Enduring a typhoon even in a full-powered steamship can be life-changing, but in my case I regret to admit, it inspired one of the more boastful claims I have made about seasickness these last forty years and more.

First I would explain how the bows of ss Canberra were light because the arrangement of the engines was aft to maximise passenger space. As she was the first large liner with this design, the naval architects had been forced to remove some weighty features from the after end including a circular marble staircase. When I had sufficiently impressed my audience with the extent of my arcane knowledge I would, in leisurely fashion, describe the typhoon which raged forty years back in the Cook Strait and northern Tasman sea. The deck dept had made an unsuccessful attempt to steer round the monster, but in had veered unpredictably, like a Texan steer, as is the way with typhoons.

Showing a surprising (and quite unjustified) satisfaction with my story-telling capacity, I would go on to say that after working for eighteen hours without rest I had taken a brief nap in my bunk which happened to be the uppermost in a tier of two. Being at the time a CPO, as ‘otherr ranks’, or as we say more properly within the naval context, as a ‘rating’, I was berthed in the forepeak, where the light bows would rear and shudder very much like the maddened cow I mentioned. Waking suddenly and consulting my watch, I found I was in danger of being late ‘turning to’, as we say. Mistiming my leap from the bunk, my feet met the deck more quickly than I expected. The sudden strain on my legs from the rising ship was that of a much heavier man than I then was (though perhaps not than I am now). On landing i tensed up and immediately felt seasick for a moment, the only moment, as I bragged, that such a thing had ever happened to me. That is, until now.

This new occasion was not far off Port Klang. For the whole of the previous day I had lain in bed with a tummy bug or infection of the bowels serious enough for the doctor to prescribe anti-biotics. At one time I had felt so weak and feverish that my contnuation of the programme was briefly in doubt. Now I was recovering, though I was still almost as weak as a kitten. We now experienced the most confused and lumpy sea that I can remember, and Kay Sira’s motion was not happy. For some time I sat in the slatted seat in the open at the stern, trying to look at the horizon, and twice I tasted the horrible iron bile rising almost into my mouth, but not quite. I began to suffer and to consider the action of some guests I have heard of at Chinese feasts who eat their fill severel times over by deliberate digital voiding between sessions.

But no, it passed and my stomach settled. and here I am, a self-portrait in the cabin of an old pilot boat called Eveline, who is in our regatta.

I am fully recovered, I did not leave the ship. My navigation has been commended by the instructor who asked me to go up to the dais at the prize-giving presentations to collect the second prize of the day.

I am immensely proud. I have seen and suffered the sea. I have employed the tools of this trade – portland plotter and dividers, to mark the charts with the compass bearings of our planned course, and for many days those plans have been followed in and out of ports and anchorages until I have brought the ship nigh on 400 miles even unto the present day!

There is so much to say, but alas I cannot stay up longer to describe it now. I just hope I shall not forget what I have done and learned so that I can report it as soon as I have leisure in which to do it.

Meanwhile, like Gilbert & Sullivan’s Ruler of the Queen’s Navy, I can still claim never to have been sick at sea.

Not ever?

No, not ever.

Not never?

Well hardly ever….