Quest for Fire (Part 3)
Surfer Magazine (USA November 1998)
Text by: Sam George
Photos by: Darrell Jones and John Callahan
Andaman Sea: April 30th 1998:
Sunrise at sea is the absolute essence of
morning. When the red sun slides up over the eastern horizon, slowly lighting up towers of
clouds in the west, it’s like the world opens its eye. With no land to slowly
inventory, the new day isn’t begun by the coming of the sun, but simply revealed.
Today just is.
Two days ago, when I rolled out onto the
Chatham Jetty on my motorcycle and saw the Crescent at anchor, it was a fine moment.
Graceful lines, white hull with red trim, two dozen boards lashed onto the stern deck way.
I yelled and waved and Chris climbed onto the rigging and hooted back. A homecoming, here
on the other side of the world. I ditched my shirt and swam out to the ship; it
wasn’t allowed to board due to immigration edicts, so I treaded water amidships and
said hello to my new family.
 After rounds and rounds of immigration and customs checks –
Callahan’s charter group has an agent here in Port Blair who arranged permission for
us to explore several restricted regions – we put out to sea at midnight, determined
to sail until dawn.
I slept on deck, wedged into a tiny space
next to the anchor winch, towel for a sheet, sweatshirt to a pillow and a million stars
for a nightlight. Then sometime near dawn the Crescent carved a broad starboard turn and
when I woke Jack Johnson was sitting next to me, his legs dangling over the rail. A group
of low islands floated off the port beam – islands where there should be no islands.
"That’s right", said Jack, "the Sisters again. We’ve turned back.
Engine trouble."
A hairline crack in a water pump, as thin
as the hair on the back of your neck. But it meant two more torpid days anchored back at
the Port Blair roadstead. Nothing to do but sit and wait for the promise of something we
don’t even know exists. Lie under the foredeck awning and tell old love stories to
bored young men; climb the main mast and hoot all the way down to the water; eat and drink
too many of the ship’s stores. The boys were buddy-breathing off a copy of On the
Road that Chris Malloy provided, desperate for some sort of answer. Someone had scratched
with a pen on the cover: "On the Yacht".
Evening light and the engine finally
rumbled. The face of the bay, like a dark tapestry shot through with rippling strands of
golden threads binding sky to sea. Two silhouettes: a steep wooded hill on the far side of
the bay, tall padouks poking their uppermost branches from out of a tangled forest, dark
lace laid against the reddening sky. A lone canoe, paddled by a man and a boy – sharp
bow and stern, gliding through the setting sun’s wedge of gold, graceful as a leaf
blowing across water. Anchor chain is rattling – what classic punctuation.
The night, near 10 pm, on my cushion next
to the anchor winch, staring up at the Southern Cross, I lay listening to the murmuring of
the water off the bow. Chris and Jack were poised on the bowsprit, talking about life in
hushed tones. Then Jack cried out, a subtle wonder in his voice: "Dolphins!"
We rushed to the rail and looked straight
down onto the backs of a pod of small dolphins frolicking in the Crescent’s bow wave.
The sea was thick with glowing phosphorescence that shrouded the flying dolphins in weird
green fire. The spectral creatures wove and twisted, tiny meteors showering a liquid sky.
Only their breaths, quick little gasps as they broke the surface, could convince us that
they were real.
We stood transfixed; Chris Malloy finally
spoke. "Seeing this was reason enough to come", he said. "A good
omen", added Jack Johnson. "We f---in’ need something", said a voice
from under the wheelhouse awning. Catto the Aussie, probably.
  
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