Chapter 24: She is Lovely, Yes she’s Sly

Friday started well. Pauline and Ryan arrived independently, and both of them were keen to examine the progress of the mushrooms in the dehydrator, and a little disappointed to find that they weren’t yet brittle. When I eventually persuaded them that mumblefucking about the device’s inefficiency was not going to improve it, they decided to make our trip a diving and fishing expedition.

The wind was Easterly around 15kt, and even though it was predicted to build in the mid afternoon, I thought we could safely go out to the Motuheihei Islands about 15 miles offshore, with the chance to dive for rock lobsters, perhaps pick up a tuna, and have the wind and sea behind us on the way home.

Ryan and I loaded the boat, and Pauline put together some kai, not without a slightly provocative comment about ‘women’s place in the kitchen’. Neither of us bit. She ran the trip again. The rip at the harbour entrance was no problem, with the onshore wind and the flooding tide running together and the waves fairly gentle, though the trip out to the Motuheiheis was slow. We drifted in the lee of the largest island while Ryan and I suited up and prepared our dive gear. Pauline seemed torn between a desire to pay very close attention to the details of what we were doing and her developing lust for killing fish. She settled for one eye on us while she cast and retrieved a softbait, eventually binning a little snapper. Once we had ‘geared up’, we headed out to some offshore rocks just breaking the surface where we were going to dive.

Then it was time for a ‘boat handler’s’ briefing’ for diving. Pauline listened intently as we explained our routine and the importance of keeping the boat positioned so that it was safe and she could also watch ‘downtide’ to pick us up when we surfaced.

“This is an easy dive, because we aren’t going deep and all of us have a reference point for location. We will be sticking to the rocks underwater, and it is not too long past full tide so there won’t be much current. You need to keep the boat just ‘uptide’ of the rocks. The wind shouldn’t give you much problem.”

“How long will you be?”

“Twenty five minutes max. There’s a couple of holes that usually have crays in them, and a tunnel that takes two to get anything out of.”

“How come?”

“One to block the narrow end, and one to go in and do the grabbing – otherwise they just scoot away and out the narrow opening.”

“How do you grab them?”

“Usually, they’re front on. You grab the base of the feelers from underneath. That’s the only way you can handle really big ones ‘cos they’re too big to grab across the back.”

Pauline eased the boat in next to the rocks and put it in neutral while we perched on opposite gunwales and prepared to roll backward into the water. She paid a lot of attention to our gauges showing tank pressures (200 bar), and depth (0m). That was it for me, but Ryan also had a ‘dive computer’ that would show elapsed time, the depth profile of his dive, his ‘no decompression’ limits and lotsa other stuff of no relevance to this tale, at least at this point.

Our dive was cruisy and moderately productive. We surfaced 20m downtide from the rocks to find the boat idling in neutral a few metres away. We handed up our catch bags, shed and tied off our gear, and climbed aboard. Pauline was fascinated by the four crayfish we had caught, and poked them gingerly as they crawled round on the bottom of the cockpit. These days, Jasus edwardsii are called ‘NZ Rock Lobster’ and are exported as a delicacy all round the world, but when ‘Ryan and I started diving, they were ‘crayfish’ or ‘crays’, and as far as we are concerned, they still are. We loaded them back into one of the catch bags, and put them with the snapper on ice. As usual, Pauline had questions.

“Why did you put them in the bag?”

“If they’re loose, they’ll get stuck in to the snapper.”

“Do they try to get you when you grab them?” Ryan showed her a few punctures and tears in the neoprene of the forearms of his well worn wetsuit.

“Big males always try to getcha with their fighting claws when you grab them by the base of the feelers. These are only medium sized, and too small to do any real damage.”

Pauline turned her attention to our gauges. Ryan’s computer showed we had been at a maximum of 14 metres, and the dive had lasted 27 mins. We had each used about half a tank of air. Enough left for another short dive! Another day!

The wind built earlier and more strongly than predicted, but since it was behind us for our return trip, I wasn’t worried.

“We could go further offshore and try for a tuna again, or we could go back and jig for Kingfish in the harbour again. Whaddya reckon?” Ryan looked seaward.

“Lotsa whitecaps! And it’s building and probably going to strengthen further!” Pauline was more definite.

“Let’s go home!” We did.

Pauline had never handled the boat in a substantial following sea. Each successive wave would lift the stern and push it sideways so that we would pick up speed and steering efficiency would drop away sharply so it was easy to lose control. Most people find that an ‘interesting’ experience, and Ryan and I watched as Pauline learned to work the throttle and tiller to surf the front face of successive waves. Even experienced people can find this freaky, but Pauline obviously (and rightly) believed we wouldn’t let her do anything really dangerous.

We got back to the harbour mouth in record time. The rip hadn’t posed a problem in the morning, but now the wind and sea had increased and the tide had changed and was ebbing strongly against them. Now the rip was gnarly, with lots of very steep waves approaching 2m. They were very close together, and almost all the tops were breaking. It wasn’t nice. I didn’t like it at all, and neither did Ryan. We were unhappy at the prospect of being thrown around for five or ten minutes. Pauline was frightened by the chaos and the power of the waves, and the way they leaped up seemingly at random. We watched her carefully. A boat handler should try to avoid unpleasant and frightening conditions, but ultimately needs to be able to manage their fear if the shit hits the fan.

Pauline exceeded our expectations. She was scared, but kept her attention on what she was doing and responding appropriately. She throttled back to less than five knots, and although the boat wasn’t comfortable by any stretch of the imagination, she let it find its own way through the waves. Since we were motoring against an ebbing tide running through the narrow entrance at about four knots, it took quite some time to cover the 300m to reach the calmer water of the harbour.

Pauline was pleased with herself, and proposed we finish the trip with a short session jigging for kingfish around the channel buoys in the outer harbour. We went along, though we had crayfish and exactly what we would do with 10 or 15 kg of kingfish if she got one wasn’t obvious. My smoker was too small for a kingfish, and even though it is absolutely top eating when fresh, kingfish doesn’t freeze well. In the event, the jigging was again unproductive. The rest of the trip was uneventful, and Pauline was keen to get away to another ‘appointment’. She was ‘busy’ all weekend.

Ryan and I promised to freeze some crayfish for her, and sent her off with the snapper. Then we put a large pot of water on to boil. We tailed the two smallest crays and froze the tails raw. The bodies and the two largest crays went into the boiling water for 3 min and were then wrapped in three or four layers of newspaper to finish cooking. Then we had a vape, transferred the two largest crays to my fridge, and made pigs of ourselves with a body each, cracking the shells of the legs and extracting the succulent flesh. I had a Chardonnay. Ryan was driving home and abstemious, but remained curious about Pauline’s ‘appointment’ and ‘busyness’.

“Whaddya reckon?” I couldn’t help.

“No clue. She hurried off the other day. Said it was a ‘secret’, but I’d find out in due course.”

“We’ll have to wait then.” Ryan had a final check of the mushrooms, and a brief mumblefuck about the dehydrator’s inability to produce instant results, took a cooked cray from the fridge, and off he went, with a cryptic comment to the effect that Maungatutu wasn’t the only place with pines.

I rang Leslie in another attempt for a catchup. She was still distant, preoccupied, and unavailable to meet with us for a meal. I finished the call wondering idly whether ‘us’ was me and Pauline, or whether Ryan was now in there, and where our ‘relationship’ was going. This love business was complicated!

Stan rang later that evening, asking if he could borrow my dinghy. He said he knew nothing about boats, but had watched me sending ‘a woman’ off in it a week or so back, and it had been obvious that she was teaching herself to row.