Burnett Heads, Australia

We left Mooloolaba at midnight, feeling like thieves tiptoeing among the boats quietly anchored around us on this dark, moonless night.

We weren’t escaping any unpaid bills; we were timing our passage carefully so that we would arrive at a tricky narrow strait during high tide the next afternoon.

Everything was secured, the weather forecast was acceptable and we were looking forward to an uneventful 12 hour sail to the southern tip of Fraser Island.

But as we left the protecting arms of the breakwater, we were shocked to see the size of the swell that immediately began buffeting Northern Magic around and tossing her like a toy boat. Short, steep waves pummeled us from several different directions, making it seem as if we were sailing in a swinging bucket of slops. The motion was horrendous and from down below I could hear things crashing around. Thank goodness we had secured the sleeping kids in their bunks with leecloths so they wouldn’t be crashing around as well.

Within minutes I was launched on a revolting, six-times-an-hour stomach-emptying ritual that was not to end for a very long time. Even Herbert, who is so rarely seasick, was brought to his trembling knees.

Our main priority was to get the self steering going so we could seek refuge from the rain that now began pelting down. We’re still not totally familiar with the operation of our new hydraulic Windhunter self steering system, and Herbert and I worked in vain in the cold, wet darkness to get it to hold the boat on course. No matter what we tried, we would swerve wildly from side to side, sometimes even running off completely in the wrong direction until we were forced to disengage the self steering and restore a proper path by hand.

After two hours of trying to get it to work, we gave up. I don’t even have words to describe the extent of our frustration. We were both white with nausea, freezing cold and wet, and now had to face the prospect of having to remain in the cockpit all night, facing strong winds, brutal seas and squalls of rain.

We tried reactivating our trusty old Aries windvane, but petulantly, it refused to budge even an inch. Four months of disuse had ceased it right up. I think it was angry at being replaced by a newer and fancier model.

We had still been motoring, even with the sails up, but now, to add an extra dose of frustration to the equation, the motor began overheating as well. We made no effort to solve that problem right now and simply turned it off, continuing on under sail alone.

"You go down and get some sleep," a dispirited Herbert finally told me at 3:00 a.m. "I’ll steer until I’m too tired to continue."

I gratefully retired to my bunk, hoping that lying down would settle my stomach. But there was something in that violent corkscrew motion that made rest - or relief from seasickness - impossible, and I just lay there in bed, staggering to the toilet every few minutes, trying to ignore the sounds of the incredible chaos that had engulfed the cabin.

Galley cupboards had sprung their latches and the cabin floor was now rolling with bottles of bug spray, Lysol, vanilla, cooking oil and plastic wine glasses. Large containers of spices had freed themselves from the bungee cord that secured them, and had landed on the gimballing stove, which was wildly swaying in tune to the waves. The salon floor had a new carpet of magazines that had slid out of their basket, combined with packages of breakfast cereal and yogurt mix.

A cupboard had also come open in Christopher’s cabin in the forepeak, and bags of tortillas joined an avalanche of books and a few hundred Magic Cards that had spilled over in a waterfall onto the floor beside our bed. It was complete and utter chaos such as we have never seen before. I didn’t even consider trying to deal with it.

It was still dark when Herbert, looking ashen, called me to the cockpit. On those rare occasions when he gets seasick, he really gets sick and he looked like death itself. I took my turn standing in the rain wrestling with that heavy wheel. As we slopped from side to side, water would rush over the gunwales and then slip under the wooden cockpit coaming and stream into the cockpit. In between spasms of nausea I realized it actually was quite beautiful, because bits of phosphorescent plankton glowed like tiny sparks of neon and made a shimmering waterfall as each flow spilled in.

Herbert and I took turns steering all that night and the next day, resting in bed when we weren’t at the wheel. The kids never left their bunks, and we hardly saw them. All three felt sick. Christopher’s older brothers took turns helping him when he needed it. I was a bad, bad mother that day.

By mid afternoon we were at last approaching the entrance to the Great Sandy Strait. Once we got through it, we’d be in calm waters and home free.

It had taken Herbert, who was now shaking and could hardly see straight, an hour and a half to steel himself to open up the engine room to find the cause of the overheating. While he worked on the engine, his barf bowl at his side, I steered us on a course to the pass. As we got closer, however, all I could see ahead was breakers. Herbert kept ducking out of the engine room to check our position on GPS and make sure we were on course, which we were. But given the strong winds pushing us towards this bank and the breaking waves which seemed to run in an uninterrupted line ahead, we began to have serious misgivings about the wisdom of continuing on without engine backup.

Finally we decided to stand off before the wind pushed us into that frothing maelstrom of water. Reluctantly I turned us seaward while Herbert continued trying to find the source of the overheating problem. His hand kept snaking out of the hatch to turn on the ignition, but after half a dozen tries it still wasn’t working. Meanwhile, I sailed parallel to the breakers, praying he’d solve the problem and we could double back and take a closer look at the pass with a working engine behind us.

An hour went by. Our hope of salvation was receding far behind in the distance; open ocean lay ahead. Our desperate hopes for a calm anchorage that night were receding as well. I’d been studying the guidebook and felt we could make our way through, but without an engine it seemed pretty risky. If, in our exhausted and weakened state we misjudged anything—in unfamiliar waters, with big winds, breaking seas and no engine—we could easily be cast upon the lee shore of Fraser Island.

"We’ve always promised ourselves that we would err on the side of safety," Herbert reminded me. "If we had the engine, I’d try it, but I don’t want to risk losing our boat."

It was with a feeling of total misery and despair that we abandoned our hopes for an end to this torture and committed ourselves to two more days at sea. Now, instead of a calm anchorage and a few days of smooth sailing inside a protected channel, we had to press on all the way around the outside of Fraser Island and then double back in to the coast.

All night long we plodded our heavy way along the world’s largest sand island. The winds increased to gale force and squalls began to punish us further with sheets of rain and gusts of up to 40 knots. We steered off the island for as long as our stamina would allow, and then, when our shivering bodies cried for a rest, we would heave to, setting the sails so the boat would maintain its position with minimum drift. We’d rest inside for an hour or two until the wind pushed us too near the island, and then one of us would have to face the elements and take the wheel again. Each minute in the cockpit dragged along like an hour.

Because holding the wheel, which seemed even heavier than usual, put an incredible strain on my shoulders, I began experimenting with ropes to hold it in position. Finally, around five in the morning, I found a system that actually held us reasonably well without me needing to stand at the wheel. I gratefully settled myself down, lying on the lee side of the cockpit, keeping an eye on the few stars that were peeking out, to reassure myself that we were on course. In a horizontal position my stomach, long since emptied, lost its need to wrack itself in painful spasms. My head on a flotation cushion, my cold, bare feet sticking out from my wet foul weather gear, I let myself sleep, ten minutes at a time.

When dawn arrived and lifted the shroud of night I was horrified to see how close to the shores of Fraser Island we had sailed. Although we were still several miles away, clearly I hadn’t been keeping proper watch. All I had been thinking about was holding our course, but it had been several hours since I had checked our position. Obviously exhaustion had corrupted my judgement.

All night long we had managed to sail only 12 nautical miles, or just more than 20 kilometres in the right direction.

Although we still had 25-30 knots of wind, conditions were now a little more comfortable. Herbert, his voice raw and horse from the ravages of stomach acid, decided to try the Windhunter again, and this time he got it working. At last we were freed from the tyranny of the wheel!

After a sleep I managed to open some cans of hearty beef and vegetable soup for lunch, which fortified us all. The kids were managing well by now, eating fruit sticks and peanuts in bed and drinking small boxes of chocolate milk. Herbert and I were still pretty shaky, though, and continued to have trouble keeping food down. Michael took over most of my afternoon watch.

By midnight we had reached the tip of Fraser Island and now only had to sail by a long bank of dead coral, Breaksea Spit, before turning west into Hervey Bay. The more efficient route would have had us continuing north, but the idea of even more days at sea was just too much to swallow. Plus the next day was Jonathan’s 11th birthday, and we couldn’t make him spend his special day wallowing around in the ocean.

As we sailed along Breaksea Spit, we gibed to a new heading and Herbert reset the self steering to the new course. But try as we might, once again we couldn’t get it to cooperate. Instead it would steer us from one side to another, making us waddle like a duck in front of the wind.

Because the wind was coming from astern, this had the disastrous effect of making the mainsail swing from side to side as we traced our zig zag course. Herbert secured the boom as best as he could, but still, at regular intervals it would go crashing over to the other side before banging back again. It was dangerous and hard on our rig to sail this way, but we just couldn’t stomach the idea of spending the night hand steering again. After an hour of trying to get the Windhunter to cooperate, we gave up and just let the sails crash around.

When I woke up next, Breaksea Spit was far behind us and at last we were in calmer waters. Herbert had given me a wonderful six hour rest and I felt almost human again. All morning I hand steered across Hervey Bay, the Windhunter having gone on the fritz again after the set screw that holds its ram to the steering arm turned out to be stripped. As we sailed, I watched fishing boats being tossed around nauseatingly. Later we learned that the conditions on the open ocean have been so rough many of the fishermen here have not left port for the past six weeks.

Herbert grabbed the opportunity to dive back into the engine room and had discovered the cause of our engine problems: air in the seawater cooling system. For the time being, the engine was working again, but he had no idea how air was getting past the $85 valve he had installed to stop that very problem. One more mystery to solve later.

While working in the engine room, Herbert also discovered that the bracket holding the refrigeration alternator was once again broken, the stainless steel bolts he had installed just three days earlier having sheared right away.

Was there no end to this? When would we finish paying our penance to whatever gods had turned against us?