Carol’s Column

Eat your heart out Jackie O

HE WANTS to kill me. He's trying to get rid of me. These and even darker thoughts crossed my mind.

The time — midnight. The place — a lurching, rocking, bouncing yacht somewhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean.

I clutched the railing and hung over the edge, casting forth the contents of my innards into the deep black sea.

How I longed for the peace and calm of South Beach, Durban, with those thousands of merry holiday makers lying sardine-like and prone.

Why, even Muizenberg would do. Better to die smothered on land than drowned at sea.

From the aft cabin came the sonorous sounds of my spouse fast asleep, oblivious of my agony. Typical.

"Ho, ho," he'd grunted over the cornflakes a few months ago. "How do you fancy a holiday in the Seychelles?"

Coconut palms, white beaches, turquoise seas — who wouldn't fancy a holiday in the Seychelles?

"I think we'll charter a yacht and do a little bit of island hopping."

Paradise.

So we sold Aunt Ethel's silver tea set, cashed in our life insurances, bought striped T-shirts, white Bermudas and special-serrated-for-sailing crepe-soled takkies and zapped off to the "islands dropped like pearls in the vast Indian ocean", so said the tourist pamphlet.

"We're doing a little jet-setting", I'd told the ladies of the gardening circle as we investigated cut worm in Lily Finkelstein's calendulas.

"We're doing the Seychelles in a little 50m yacht — nothing too grand you know."

They'd oohed and aahed accordingly.

"We thought we'd do a little island hopping you know. See a bit of here and there. Mahe, Praslin, La Digue." The names rattled off my tongue easily.

So they should, it had taken me over an hour to learn them off by heart.

The beginning of the holiday was promising.

We'd jetted away from Jan Smuts in a flurry of excitement.

And it was just unfortunate that my husband misbooked the tickets and landed up next to a silicone-job blonde while I found myself sandwiched between a mother of twins plus her twin on the one side and a verbose Japanese gentleman on the other.

Who needs to relax on a five-hour flight anyway?

It didn't really matter that my suitcase went on to Hong Kong and I landed up with an identical looking job that belonged to a Mr Foo Ying Ling.

Who needs clothes when you're on a boat?

Furthermore, somewhere in Hong Kong, Mr Ying Ling is walking around in my new striped T-shirt and white Bermuda shorts.

Indeed, the brief glimpse I'd caught of the islands had been sensational, all and more than the ecstatic brochures promised.

But then again, it's not easy to judge from an upside-down position while hanging overboard.

Because Aunt Ethel's tea set had seen better days and went for half the asking price, we got half a boat.

What they euphemistically call a "bare boat" charter.

My husband explained it to me: "Look, we get the boat and the crew and we have to clean the boat and cook for the skipper and the crew."

We have to cook?

Beneath my feet the floor slid from slide to slide. I was knocked out by a bottle of garlic spice, to recover and be felled once more by a Tabasco sauce in full flight.

The only balanced thing in that galley — the size of half a broom cupboard — was the stove. Gimballed, they said, which meant it was suspended on rings, and stayed stable while the rest of the boat rocked.

Ah, if only I could have been gimballed too.

All cruising yachts — unless they belong to the late Onassis or the Queen, are built for midgets.

Nobody told me I'd spend a week doubled-up tripping through one-metre-high hatches.

Neither did they mention pitching and rolling.

"Isn't this great?" murmured my husband as he shot past me feet first on a downward pitch to hit the stern.

"Yes, eat your heart out Jackie O," I answered as I, in turn, was thrown into the cockpit.

My right arm developed cramp from pumping toilets, water, bilges, showers and all else that needs to be pumped on a yacht.

My husband, quite the old salt, fished for our food which meant we ate canned baked beans every night.

This week we had a gardening club meeting. The girls were fascinated.

"Your holiday must have been super, you look ravishing," they said while we crowded round Hilda Bloggs' frost-bitten euphorbia.

"And you've lost so much weight."

They should only know.

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