The Pirate Vortex

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

CHAPTER 4: PACKING

The next two days passed in a blur.
Dad and Wendy moved around the house like people possessed. I hardly saw Dad at all. He was continually driving back and forth between the house, dropping stuff off then speeding away to get some more. Soon there was a huge pile in the lounge room.
First he got the food. Sacks and sacks of flour, dried vegetables, tinned goods. When he wasn't driving back and forth he was at the telephone, arranging for barrels of water to be delivered directly to the Que Sera. Still the food kept piling up in our lounge room - lentils, dried meat, sugar, sacks of potatoes. No soft drinks or sweets. I was really looking forward to meal times on this voyage.
Wendy wasn't quite as active, but she was working hard. Up in her room, she was going over old atlases, reading exploration books, and making complicated diagrams on butchers paper. In one corner of her room she'd stacked up a huge pile of reading material for the voyage. She knew what she was packing.
I didn't. I had no idea what to take. I thought of taking a fishing rod, then realised I didn't have one. Que Sera didn't have any electricity, so I couldn't take a TV or a radio.
Since I didn't have a clue what to do, I spent most of the first day watching Dad and Wendy prepare. By the end of the day, Dad had gotten all the food he wanted. So he started bringing in all sorts of survival equipment - ropes, torches, stills, tarpaulins, sheets, all sorts of stuff. This went on well into the night, so I had to get my own tea. Again.
Wendy stayed in her room, working under the bright white glare of the desk lamp. When I went to bed, she was there working. When I got up in the morning, she was still there, working, as if she'd stayed up the whole night at her task. The thought troubled me a bit, I'm not sure why. Things like that weren't supposed to happen.
Dad of course was already gone, bringing in yet more voyage equipment. The pile in the lounge room was starting to spread to the kitchen. We'd have to get a delivery van just to get this stuff to the ship.
I made breakfast, then had a think. Out of that came the thought that I should maybe pack some clothes. So I went upstairs and got out all my clothes. Where were we going? Was it going to be hot, or cold, or both? Rainy? Windy? Eventually I just decided to take everything. I lumped it all into a garbage bag, labelled it with my name, then put it in the lounge room pile.
When this was done, I went out into our too-small back yard. The familiar skyline of the city towered above me. Something warm nudged my ankle - it was Peepers, our black-and-white cat.
Of course! Take Peepers! I instantly realised that both Dad and Wendy had forgotten Peepers, in their haste to get ready.
"Don't you worry," I said to Peepers, "I haven't forgotten you. You're a very lucky cat, you know that? You're going to get to go on an ocean cruise!" Peepers meowed.
When Dad came back from his next supply trip, I asked him to get some cat food. He returned half an hour later with a forty-kilogram sack of cat food. I took Peepers inside and showed her the food. She looked surprised.

Just when I was resigning myself to another night of dry biscuits and cheese, Dad surprised me by announcing, coming into the house with a sack of metal tools, that he now had everything, and that we were leaving tomorrow.
"Tomorrow?!" I said.
"There's no time to waste!" insisted Dad. "Every second is precious!"
I must have looked tired to him, because he calmed down and looked at me with a concerned expression. "Don't worry," he said, "I'll cook dinner."
That cheered me up a bit. I went into the lounge room, and pushed away some of the sacks until I could see the TV. Soon, I heard the sound of frying in the kitchen, and a wonderfully familiar smell wafted in.
"Tea!" announced Dad. I came into the kitchen, followed by Wendy from the stairs a few seconds later. On the table were three plates of grilled fish, lemon wedges, and hot chips.
We sat down and and ate. I was hungrier than I'd been for a long time, so hungry that I finished the meal off in three minutes. Dad gave me seconds. Wendy ate her fish with more decorum. She doesn't mind eating fish, but she won't eat red meat.
Soon we were all finished. But nobody got up to clean up the table or do the dishes, and I realised Dad had something important to say.
But before he could, I blurted out a question that had been bubbling away inside for several days.
"Are we really going to go?" I asked. "Just like that?"
Dad looked satisfied. "We sure are," he said. "I never thought I had it in me."
"But..." I didn't really know what to say. "That's not right."
Dad frowned. "What do you mean, not right? We've earned this, we have. We're going on an adventure. At last! An adventure! Hooray!"
Honestly, my Dad doesn't talk like this. I just don't know what had gotten into him. I still don't.
Dad was now looking at Wendy. "How are you going?" he asked her.
Wendy pushed a piece of paper onto the table. Dad took a look. I was a bit curious so I looked too. It was another map of the world, with a large area of sea marked off with a circle and shaded. The 'unexplored' area. A dotted line led from our city to this circle, and all around it were tiny annotations and directions which I couldn't understand at all.
"It's here," said Wendy. "Somewhere in there we'll find land." She'd been busy for nearly forty-eight hours reading, drawing, calculating. And there was something I remembered about Wendy. She never got answers wrong. Just seeing her total confidence made me feel better. And the circle was in the tropics! More good news.
"Good," said Dad. "And you're ready to go?" Wendy nodded.
Dad was beaming. "Oh, this is going to be great," he said. His enthusiasm was now starting to carry me away. "We'll go walking through desert islands! Throw fishes to dolphins! Search for buried treasure! And come back at the end for fame and fortune!"
"Hooray!" I shouted. Even Wendy smiled. And in these high spirits, we went to bed.

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