RESUME

Nick Lowes

In Flying Fish 1993/2 Nick told the story of The Wedding Presents. I little expected that his next contribution would be the tale of his own search, aboard his Compass Short Time, for a suitable `man of the cloth'.

Sheelagh and I left Sydney much too late in the year for the favourable winds to take us north to Queensland, from where we intended to leave direct for the French island of Wallis to get married.

After some dreadful weather we left a little haven near the southern entrance to the Great Barrier Reef in late May. Having paid the price for doing this in the form of being pooped and a `knockdown' we were forced to return to our little haven after ten days. They say that out of bad there always comes some good, and we discovered that our gas bottle, filled before our first departure, was empty. (It normally lasts about three months). The following forty-six days to Wallis would not have been made easier if we had had to survive on cold food -- tinned naturally!

It was our intention to be married on Wallis -- a truly beautiful island -- but the local padre and even his Bishop, refused to accept our 'bone fides' of being single. This, in hindsight, was not altogether surprising as we found the padre' having a crew cut outside his church -- not exactly what one expects of a `man of the cloth' when he is approached on the question of marriage -- strange man!

Having reconciled ourselves to a prolonged engagement we fully intended to be married on Wallis in the latter stages of our return to Australia and requested confirmation of the status of the prospective bridegroom from his brother-in law -- also a bishop, but in the Church of England. It read:

To Whom It May Concern'

This is to say that to the best of my knowledge Mr Edward Nicholas Lowes has never been married. I say this advisedly as I'm married to his sister and should know!

The reply sent by us to the prospective bridegroom's brother-in-law was as follows:

Very many thanks for your fax dated 30 January to confirm my claim of `bachelor' status since 1940.

I am not sure if you have a contact with your equivalent position in the Catholic church but assuming that you do, a similar fax concerning the position of my fiance, Miss Sheelagh Naomi Hamilton-Fletcher who has been a spinster since 1946, would be greatly appreciated. If you are able to secure a document/fax similar to the one you kindly sent me, then, as I am sure you will understand, this will avoid a wedding ceremony on a French island in the South Pacific which I would have to attend alone!

PS: I trust that both documents/faxes are able to be translated into French without losing face with both our churches!'

After the problems in Wallis we left direct for Hawaii where we nearly met with disaster. (A breakwater near the entrance to the main harbour to this little port was not shown on our British Admiralty chart bought in Sydney last April. It had, as we discovered from the local people, been in existence for some twenty-five years -- so much for charts being corrected when they are sold). Having Hawaii, as we had been advised to buy any food we needed in Honolulu, we indeed discovered that it was possible to do the necessary shopping and purchase vital pieces of equipment for the yacht there. This short trip, some 160 miles, gave us an experience of the weather one can encounter in sailing around these islands. We left Hawaii with almost no wind, a steady barometer and a clear sky. Two hours later -- crossing the 25 mile entrance to the channel separating Hawaii from the next island, Maui -- we had to take down the mainsail and were reduced to sailing, for a few hours, under a pocket-sized jib. After a short time matters returned to normal and we sailed quite comfortably towards Honolulu. Later that night all hell broke loose and we took down the mainsail just as the wind picked up to some 100 knots. The lightning -- not to mention the rain which was enough to cut our faces -- was something we have never experienced before and, because we have no intention of returning to this island, hope not to experience again. The passage, which should have taken some thirty hours, took four days.

On the other hand, even if it took forty-five days to reach Hawaii from Wallis we did have some beautiful weather and easy sailing. We had always assumed the weather was reasonably warm on the Equator but in our case found it quite cool, with short choppy seas -- it was even too cold to have the daily shower with the aid of Palmolive, although the version we purchased here labelled `New! Better Cleaning Action!' is bound to be a myth like so many other things one discovers in life.

We left Kauai -- one of the most northerly and westerly islands in the Hawaiian chain, where where we spent a week -- a truly beautiful island and aptly called the garden island, one glorious day in June and made our way north toward San Diego. The first few days were fine, with warm and sunny weather and good winds allowing us to make an excellent start to the trip. We had provisioned for forty-two days but everybody told us a different length of time for the voyage. We managed to take things fairly gently with Harry our self-steering gear relieving us of tiller duties and even allowing us a good night's sleep. However, the further north we went (we had to go north to avoid the Pacific High before turning east and south to San Diego) the colder it became, although safer because the Pacific High is a dangerous place to be, and we began to pile on the sweaters -- even thermal underwear purchased for colder climes later on in our trip! The skies and seas were grey and the winds variable -- or sometimes none at all necessitating the use of the engine -- our constant companion a bank of fog.

We were then suddenly and without warning hit by storms which lasted for five days. It was impossible to sail, so we just lashed the tiller and under a pocket-sized jib she slowly made her way, amazingly still on course although being badly battered by the high seas. It was a relief when the storms abated and we could continue sailing, trying to make up for lost ground. Harry had packed up (within the first four days of our departure from Kauai) long before the storms hit us. We spent three days trying to repair him he and he still would not work properly, so it was back to the helm for both of us, catching what sleep we could. We then discovered that the engine had come off its mountings, but we managed to secure it as best we could until we reached port -- luckily it was calm weather. We were just worried about any vibration when we used the engine in case it decided to take off through the side of the hull!

We finally reached the coast of America, and late that night stood off until dawn before making our way up the marked channel to San Diego. We had one hairy moment when seaweed wound itself round the prop, but we managed to spin it off by revving the engine -- a nail biting excercise in itself! Once in the channel we slowly made our way to the San Diego Yacht Club where Neva Sullaway (an old crew member of mine on my last voyage across the South Pacific) had kindly secured us a mooring. It was amusing to see the sealions taking up every inch of room on the channel marker buoys -- the buoy with the bell was especially popular! Conveniently, not far from the yacht club, we cleared customs.

Soon after we arrived in San Diego we discovered from local people that because of the hurricane season we could not go on to England as planned, or return to Australia until the end of October. In the end we decided that our best course of action would be to return to Australia, hopefully delivering yachts from England to the West Indies or from other suitable places. The idea of delivering yachts came about through me knowing Peter Haward, the skipper of the 'Golden Hind', the replica of Drake's ship on which I was both engineer and doctor during a six month's delivery trip from Japan to England.

The word `preparation' was quite apt in the case of our marriage. Sheelagh's church has a nine month instruction period -- for which of us we are not quite sure -- and it is a somewhat odd coincidence being the same length of time as another well known family event! Even then we were told that the church was fully booked with successful and aspiring couples. A sympathetic Methodist minister suggested that as he could only marry his own parishioners we could either go to Mexico (a fifteen minute train journey) and have the ceremony conducted there, or better still fly by special package to Las Vegas and even shake the priest's hand through the car window! (Before or after hedging our bets at the gambling tables he did not say!). Disenchanted by these words of advice we finally decided that as we have to have a marriage licence in any event, we might as well have a judge marry us at the County Government offices at US $46.

'We were finally married on board an old two-masted masted sailing ship in true maritime fashion, with my brother David being my best man. A sloping deck had more appeal for us than the somewhat bleak and gloomy atmosphere of a `room' at County Government resembling a dentist's waiting room! This reminds me that we have not visited a dentist since leaving Australia and as it is too expensive an exercise here we intend to visit a dentist (after the blessing of our marriage) in the Marquesas where medicine is free of charge. Neither of us favour the alternative solution of having stainless steel teeth in place of the real things! (As two people decided to do when they went to live in the Galapagos -- no dentist there but an abundance of wild life).

We plan to call at the Marquesas on our return passage to Australia. It should not be a problem, hopefully, to obtain a `blessing' of our marriage there.

(1792 words)