Beating to Windward by Greg Clarke

Weevils in biscuits and peas as hard as gun shot are no longer standard fare for travellers, not even for those on budget airlines. Nineteenth century sailors, however, regularly supped on biscuits with the pesky and all too pervasive grubs, and how they helped discover new worlds says something of their fortitude and perhaps also the considerable lure of Polynesian beauties.

The redoubtable sailors? tall ships, great wooden sculptures trimmed with acres of square sails, have for the most part gone the same way as a nymph?s bare-chested tropical island welcome. Yet in various parts of the world a few ?old salts? have been keeping some of the noblest sea-faring traditions alive ? though sadly this seems not to include Tahitian beauties or exposed breasts.

Australian Sarah Parry has built a replica of an 1848 brigantine. Both Parry and her senior crew are maritime history aficionados and go to remarkable lengths to preserve the grand era of Captain Kidd, square sails, and wonderful ?run aloft? commands.

Sarah, formerly naval officer Brian, took 15 years to craft a tall ship from plans given to her by the Smithsonian Institute. Windeward Bound was completed in 1995 and was put to sea primarily as a training vessel, but Parry also offers passage to landlubbers between various ports on Australia?s eastern shore.

My passage is from Melbourne to Stanley, on the northwest coast of Tasmania. It?s a four-day ?cruise? that involves crossing notorious Bass Strait, a body of water more cantankerous than a sea captain on a loss-making voyage.

This will be my first time sailing on open water. Tied up at marina near the Melbourne CBD and surrounded by modern trophy boats set to a backdrop of towering city buildings Windeward Bound looks, well, both vertically and horizontally challenged. While there is no denying her recycled timber beauty it is rather reassuring to find the lady also possesses far more substance than my first wary glance surmises: at 81feet (24metres) she is longer than two of the First Fleet vessels that fetched up at Sydney Cove to settle this part of the antipodes.

I claim my bunk and with the rest of the passengers take a tour of the ship. Discovering ?mess? and ?galley? have made it through to the 21st century proves as disturbing as Bass Strait?s reputation. The words are to food what ?expedient election promises? are to politics ? harbingers of considerable gloom. I practise my line: ?I?ll pass on the weevils, thanks anyway,? and try and deliver it with the cheer of a breakfast show host.

A tranche of the first day is spent on safety routines as well as squirreling away my stash of emergency rations. The appropriately languid introduction is broken when Parry barks, ?Run aloft. Gaskets off the lower top sail.?

Out on Melbourne?s Port Philip Bay, with the sun bathers on St Kilda beach still visible, the commands instill an extraordinary sense of excitement and a good deal of impressively drilled flurry.

There are 13 passengers, 11 crew and Trim the cat on this voyage. Many of the crew head to the fore deck, but four of them scatter up the ratlins, rope ladders that reach to the tops of the masts towering above the deck.

The ?run aloft? crew wrap themselves over a yard arm and unfurl the first of the sails. The ships main mast is 24-metres high and everyone bar Trim is on deck and peering skyward. The hint of curmudgeon in the captain?s voice indicates that for the high-wire crew, this is serious business. But it is also wonderful theatre, a thrilling opening act. An oil freighter steams by us for the bay?s mouth ? the only gate to Bass Strait and the oceans of the world.

When the sails are rigged excitement gives over to a keen sense of adventure. This after all is how Darwin travelled on the Beagle. The freighter, ploughing the water with formula one speed, is barely visible.

At 4am next morning I am on deck, part of a six-person watch keeping a vigil for other ships in the night. The moon is full, paves a part of the sea with its shine and illuminates the deck. I am offered a turn at the helm, fasten my hands around the beautifully crafted wheel, and proceed to be distracted from the task at hand by the befuddling mix of ropes that are everywhere about. These ropes, more correctly known as lines, are as a defining character of tall ships as sails and polished timber.

There just might be enough rope on board to reach the 150 nautical miles to Stanley and while each has a purpose, determining what that might be is a conundrum almost as baffling as Keith Richards? longevity. I veer off course and the watch leader, without conveying too much of her disgust, resumes control.

Dawn breaks. Phil Denehy is on board to retrace some of the steps of his grandfather who ran away to sea as a 13-year-old cabin boy and sailed around the globe seven times. Denehy and I are watch-buddies and soon after our first sea dawn he points to a distant whale. Denehy though is more excited by the experience of the ship than encounters with nature. ?I?ve always wanted to do this,? he says reducing the spouting whale to a hardly-worth-mentioning cameo. Later a seal slinks by and slews a what-are-you-doing-here look and a pod of dolphins gambols off the bow.

Bass Strait is flat, as threatening as bath water. A northerly barely whispers. The master mentions she has rarely seen it as calm. Many of the crew get about the decks barefoot, like desert island wanderers, and following their lead I spend much of my time without shoes. If possessed of a certain biblical wherewithal I could, with little effort and sans shoes, walk considerably faster than we are sailing. The first mate, Dirk, observes we are making 1.5 knots, about the median speed of Captain James Cook?s 18th century circumnavigation of the world.

However, because of the modern world?s penchant for schedules the ship has an iron spinnaker (motor). Nobody seems enthused by its use, but when the engine is cut and the square-rigged sails fill, the tall ship experience is all the more wonderful.

On Windeward Bound the cabins are small and the bunk beds are tightly fit. There is work involved. Guests are split into three groups (red, white and blue watch) and everybody is expected to take regular turns at watch, including the midnight to 4am shift and help clean decks. For some of us seasickness is an ever-present blight.

Gayle Shugg, 47, is not the least perturbed by the work. ?I really like the fact that everyone has to get together as a team. You?re supporting each other. I like doing something that pushes me.? If you are after luxury it would be far better to take a suite on the Spirit of Tasmania, the passenger service that shuttles between northern Tasmania and Melbourne. This is the ever-chirpy Shugg?s second trip on Windeward Bound.

Canadian Rick McRae is one of the crew. He had been on board four months and, when we met, had just celebrated the first anniversary of stepping off the corporate ladder. ?Some might say I am going through a mid-life crisis. As far as that goes I think it is going fairly well,? says McRae, his joi de vivre on par with the cat who got not only the milk, but the manor house and the keys to the Morgan.

Soon after the completion of his MBA, McRae left his Toronto based, 13-year career in finance. ?I quit my job and sold my condo. Got rid of all responsibility back home.? And ran away to sea? ?Yeah,? says McRae delighted by the thought.

As with the best of travel, happenstance helped conjure McRae?s path to the ship after his arrival in Sydney. ?I wandered past (when the ship was docked by Sydney Harbour) and struck up a conversation with a couple of the crew, offered my assistance thinking I could somehow finagle a free harbour cruise. A couple of days later I was living aboard,? snapshots McRae. ?It?s exhilarating.? McRae?s only sailing experience, prior to finagling the job, was sailing around Lake Ontario. Now, he?s one of the ?run aloft? gang.

For landlubbers the language on board a tall ship can seem as familiar as Pashto and not just because the toilet is called the Head and crew say ?Aye?. Parry revels in maintaining sea-faring traditions and is particularly taken with Matthew Flinders who, in 1801, became the first person to circumnavigate Australia. Parry describes him as Australia?s greatest unsung hero (Trim is named after Flinder?s cat). In 2001 Windeward Bound circumnavigated Australia in a re-enactment of Flinders? historic voyage.

Late one morning Parry sits on the aft deck and while we bask in unexpected sun she reads a passage from Jack Tar that describes the victual privations of the era when tall ships were the world?s 747s. The tale of weevil ridden biscuits and peas as hard as gun shot could be considered as calculated as enthralling for they make the cook?s carbonara seem as fine as dining can be.

Such enthusiasm for history, questionable dietary practices aside, proves infectious. Passengers read books on Flinders and relaxing in the saloon (the common lounge) one evening another picks at a guitar and sings High Barbary.

On our third night we set anchor in a sheltered bay off Three Hummock Island, the 7,400 hectare home of Rob Alliston* and his wife, Elaine. Captain Parry and I and two others go ashore in a zodiac. The Allistons come down to the beach to greet us and invite us up to the house for tea.

From the Alliston?s porch I stare across their island?s triumphantly unspoiled beach to the ship at anchor. Surely Robert Louis Stevenson or Jules Verne conjured the scene that greets me: an unreconstructed beach, sand almost as white as Hollywood teeth, a brigantine moored in a sheltering cove. Somewhat disturbingly those landlubbers fresh from the ship note the house seems to be rocking in the manner of the boat.

Three Hummock Island is one of the largest in a cachet of islands off the tip of northwest Tasmania and it still feels so beautifully remote that if captain William Kidd hadn?t been trussed up in 1701, he may have lived long enough to cotton onto the fact that here rather than anywhere by Long Island is a far better place for buried treasure. And indeed, hereabouts the Tasmanian Aborigines found their own version of riches. Smothering themselves in the fat and oil of seals the Aborigines would take advantage of favourable currents and swim between islands to harvest oysters, abalone and crayfish.

Bass Strait gives hint of its treachery on the final morning. Despite the menace of the white caps and the considerable swell McRae and another member of the crew perch precariously on the bowsprit furling a sail. The ship dips off a wave, crashes into a cottage-size swell and McRae and his mate disappear under an explosion of water. When they reemerge a short time later both are wearing Helena Christiansen-just-propositioned-me smiles.

McRae looks as though he has almost drowned. Is that something you would recommend others do? ?Oh, definitely,? says McRae making light of the sail lashing task. ?Just experiencing something different. It puts sitting behind a desk working 40 hours a week into perspective.?

As it happens, McRae?s mate on the bowsprit, Scotsman Neil Dunphy, has also blown full-time on the 9-5. ?This is something very special,? says Dunphy. ?It?s something that sticks by you. You never forget days like these.?

As water floods along the deck the passengers, some not quite as wet as the crew, are smiling too. Indeed there is plenty of cheer about and it has little to do with our approach to Stanley.