Chapter 2

I got into skiing through bush walking, camping and running around in the undulating mountains in the south east corner of Australia. There’s also affinity between sailing on your own, or just you and nature, and walking through the natural landscape. That’s also how I got involved with ski lifts. Running across the ridge from Mount Feathertop to Mount Hotham one summer I came upon the guys building a new lift up the grassy slope towards the Top of Hotham, which is more a grassy knoll than the usual definition of mountain. I stayed, and over the next few years learnt how to manage the building and operation of ski lifts through the ever changing winter/summer cycles.

So there’s a mystical connection between sailing, bushwalking, cross country skiing. They are all about you and the natural environment, and it’s led me along by the nose my entire life. It’s given us the emphatic belief that sailing solo offers all sorts of recreational, therapeutic, cathartic, psychological, and of course mystical/spiritual experiences and needs to be offered as a pathway for disability sailing organisations, which so easily can dumb themselves down to just taking disabled people for a ride.

Building ski lifts though is a great job for someone who doesn’t fit any of society’s stock moulds of acceptable behaviour. And you don’t have to comply with safety standards as no one is watching, you just have to think things thru and be careful. We need rules and regulations because most people can’t see where things are going to go wrong, and rules are a backstop so you won’t be blamed when something does go wrong.

Everyone is trying to cover their backsides, so the rules get ever more complex. The age of litigation thrives because people don’t take responsibility for their own actions. As long as you comply with the rules, no matter how much time they waste, you will survive, even thrive and prosper. So a society should also listen to those with natural skills and not only those who are clever at working the system.

Ski lifts in the past were built by first erecting a temporary flying fox. I loved the flying fox. First step was to drag the winch drum wire rope, say 10mm in diameter, up the mountain and anchor it to something immovable so the winch on its skid can drag itself up to the top. Next you turn the winch around, align and anchor it to a rock outcrop, then pull the winch rope back down to the bottom. You then haul a much bigger track rope, say 25mm in diameter up to the top, take an extra bite so you have enough tail to wrap around a really solid rock feature in the background which is its anchor. You then set up a block and tackle on the bottom end of the track rope so it has adjustable tension. This track rope needs to be set up say 3 meters offset from the ski lift centreline. That’s so the flying fox can be moving things up and down the job just off to the side of where all the main work is going on.

You then erect the flying fox towers, usually old telegraph poles about 15m long, or straight tree trunks or whatever you can scavenge. You winch the  first one up to where you want it near the top, where there is a small crest with suitable anchors off to the side. Then stand it up on an angle using a gin pole, which itself is an improvised lifting device, so the tower top is directly above  the track rope. You guy the tower to its anchors, then winch up the flying fox shoe over which the track rope runs. You now have the track rope up in the air at top tower. Maybe there’s 4 to 6 towers over 400 metres, depending on the undulations of the terrain.

When you are done you have a fully adjustable portable aerial ropeway to carry everything up the mountain, compressor for jackhammer and drill holes for explosives, formwork, concrete, lunch. When all the concrete is poured the steel towers will be winched up, scraping the ground between towers as they are heavy. They  are stood up with a gin pole made from your straightest and tallest flying fox tower. It looks risky as you pick up a 15m tall steel tower complete with its  top T section. It’s slung just above its centre of gravity so it goes up on a 60degree angle. You winch in its base, twist and turn it till you can lower it down onto its anchor bolts, which are cleaned and greased in the ready. These days if occupational health and safety officers saw this sort of thing they would shut the project down.

A flying fox gave you control. You could plan everything ahead. You mixed your own concrete from aggregate, sand, cement and water. You could assemble a great team of guys who loved hard work in the fresh mountain air. You had to walk up the mountain to go to work, carry your tools on your back. You dug foundation holes with a shovel, pick and crowbar, until you were stopped by rock, which was drilled and blasted, the air compressor having been brought to the hole on the flying fox.

As the holes were blasted and dug to size the formwork and reinforcing bars and tower anchor bolts were suspended, then a chute was erected and the concrete, which was mixed at bottom station, was delivered to the  foundation by a hopper riding on the flying fox. What a great way to spend a summer, being part of a team who made all that work. When flying foxes were replaced by a sky crane helicopter it was time to give the game away.

Over 2 or 3 years we built a few lifts. My role was foreman which, once the flying fox was built, was to make sure all the guys had the right tools each day and everything was ready to support them, as it was demoralising and destructive if anyone had to walk back down the mountain to collect something we had forgotten. You worked to a strict time frame starting as soon as a ski season ended. You had to have all the concrete poured over summer as a serious frost could freeze the water in uncured concrete, and it would crumble. And you had to have all the towers standing, and hopefully everything fitted out with the batteries of sheaves on each tower, the bull wheel at the top in place, all fitted so you could get the ski lifts own track/hauling wire rope pulled around and tensioned before a serious snow fall, then you were safe. Once in the air, and an armoured electric control and power cable buried alongside the length of the lift line, the job was secure and could always be finished even after heavy blizzards.

The guys who built lifts in the summers usually worked in ski resorts in the winters, but I would head back to Indonesia as I was researching the traditional Indonesian sailing cargo boats which were used throughout the archipelago. One winter I drove up to Darwin in a Volkswagen Beetle and was about to buy a return air ticket to Bali when in sailed the trimaran which had flipped in the Brisbane to Gladstone Yacht Race cyclone, where 2 crew had died, and which I had help right and re-float. They were heading for Indonesia but didn’t know much about the complications ahead, so I hitchhiked a ride.

In those days very few boats visited Indonesia as officially you needed a cruising permit, which was near impossible to get, so if you didn’t have one be prepared for some tough negotiation, particularly if you stopped in off the beaten path ports. Regardless of that rule, we went straight to Kupang, the capital city of West Timor, a controversial place as Indonesia was soon to invade the Portuguese half of the island. Instead of anchoring in proscribed area our skipper elected to arrogantly put the tri up on the beach and walked into the very surprised immigration office which skewed the discussion off on a bad tangent. It’s much easier if you just treat everyone with respect, they will usually reciprocate, so here the boat was told to leave immediately, whereas the immigration chief was worried about his son running afoul of immigration in Darwin and needed some help, at least an assurance that his boy would not be abused, so they steered me to an office that sold seats on a military DC3 cargo carrier taking military family members home to Java.

Halfway to Bali we developed engine trouble and landed in Maumere in Flores, and were stranded for about a week as they waited for a replacement part, which is marred in my memory as I remember a very distressed mum coming to me with a prized traditional cloth and offerred it for sale so she could feed her kids. I think I bargained her down, took advantage of her position instead of being magnanimous, it’s that sort of thing that disappoints me, going through that fiasco in Exmouth is hardly a serious offence, but failing to help someone in need like this mum is, it was a character test and I blew it.

We arrived in Bali and I had some explaining to do, so I agreed with immigration it was best I moved on, so left for Singapore and would return to Indonesia with a valid visa, and a new camera to continue the study of the Indonesian sailing trading ships.

On the return trip to Indonesia we took a ferry from Singapore to Tanjung Pinang, the capital of the Riau Archipelago, the cluster of hundreds of Indonesian Islands just across the strait south of Singapore. Interestingly, our Hansa sailboats are now built on Batam, the second biggest of these  islands.

In Tanjung Pinang we found an Indonesian Chinese owned wooden trading boat, diesel powered, about 120ft long, that would take us to the port in Jakarta where the Pinisi, pronounced pin-iss-e, the biggest of the sailing traders berthed. We arrived at dawn. 2 breakwaters or groins about 50 metres apart projected out into the bay. It was full of Pinise, in 3 rows, over a mile long, the row on the left going in, one coming out on the right, and down the centre it was a wide lane free for all, a power of wills, a game of bluff, which we joined.

Maybe there were 200 Pinise here. Their main trade was timber from Kalimantan, the Indonesian name for Borneo. More boats were arriving and others left as the sun came up and we settled into the drama of making our way in to the wharf. The ethnic groups who own and crew these huge Pinise are the Bugis and Macasarese from South Sulawesi. Our vessel was Chinese owned with diesel power, not sail and a thorn amongst the roses, so we had a Bugis skipper giving us a connection without which wouldn’t be here.

We pocked our bow into the centre lane, drove slowly forward and touched the boat in front, and backed off the power. Nothing happened so we pushed. The boats in front all started moving, ropes were stretching, we backed off again and waited.

Everyone pretended we weren’t there, so we pushed again, harder, timber’s were heard creaking and groaning. Eventually the crew on the boat in front eased some lines and they got pushed to the side between 2 on the left, so we moved over and forward so the ship in front was very slowly hauling ropes to bring them alongside. Their plan was however to tie on behind us and get towed, so eventually, as we repeated this game and passed another boat they would run their own battle to get in the line of boats following us in. Throughout all this there was never a word in anger, it was an exercise in patience, steady hands and calm minds, it was pure class.

It took all day, which was fantastic as I was all over these boats, taking photos from bowsprits, up masts, from steering stations. Unfortunately progress has seen the passing of all these graceful white ships as they are now all powered by diesel.

***

I had devised a classification system for the trading boats of Indonesia based first on how they were steered and on this trip it was to be put to the test.

The most recent boats were reminiscent of some North Sea fishing luggers with conventional stern hung rudders on flat transom sterns, or counter stern’d where the stern extends aft behind the rudder. There were several variations on this theme, called “Nade” or “Lambo” depending on how big they were and where the were built. The rigs were generally crude variations of 19th century European gaff cutters or ketches.

Then there were a hull form called “Palari” which had pointed sterns and were steered by a pair of steering oars pulled down to near vertical, or a single trailing our on the smaller boats. The big “Pinisi” actually refers to an arrangement of masts and sails I’ll describe later, which was used on the “Palari” hull form and had a long trailing rudders each side, each shaped from a tree trunk about 10m long. In deep water these blades would be pulled to near vertical by crude block and tackle systems. The tillers poked out aft and were controlled by a crewman or 2 who were over the side on a platform. Out the stern projected a poop deck with a 4ft head room cabin, while in the stern underneath was the only accommodation for the 30 odd crew. 

These Boats were big, 30m long, 10m wide, rigged as standing gaff ketches, the lower masts being tripods of long straight logs with a platform on top, above that is another log topmast for topsails. Standing gaff refers to the gaff, a spar which usually has the sail lashed to it and is raised and lowered. A standing gaff is permanently rigged with the mainsail and mizzen sails furled against the mast and hauled out onto the standing gaffs, so the crew go aloft to furl and unfurl the sails. The topsail sheets also lead to the top of the standing gaffs. Out the front of the hull pokes the 10m long bowsprit with a line of forestays and on each is a jib.

A third type of trading boat had lateen rigs, either single or 2 masts. They had a single long trailing oar instead of a rudder and were reminiscent of Phoenician or Nile traders. The Jangollan was particularly spectacular with its sleek pointed stern hull with 2 lateen rigged masts, a single trailing steering our from Madura. Jangollan traded all over Indonesia even as north as Singapore. But there were many other versions, each belonging to its ethnic group and even village,

You could look at all these boats, the people who sail them, consider their religion, and postulate how they came by this package. Whereas the Lambo hulls and Pinisi rigs are very recent developments, the lateen rigged craft with single trailing steering oars have history, and just where they originated from is what I wanted to know.

The most unique of these eastern or ancient styles were the boats of Madura, a large island to the north of eastern Java.. These people are serious Muslims and don’t take any nonsense from outsiders, like me, or even their Javanese neighbours. They are darker to even reddish skin, they are unique in many ways, like their tradition of racing bulls. But over in south west India is Madurai, a remarkably similar name to Madura, there they also race bulls, and are Muslim, so I’d presume there’s a connection between these people. So there should be similarities in the boats they sailed.

Eventually I would have measured, drawn and photographed all these boats, but wanted to capture them actually sailing, so the plan evolved to get another sailboat and find these sailing trading ships at work, at sea, and compile them all into a coffee table book of the trading boats of Indonesia. I never did complete this project as life took another turn, but I did get the other boat which took me to Singapore and a whole new set of adventures. But we will go there later, for now it’s back to Indonesia and the journey home to Australia to start saving money for that new boat.

***

We spent 3 months in the outlying islands, and returned to Bali to catch a flight to Darwin and the Volkswagen Beetle, but cyclone Tracy had been through on Xmas day and wrecked the place. The only way back was via Perth, and hitchhike across the Nullarbor, again. In total I’d have hitched around Australia once, to Darwin and back 4 times, and across the Nullarbor 11 times.

So it was back to building ski lifts again with my final job in this construction cycle was the first triple chairlift to be built in Australia. It was our biggest project, I’d actually done a feasibility proposal for the management and owners of Perisher Valley to consider. The basic option was a fixed grip triple chair, the next level up was the revolutionary concept at the time, a detachable grip triple chair, the Rolls Royce was a detachable grip car, a Gondola. Detachable grip means the hauling rope keeps rotating at its prescribed speed, but as a chair or a car approaches a terminal or mid station, the grip opens and the chair/car is led off onto a slow moving track so it can be unloaded and loaded at a sedate speed. As it approaches the platform end it’s sped up and led back onto the main hauling rope where it clamps itself back on.

They chose option one. it was a great job as we could drive vehicles to the middle station of the near mile long lift line, so we erected 2 flying fox, one covered the bottom third of 6 towers, the top third had its own flying fox, while we could get to all the central towers by all-terrain vehicles.  It was a mini engineering dream come true.

We were splicing the rope of this new triple chair, it was approaching winter so fingers were frozen, when I heard about a job going on at a gold and copper mine in the mountains of West Papua in Indonesia. The Australian sub contractor on the project operated a ski lodge for their staff, the buzz was about but none of the ski village staff were interested in the foreman rigger position, they weren’t qualified either but I certainly was, the triple chairs rope was spliced, the job was as good as complete so, full of confidence, I went straight to their Sydney office for an interview.

I spoke the language, loved Indonesia and its people, so of course I got the job and was on my way to a fantastic new adventure.

I had to erect a tailings plant at the mill site at 9000 ft above sea level.The copper ore came down from the mine at 12,000 ft above sea level on 3 reciprocating flying foxes. The big one carried 17 tons of ore. Reciprocating means there are 2 sets of track ropes side by side. There’s a car on each set of tracks. The cars are connected by a haul rope which runs through a winch at the top. So as a full car comes down the empty one goes up on the neighbouring track ropes Then there’s a big counterweight at the bottom of the system, suspended on a tail rope going to the rear of each car. These 3 flying foxes were set up parallel to each other delivering ore to a common stockpile.

Then there was a personnel cable car which carried workers, knocked down machinery parts like bulldozer blades, dump trucks etc up the the mine in the clouds. After the tailings plant was finished I moved over to maintenance on the aerial ropeways. Maybe the highlight came when our little crew was riding up on top of the cable car, sitting on the suspension assembly above the track ropes, we had just left bottom station when the haul rope broke on the big new flying fox.

Down the track ropes came the fully loaded car with about a mile to run, from 12000 feet down to 9000 feet above sea level, that’s 2/3rds of a mile drop, it was trailing its broken haul rope, like a half mile long 2” diameter angry steel snake. The 200 ton counterweight crashed to the ground followed by the empty car which crashed into its buffers. But the action was yet to come as the loaded car was now at full speed, sparks were flying as its haul rope whiplashed from side to side, and when the car crashed into its buffers it exploded open and snapped its 4 track ropes, each 3 inches in diameter and under 90 tons tension. As the track ropes snapped back uphill chunks of ore, sheaves, and bits of metal careered on downhill punching holes in the roof and walls of the mill 100meters away.

We watched that big expensive calamitous crash from our vantage point riding on the carriage above the cable car 50 metres off to the side. It kept us busy working 14 hours a day for 3 months to get that machine back into production. So I was well on my way in funding that next sailboat.

Another highlight was we were winching a vehicle which had gone over the side, off the road leading from the townsite up to the mill at the foot of the flying foxes. We were down in the ravine hooking the truck up to a winch line when we heard and felt a rumbling roar. We scrambled out of the gully and got as high as we could when down the gully came a wall of rocks, mud, huge truck tyres, dumped truck tyres, boulders the size of a car. This avalanche was the spoil from the mine, plus all the mine rubbish which was tipped into a gully. It rained heavily every afternoon, and eventually this mess would start to slide, then over the edge, free fall for the first 100 metres then down the gullies taking everything before it, past the mill, past where we were, then on its way down the valley to where the native indigenous villagers lived. No one really thought through the consequences for these people. Or for the fragile environment. This Freeport mine is now the biggest and most productive gold mine in the world, and it’s this that stands in the way of the indigenous West Papua indigenous people ever obtaining their independence from Indonesia.

I worked there for 3 years, then moved on to West Java where a conveyor system, a storage building and a ship loader was to be built at Krakatoa Steel, to bring ashore, refine and then re export pellets of iron ore. Here we were on the shores of Sunda Strait, and across near the Sumatra side was Anak Krakatoa smouldering and smoking, building up steam for another eruption one day. Anak means child, so this was the child of Krakatoa.

You could drive along the coastline here, around onto the Indian Ocean coast, and it’s probably the most sparsely populated coastal region of the heavily overpopulated Java. That’s because everyone knows what happened when Krakatoa erupted in 1883 blasting 25 cubic kilometres of rock skywards in the biggest explosion in history, 13000 times more nuclear yield than the bomb which destroyed Hiroshima.

The explosion which blew up the entire conical island was probably caused and exacerbated when the waters of Sunda straight poured into the open fractured crater which triggered the next cataclysmic explosion.

I was really at home on these big projects, I spoke the language, you worked for small subcontractors so their was little hierarchy, meaning you could do it your way, drinking was the norm, plus very good tax free pay. Whereas most expats would go back to their overseas homes in their off time, I would go in search of adventure and researching those Indonesian sailing trading boats.

I’d been working for 4 years as a supervisor of teams of fabulous little Indonesian riggers maintaining aerial ropeways and erecting buildings in West Papua and Java, and despite burning the candle at both ends I’d saved enough for a new 32 footer built in Hong Kong. The Dream was to seek out and photograph the Indonesian sailing trading boats and compile that definitive work with drawings and photographs of them under construction and sailing, and classify them based on their steering system, which was related to which ethnic group developed and used them, which meant you could trace them back to their historical origins.

To  complete this I would need to sail not only Indonesia, but the whole region, everywhere today’s Indonesians and their culture could have come from. You never know what traditions may have survived in unexpected places. So I planned to explore the coast all the way to India and the Middle East. This becomes more complicated when you need to consider mythology and influence from lost civilisations like Mu, even Atlantis, as everyone built and used boats, but no one had really stepped back so they could see the whole picture from the marine design perspective.

I’d moved on from trying unsuccessfully to be a dope smuggler as it was obviously not my calling, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to continue to disrupt my life as characters from the past would keep on reappearing. I was an annoyance from their past, and for years I would unknowingly be sailing around in the middle of their hornets nest.

You could look at it another way too and say I would have this story to tell one day, much of it centre’d around south east Asia, so it was best for evolving circumstances to force me to stay in South East Asia and not sail off stage on a tangent.

That circumstance was a flaw in my new boat, and coincidently the same flaw I had with the previous 25 footer, and that was not enough ballast. You need deep enough draft to lower enough lead ballast weight to stand the rig up straight enough against a strong wind to generate the power for forward motion through the waves it generates. Without enough stability meant my new boat was not robust enough for serious ocean passages, which meant that once I arrived in Singapore I was confined to coastal sailing until I could rectify the problem, which I never did.

But before we can even arrive in Singapore we have to first leave Hong Kong. My buddy George who managed the painting crew on the project in Java was coming on this adventure so while he was still finishing the painting, my rigging and steel erection was complete, so I headed to Hong Kong to collect the boat and get it ready for sea.

About a month later George arrived and we left for the Philippines, but as we sailed away from the land mass of Asia we found the wind rose ever stronger. It grew to a steady 25 knots, peaking at a 30 knot trade wind coming dead from ahead. The only way to make headway was motor sailing with a reefed main and storm jib. With the fuel tank in the bilge, as it got low our stability went with it, so it took a steady hand to keep the small sails full, providing some drive, but the real traction came from the fast idling Diesel engine. I thus learnt the value of motor sailing: in very light and very strong winds the combination of engine and sails complement each other.

In very light winds, too light to keep the rig steady and sails in their aerofoil shape, an idling engine generates enough speed and resulting apparent wind which does fill and shape the sails, which generates power which adds to speed through the water.

In strong winds the sails alone are too small to generate forward motion, so you don’t have directional control, but with the propeller turning slowly the combination of sails and engine gives that control while the sails steady the ship’s rock and roll so forward you go, crashing into the oncoming waves which break over the deck and bury you in green water, foam and spray. The best place to sit when going to windward in these conditions is jammed in the windward aft corner, so it’s good design to have a seat there both sides in the aft pulpit. It’s the place to be as the wind and waves strike the bow at 45 degrees  and wash over the foredeck and coach roof. But it’s dry back there in the aft windward corner where you’re also up high with a great view, the boat is heeled right over and steering itself. That’s a disadvantage of a centre cockpit: it gives a big roomy aft cabin, but is very wet going to windward in a gale.

When we were 3/4 of the way across the China Sea and approaching the Philippines it moderated till we could set full sail, and once within the Philippine islands we were fine. We stayed in Manila a week or so, then set sail for the south, and I look back at the first night out, when another of my nine lives came up for the count.

Rum is really cheap in the Philippines, and rum lime and water was always the favourite because it doesn’t need ice, and the first night out I was enjoying myself drinking rum, alone on deck as we crossed the Verde Island Passages to the fabulous little Puerto Galera on the north side of Mindoro Island.

We were broad reaching under spinnaker set shy with the spinnaker guy under great load as it braced the spinnaker pole at a very oblique angle, with the pole pressing hard on the forestay. The wind kept rising so I needed to drop the kite, alone on deck, quite drunk, which was normal. The boat was powering along, steering itself, nicely balanced. The plan was to release the snap shackle at the spinnaker tack at the outboard end of the pole, so the kite would drift back into the lee of the mainsail, harmless, the boat would settle, I would scurry aft take the tiller and release the spinnaker halliard lowering the kite in the mainsail’s lee and stuff it down the companionway hatch.

Normal everyday stuff, but here I’m alone on deck on a pitch black starless night, no deck lights, standing on the pulpit in the bow, no lifeline, tugging violently on the snap shackle trying to make it release. Luckily it didn’t as the spinnaker guy was under a big load, stretched and ringing with tension. If the shackle had released I would have been struck hard on the head, knocked out if not killed by the blow, no harness attached so over the side to drown as the boat sailed on into the night, to round up, the spinnaker would have wrapped itself around the backstay and mainsail, with me out there somewhere in the dark.

George didn’t know a lot about sailing, and on this black night it would have been quite an exercise trying to reorganise the boat and untangle the mess in the dark. I’ve nearly been killed several times, usually it’s been alcohol related, but this episode causes a grimace every time it is recalled from the memory. That snap shackle refused to open despite me yanking hard and jerking harder on its lanyard. If it had opened all the preamble so far in this story, and it’s just getting going, would have never been written and pointless. It would just be another untold story of artificial mind bending ending in death and disaster.

We often hear about a yachtsman lost over the side at night, which is why a safety harness is advised, but when you get into harmony with a sailboat at sea you move with its motion as one, so it’s easy to relax and all it takes is you lurch one way and the boat jerks the other and you’re over the side. I say that in theory, as it’s never happened to me, as you always move carefully on deck at night when it’s rough. You maintain a 3 point contact, aware of the danger. That’s why this episode with the un-open-able snap shackle is not so much about the shackle but the mysterious force that prevented it from opening. But at this stage of the journey I’d never given it a moments thought so didn’t know it existed.

There were many adventures sailing through the Philippines. It’s a very different experience as it’s predominantly Christian and heavily influenced by modern North America. The population are generally cousins of Chinese, the remaining Indigenous peoples having retreated inland and to out of the way places, which seems the norm not only here.

So I started off as an ignorant Australian youth, from a broadly secular society, irreligious, irreverent, religion was irrelevant was how I saw it. We were just animals, as we weren’t plants, but animals didn’t behave like humans, we were more sadistic and brutal, and we had a Christian background as our dominant immigrant population came from first Britain, then later from continental Europe.

I’d been stunned by Indonesia. Predominantly Muslim, some Hindu, Buddhist, and  Christian, extraordinary history with roots in the Middle East, India, 300 hundred different languages many with their own script, historical trading ties with South East Asia, pre White Man Australia, China, India, Ancient Arabia, and recently Portugal and Holland. But while everyone had one foot planted on earth, these people all had the other in their concept of heaven. In Asia their are very few non believers in something, let alone a confirmed atheist. So I was confused.

This realisation was making an impression on me. Had I stumbled here on the difference between the East and West I asked? The answer, of course, is more complex, but the basic premise has merit as I was toying with the concept that the more ancient a belief the closer it may be to the truth.

Then I sailed into the Philippines, historically populated by migrations from China overlaying the typically curly haired indigenous people as also seen in East and West Papua and the hinterland of Indonesia. The Philippines had similar influences as Indonesia, but diluted the further out from the ancient Hindu and Buddhist kingdoms centred in Java and Sumatra. Islam also filtered up from Indonesia but is confined to Mindanao province. The national language is Filipino which is influenced by the 70 odd major languages spoken across the 7100 islands. Also spoken is Spanish as these islands had been “discovered” by Portugal, “invaded” by Spain and more recently colonised by the USA, so they also speak English, all of which has made the majority strong Christians with God their active partner in life.

So I was learning about different cultures, how people actually took religion seriously and how it shaped their lives. Of immediate interest to me was that in Christian countries alcohol was accepted as normal and available everywhere, while in Indonesia Muslims treated it with suspicion. For many it is forbidden, so it was used mainly by tourists and the non Muslim communities. 

The Philippines, with its warm weather, fair winds, protected seas, safe harbours, cheap rum and beer everywhere, with all the those staples of life, including fresh limes to mellow the rum, it should have been sailing heaven, but alas, being Christian, speaking English made it feel familiar to me, but back then I wasn’t aware of its rich history. Its sailing work boats  were unremarkable and, while their evolution would be an interesting journey, they were to me up scaled outrigger canoes. But then again, I didn’t look below the surface, so who knows what I missed, and if you embarked on a study of Indonesian work boats today you’d say the same, as their magic is gone, they are powered by engines and now look unremarkable.

Besides we had more pressing matters to attend to, a mission to document the exotic Indonesian trading boats before they disappeared, or so I thought, but as it turned out I was closing in on a new life in fabulous Singapore.

We spent a few days in Puerto Galera, then sailed on for a weekend at the Ati Atihan Festival we had heard about, at Kalibo on the northern corner of Panay Island where we moored deep inside the river at Port Washington. Ati Atihan is known as the mother of all Philippine festivals. It was here in Port Washington I woke one morning and there was a yacht moored next to us. It was dawn, but I rowed over to say hello.

Sitting in the cockpit was an English guy, and I was invited onboard for breakfast, which turned into rum, beer, a smoke, then lunch, more rum. I don’t think I’ve ever met such a kindred spirit as Barry, only he was better organised and successful at living the Cheech and Chong Asian sailing dream than me.

We sailed in company to Cebu where Barry had based himself and then followed some wild times, the usual shallow pursuits centred around pleasing the senses, official business like negotiating with immigration to extend a visa, but not much exploration of the fantastic history of the central Philippine Visayas Islands.

It is said that Visayas is derived from Sri Vijaya, the Buddhist Kingdom centred in Southern Sumatra city of Palembang, from 7th to 13th century AD. Srivijaya was a Thalasssocracy, which means it’s power was based on the sea and trade, as for several centuries they had control of the trade choke points between the Indian Ocean and South China Sea.

After it’s decline little was known till it’s rediscovery by archeologists in the early 20th century. But the travel records of Tang Dynasty Chinese monks record pilgrimages to India, cooperation in translations of Buddhist texts and descriptions of the size of the empire. What is in dispute though is did the declining Srivijayan empire establish a satellite community in Panay Island in the Visayas, after which the region is named, or is that only a myth as there is little or no Buddhist history or culture in the region. Who knows, the answer to that may be blowing in the wind, so If I went back there today I would ask that question.

In Cebu we met and befriended a young French girl who told quite a story. She was an orphan who was rescued from an orphanage in a French protectorate by a nice gentleman sailing the world in his traditional engineless schooner, like a Quaker . I think a nun accompanied her as a chaperone. She was the perfect picture of a petite mademoiselle, more French than the French, because she had never been to France but was raised by nuns nostalgic of French customs. Perfectly groomed in floral patterns, parasol to protect her fair skin from the sun, but she wanted out, and she wanted to escape from her overprotective benefactor.

They lived on his boat, miles up a creek in a tidal gutter, with overhanging tropical rainforest. The boat was a centre boarder and sat on the mud at low tide. It was taking the hurricane-hole concept to extremes, as after the storm had passed they stayed. With no engine, lights and cooking were by kerosine. I imagine the mosquitoes would have been very annoying.  They sailed on soon after we left Cebu, across the northern Sulu Sea to Sabah. We took a different route to avoid the Sulu Sea as it was said to be very dangerous. When we arrived in Sabah the centreboard schooner was already there, but we kept away as the police were involved, apparently they had been attacked by pirates and she had been shot and went over the side. I’ve since come across 2 other cruising yachts where the female crew was lost at sea and wonder why it’s the girl who dies, not the man

Our journey to Sabah was less eventful. We pulled into Tambogo Bay on the south eastern corner of Negros, which looked uninhabited from the sea, so we didn’t even go ashore. Today google earth shows there’s a resort and other accommodations, with lots of yachts moored in the bay, but 40 plus years ago it was deserted, and the perfect place for scammers loaded with dope to rendezvous with a supply vessel to restock with fuel and food before the longer leg out into the Pacific.

We didn’t stay long and sailed west across to Palawan, the long thin island which borders the South China Sea. We went west as there was always the possibility of meeting bandits, pirates or terrorists (depending on your interpretation). These guys operate out of the islands around the Sulu Sea and Southern Mindanao. Their attacks are not terror related, but money- making exercises, so they are pirates at sea, or bandits when they go ashore in raids on towns like Sandakan on the East coast of Sabah. The one port we entered in Palawan didn’t feel at all friendly, so we upped the anchor to be out of there before nightfall and sailed for Malaysia.

We were off the north west corner of Sabah at dawn and sailed down the coast passing the very prominent Gunung (means mountain) Kinabalu which is claimed to be the highest mountain in the region. Well, it was thought to be the highest, but it’s not if you include Indonesia’s half of New Guinea, West Papua where I worked 2 years before on those huge flying foxes.

Back then, standing at the bottom station looking up the line of steel cables should have produced some great photos, but in the morning it was deeply shaded while looking up was into bright light, and by noon it was clouding over, so when the sun had moved out of the way it was raining. Every day it did that, but this phenomena also hid the scale of these mountains which remained hidden in the clouds.

The flying foxes came off what would have been the cliff edge of a hanging glacier. Today the glacier is gone, but it has gouged out and left a valley floor about 500 metres wide and say 2000 metres long behind the mine. Another job we had up there was building emergency accommodation and workshop facilities out the back on the left side of the valley floor, but on the other side at the head of the valley was a creek flowing down through a gorge, and if you climbed up there, you passed several mini moraine lakes and came to a little glacier, fed by the snows falling on Puncak Jaya, the true highest peak in the region.

I did this trek several times with our Indonesian workmates who periodically organised the one day expedition. It was hard work in the rarefied air, the glacier must start at 14000ft, and towering above it another 2000ft are the rock walls of the mountain, its peak in the clouds. We always carried binoculars to scan the cliffs and try to identify the wreckage of planes that met their end there during the Pacific war.

These mountains were never surveyed but were believed to be only 14000ft high, so for all the planes which flew across from coast to coast during the war, into the clouds and torrential rain, flying above 15000 ft to ensure enough height, it was your good luck if you made it. If you didn’t it was straight into the rock walls of Puncak Jaya, so no one lived to tell the tale.

The big island of Borneo is divided politically into Kalimantan, the biggest slice which is Indonesian, while the northwest facing edge has the Malaysian states of Sabah to the north and Sarawak to the south, with Brunei, an independent Sultanate, in between. Malaysia is predominantly a Muslim nation, but under British colonial administration its mix of ethnic groups diversified as Chinese were brought in to mine tin, and Indians to grow and harvest rubber. Consequently Malaysia has a diverse population with strong Chinese and Indian cultural influences, which the Malaysian government includes, but it is a Muslim  state with social structures which try to swing the pendulum in favour of Islam.

Then there are the outlying states of Sabah and Sarawak which bring their own special flavours. They are a lot more Christian, so you notice these differences as you sail through, particularly if your life revolves around bars and debauched western behaviour. So I was slowly learning how other people lived and adjusting my behaviour, more for my own safety and preservation than giving these different cultures and ideologies the respect they deserved.

We officially entered Malaysia at Koto (means city) Kinabalu, stayed a day or two, but there are no memories of anything crazy or nice to report, so on to Brunei, the Sultanate devoid of dens of iniquity. So we sailed back out into the South China Sea and down the coast to the Sarawak River, and motored 30 miles inland up the winding river, past wharves, floating islands of logs, to Kuching.

These were frontier cities, people are there to work and make a living. These aren’t really tourist destinations, yachts don’t visit these places, we did because they were there on our route to Singapore. It’s as if we were winding down, the end of the voyage, the party is over, the binge is over, only the hangover remains, we will soon arrive in Singapore. George will leave, I’ll be there alone, broke, in a boat light on ballast that needs repair. So in a way I was trapped, with nowhere to go.

***

Singapore is an extraordinary place, an island city state. It was envisaged to be part of Malaysia, the post war political grouping of ex British South East Asian colonies. But whereas the mainland and 2 island states had Muslim majorities, Singapore was Chinese. Lee Kwan Yew saw the vision, it could succeed and prosper in its own right, it sat at the mouth of the funnels which concentrated the shipping between Pacific and Indian oceans. This choke point was the key to success of the region’s historical trading empires. So Singapore could become the greatest sea port in the world. It was at the centre of Asia, it had a diverse ethnic population, so if it developed an airport and airline it could become the tourism hub of Asia. It could become the independent financial and banking centre for this new world, the Switzerland of Asia.

It did all those things, but to understand what it really is you need to see it for what it will become in the future. It’s to do with the rise of China, the shift of power from the west to the east, so it needs to maintain its independence. Singapore is the hub of the wagon wheel, virtually on the equator, so it’s free from the tropical cyclones which hammer both hemispheres of the region. It’s also distant from the fault lines which cause volcanoes and earthquakes. But I was unaware of the significance of any of this when I sailed into Singapore in early 1979.

Singapore has changed enormously, but back then you anchored at Clifford Pier off the mouth of the Singapore River where stood the “Merlion” sculpture, with its lion’s head and fish/mermaid tail, where it was unveiled by Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew in 1972. Singapore grew from the historical Malay fishing village of Temasek. Singapore’s name in Malay is Singapura, derived from Sanskrit’s Singa meaning Lion, Pura for city, so Singapore is the Lion City. Today Temasek Holdings is one of the Singapore Government’s holding companies that owns over 300 billion dollars of commercial and strategic assets around the world.

Clifford Pier was the ferry and water taxi terminal that serviced the hundreds of ships at anchor in Singapore Strait as ships used Singapore to change crews and provision. I was close to broke of course, but miraculously you always meet someone in a bar who can help, maybe it’s a charter, or they need somewhere to crash, and so it was that I met Serayah.

She was a divorcee, with 5 children to feed. She lived in a one bedroom apartment, along with her father. Her mother lived nearby and called the shots as she had regular work cleaning the holds of ships at one of the many maintenance yards.

Serayah introduced me to Kevin, an ex ships captain. There were hundreds like Kevin, heavy drinking seamen who lived in Singapore and worked on the thousands of small ships which traded around Asia. It was good timing for me as the price was right and gold smuggling was in full swing. Singapore was then a duty free port so consumer goods, alcohol, precious metals like gold, and diamonds could all be exported legally, duty free. But it might be smuggling at the other end, which was not Singapore’s problem.

My first trip was to Jakarta carrying 16kg of gold hanging in a body belt, and strapped on the inside of my ankles. Having got a visa the day before I turned up at an apartment address to find about 50 guys there, sitting  around waiting while airline tickets were being issued and sorted out. At about 7 pm a couple of small pallets were rolled in and, in groups, we were loaded and taken off to the old Paya Lebar international airport.

When our flight was announced we waited till the final call, then on a signal from our handler, after making sure all other passengers had boarded we all came forward and quickly filed through the metal detector. The obliging staff would turn down the volume otherwise there would be a loud BUURRRR blasting through the terminal as each of us passed through. I think we had 10 to 20 guys on all the last flights to Jakarta that night. The record I saw was 750 kg in one night.

We all sat in the back of the plane because we wanted to be first out, and I wondered if the pilot noticed he was tail heavy. At the Jakarta end it was straight through customs, nothing to declare, about 20 guys, all dressed much the same in safari suits, carrying a brief case and overnight bag. After a while it must have looked like a new normal: business men catching the last flights after a day in the office in Singapore. Occasionally there were instructions to take a particular path thru customs, but regardless it always went smoothly.

Then into taxis and off to the designated hotel. I remember one night, there were about 10 of us in the lift of our 5 star hotel, it was late, so there were few people around, but the lift was throwing a tantrum and after reaching our floor would immediately return to the lobby, the doors would open and there we all were again in full view of the startled staff. Having 12 or more Kg of gold bars hanging around your waist and 2 more strapped to your ankles for hours can be very painful. So, when the doors opened at the lobby, twice, before we eventually changed lifts, there we were moaning and writhing in pain, a mixture of Caucasian, Indian, Chinese and Malay guys, moaning and groaning, hanging on to the handrail, some on the lift floor. But Indonesians are lovely empathetic people who mind their own business, so no eyebrows were raised.

Typically when we got to our rooms someone would make a phone call and give our room number, and some guys would come and collect the goods. At this stage we were free to hit the town. I probably made 100 trips around Asia carrying gold. Other destinations were Bangkok, Kathmandu, Madras and Dhaka in Bangladesh. This work came in cycles which I never bothered to understand. It depended on the price of gold at the time, and whether it was rising or falling. Some cycles we would carry it out, then something changed and we brought it in. I was only a mule, had a family to feed and was never interested in how it worked.

As security was beefed up at airports we had to compensate, and different routes were tried. I remember one trip via Pontianak in Kalimantan, flying in from Jakarta loaded with export gold. As we were walking across the tarmac a suspicious airline staff member rubbed his hand around my waist, then scurried off into the terminal. This rang alarm bells with our local handler, who sent us 4 couriers to a nearby restaurant while money changed hands and our passports were processed to exit Indonesia. That route was now contaminated and was never used again.

As metal detectors came into use new tactics were employed. Like 6 guys would board in Singapore on a flight to Bali with a stop in Jakarta, where 6 guys would board. They would identify each other and with subtle signals pair up, so when the fasten seat belt sign went off, a guy with gold would stand up and slowly move towards the toilet, to be followed by his pair, who would stand next in line at the toilet door. There was no turning back, if we hit turbulence you had to stand your ground ignoring instructions to return to your seat, or if another toilet became vacant you were committed to wait at your door. When your mate came out there would be the gold stacked up in the sink, hopefully covered in a paper towel to avoid someone else seeing the shiny metal. Once unloaded you sat down, the plane would land and you would pass through the international passport check channel with its metal detector screening, but you were clean, so off outside and free in Bali. The domestic travellers who boarded in Jakarta didn’t have to pass through immigration or security checks, so they, too, passed through freely.

You had to hold your ground even in extraordinary circumstances. I was once on the domestic leg, boarding in Jakarta for Bali, but my partner from Singapore was new at this and terrified. He had been told to use a certain toilet, but on this flight that toilet was out of order and the door was taped closed. That didn’t stop my mate who removed the tape and forced open the door and locked himself in. I had no choice but to stand my ground and, as soon as he came, out force myself past the protesting crew because my gold was there piled up in the sink.

Another time we travelled first class, the only first class flight in my life. Again we used the toilet to switch the gold. I had boarded in Jakarta, and I was standing at the door, a hostess next to me, when my Chinese mate came out there was the gold in full view stacked up on the toilet seat. Our hostess didn’t flinch, just looked the other way, but she must have wondered why a Chinese guy was giving me a fortune in gold mid flight to Bali.

Circumstances brought an end to this high volume work when one of the principals in the syndicate died in a high speed collision with a tree. The photo in the paper clearly showed both number plates, as his car had slid sideways and wrapped itself tightly around the tree. These guys had also been behind a people smuggling operation which used small ships carrying Vietnamese refugees, abandoning the ships fully loaded in HK, Indonesia and Port Klang in Malaysia .

They were also behind the theft of 50 million dollars worth of diesel from Indonesian tankers carrying the fuel back to Indonesia from Singapore where the Indonesian crude had been refined. They got busted for this and the syndicate broken up, but the gold business continued, and I found myself travelling alone, a trusted old hand, on some really exciting adventures.

But all the while I was working on my boat and intended to use it for charters in the Riau Archipelago, that cluster of islands just across the strait from Singapore. It just seemed obvious, only one hour away by boat were hundreds of islands, while in Singapore were thousands of travellers who would love to spend a couple of days sailing, some nights on shore, great food and local cultural delights.

So all the while I was preparing the boat. We would also sail up the east coast of Malaysia to the Tioman Islands tourist resort, and each year make a pilgrimage up the west coast to Phuket in Thailand. Serayah and I would take 2 or 3 passengers for the adventure of their lives. On our boat it was hands on, you learnt about sailing, you helmed, crewed, cooked, smoke and drank to your hearts content. Our friends were plenty.

I lived in a one room HDB flat with my extended Malay family so I was accepted as an expatriate local. I lived on local street food and spoke Indonesian. Outside the family my friends were the local guys I’d met smuggling gold, they were Chinese, Indian, Malay. I owned a yacht which we used every weekend, it was a party boat. We were well known to the water police who knew us as colourful larrikins, on the edge of the law but not anti- social criminals. You would often see my boat on the weekend loaded with little Malay kids and their mums, friends of Serayah, sailing, anchoring and picnicking on Singapore’s nearby islands. People respected me as I was very much in tune with village values.

One day when anchored at Changi Sailing Club, I was rowing ashore and was hailed by a guy on a small yacht on one of the club’s moorings. He wanted a lift ashore. I came alongside and looked up, it was Rich from the old days in Bali’s Benoa Harbour. Rich was the guy who negotiated with lawyers and immigration for the right deal for Seth. Wow, it had been 15 years, so ashore we went to exchange stories.

Rich worked in the oil field, month on month off, lived nearby and mixed  with a bunch of people I didn’t really know. These were expats, my friends were Singaporeans. There were yachts coming and going, and strangely guys would reappear next year on a different boat, and maybe with a different name. This obviously pointed to some sort of scam, which didn’t phase me considering what I did for a living. I was still drinking heavily, indiscreet in many ways, spoke out of turn, so not good at keeping secrets, out of my depth as I was now, unknowingly in the hornets nest mentioned in chapter one, and they now had me under surveillance.

I was friends with a Chinese business man who owned a few boats, and was migrating to New Zealand, but needed work done to make them more seaworthy before the long ocean voyage. Joe also saw himself as a bit of a guru and was very interested in spiritual things, which I was learning about as all around me were people who obviously believed in the supernatural and magic.

I spent a lot of time with Joe, who saw me as unusual. I didn’t fit the mould of an expat in Asia. He offered to help me by funding one of three projects I had going, which were 1). develop the perfect little sailing tender and get it into production, 2). build the 36ft timber yacht I’d designed, or 3). Help me set up a charter business in the Riau Archipelago. But first I had to help him with his boats, for which he would pay me, and also do a lines drawing and designs to convert a wooden 70ft traditional tug boat he’d bought into a sailing schooner.

Ok, let’s fix his jobs first then see which of my projects was the one. We also discussed the best route to move his boats to NZ, which I suggested was out into the Pacific through the Southern Visayas, then motor sail through the doldrums till you were far enough east to turn and reach down to NZ in the Trade Winds. There were other options available according to the cruising types Joe spoke to at the club. Joe then would then bring this back to me, I was confused as the best route was as I’d said, but they were arguing against it. And then it hit me: had I started a discussion around the bar of the best route for Joe, which was the route used by dope smugglers, guys like those with multiple names and a variety of boats? We’ll come back to this question later as things were moving fast, but first there’s some background we need to catch up on.

Rich had bought a really magic little rowing dinghy from a passing yacht which I thought would make a fantastic sailing tender. I really wanted to know what he’d paid for it and did ask several times but for some reason didn’t get an answer. There was a lot of water to flow under the bridge before I did find out a couple of years later.

The little dinghy I likened to a Herresmhoff Pram, only shrunk lengthways from 10 feet to just short of 8 ft. It was clinker with its planks when viewed from the bow seemed to follow the 10 degree arcs of a compass, like looking at the arc of panels on a traditional hand held fan. It needed repairs so I offered to fix it if I could take a crude mould off its hull. I did this, and over the next few months repaired the dinghy and made that mould, and would laminate a hull in it later. The events surrounding Rich’s dinghy are very significant in this story as it was this little pram mentioned in Chapter 0 which measured 2.22m, and became our Access 2.3 dinghy, and evolved into our Hansa 2.3.

These were high times for me as I was very busy designing boats, doing fit- outs, drawings, making and fitting self steering gear, and the occasional gold and diamond courier job which were needed to solve the periodic visa crisis.

Plus a guy who worked month on, month off on an oil rig and had plenty of money had acquired the plans of a Norwegian Rescue Ship, and wanted aspects of it redesigned as it was to be built as a cruising boat in Changal hardwood in North East Malaysia. So I was given a copy of these plans to work on. Rescue Ships were enormously strong, their job was to heave to in the vicinity of dangerous reefs and islands, to be on station ready to rescue mariners when their ships were wrecked in North Sea gales. So these boats weren’t designed to cruise from A to B, they were specifically designed to be able to ride out and sail in a gale, and be manoeuvrable in even survival storm conditions. A Rescue Ship is an extreme choice for a cruising sail boat.

A cruising sailboat is a balance of elements which suit a particular owner, so it depends what people expect from their boat. The average cruiser probably spends 90% of its time at anchor, or in a marina in a port or harbour, so it needs to be a comfortable living space. Then it needs to get from A to B and there are lots of choices of how much comfort versus speed in there. Full keel boats are slower, more docile, have more cave-like accommodations and are safer than high performance racers with keels and rudders which are easily damaged. Performance boats are also more twitchy and less docile and have reduced accommodation. A Norwegian Rescue Ship is way beyond any balance found in those choices above. But it was an interesting job and this particular set of plans meshed into the enormously serendipitous coincidental puzzle which unfolded over the next couple of years.

But what was really happening was my life had changed, and instead of looking solely after myself, now I was taking care of Serayah’s family. I had become the bread winner, paying the bills, school fees, books, school uniforms. The focus had changed from me and the needs of others had to come first.

This was an important milestone in my life, and maybe I’d arrived at a level of balance, maybe I was now bouncing along the bottom, the garbage I was creating was more or less equal to the good stuff of devoting myself to support all these children. I doubt the nature of my work, carrying gold and diamonds around the world for rich guys to make more, has much to do with me. We need to obey the laws of the land, which I was doing in Singapore, while in the destination country the market value of gold was manipulated by the government for its own selfish purpose. Smuggling gold in the purest economist’s world might cause some problems, but at a human level it does no harm. Neither do diamonds, which are routinely moved around the  world and aren’t declared. It’s not like smuggling drugs, which cause a lot of societal damage. Anyway it’s an interesting question, so we can put that one out there and see if we can recognise the answer. That’s if we remember ever asking the question.

A similar and related question could be what is the difference in karmic debt accrued by accidentally killing someone, killing someone accidentally while committing a crime that might endanger others lives, killing someone in a war when you are ordered to do so, or what about if you planned and executed a murder. Wow, that’s a grisly series of events to consider. Best not, so let’s move on. But the answer would help answer what’s the karmic debt accrued smuggling gold for a businessman when you are led there by a force that is teaching you the fundamental laws of existence, when you didn’t ask to go, there was just no alternative, and all you want the proceeds for is to look after the needs of a fleet of little children.

To get that into context consider the following, as what was extraordinary were the coincidences which came and went in cycles, which were becoming more and more outstanding and increasingly obvious. Like this one:

In Singapore a traveller was entitled to a one month stay on arrival, which could be extended for 2 more months if you were lucky. Then you could cross the causeway to Malaysia and return, and get a further 2 weeks.

Maybe you could do this twice more if you were a good talker, which I wasn’t, but then your time was up and you needed to leave by air, but could arrive back the same day on the return flight, and start a new cycle.

Typically, on return from a gold transport job we would get Serayah’s gold jewellery from the local pawn broker, which operated like a bank for us, then there would be 2 or 3 trips in the cycle which would give us a bit of a buffer, but over the next couple of months we would use up our funds, and my visa options were also used, till D day approached. D for departure. I had to leave the country and return by air, but with the last dollar given to the youngest daughter so she could go to school, I’d be left there broke, wondering what’s next. Then the phone would ring and Wang had a job on, could I please come to the office.

This became the normal theme, all seemed to be taken care of, till we expected these little miracles, which Serayah took for granted; of course Allah would be looking out for her and her children. That’s what Allah does, doesn’t he? I’ll get back to these international travel coincidences later, but first some events at home in Singapore.

I also returned to Australia to help an old friend with some ski lift projects, which brought me to the edge of some serious cocaine trading. But every time I got too close to drug smuggling I’d be brought undone. This time on a trip to Easter island, attempting to implement the toilet gold switch trick, I was instead beaten up by an American petty hoodlum, and I scurried back to Singapore with my tail between my legs.

Not long after this Polynesia incident Rich told me that our old friend Seth, who was arrested with 10kg in his backpack in Bali 15 years earlier, would  be coming to Pattaya in Thailand and he wanted to see me. Great I thought, must have some job which I can get involved in. Yeah right, all that shows is the delusional world I lived in, but I couldn’t see it, as the die was already cast and I was heading for something really special.

I was wanting to talk to Rich about something and rang his home and spoke to his wife, who was Thai. Rich wasn’t there. I mentioned the coming trip to Thailand to which she blurted “don’t go, please don’t go”, then hung up.  She obviously knew something I didn’t, so being me I’d have to go to find out.

Serayah and I made the journey, luckily we had plenty of money as we were going to need it. I can’t remember how we got to Bangkok, found the guys and met up with Seth who was sick in bed. Next day they were all heading to Koh Samit, an hour or so drive to the east. We joined them, went over to the island but I was getting more and more paranoid as I was isolated and shunned by the guys, who were all crew from a couple of boats that had recently been moored in Singapore.

I was really getting desperate, had zero confidence and was powerless to do anything, and it’s here that I got glimpses of people’s actions and reactions when seen through your eyes while in a serious paranoia misadventure.

My mouth was dry, I felt disconnected from my limbs and had to move around with caution. I was totally turned inside out and full of fear, so I went down to the water’s edge to be alone. But there was a little Thai boy there who was looking at me with contempt, though you can’t blame him as I would have been transmitting some really unsettling vibes.

He took a stick and drew a face in the sand, then looked at me as he scratched it out, then upped and ran away, leaving me in paranoid shock as I took it that he had just killed me. I was in a very dangerous place, I knew this state, my bottle of beer earlier had been spiked, this was a bad trip more like PCP or angel dust rather than LSD.

Next day we went back to Pattaya, it was New Year’s Eve 1984. I arranged to have breakfast with Seth next morning. This was 5 years after I first sailed into Singapore. That night was the most terrifying in my life, with fireworks going off everywhere I was certain I was about to die. Totally paranoid, I lay there shivering with cold and fear. Super dehydrated, mouth so dry I couldn’t speak. Zero sleep, we checked out and went to see Seth. He was as cool  and calm as ever. He called Serayah a May Lay, he called me Crunt, both obviously degrading names. I looked around, saw illusionary characters, one guy several times looked around a pylon at me. First option is was he doing this maliciously? Or second option is he was just harmlessly, periodically looking around and happened to catch my eye? Third option is related to the second, but he is being used by spirit, its triggering his looks in my direction? to terrorise me. Or fourth option is the easy one where I imagined it all?

When it was time to go I said to Seth, “Thank you Seth, I will never drink alcohol again”.

We had been given advice about the bus to return to Bangkok. We sat side by side. The bus was riddled with bullet holes as back then this was a violent region and in the seat in front of us was a dangerous looking guy, obviously a junkie. He had a copy of the Born Loser cartoon book, and he turned the pages, passing it by the gap between the seats for me to read. Was it an illusion? No, it wasn’t. Did he do it maliciously? Or was it a totally unrelated coincidence arranged to terrorise me. Again 3 of those choices.

We got to Bangkok station, but as we approached the ticket counter a local guy who spoke good English came forward and asked could he help. “Yes,” Serayah said, and gave him the money for a ticket south to Malaysia. I was screaming inside, “Don’t, don’t, it’s a set up, they are doing a brilliantly executed number on me”, but I was speechless, a lamb being led to the slaughter. Again ask those questions, was it malicious as I thought, a harmless coincidence, he was an innocent puppet, or I imagined it. Then a guy came alongside and took us to the platform, we boarded a train, for a couple of stations, then he took us across the tracks to another platform and left.

We sat there for a while and 2 foreigners crossed the tracks as we had, they were talking, but as they passed us one said, “They are going to kill him”.  Again we ask those questions, were they maliciously involved in a scam to send me mad, had I imagined those words, or were those innocent words between them and they were unknowing actors in my nightmare.

I know now that this energy from the oneness which hasn’t been in focus since first mentioned in Chapter 0, can arrange all those 3 things, so which is correct is irrelevant, but this does allow us to treat the whole episode as a movie. All the players were puppets, but that’s ingenuous as there were some proudly unsavoury characters involved here so let’s give them credit for their actions, credit where credit is due. Another thing I now know is that paranoid feeling of being alone. Well, we are never alone as that energy is always with us, and if we know that we can never get into anything like this terrible situation.

I sat there on the platform speechless, looking around, every written word was in Thai. I mentioned something to Serayah, who snapped back at me that I was gila, crazy. She was right, and I was at that moment alone, even she had left me. We were sitting on a bench in the centre of the platform, we were facing towards any incoming train, I looked up and there was a big sign above our heads, it was all in Thai, except for it’s heading. It said we were on the “NORTHERN LINE”.

The train was speeding into the station, I was at a dead end what to do, I made a split second decision, I will run parallel to the train, it is slowing in the station, and like Spider-Man I will leap on the front and hang on. They had brought me to this, but I will survive, this will defuse the whole situation, we will take control and find the train south, and they will leave us alone.

If we had taken that train north, instead of one heading south to Malaysia, it would have been a struggle to keep me alive, as Northern Thailand then was a dangerous place for a drug crazed white man. At best it would have been a very confusing battle as I regained “composure” and we regrouped and made our way back south through Bangkok.

Or, on that day, was there track work going on? Were all south bound passengers from Bangkok’s central station being escorted to another platform on the northern line through which southbound express trains were being routed? I don’t think so.

I believe my thinking was I could be like Spider-Man, but a lot was going on and throughout it all I was like an observer looking on. I was suffering from paranoia induced by PCP, or angel dust, so it’s quite feasible that the Spider-Man scenario was my plan, but another is I was just an unwitting actor in my own movie, the outcome already written, and I was just an observer, or another alternative it was an attempt to suicide, which is quite realistic considering the state I was in.

The motive is irrelevant anyway as I bounced off the front of the train, and landed on the sleepers between the tracks. The train pulled up, the poor driver would have been in shock, though they see it often: people suiciding on the tracks in front of them. But here a looney white guy, a Farang, had leapt into his view and tried to hang on to the windscreen wipers.

The train stopped and Serayah sprang into action. No one would help, so she paid a couple of guys who were collecting cigarette butts to get my body out from under the train. Miraculously I was alive, I had landed gently between the steel rails, no limbs missing or broken, though there was a lot of blood from a scalp wound, but otherwise I was fine. They took me out to a taxi and off to a private hospital where 2 nurses dressed the wound with a bleeder tube to take away any weeping from under my scalp.

I woke up suddenly as they were finishing the job, and said to Serayah, “They nearly killed me. My mother doesn’t know about you and the kids, so I’m going to Australia when this gets better and will arrange our wedding. They can’t hurt us now”.

I’d been sitting there quietly smiling all the while, sitting up in the chair, self supported. I’d sprung back to consciousness fully aware of where we were and what needed to be done. Next day we headed by train back to Singapore. I felt fine, empowered. I didn’t drink any more. I was free at last, the addiction was gone.

After a few days back in Singapore I went down to Changi, to the headland next to the club and down a path to a patch of sand where I could hail my dear friend Wayne, the only guy who’s name isn’t changed in this story, as he died of a heart attack a few years ago. I have a unique cooee type call, WHOOO! WHOOO! WHOOO! into the dark night, a bit like a woof without the f, then I’d see a flashlight wink, and soon hear an outboard motor start. It was a practiced routine, but when we got back to the boat and Wayne saw what had happened to me he was furious. “Don’t say a word about this” he said, “Not a word”. He’d keep these clowns under surveillance when they returned.

The chatter around the club was they had bought a new boat, a big 64 footer, but it had some osmosis problems so it was on its way to NZ for repairs, and when ready would resume its journey, but we will come back to this saga shortly.

So here we were, I’d stopped drinking for the second time, first effort was the time spent on and after remand at Geraldton jail, in Western Australia. And like before, things started to come together. We didn’t automatically end up with chaos, things were working, my boat’s modifications were nearing completion and we would soon be able to enact that charter boat dream. Joe’s boats were drawn, as was the Rescue Ship.

And then about 9 months after the train all hell broke loose. I went to bed that night and felt sharp, strong, a new awareness, colours seemed bright and sparkling, but I hadn’t induced this high with anything. I woke up next morning and I was a different person, I had a new perspective, my reactions were measured, and yes, colours seemed brighter, and they had meaning, I was observing the world with a new understanding. Something had flicked a switch and I was now on the next stage of the journey.

I think it’s safe to say people don’t actually change, they just become older versions of themselves as they age, except when spirit enters their lives.

I remember catching a bus down to my boat, which was now at Jurong, and the bus to get there was route 33. I boarded the bus, and for some reason checked my ticket, I had boarded at 3.33, and I was passenger 333. Okay, a coincidence, but it went on like this when you were least expecting it.

Next day I woke in a state of euphoria, so I felt inclined to hire one of the little red Daihatsu vans I liked, and went down to Changi. There was an incredible thunder storm as I drove around the back of Changi Airport. I noticed the boom gate was up at the security checkpoint so I drove through waving to the guards as I went. I’d always wanted to investigate that gigantic hanger where Singapore Airlines did their engine maintenance. I drove into the hanger, back out and drove over to the office block forming the hanger side wall, parked and went up the lift and walked through the offices startling hundreds of staff. I saw through a window 2 security guards coming to apprehend me. I saw them enter a lift so I took another and headed to ground level and out into the rain and back out waving to the security guards on the gate.

A week later Serayah was worried about my mental health so she took me to a psychiatric hospital for a check. I went along for a lark, but they seemed to understand that this was just some sort of psychic event. It’s not serious, I’m not dangerous, but Serayah kept the appointment receipt in her purse, which saved the day a couple of months later when the serious breach of security at the giant hanger finally caught up with me. I had to report to a police station, but when  Serayah showed them I was just a looney expat having a psychic experience, probably triggered by the thunderstorm, the case was closed.

As for Charlie the Dutch guy who hired out those red vans, he wasn’t so lucky, I’d run up a lot of parking fines, all of which were piling up in his office, plus my van was involved in a security breach at Changi Airport and his operation was under investigation for various irregularities. How come a red Charlie van was waved through into a high security zone at Changi Airport?

I was summoned to Charlie’s office and Charlie was sitting behind his desk looking terrified. I’m the one who is supposed to be paranoid. He wanted to take the van back, but his 2 Chinese staff were having none of that, no, they renewed my contract, took the money for another month and my outstanding parking fines, then wished me well. I think they enjoyed seeing their usually aggressive bully boss under the pump.

It seems a Charlie van was also caught on CCTV leaving a building on Shenton Way where a fire alarm had been triggered. On that occasion I had gone to this building where the remnants of the gold running syndicate had their office, on the way out I broke the glass on the fire alarm, and drove away, went down the street and into a McDonald’s carpark for some reason, then into the store.

I hadn’t gone into McDonalds for a burger, I was just acting on impulse, there was no plan. I walked up to a stand on which there was a photo album, it was open and there on display were photos of Serayah and a big group of kids with their mums, a birthday party she had arranged a month earlier, but I had no idea which Maccas she went to, and how come it was open on this page on the day a month later when I walked in for no reason.

I came out onto the street and there was quite a commotion, fire engines had blocked off Shenton Way as they searched for the source of the fire.

It turned out that Charlie was a good friend and associate of the gold smuggling boss who had died in the high speed crash a few months before. They were both European expats living and finding loopholes to run shady businesses in Asia. So who knows what activities he was otherwise involved in which had caused his paranoia. Anyway I was enjoying the impact I was having on people. I was used to upsetting people while drunk, but this was like magic, I was invincible, all while absolutely sober.

Not long after I had to take some diamonds to Antwerp, and while these are carefully wrapped in condoms, about the size of a D size battery, and are meant to be transported across borders in your rectum, I didn’t like this at all and preferred to take my chances. I’d seen enough to know you don’t have to get busted if it’s not your day of reckoning.

It may not sit well with diamonds reputation and image as a girls best friend, but in rectums is how they are generally carried.

But not mine. So here were these 3 D size packs, in condoms, and what should be very obvious to a customs officer here they are sitting in my briefcase for all to see. I’d arrived at Heathrow and had to change terminals. It was a bit of a rush, it’s like 03.00 in the morning and I’m alone on this bus, hadn’t considered the diamonds at all as we were simply changing terminals. The bus pulls up at the entrance, I get out, the auto doors open and I walk straight into a customs counter and am asked to swing my overnight bag and briefcase up onto the counter.

The customs guy takes the overnight bag and rifles through it, the girl opens the briefcase, picks up the 3 condom packs in her right hand and holds them aloft while her left hand shuffles the briefcase contents around. Then back into the briefcase go the diamonds, thanks all round and I’m away, shaking my head in amazement. Make of that what you will, but it’s the truth, all you can say to whatever may be listening is thank you. It said very clearly to me that I was never alone. It also showed me that this thing, this extraordinary force, energy, awareness or whatever we call it can play anyone, it can take over their consciousness and trigger someone to do anything. How is not the question, except it can because it is in everything, or better than that it actually is everything.

About this time back in Singapore I had the opportunity to laminate the hull in the mould I’d made of Rich’s little dinghy. At this stage I didn’t have a workshop so had done the work out the back of Changi Sailing Club. I mentioned this event in Chapter 0, the introduction to this story, but here it is again in context with all the other nonsensical, irrational things going on. I pulled this hull out of the mould and measured its length, which was 2.22m, and then to my amazement, the 222 magnified and pulsed before my eyes, for maybe 10 seconds. What could have caused this? Well there are different possibilities, all unnatural I’m afraid, like my eyes changed focus, or it was the tape measure being manipulated, which are both perfectly logical explanations to me, that’s if you know how the logic of 3 works. Or, if you like, you can hide behind it was just an hallucination brought on by smoking too much pot.

Not long after this I went on a really miraculous trip to Europe via India carrying gold and diamonds. I had small ingots of gold in my shoes to be taken to Bombay where I’d be given diamonds to take to Antwerp in Belgium. It was May 22nd, and in Zurich I was put in seat 20. From Zurich to Schipol (which is Holland’s International Airport) was uneventful, but as usual my diamonds were there in my brief case, so through the “nothing to  declare” gate I go, but this is my day, brief case is opened, there are the packets, the customs gent, Hendri Wentinc was his name, thinks it will be heroin or other powder so plunges in his auger, and a few small stones spilt out onto the floor. We manage to find them, then it’s off to a booth where I’m about to be interviewed by a customs intelligence officer.

These guys know exactly what’s going on, he can see by my passport that I’m an experienced courier, he opens the packs and loads all the little parcels of diamonds onto the scales, and explains to me that these are industrial diamonds probably from South Africa and these are the scraps from cutting in Bombay. We count the parcels as they are loaded, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, then 2 fall off and I say 20. 2220 again, it hadn’t escaped me that it was the 22nd of the month and I sat in seat 20.

Anyway he was a nice guy and explained that I will get the stones back in a couple of weeks so in the meantime go to Antwerp and explain the situation to the boss, there will be a fine of 4000 gulden which they should pay, then arrange a new flight back to Singapore, not via India he said, and return the stones to my boss there. He gave me a phone number to call Henri for updates on the assay process which they will now do on the stones. I will get a copy of the assay when I’m given the stones just prior to boarding.

Diamonds are big business in the “Low Countries” of Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg, so moving them around is not really illegal, though they do like to be aware of the volumes crossing their borders.

So off I went to Antwerp by train and sat in a window seat to enjoy the view. We stopped in Rotterdam and just in front and in full view above me was a conventional clock with 24 hour numerical readout. That clock had broken down sometime before, at 22.20. So I certainly had the feeling, and very good grounds to believe that I was not at all in control of these events, that I should not worry, whatever was in control of this was calling the shots, like I was on rails during this experience, and the best thing I could do was sit  back and enjoy the ride.

For me to be sitting in the train at the window which stops with me facing the clock which has broken down at 22.20 is an outrageous proposition and not to be confused with any high odds coincidence. What exactly are the odds that these elements line up purely by coincidence. For the airline seat and date to be 2220, for there to be 22 packs of diamonds, 2 of which fall off the scale leaving 20, for the whole coincidence to have started when I made a mould off a dinghy which produced a shell which measured 2.22 metres. I’d already seen so much of this stuff that the only question I had was, “what is the significance of 222”? What could it mean, or if it didn’t have a meaning what was the purpose of the whole exercise? The only option was to proceed until presumably everything would be revealed.

These extraordinary events didn’t happen all the time. Generally life would go on in the normal mundane way, then there could be an isolated  “coincidence”, but then, completely unexpectedly when mind is off elsewhere it would start, and there would follow a series of events, and slowly it changed you, you began to understand your relationship with this extraordinary puppeteer, this Joker who seemed to be able to manipulate anything, as long as it was totally unpredictable, like when you thought it might do something, then it wouldn’t.

So there was no way to preempt it, you just had to learn to accept it as logically inconceivable and, as it negated all your preconceived ideas, that void slowly filled with a new concept. You realised you were connected to this extraordinary thing, you were a living microcosm of its energy, like a node plugged into its invisible network which spanned everything. You had to just stop and stand in awe of its magic, and had to have faith that it wasn’t going to hurt you, the opposite was true as it arranged everything you needed to be in your pathway, there was no need to you worry or want for anything as it was right there when you found you needed it, so Yu relaxed and watched as your body was taken on this amazing, crazy journey.

On this trip to Antwerp I was carrying about 1 million US dollars worth of diamonds. I had the list of their values. I could have tossed away that list and pinched a few of the expensive stones and no one would know. If they did it’s what they would have expected. But they weren’t mine, and if I had learnt anything, it’s that you should never take anything you haven’t earn’t the right to own. Which suggests that even if you didn’t steal it, like you won it in a lottery, the best thing you can do for your own preservation is find a way to use most of it to benefit others. Spend it on yourself at your peril.

Anyway I did what I was told and took the stones back to Singapore and handed them over to the Swedish guy who was a survivor from the old days. I’d been made aware that he didn’t share my values, so would be surprised if he hadn’t taken the opportunity to pinch a few of the stones himself as he could always blame me, or the customs guys back in Holland.

I told my Chinese friend Joe about these coincidences and his response was interesting as his interpretation was quite different from mine. He said wasn’t I lucky as I could develop and use this to my benefit, learn how the numbers could be used. But to me they had a deeper meaning. I was not going to use this in any way, I was to go with the flow and learn what it had to teach me. It was about learning how to discriminate between what is right and wrong. For a start, what makes something right and the other way wrong? If I had followed Joe’s advice then I was not going to take the next adventure, and would miss the point of the whole exercise.

That was the last diamond job I did as I was now a little compromised. Not a serious problem in the Low Country grouping of Belgium, Luxembourg and Holland where the diamond trade and its unusual practices are an important under the radar trade. Hitler must have felt the same because diamond central Antwerp, the Belgium port city survived the war un-bombed.

When you see how the system works we could ask why is this disparity of pricing maintained, the gold price in some countries fixed at about 20% higher than the floating market? While there would no doubt be quite a disruption to domestic economies if government taxes were removed, those with diplomatic immunity and who can avoid metal detectors, like senior bureaucrats and politicians, would lose an instant 20% profit business opportunity. Whatever the reasons for maintaining the disparity, it hardly warrants demonising gold smuggling as a heinous crime, when it’s really just a minor case of tax avoidance.

For post-diamond-me there were still domestic needs like kids to feed and educate, and obviously I had a lot more to learn about the ways of the world. So luckily there was still plenty of gold that needed to be moved around from A to B. Mine was not the reason why, it was to do and – see what happens, it was certainly not going to be to Die. Or even if it was I had no choice and had to trust this thing that seemed to have me on a leash.

When you pass through customs there will usually be customs intelligence officers watching. I suspect that Asian detectives will be expert at working with gut and physic feelings. In Asia there is a greater awareness of other levels of being, people are more superstitious, whereas Westerners will be more “grounded” and logical. I remember one trip to Madras, now with its older name of Chennai, I had gold in my shoes and wasn’t walking naturally, I was being watched closely by an intelligence guy. You can see them in your peripheral vision, their eyes following your every move, you know they are there but the last thing you’re going to do is flash eyes at them. At times like these you just relax, it’s your mental transmission verses his antenna. Relax, who cares if it’s your time or not? Or his payday, presuming he gets a share of the loot. He also has kids to feed and a nagging wife who needs a goId necklace, or get her jewellery back from the pawnbroker. But in the end it’s not your time and he doesn’t pounce, but there will always be a next time.

That’s the game of cat and mouse, or to give you glimpses of what a comedy it all really is, there was the time passing through Bombay airport, I knew I had too many stamps in my passport, there was a psychic customs intel guy watching me, I’m in the queue to have my passport scanned, the images will come up on a computer screen, it’s my turn, the clerk pushes a key, his head nods forward, eyes close, he’s gone to sleep, head jerks back, he takes the next passport and I say again thank you to this extraordinary thing that is showing me it’s amazing power.

All the while I’m returning to a busy schedule back in Singapore, working on projects for my Chinese friend Joe, other jobs would come up for oil field guys who had more money than sense and I could see they could use a dose of the wisdom I was learning. But they wanted to pay me for services, I hadn’t sought it, and who knows who would benefit what from the project. I also was preparing my boat for charter, and drawing concepts for the little 222 dinghy, as obviously I’ll finish with this international gold transfer service one day and need an income source elsewhere.

My mate Wayne worked month on month off in Indonesia on oil field projects. When he returned to Singapore I’d take a bus or taxi down to Changi Sailing Club, Whooo, Whooo, Whooo from the dark in the bushes, and I’d get an update on who’s moving what on sailboats. There were always boats coming and going, most were simply cruising, or legitimate deliveries, but if you had a broad understanding of what might be someone’s motives, you could then temporarily place them in a certain pigeon hole, which is like asking the question, do they warrant being there or not? And then move on, forget it. If it’s relevant then out of the blue, from nowhere, from out of the ether would come an answer in the form of an event which might say yes, no, or here’s another question. The story therefore grows with a series of these suppositions, each providing a level of proof that the hypothesis is correct. This joining of the dots can reveal an interpretation of what’s true, you arrive at a knowing, as distinct from thinking through to a conclusion. It takes you behind the scenes, a lot deeper than the simple evidence based proof that our mind has to work with.

And then came the news about our friend’s boat that was on its way from New Zealand to collect a load of Thai dope and take it somewhere, but you have to surmise from what happened to me a few months earlier going under a train in Bangkok, which was possibly connected to my loud mouth talking about the best way out into the Pacific, that that’s the route this new arrival would eventually be taking.

A few days later I was on a flight back from Jakarta on a new lightly loaded Singapore Airlines Airbus. I was in a window seat as we flew over the Riau Archipelago, descending as we approached Singapore, when the pilot announced we needed to waste some time so he began a number of 360 degree turns. There, right in the centre of our circle was a big ketch sailing towards Singapore. Whoa, is that our boat? If so, what a reception, how special are they to be announced to me in this way? But I’d long given up being shocked and confused by these games, as that’s what they were, as everyone in my world was being played like puppets, including me.

That night I went looking where they might be moored but didn’t find them. But a few days later, on a Sunday I went down to Changi with Serayah to see if the boat was there. It was, so we borrowed Rich’s little 222 dinghy that I’d restored, and we rowed out to have a look. We came around under it’s wide high stern, and there to my amazement was its name in bold black letters, right across the transom. They had named this boat HEADACHE, a most unusual name for a sailboat. Had the boat caused so much trouble by needing that osmosis work in NZ that they chose to name it Headache? In hindsight yes it’s an option to imagine that mischievous Joker from the Oneness popping headache into their consciousness, as being beyond time it knew what was still to come, but in that case they might have all gone for Migraine instead as it takes headache to a whole new level.

We rowed around to the port side and I bashed on the side decks to tell those onboard we were here, when up over the cockpit coaming came a head, and a face in terror. It was John, who’s name the year before had been Don. He was either in the middle of a very bad LSD trip or he had naturally fallen into a bout of extreme paranoia. His face was pink, and blue, even purple. His mouth was quivering as if he was acutely dehydrated. He was terrified, just as he was a party to doing to me 9 months earlier. The difference this time he was now in my town, not up in there in Thailand.

We climbed aboard, he sat in the cockpit with Serayah, she glared at him and said in Malay “I know what you did, you bastard, you babi betul.” (Which means yours full on pig). Meanwhile I was up on the foredeck raving on about what a fantastic boat this was, well done John, what a great boat. I was behaving like a lunatic, but they shouldn’t be surprised as they had made me that a few months earlier. Don sorry John couldn’t take a trick. He offered Serayah a sandwich, she looked at it and cautiously took a bite. “What’s this?” she asked, “Pig? You bastard Babi Betul” again as she spat it out in horror, being a Muslim.

We eventually left and went home. Strange day, but the following Sunday morning I was with my friends down at our favourite waterfront venue and after telling them what had happened to me and that I was going down to Changi for another visit they said they were coming too for my protection. I headed off in my Charlie van, they followed. I got a ride out to the big ketch, then my Chinese friends arrived in the yacht club ferry. There was no plan, we were just there, so I reached down and turned the key and the engine started. The guys went forward to throw off the bow line, ok we must be going for a joyride, so I pushed the lever into forward, built some revs, so off went the lines and we were away.

We motored west towards where we had started from that morning. It was upstream to a dead end where the causeway crossed to Malaysia, so no one could accuse us of trying to steal the boat. We had gone about a mile when we saw an inflatable had left the club and was coming our way at high speed.

They came alongside about 10 metres clear so we throttled down to hear what they had to say. “You f- – – idiot Chris, what the f—- do you think you’re doing?” I replied totally unrehearsed, it’s just what came out my  mouth, “There is a tsunami coming. We are taking the boat upstream for safety”.

They came alongside and boarded, both teams stood there ready for action. I was standing in the companionway, my 5 mates were on one side of the cockpit with one of them steering. They had never been on a yacht before so this was quite an adventure. John was with 2 others, one was a fellow skipper off another classy visiting yacht which had been at the club while this new boat was being delivered, the other was a bearded heavy, and seeing the nature of their mission I imagined he was the muscle who would handle the firearms if needed when they sailed through the pirate areas up the south east coast of Thailand.

There was a bit of a discussion and John was losing patience so he gestured to the heavy to go below, presumably he’d come back with a gun, but as he moved towards me, I screamed in Malay, “Jangan dekat saya, jangan dekat” which means don’t come near me. He stopped and instead scampered up to the fore hatch to go below, but it was locked. He returned to the cockpit and looked to John. Obviously a fight was about to start.

When around the corner came a police boat, everyone stood still and looked again to John. “it’s your call,” Allan said. “ if you call the police we have nothing to say”. John consulted his friends and they hailed the police boat which was now about 100 metres away. As the police came alongside one of them called out “selamat sore Chris, Allan”. “Good afternoon Chris, Allan”, They knew us well as my boat was moored up the channel near their base. We were friends as I was that orang puteh with the Chinese, Indian friends and Malay family.

Allan explained quick-fire in Chinese what was going on, so I don’t know what he said, but the police took down the Chinese guys’ names and told John to take the helm and bring his boat back to its mooring and bring their passports into the club for a discussion. So back we went, I got off that boat and went home, quite blown away by the extraordinary day.

A few days later I went down to Changi by ski boat with other local friends who were hatching a plan to make some big money, but also teach these guys a lesson for what they had done to me. HEADACHE was still on its mooring and my friends took pictures. I’d come to Changi to see Joe and discuss what needed to be done to this boat before it was to be delivered to New Zealand, so we came alongside Joe’s boat and tied our ski boat off the stern.

Joe arrived by a club ferry and we were discussing the matter when we had an extraordinary event. The sky opened in a tropical downpour, but not on our boat. We were in a dry 10m radius circle. Around us it was pissing down. I was getting used to these extraordinary events and could see first hand why the majority of the population on the planet are believers in something and open to magic, and it’s predominantly white westerners who are the atheists.

We talked things over with Joe. He was very interested in me and my friends, who he hadn’t really met before, but he could see that I was well protected. He did say to me “you’ve changed, what’s happened?” I didn’t see Joe much more after that and have tried to find him. Maybe we will cross tracks again in the future.

John, too, would fade from the picture as I would soon leave town for a few years, but for now it was what’s next for HEADACHE, which seemed to be living up to her carefully chosen name. By coincidence her crew chose a bar in Sembawang to do their drinking, which was a bar owned by friends of my friends, and where my friends helped keep the peace. They therefore had John and his crews under surveillance, and asked me what I wanted them to do to even the score.

It turned out the bigger plan was to keep track of HEADACHE as it sailed up the coast to Thailand, and through Thai friends who smuggle consumer goods by sea, to wait till the dope was loaded, then attack, casting the crew off in their dinghy and take the boat to be scuttled at sea after taking off the cargo. They asked me if I wanted the boat.

After thinking about this for a while, what this actually meant, it was obviously not the way to progress this, and I can remember imploring my friends to drop it, to move on. There is no way this can be done.

In the end it was all academic as HEADACHE didn’t go anywhere that year. She was lifted from the water, got a new hull colour and was renamed. A year later she sailed off into the night. But with her visit to Singapore she certainly justified their choice of name.

***

I’d taken a great interest in the number 3 after that extraordinary bus ride on route 33, passenger number 333, boarding at 3.33. But I saw this had nothing to do with the usual thinking and linking this to numerology, as that’s a common mistake. It’s a red herring. Numerology, like astrology, are both pretty basic near earthy psychic sciences. Connecting the word science to it will alarm some who see science as only relating to the physical world, but I don’t see why it can’t apply to phenomena of the mental world also. This way Science reaches its boundary at the limits of the binary worlds, which therefore includes mind and even most consumer religious concepts. After all, there is a discipline called political science which, by it’s very name, veers off into the realms of fantasy.

So what I see in the fascination with numbers is not numerology, but the actual source of the power of numbers, which numerology, astrology, magicians, witches, and religions generally all take advantage of and use the magic they can generate as proof, to justify the veracity of their own relative truths.

So, after mulling over various dimensions of the little dinghy, finding it difficult to make decisions, I decided that all the principal dimensions should be divisible by 3. I could use the metric system based on cycles of 10. I  could use the duodecimal system based on cycles of 12, and I even experimented with a hybrid system where 300mm = 1 foot. That got overly complicated but did prove an elusive point.

The way it worked I would chose the option which was divisible by 3. There was something in this that harked back to the simplicity of the past, when so many things could be accepted as the effects of the supernatural. This had been replaced by logical thinking which has added legitimate solutions, but had not entirely replaced the original explanation. This struggle I could see was a battle between mind, seeking to explain everything in logical terms, a simple binary equation of whether it was right or wrong, admitting only “provable” evidence, and magic, a third possibility which could stand alone as an occurrence or event to explain the unprovable.

To me that was embodied in the number 3, where 2 of the 3 was logic, a pursuit of mind, while the third came from a gut feeling. Here consciousness knew this was a legitimate proposal, as here were 2 different ways of thinking, or one was thinking, while the other just was, it was knowing. It was beyond thinking, as if we had 2 different dimensions, one a polarised duality, the other a holistic-like oneness, which couldn’t be argued about. It was devoid of complexity, it just was. To me thats was is symbolised in the number 3. So here was a concept which fitted into the fundamental principle of 222 as the foundation of everything in existence. There’s a dimension in oneness and a binary dimension = 3.

An amazing example of what it did is hidden in this story. The early version of what evolved into the 2.3 was a clinker planked hull, that is also called lapstrake, as the lower edge of each plank (in traditional boatbuilder called a strake), overlapped the upper edge of the plank below. I’d made the fibreglass hull in the mould of Rich’s dinghy. The hull was 2.22m long. I had then made a drawing of my version of this hull, with its planks overlapping, as in lapstrake, in an orderly measured way, each 10 degrees apart, like the lines etched into a plastic school protractor. This orderly-ness applied only at the mid section of the hull, as it needed to adopt its preferred shape to form the bow and much wider stern.

I built this hull which had 2 leeboards to give lateral resistance instead of a centreboard. Lateral resistance causes the boat to sail forward instead of just drifting sideways when under sail. These leeboards went down through a watertight slot formed inside the top plank, the board projecting out through an opening where the 2 top planks overlapped. This meant the leeboard could be inserted in the slot, pushed down and, when all the way down, if cleverly designed, could pivot back and fold up like you see a swan paddling along with its folded wings. So the first version of the 2.3 was called a Swan, which incidentally became Access, which became Hansa. So it did a full circle as a Hansa is Sanskrit for a mythical bird based on a swan. Along the way the wing like leeboards were dropped in favour of a single centreboard or keel on the centreline.

I drew out the shape I thought this leeboard should be. It was based on the centreboard of the first windsurfer, which folded aft under the windsurfer hull.  I cut out this shape, but something wasn’t right. It wouldn’t fold, but there on the ground in amongst the offcuts was a piece that looked interesting, which I tried and, voila, it worked. So the waste scrap I’d created when cutting out my cleverly designed shape turned out to be the right answer.

I devoted a lot of time investigating number 3. Playing around with a calculator I discovered that 1 divided by 3, divided by 3, divided by 3, divided by 3 = .012345679, then it repeated itself. In contrast we all know that 1 divided by 7 = .142857142857 etc. That’s interesting as 14 is 7 x 2.   28 is 14 x 2.   28 x 2 = 56, but it doesn’t do that it’s 57, then starts all over again. I don’t care about any logical explanation for this, that’s not the point, but I found it fascinating that dealing with number 3 led to great numbers and an elegant harmony, while number 7 was a nightmare. Use it and you quickly needed a calculator to get anywhere.

And when you looked at the positions 3 and 7 have in a cycle of say 9 you see they are opposites. Interesting that in Cabala mysticism which uses a cycle of 9 and has no concept of a zero, here the 3 and 7 being opposites fits in perfectly, which makes me wonder what Jewish mystics would think of this comparison, but at the least this hints at my suggestion earlier that we are talking about the fundamentals of where do numbers acquire their power, not how it’s applied by a particular doctrine.

My own reasoning leads to the suggestion that 3 is a positive symbol, active, which suits the sun, the positive source of light, whereas 7 relates to the moon, passive, a reflector of light, which incidentally orbits the earth in (7x 4= 28) 28 day cycles. So it’s no coincidence that there are 7 colours in a rainbow, 7 notes in an octave, 7 deadly sins and Buddha sits in a 7 petaled lotus. What happens is you can package up all this stuff with numerology, astrology etc and with a following behind it in prayer and meditation a cult or religion gets formed. That could be the foundation of a new science of religion, religion science, the study of how religions are born and evolve. Now that would be something, as an alternative to teaching individual religious studies. Give kids an understanding of religion as seen from the oneness.

So while I’m pondering all these concepts, and they are all over the place, already convinced there is some sort of God out there somewhere, with all these coincidences which seemed to have me and many others all intertwined but revolving around what I was doing, it’s easy to see how egotistical people can blow their own importance out of all proportion. They create sects with themselves at the centre. They use artificial stimulants to induce trances and attract their followers, but then the outcome is lopsided because its basically using fundamental truths to benefit yourself it breaks a fundamental rule so to return to balance there will be a balancing act and the whole thing collapses, often in a raging fire, a gun battle, a mass suicide, all of which happens periodically as seen in the rise and fall of cults and sects.

So to get me on a safer track I was shown that I’m not alone, millions of people have these experiences, but it needs to be managed. Singapore in those days was part way through its primary transformation, the southern half had been torn down and rebuilt with Housing Development Board (HDB) high rise apartments replacing all the kampungs or villages where the population lived. Those ethnic group based community units who clustered in those kampungs needed to be broken up and a whole of community established. But the northern half of the island was still intact with untidy villages with creeks and drains and winding roads. Serayah lived in the organised southern half, I moored my boat and spent my time in the relative chaos of the north where middle aged hippies like myself could blend in.

Up a creek in the mangroves was a traditional workboat building precinct where an expat friend of mine was building a 50 wooden junk while he lived in an old Vietnamese refugee boat which was hidden in the mangroves. My friend was away for a few months, but I would go down there periodically and smoke a joint in the quiet of the Vietnamese boat. I was smoking this joint when my attention was grabbed by this book up high on a shelf, it was moving. There was a row of books, but this one was shaking, so I stood up and took it down and opened its cover. It said “heaven is here right now”, to which I started laughing. Excitedly I flipped through its pages, everything I scanned made sense. I got down all the books, there were maybe 10. They covered all sorts of new age concepts and beliefs, but I sensed I had arrived at an important milestone. I could read all these and see where it led, as I had to find out what was happening to me.

I took all those books home and read them all. I learned about mind, its role, the worlds of mind, and about soul which was our true self, our consciousness. I also started a new lines drawing for the new dinghy, its plank lines around the centre station followed the 10 degrees concept, but I changed its length, depth and width to better include my preferences and be divisible by three. I gave it 10 stations, and drew these lightly as 5 concentric circles with the centre point being station 5. Where the circles crossed the waterline were my stations. The outer circle marked the bow and stern at the waterline. That drawing is captured as the binary bubble which comes out of the ether on the home page of this story.

The circles represented the physical world at the centre surrounded by the 4 mind worlds I’d read about, so the outer circle was like a bubble, or a balloon floating in a world of oneness, the home of our consciousness. The balloon was the world of mind with a ball of matter at its centre, including energy as we know it, and space as in our entire post Big Bang universe, and of course time which began with the formation of the universe at the Big Bang.

It therefore had conceived the little boat as a symbol of the matter, energy, space and time, all the aspects of the dualistic dimension, floating in the oneness, an ocean of love, the home of soul. The sailor on board the boat, themselves a representative from that oneness residing in their own body, their own bubble of mind and matter, would complete the picture.

The question I was therefore asking, was is this extraordinary concept of symbology true, or not true? Was this really the ultimate description or formula for the extended universe which included both the dualistic worlds of mind, and the elusive indescribable world of oneness? If it was, and future events and their outcomes should reveal the validity of the questions, and events should play out as the answers, it will answer the ultimate question, which is what is the meaning of 222. Did that refer to 2 dimensions, was one of those dimensions a oneness the domain of an elusive indescribable god with its equally indescribable outgoing energy, and was the other dimension a duality built up from a stream of polarised energy.

As inferred earlier, but here made more specific, if consciousness asks a question, the answer is coming, but it won’t be received when mind is busy dominating the conversation. It’s as simple as that. You see it in everyday life today, with spin doctors distorting the facts, fake news they cry, that’s mind  at work clouding the issue, disguising the truth. Consciousness is there in a hostile environment trapped in its body dominated by mind which is getting bombarded with incomplete truths, relative truths, spin and fake news as answers.

If you want a true answer ask that energy of which our consciousness is a spark, the answer will come when mind is still, like in those early hours in the morning when you first wake, or in a dream, or it may play out in front of your eyes in everyday events which you will miss if you’re not aware of their significance, in what can be called a waking dream.

What I’d been experiencing in those extraordinary events full of coincidences where just waking dreams, but back then I wasn’t even aware I’d asked the questions. So the answer came first, before I’d even asked the question. The problem people have with this is they try to tie everything down to a time line. That’s because they are thinking from the perspective of mind which can’t possibly understand or relate to a dimension other than a duality where everything is in relation to its opposite.

What it comes down to is mind is essentially the personification of the duality, just as the polarised particles are ultimately the building blocks of matter, and which creates space, the positive and negative values are the equivalent of the binary ones and zeros of computer software.

What then is karma? It’s the accumulation of polarised values which play out enhancing or disrupting your life in a balancing act. Ignorance of the rules can hardly be used as an excuse when we are really just dealing with a software program. The question to ask then is who wrote that program and why. That’s the ultimate question of what is the origin and meaning of life.

Let’s say here that the role of mind is to keep you going round and round chasing your tail, just like the dog who doesn’t twig the tail is trailing behind him, so we are the dog going around and around in circles because we don’t know the rules.

So we come back to asking the question is that model of the universe valid or not, and going by past experience I’d better have all antennae switched on to receive the answer. So obviously it’s good I’d given up drinking as you can’t expect to receive and process subtle information of this nature if you’ve excited your minds senses with artificial stimulants. So alcohol has to be one of the traps which help hide the truth. So forward I go, still smoking a bit of dope which will probably cause distortions, but I’m coming from a long way behind, overcoming one hurdle at a time. We will get past dope one day soon, so for now let’s see what the future brings, will the answers come during sleep or a waking dream.

I used to spend nights at our apartment, but it was also nice to get away to the boat where my drawing board was set up. One such night I was on the boat and awoke with the urge to write down some words, which quickly evolved into the following poem.

“I started to realise what it was, and then what I thought it wanted, But it used me to do its want for I could not see.

I tried to pre-empt it, to use and direct it,

Ever seeking the magic in three,

But then mind would falter as it proposed another answer,

To some question forgotten,

To leave me awed by the wonder of thee”.

There is a lot in there, it was the start of realising the secret of the magic in three. What that says is when dabbling around nonsensically seeking to incorporate dimensions of things using numbers divisible by three I’d stilled my mind and into the void, from out of the ether came an answer to a question I’d forgotten all about, to leave me awed by the wonder of – this thing.

***

My next gold courier job turned out to be the last as I went on what I call a smugglers holiday. When you finally get arrested if you can get past all the issues mind will throw up, like what’s going on outside, how is your wife coping, how are the kids going to get to school, then it becomes a well- earned holiday.  You have to have faith that this thing that had brought you here will also be looking after your family outside.

And as long as you can find something productive to do then the opportunity to not have to work or think about all the security and survival issues, then in jail you can be truly free. Far freer than outside, particularly if your time outside is spent trying to stay out of jail, actually arriving in there can truly be a blessing. It all depends on whether your looking at this from the oneness or the binary bubble perspective. If you compare jail to being conscripted into the military, jail is a far better proposition. With both you lose your so-called freedom, but in the military you are ordered around, you have to work and might get shot at. Jail is a far better deal and can be an earth bound version of heaven, and it’s free.

The day started by giving close to the last dollar we had to the youngest girl so she could go to school. How we would handle tomorrow we would have to wait and see, but it didn’t take long for the phone to ring, could I come to the office as there was a job on if I was available. Yes of course, I’ll be there in an hour. I’d been to Bangladesh a few times, several on this passport, but I’d given up counting or worrying about being over-exposed.

It would be travelling on the 22nd again for the first time since Holland a couple of years earlier, and 9 months after going under the train in Bangkok. It was the 22nd, I hadn’t chased this job, it wasn’t up to me to chose not to go as everything said I had to. I was stamped out in Singapore and would have to leave the country by air this coming week anyway, and besides, the only way to find out what’s next is to go, who knows, last time on the 22nd I got busted, this time might be the other side of the coin and I won’t be. Anyway last time ended well, so might this, I’ve no choice anyway.

So next day it’s off to the airport, I’m carrying 14kg of gold bars, at the checkin all goes well until the boarding pass printer won’t work. She tries again and again to no avail. I’m looking on with amusement, poor girl can’t understand what’s going on, it’s this thing playing around with the machine, elementary for the source of polarised digital data to fiddle with the signal. Eventually my ticket girl moved to the next counter, keyed in some numbers and it printed my boarding pass, Wow, very impressive as its seat 20. Same combination as in Holland.

I passed through immigration and went straight to the nearest free call public phones and rang my boss for instructions, was he superstitious enough to want me to abort or continue. The phone rang for a few seconds then as he answered, click it was cut off, so I tried again, same thing. On the other side of the circle of phones was a phone that worked as I’d been watching them all and when the user finished their call so I moved over there and tried again. But same thing, it was again cut off, so I was presuming the Joker didn’t want me to talk to my boss who could abort this, a sign it might be my turn, so I tried ringing Serayah to say goodbye, I may be gone for a few months, but again it cut off. Yes I’m probably going to get busted, but maybe not, only one way to find out and that’s go.

The flight was via Bangkok where I changed planes. It wasn’t the most relaxing trip I’d been on but nothing really obvious, but on arrival in Dhaka it didn’t take long for the customs guy to focus on my waist and come straight over and pat me down and excitedly lead me away. It was a great catch for him, the whole office really, as they would all get a little bonus. In cases like this the declared weight of gold you signed for in the statement would be greatly reduced, so the offence would be less, leaving the balance for the boss of the office to divvy up as he saw fit.

But I wasn’t having any of that, I had 14 kg and that’s what I’m signing for, I’m not going to be party to facilitating their corruption. After that I was taken away and driven to a nearby police lockup which was pretty grim. It was the first cell to the right in a block of several cells, it’s door opened straight onto the entrance. About 4m x 4m square, earthen floor with a drain hole mid the back wall where my cell mates would pee. There were a few guys in there, it was already late so I sat on the floor and lent against the side wall, mosquitoes were bad but that’s life.

The next night there was a commotion about the same hour I had checked in, I heard an Australian voice out there, hi I said, welcome to the ashram. Steve had come from Hong Kong also carrying gold, he was obviously going to be my companion through this, good on the Joker, he thinks of everything, no I shouldn’t say he as IT’s not a binary gender. Sorry I shouldn’t use the word “think” either as that’s a crude search function of mind, not a procedure the true master of the universe indulges in as IT just Knows.

Steve reminded me recently that within 5 minutes of his arrival we were both sitting together on the floor of this cell laughing. I’d started by saying to him that I presumed he’d come to learn about spiritual things, and yes said Steve, his plan had been after this trip to find an ashram in Thailand. Obviously he didn’t need to go to all that trouble as here we were, this was a much better deal, for free.

We stayed there for a week, every day we were taken off to court to be remanded to jail, but each time nothing happened, back to the lockup, until of course the last day, this time we are taken before a magistrate and led off to another holding pen. There were about 50 other guys there on these court days, they were all dressed in white, some were in chains, others with hinged bars shackled between their ankles, some had straight bars.

Eventually we were all taken out and filed into a prison truck, like a covered in delivery van with narrow slits for windows, and taken off to Dhaka Central Jail. We were led off single file, and the newcomers like Steve and me were lined up to get processed. Steve was 2 behind me as we shuffled slowly towards a table across an open doorway into an office. Seated behind the table was a white dressed clerk, on the table was a huge open book, a ledger with serial numbers down the left side column. I stepped up to the table in turn, and there I saw my prison registration number was to be 2218, I was shocked, the Joker had made its first mistake, it should have been 2220 shouldn’t it.

When I was done there was a Bengali guy behind me, then Steve, who wound up with my number. I felt disappointed. I’d been dropped in favour of this red headed newcomer, but of course that response was my mind demonstrating just why I was in need of this incarceration. We were given some prison clothes, a bowl and spoon, and led out into the jail. What an amazing experience that was, it was medieval, it must have been like this back in Mohamed’s day. There were guys in chains, chain gangs, rocks being crushed by sledge hammer, a team weaving rugs, and as Steve and I walked out through this extraordinary place, I was musing out loud “what happened, a mistake, that should have been me, but no this thing doesn’t make mistakes, so what can this be, what is this 18, what’s that mean, it’s a great number, divisible by 3, by extension with a zero it’s 180, ah, that’s half a 360 degree circle, Wow, thats 180 degrees on the top hemisphere, then 180 on the bottom and we have a wave, that’s it, I’m here to learn about cycles”.

And then I remembered that Rich told me he had paid $360 for that little 222 dinghy, 360, one full circle, the ups and downs of a cycle, what a nice little touch that is. Or we can dismiss that too as a coincidence, but then we miss the point of the story as there may be no such thing as coincidence if everything in the lower worlds is the result of the interplay between a cause and its consequence. Now that may be an esoteric concept, but even down here in this world we have “chaos theory” which suggests “The flap of a butterflies wings in the Amazon may cause a typhoon in Texas”.

I’d obviously been a naughty boy for many years, then there was all manner of hedonistic pursuits which accrue debts, then we have criminal behaviours like smuggling all overlaid on a generally selfish attitude with its constant negative inputs so we can’t complain when a state of bankruptcy is declared and its time to for a reset to try to balance the books. I’d lived through a constant stream of minor to severe balancing acts in my wayward career, but here was something special, a formal government sanctioned accrual which took away liberty, even threatened to take away my life. Well that’s going too far, it’s true the government had the power to kill off my body but that’s all, they had no power over my life.

But as they say in politics, “never waste a good crisis”, which is how this was to play out, as I was about to be sentenced to death as punishment for being caught flaunting some petty rules, which was obviously meant to be a painful karmic balancing act, but it wasn’t, instead we turned our new home into an exotic oriental ashram with so much to do and so much to contemplate there was rarely a bored moment, and it became a fantastic opportunity for growth and an awesome adventure.

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