How To Lose Weight And Survive The Apocalypse

Chapter 28

There were five important things I didn't know about yachts before I spend the most physically hellish days of my life crossing the Tasman.

The first fact I found out is that being on a sailing boat meant always being wet. Always. Even if the waves didn't actually break over the deck (which they did at frequent intervals, drenching anyone in the vicinity with icy water), there was the constant spray that whipped off the swell, coating us in a salty patina.

The salt worked its way into the cracks of my skin, particularly my chapped lips and the micro-cuts on my hands from where the ropes had sanded away at the softer flesh, and in those places the brine stung like razor cuts dipped in lemon juice. There was no way to remove the salt; our water supplies were tightly rationed so zero chance of a shower, not even a cold one. Once a day we could afford to dampen the corner of a towel and wipe it over the worst of the grit, but that only seemed to move the problem around. I was surrounded by water and I dreamed of baths, overflowing with scented bubbles, piping hot and vast.

Second, I learned quickly that sailing is hard work. So hard, it made cycling up the side of the Macquarie Pass on our first day out of Sydney seem like a gentle Sunday ride. While ever there was light in the sky, Ruben had us moving forward through the waves, chasing the capricious breeze while he shouted powerful orders and wielded the helm to his will.

And that, of course, would have been just a little sexy, if it wasn't mainly me he was shouting at. Rueben had said the yacht needed two people on deck at all times, and he wasn't kidding. Mischa ran around helping where she could, grabbing us snacks and bottles of water, but otherwise it was Rueben and me, slogging it out for twelve hours at a time.

Sometimes the orders were easy, "Hold this, don't let it move." Sometimes they were frantic, "Wind it! Fast as you can! Faster, Karla!" Sometimes they were completely indecipherable, a combination of words and angles and time periods that all made sense on their own, but as a sentence meant nothing, leaving me to scream back, "WTF does that even mean?" in a tone I usually reserved for dealing with my phone company when they added extra inexplicable charges to my bill.

I ducked and leaned and dashed and pivoted across the slippery deck. Any thought of doing these activities gracefully for Rueben's benefit had long gone overboard, along with thoughts of weight loss, Dean, the world behind or the future ahead of us. There was only survival, dependent on our moment to moment activities; one wrong winch and we'd be sailing towards the Antarctic and our deaths instead of the safety of the Tasmanian shores.

At dusk on the second day, we staggered downstairs on trembling legs, and Rueben said, "You need to check in with Bailey, see if they can lend us a hand tomorrow."

I collapsed to the soft white leather of the padded stool. "I can try," I replied, exhausted by the thought of it. After sobbing themselves dry on the deck the day before, Bailey had disappeared into the room they should have been sharing with Nev and hadn't emerged since.

After cramming a handful of dried fruit into my mouth for enough sugar energy to steel myself, I knocked on Bailey's door. "Hello? Bailey?"

A huddled lump under the 1000 thread count sheets emitted a grunt. I approached warily in the darkness. "Listen, Rueben and I are doing it really tough up there. He thinks we're about halfway now, but we're both exhausted, and another pair of hands would be so helpful. Can you pitch in tomorrow?"

The lump said nothing. I perched on the edge of the bed. "Bailey? I know this is hard for you, and I'm sorry for what you're going through, but we're not going to make it if you don't help us. Please?"

We sat, the silence loaded between us as the waves slapped loudly on the walls outside the room. I was readying another argument, some convincing rhetoric to spur Bailey out of bed with fire in their eyes, when they finally spoke. "You don't get it."