A sudden wave broke. The boat pitched violently like a leaf. The four of us scrambled in vain to stop the water engulfing us. The oar and a lifejacket went overboard. The water surged. The engine let out a distressed whine. The boat span round in aimless circles. Figures on the nearby sandbank looked on in horror. Our trip to the island was ending in catastrophe. This isn’t some Rolling Stone-style introduction to a tale of rock star antics gone awry. This is an everyday scene from a recent holiday, when my friends and I nearly sparked a major search-and-rescue incident off the Queensland coast.
When we Blackpool folk holiday abroad, we have a knack of drawing attention to ourselves. If I were to give a reason it is simply because we love life. The world is a great big playground.
It was not a good idea for me to pilot the dinghy in hindsight. I knew as much about boating as I did about Kyrgyzstani import tariffs, which is not a lot. But despite a nerve-jangling afternoon featuring a dodgy outboard motor and a few unexpected waves, the gods conspired to micturate the sweet urine of good fortune down on our day. We bailed all the water out from between the seats while I steered the dinghy back to our houseboat; an oasis of calm floating on the sea a few hundred metres away.
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