heading out to sea again, but there you are – we had lost all of those sensibilities, we weren’t about to apologise, we were desperate.

I introduced us all and told the Captain what we had done and why we were here – Theo and Rosa both chipped in and we were brief and strong – we had been looking for him and his boat for nearly three weeks and here he was – could he take us?

His reply was mixed – ‘look, I would if I could, I’ve got the space, that really isn’t the problem (he’d got space!!!) but I’ve done the paperwork for Border Force (customs in Australia) and I don’t know what I’d have to do to add three more people!’

I stayed calm but I pushed like I was getting that boulder the Greek bloke has to push up a hill endlessly…

‘I’m really good at admin.’ I said ‘If you have the contact details I can at least find out?’

To his credit he looked up her email address and there was a phone number!

Michelle answered within two rings – breezy, efficient and helpful.

‘What’s the name of the boat and the reference number please.’

‘Destiny 1’ I said – and read out the reference number. She found it easily…

‘Look, what you need to do is send across your passports and I can check out your visa’s and see what the situation is.’

I had our passports with us so I photographed them and went to copy our captain in…’sorry I haven’t asked you your name?’

‘Wayne’ he said.

Rosa reached under the table and touched my hand – from even before we had left England ‘Wayne the plane’ was who we had imagined taking us on his little propellor plane…and here was ‘Wayne the yacht’ – it didn’t rhyme but was it a sign 🙂

I rang Michelle again and she was looking at the passports ‘right now’ – Wayne was done with his paperwork at the port and was heading out the door to get his boat refuelled.

‘Should we go and get our luggage and meet you here?’ ‘In case it’s a yes…’

He turned back towards me, clearly divided in himself about what to do…

‘Look, I can’t afford anything to slow us down here, there’s a cyclone coming along in two days and we need to be in Darwin by then.’ ‘I’ll ring Michelle myself and see what she says.’ …and he was gone.

I reckoned we had about a 7 to 15% chance of getting on the ‘Destiny 1’ but that went down to zero if we weren’t packed and back here in good time.

Theo and Rosa set off and I waited for twenty minutes to see if there were any further developments, I sent messages to Wayne and got no reply – it looked like Harbour Master central was closing up for lunch so I headed out too and one of the officials offered me a lift on his motorbike.

So kind…

We packed crazy quick and I bought some pineapples and bananas to add to our food stash – by my estimates the journey was going to take two and a half days minimum, which meant Wayne’s chances of missing that cyclone were slim…how did we feel about that?

As I was walking back with the pineapples I checked my emails – bad news from Pete at Airnorth.

‘We haven’t been granted our licenses to fly for the rest of this week so we won’t be flying any planes out of Dili..’

I could tell he was really sorry!

I rang him and he offered to ring the Santos boss again just in case…he said helping us would be a good news story for Airnorth and Santos – I thanked him and rushed back in to pack.

We were back in the port ready to go within an hour – it was a logistical miracle.

We had a moment together waiting for the taxi…where we actually prepared to get on a boat ‘racing a cyclone’ – we stood looking at each other for a little while each of us thinking about the last four months and how hard we had tried.

It was a clear yes from all of us….

There was no-one at the port when we arrived, the harbour masters weren’t back from lunch, so I asked the taxi to wait while I rang Wayne…no reply.

I rang the other number I’d been given by accident by one of customs team and got Rob, the guy who was sat next to Wayne in the office. I told him we were ready to go if it was a yes and where was the boat?

‘Who are you?’

‘I’m Shannon, you just met me – we need a lift to Darwin.’

‘Look I don’t think that’s going to happen!’

‘It was looking pretty good when you left,’ I said, trying to keep my tone light, ‘have Border Force got back to you?’

‘What?’

‘Have the customs people cleared us to get on the boat? …and where are you – we’re packed and ready to go, can we come to you?’

‘What?’

I decided to keep it simple – ‘where’s the boat Rob, we will come over!’

‘Wayne you’d better speak to this woman…’

Yes, Wayne…!

‘Hi Wayne, we are at the port all packed and ready to go if you’ve got a yes from Border Force?’

‘Look,’

…and I knew.

He was going to say no.

‘Look, what’s your name again?’

‘Shannon’

‘Look Shannon, I rang Border Force myself and then I rang the owner. He said that if you break a leg on his boat he and I are liable, maybe not in Indonesia but in Australian law, we’re liable…’

I managed to say that we had our own travel insurance but I knew already it was too late.

He told me he was sorry but it wasn’t his boat…

I told him I hope he made it to Darwin safely and thanked him for being willing to consider taking us.

I went back to the taxi tears running down my face… ‘what happened mum?’

I managed to ask the taxi driver to go back home but I couldn’t talk…pushing boulders was hard.

We sat in Traceys garden – all our stuff around us and I told them what had happened.

We were beyond gutted.

We spent fifteen minutes together dealing with our own cyclone of emotions and then headed back upstairs into Tracey’s living room.

We were done.

Day 17

Later that afternoon I rang the last phone number we had, trying to get through to Santos but the women whose number we had been given told us that she would contact her boss and see if he would be able to help us. It turned out that he wasn’t and no, we couldn’t have his contact details …so that was that.

Pete sent me one last email saying he had tried the Santos team again himself (what a lovey man he is!!) but because we weren’t Santos employees their liability insurance wouldn’t cover us.

So there it was…every door, window, avenue, back alley, and mountain pass – closed.

Could we have tried harder?

We didn’t think so – we could have got here earlier and had some sailing lessons but Russia and China took most of our attention and efforts before we left…we had done our best.

It was decision time.

Our plastic bottle raft (we named the ‘Destiny 2’) or the E190 Qantas flight to Darwin?

…we thought of all the people who have supported us on our journey and all the people routing for us to make it… We thought about the people who thought we were crazy and that we should have flown, but had a grudging respect for our efforts – we thought about the people who would casually dismiss us for not making it.

We thought about why we didn’t want to fly, the fragile future of our planet and what we as individuals are responsible for…we thought about going home…

We thought about my sister, my nephew and the new family we hadn’t met yet. We thought about her wedding, and her dogs.

We thought about each other.

…and then we thought about you and wondered what you would do?