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The sleek, timber sloop glided lazily across the calm ocean. There was barely enough strength in the westerly zephyr to fill her blood-red sails. It was a couple of hours after sunrise on Sunday, September 24, 2023, East Australian Time. To an albatross soaring above, Mecca looked like she was floating on an ocean of liquid fire.
Lloyd manned the tiller while Sophia and Alex sat next to him. Alex was playing with his iPod trying to select some appropriate music for the morning. Everyone on board wore their safety harnesses, which were clipped to the guardrail.
‘Is everyone ready for a coffee?’ asked Eva from within the cabin.
‘Yes, please,’ they all replied in unison.
‘If I must be honest, Lloyd,’ said Sophia in a whiny voice, ‘I am beginning to get quite bored sitting out here going around in silly circles.’
‘How could we forget your magazines?’ said Alex.
‘One more day, maybe two, then we’ll sail back home,’ said Lloyd reassuringly.
‘It’s starting to look like a huge anticlimax, isn’t it, Lloydie?’ said Eva.
‘I welcome the anticlimax, darling.’
The digital clock next to the hatch flipped from 7.22am to 7.23am. Eva was bringing the coffees above decks on a tray when suddenly, faster than suddenly, in a heartbeat, the tray and the four mugs of coffee disappeared into thin air and the ocean changed from a glassy lake into a wild tempest. The sky changed from a clear blue to a dark, squally grey.
The wind changed from a balmy, five-knot westerly to a fifty-knot, freezing-cold, southeasterly gale. In an instant they were in the midst of lashing rain and sea spray, and huge, white-capping swells. The icy gale overpowered the sails and slammed Mecca into a powerful knockdown. She heeled near to 90 degrees until the mast touched the ocean surface. Eva was violently pitched overboard. The other three managed to hang onto the guardrail. The boat naturally headed into the wind and the weight of the keel righted her.
Covered in spray, and deafened by the roar of the wind, Lloyd screamed out his instructions.
‘Grab the tiller, Alex, and keep her pointed into the wind.’
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Alex grabbed the tiller with both hands as Lloyd scrambled to the port side of the cockpit. He hung his body over the rail and grabbed Eva’s lifeline. He could see that she was not hurt. He began hauling her in when a huge wave hit him and washed him to the back of the cockpit. He ended up on top of Alex and Sophia tangled up amongst some ropes. He maintained his hold of Eva’s lifeline however. He pulled himself up to his feet and began hauling on her lifeline again. Eva was fit and an excellent swimmer, but it was obvious to Lloyd that she was having difficulty in the turbulent water. After a few strong pulls on the line, he finally managed to pull her to the side of the boat. She grabbed the gunnel and held on for dear life. Lloyd tried to pull her up further, but didn’t have enough strength. He called out to Alex,
‘Give Sophia the tiller and come give me a hand with Eva!’
Alex placed Sophia’s hands on the tiller and said,
‘Just keep it straight into the wind, darling.’
Sophia looked at him with a look of total horror in her eyes and grabbed the tiller, something she had never done before in her life.
Alex clambered up to Lloyd. Together they leaned over the rail, grabbed the back of Eva’s safety harness, and with a big heave, pulled her out of the water.
As soon as Eva was back in the boat, she quickly recovered and assessed the situation. She had plenty of rough-weather experience with Lloyd and she could see that Sophia was losing control of the tiller and was becoming visibly panicked. She yelled out,
‘You boys pull down the sails and I’ll take over the helm and look after Sophia.’
Mecca pitched and rolled violently in the turbulent water, making it extremely difficult and dangerous for the boys to handle the sails. First, they furled the headsail, leaving only a small portion of it exposed to act as a storm jib. They then proceeded to drop and tie-off the mainsail.
When the sails were secured, they scrambled back into the cockpit. Lloyd took the tiller from Eva and turned Mecca downwind. She accelerated down the next giant swell.
The following swell white-capped at the top, picked up the dinghy, which was being towed behind Mecca and was full of supplies, and smashed it into the stern of the boat.
‘We’ll have to let the dinghy go,’ yelled Lloyd. ‘Untie it, Alex.’
Alex did as he was told and set the dinghy, with all of its extra survival supplies, adrift. Lloyd knew that to attempt to keep towing the dinghy would have almost certainly
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assured that it would have smashed itself to pieces against Mecca’s stern and more likely than not caused damage to the boat as well.
As they silently watched the dinghy surf past them down the following swell, Lloyd leaned against the tiller in a vain attempt to try to stop Mecca from broaching. He asked Eva, who was hanging on for dear life next to him,
‘Eva, darling, what do you think about throwing out the sea anchor?’
Eva crawled through the hatch and retrieved the sea anchor from below decks. She tied it off to a cleat in the stern and slid it under the pushpit into the water. The rope holding the sea anchor twanged into tension and everyone noticed how the boat instantly slowed and became much more directionally stable. Eva returned to her spot in the cockpit. Everyone was drenched and freezing-cold because they were still wearing their lightweight, warm-weather clothing. Lloyd barked out more instructions.
‘OK, we all have to change into our waterproofs. Eva, you go first and take Sophia with you. Get some dry clothes on, put on your storm gear, put your harnesses back on and then come back out here.’
The girls did as they were told.
‘You’re next, Alex.’
Alex went below and changed into appropriate apparel. When he returned, Lloyd told him to,
‘Keep her headed directly downwind, Alex, while I get changed.’
When he returned, he grabbed the tiller, looked at the compass and assessed,
‘As far as I can make it, we were 20 miles due east of Sydney Heads before this storm started. This gale is coming straight out of the south-east so there is no way that we can make it back to Sydney Harbour. Our best bet is The Hawkesbury. We’ll set the heading to north-west as best we can and try to get in around Barrenjoey into some sheltered water.’
Every giant swell picked up Mecca’s stern and accelerated her down its face like a surfboat. The sea anchor managed to keep her under ten knots and Lloyd’s years of experience kept the bow pointed downwind. At every opportunity he attempted to sail in as westerly a direction as conditions would allow. He realised that he needed to get sight of land as soon as possible so that he could find Barrenjoey Headland and the entrance to the sheltered waters of Pittwater and The Hawkesbury River.
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The driving rain and sea spray created a grey fog, reducing visibility to less than one mile, and then only when they were at the tops of the swells. When they were down in the troughs, they could see nothing.
Lloyd constantly monitored his direction, speed and time, attempting to dead reckon their position. He did this because his GPS was out. He wasn’t sure whether it was his receiver that was down or whether it was the whole system. Either way, he now had to rely on his own instincts and an abundance of local knowledge. He calculated that Barrenjoey would have been about twenty-five miles to the north-west of them when the weather changed. He knew that it was imperative that they got into Pittwater because if they got blown past it, they would have to sail all the way up the coast to Port Stephens for safe shelter. Lloyd decided that that was too far and too risky because he harboured a concern that the storm was still on the build. So, he continued to head Mecca as close to due west as he could.
After about two hours of rough sailing, Alex pointed across the bow and screamed out,
‘Look, Lloyd, there’s a light up ahead!’ They focussed onto a faint light that was intermittently emerging out of the murk. ‘What is that? Is that land?’
‘I don’t think it can be land yet, Alex. We should still be about five miles out. That light is only about a mile ahead. It must be a vessel of some kind.’
‘Make sure we don’t hit it, sweetheart,’ cautioned Eva.
They headed directly for the light. On a normally clear day they would have already had plain sight of the coastline. All they could see in the raging storm, however, was a wall of mist and pelting spray, and that was only when they were on top of a wave.
Lloyd was desperate to not sail past Barrenjoey Headland. All their immediate fortunes depended on them finding and sailing into the shelter of Pittwater. He continued to head as far to the west as conditions would allow. Occasionally a huge wave slammed into the port side of the sloop, causing Lloyd to have to steer more downwind. He knew that each time he did that, it increased their chances of being blown past the entrance of Pittwater.
‘That light’s not getting any closer, Lloyd.’
‘It is strange, isn’t it? It’s as if it’s heading in the same direction as we are.’
‘They are probably trying to get into Pittwater just like us.’
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‘That’s it, Alex. I bet that’s it. We should see the coast pretty soon and then we’ll be able to fix our position.’
Within minutes, the east coast of Australia materialised out of the haze.
‘There it is,’ exclaimed Lloyd, ‘and there is Barrenjoey right on cue. We are just going to sneak it in.’
As the four of them huddled in the cockpit, freezing cold and drenched by the pelting spray, they all witnessed an impossible sight. The light they had been following for the previous two hours, which they thought was another vessel, suddenly took off vertically and disappeared into the clouds.
‘Holy cow, Lloyd, did you see that?’
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Everything calmed as they sailed behind the lee of Barrenjoey Headland into Pittwater. The sky was still dark grey and it was still pelting rain, but at least the 28-foot timber sloop, Mecca, was out of the gale and ferocious sea. Lloyd pulled in the sea anchor, fully furled the jib and fired up the diesel. The first thing that caught everyone’s attention was the condition of the lighthouse on top of Barrenjoey Head.
‘Jesus, Lloyd, it looks like somebody dropped a bomb on it, and it’s all overgrown with vegetation.’
The top two thirds of the lighthouse were missing and only the tops of the ruins of the lower third could be seen poking out of dense undergrowth. Lloyd grabbed his binoculars and had a closer look.
‘This is really strange. The walls of that thing must have been a foot thick. I wonder what happened to it? And how could all that growth happen in just a few days?’
‘I’m still trying to understand the light,’ said Sophia.
‘Yes, that’s two weird things,’ said Alex.
‘Actually, you are forgetting the instant storm,’ added Eva. ‘That was weirder than weird.’
‘So that’s three weird things,’ said Alex.
‘Three and counting,’ added Lloyd. ‘You know, if I must be honest, I believe that I’m beginning to detect a touch of euphoria.’ Everyone looked at Lloyd, surprised. ‘What?
Don’t you think it’s euphoric finding shelter out of a bastard storm like that?’
‘Hello, hello,’ said Alex in jest, ‘Lloyd is losing it. Did we bring a straitjacket?’
That lightened up the mood somewhat.
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‘Why don’t we go and have lunch at The Newport Arms?’ suggested Sophia. ‘I’m absolutely famished.’
‘I wouldn’t mind a beer,’ said Alex.
‘I love Sunday afternoons at the Arms,’ added Lloyd.
‘Is anyone paying any attention?’ asked Eva. Everyone looked at her. ‘Look at the far shore … there are no houses. Where have all the houses gone?’
Eva took the binoculars from Lloyd and looked across the bay past Lion Island towards Umina Beach. She looked at Pearl Beach and Patonga and observed,
‘There is no sign of civilisation anywhere.’
‘Some of it is National Park,’ said Lloyd, ‘but I take your point. Where have all the houses gone? … And the jetties and wharves … and boats? … There is nothing there.’
As they rounded the western tip of Barrenjoey, they became exposed to the gale again, however the water was calm because they were in the lee of the low sand spit that connected Barrenjoey to the mainland.
‘Let’s motor around and see if the pub is there,’ suggested Lloyd.
‘Where is the Boat House and the golf course? Everything is overgrown and wild,’
exclaimed Eva. The look on her face expressed a mixture of shock and surprise. ‘What is happening, Lloydie?’
As they motored further south, deeper into Pittwater, they again came into water more sheltered from the wind.
‘Look over at Coaster’s Retreat,’ Lloyd pointed across the bay, ‘it’s usually packed with moored boats. There’s not one boat there. There’s not one boat anywhere.’
‘I’m starting to get frightened, Alex,’ said Sophia.
‘You can’t get frightened, darling, because you’re supposed to keep me from getting frightened.’
Mecca motored slowly up Pittwater towards Church Point. They could feel the expressionless numbness in their faces as they struggled to come to terms with the reality being served up to them. The tricky part was connecting the dots between that day and the day before. Their brains struggled with the problem and forgot about their facial expressions. Sophia snapped out of it first.
‘Close your mouth, Alex.’
‘The Arms is gone,’ observed Lloyd.
‘Everything is gone, darling, except us.’
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They motored around Scotland Island, past Church Point, and began to head back out of the bay towards Lion Island.
‘It looks like before the white man came,’ said Sophia.
‘Yes,’ Eva agreed, ‘like we have been transported hundreds of years into the past.’
‘Maybe we’ll bump into Captain Cook tomorrow,’ said Alex in a funny voice.
‘Right now, nothing would surprise me,’ Lloyd replied. He looked around the bay, took note of the conditions and suggested, ‘The wind is behind us now, so why don’t we save some diesel.’
He shut down the motor and asked Alex to partially unfurl the headsail. There was always a small surge of inner pleasure when the noise of the motor ceased and the silence of the sailing began. They all felt it and delighted in it.
‘We must start thinking about where we’ll spend the night.’
‘Let’s spend it in Bobbin Head, sweetheart,’ suggested Eva.
‘Good idea, let’s go there.’
3
Everything that could be connected with the existence of man was gone from Bobbin Head. They anchored where the marina used to be, safely sheltered out of the wind. As night descended, they huddled together in the cockpit sipping hot minestrone soup and feeling frightened by the complete darkness and silence that enveloped them.
‘I never thought I’d miss the streetlights so much,’ Eva sighed.
‘I miss the radio. All the radio stations are dead,’ said Sophia.
‘At least we still have the iPod,’ said Alex.
The only light burning was a small candle they placed near the hatch. Its tiny flickering flame lit their faces just enough to be seen. The conversation stalled as they enjoyed their soups with some bread. Eventually Sophia broke the silence by suggesting,
‘I doubt that we’ll ever run into Captain Cook.’
‘Really? Why is that, my precious?’
‘Because, Alex, I doubt that there was a lighthouse on top of Barrenjoey two hundred years ago.’
Lloyd laughed,
‘You never fail to outsmart us all, Sophia. Sophia is right, of course, we must be sometime in the future. Enough time must have elapsed to wreck the lighthouse and then
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have it overgrown with vegetation. That lighthouse is our only link to our time. Without it we could be anywhere.’
‘You mean anytime, Lloyd.’
‘Of course, that is what I mean. So, it’s a good bet that, all of a sudden, we’re in the future, but the big question is, how far in the future?’
‘I doubt that it matters,’ said Sophia. ‘The time in history seems irrelevant to me.
What seems most relevant is the state of everything. Whether it is ten years or a thousand years in the future doesn’t matter … it seems to me.’ She looked at the other three slightly embarrassed about being so forthcoming with her opinion.
‘I think Sophia is right,’ affirmed Lloyd. ‘We seem to have found ourselves in a time where time is not relevant. It’s just whenever, with the only link to 2023 being that lighthouse in ruins.’
‘I wonder if the pyramids are still there?’ asked Alex.
‘More than likely,’ responded Eva. ‘It would take a lot to get rid of them.’
‘You know, I just realised something.’ Everyone looked at Lloyd. ‘We haven’t seen any people … anywhere.’
‘Do you think they’re all dead?’
‘Well, Alex, I don’t know, but something major has happened. Maybe it was a tidal wave. It must have been over 500 feet high to take out the lighthouse like that.’
‘I’m becoming worried about Leon and Russel, and their families,’ said Eva.
‘I am as well, darling, although Warren is a very long way from the ocean and on the other side of the Blue Mountains.’
Lloyd and Eva were talking about their twin sons and their families who lived on the family cotton farm out in western New South Wales. Sophia changed the flow of the conversation.
‘I think that if a time shift happened, it may have happened when the weather changed from calm and sunny to stormy. It seemed to happen in an instant. Weather doesn’t change like that, does it, Lloyd?’
‘It definitely doesn’t, Sophia, and I think you might be right about some type of time shift, although it leaves me wondering whose technology could do something like that.
And how could they do it to us remotely?’
Suddenly Alex remembered,
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‘My shower, remember all those years ago, how I couldn’t account for an hour? I’m sure I told you. I walked into my shower at 10.00 in the morning; I had a five-minute shower and walked out of the shower at 11.05. All the clocks suggested that I’d been in the shower for over an hour, when in fact I was sure it was only five minutes.’
‘I remember the day you came over and told us about it,’ said Eva. ‘That was what gave you the idea that junk DNA might have something to do with the organism’s existence in time and set you off on your research.’
‘Actually, it happened on the day I first met Sophia at the Cosmo, with mother.’
‘So, we have a precedent,’ said Lloyd. ‘It would seem that you are the time shifter, Alex.’
‘So how did the rest of you get time shifted if I am the time shifter?’
‘Hmm, that gives us something to ponder over.’
‘While you are pondering, Lloyd, perhaps Sophia might hazard a guess,’ suggested Eva. Everyone smiled and looked at Sophia who already had an idea.
‘Well, if you think about it, we were all connected to each other via the boat, via our safety harnesses.’
‘Interesting, very interesting,’ mumbled Lloyd, ‘but who’s to know? You know something, I feel like a character in a bloody science-fiction novel.’
‘Yes,’ Alex agreed, ‘written by an escapee from the funny farm.’
‘I think you are being too harsh on the author,’ said Eva. ‘I mean, how do you assume Isaac Newton would have reacted to someone using a mobile phone in his presence? The only thing separating his reality from insanity would have been time, about three hundred odd years of it. And that is how it is with us as related to this time shift technology. We are Newton and somebody has handed us a mobile phone and said, it’s for you. Except instead of a phone they’ve handed us time travel.’
Alex scanned the darkness and then looked up.
‘Ooh look, stars. There’s a break in the clouds.’
Everyone looked skyward. The stars shone with a brightness they could barely believe. Other than their own, faint, flickering reflections in the candlelight, the stars were the only other visible light in an otherwise pitch-black, silent, infinite universe.
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They awoke at the first light of the pre-dawn. Mecca was anchored at the farthest extremity of Cowan Creek, a tributary of the Hawkesbury River. She was surrounded by
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high, heavily-wooded hills. Lloyd stuck his head out through the hatch and scanned their surroundings. All he could see was thick fog. He took note that the storm had completely abated. All was absolutely silent, when suddenly, in the distance, he heard the unmistakable, whip-cracking sound of the Eastern Whipbird (Psophodes olivaceus). Even though he wasn’t a birder, he did once take time to find out what made the strange sound.
He also learnt that it might have been a lyrebird, which could imitate a whipbird or just about any other animal’s call.
‘Life,’ he thought to himself.
Alex crawled out through the hatch and joined Lloyd in the cockpit.
‘Wow, what a pea-souper,’ he mumbled. ‘You can barely make out the bow.’
‘Listen to the birdlife, Alex.’
The world beyond the fog began to wake into a symphony of birdsong. As they sat, almost in a trance, listening to the sounds of life invisible, they were startled by a fish jumping out of the water right next to the boat.
‘Jesus, did you see that fish jump out of the water, Lloyd? It scared the crap out of me.’
‘More life,’ Lloyd commented. ‘This is good.’
After a few minutes, Alex rose to his feet and walked up to the bow where he proceeded to relieve himself over the side. Suddenly he called out,
‘Lloyd, hey Lloyd …’
‘Yes, Alex, what is it? Have you killed a fish?’
‘No, Lloyd, come up here and take a look at this.’
Lloyd clambered up to the bow and had a look. Alex showed him a rope that was tied to the pulpit. As they followed the line out into the fog, they were both shocked by what they saw. Tied to the other end of the rope, immersed in the mist, looking like a ghost floating on the calm water, was the dinghy. Alex was about to begin pulling on the rope when Lloyd stopped him.
‘Hold it, Alex. Take a note of the way this rope is tied to the pulpit.’
Alex had no knowledge of knots, so Lloyd explained it to him.
‘This is a buntline hitch. Whoever tied this knot knows how to tie knots. This is no accident. OK, let’s pull the dinghy in now.’
They pulled the dinghy up to the bow, untied it and dragged it around to the stern where they tied it off to a cleat. They sat back in the cockpit and looked at each other with
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complete astonishment. Eva and Sophia poked their heads through the hatch and joined them.
‘Good morning, everyone,’ said Eva.
‘Good morning,’ everyone replied.
‘Boy, it’s foggy. You can’t see past your nose,’ observed Sophia.
‘But at least the storm has subsided,’ Lloyd answered.
‘We found the dinghy,’ Alex blurted out.
‘Our dinghy?’
‘That we lost in the storm?’
‘That’s right, girls. There it is, completely intact.’
Alex pointed at the dinghy tied up to the stern. Lloyd spoke with a haunting tone in his voice.
‘We are not alone, guys. Somebody retrieved that dinghy twenty miles out to sea and towed it here and tied it up to the bow of the boat last night, with a ruddy buntline hitch.’
They all looked at the dinghy. It still had the ten-horsepower Yamaha attached to the stern and was also still covered by the custom-made, drum-tight tarpaulin, which kept the contents in and the water out.
‘It must have bobbed around on the surface of the ocean like a cork,’ said Lloyd.
‘This must be good news,’ said Sophia.
‘It’s great news, Sophia. I packed all the camping gear in the dinghy. There are three tents, airbeds, butane bottles, cookers, utensils, spare fuel, knives, spear guns, fishing rods, nets, and extra food. Getting the dinghy back substantially improves our lifestyle and chances of survival.’
‘Oh my God, Lloyd, you used the S word. I was hoping that no one would ever use that word. Surely we are better than that.’
‘You are right, Eva, I’m sorry. We will thrive, that’s what we’ll do.’
‘Yes,’ affirmed Alex, ‘especially if invisible people, who are great at tying knots, keep bringing us stuff every night.’
Everyone laughed nervously.
‘I’m going to make scrambled eggs,’ said Sophia. ‘Who is for scrambled eggs and coffee?’
Everyone raised their hand.
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They ate their breakfast in silence. Every now and then, one of them looked up and looked around the boat straining to see something through the fog.
‘There’s got to be somebody out there,’ said Lloyd in a perplexed voice. ‘Somebody retrieved our dinghy for us … and buntline hitches don’t tie themselves.’
…….
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