daybreak is early enough

"FuckFuckFuck..... FUCK....... FARRRRRRKKKK!!!!!!! FUCKING FUCKING FUCK WHAT A FUCKING CUNT OF A FUCKING IDEA"

It was the desperation and disbelief, more than the frustration in his voice which made me think that our current predicament was unexpected.

I had first stepped on deck not more than 15 minutes prior and met the bloke at the wheel less than 10 minutes before that. Up until then I had been sitting on the wharf in my car at 4am every day for the best part of a month, waiting for this chance. A sign on the front bumper read "qualified deckie ready to go". We had moved to town after the season started and now all I could do was wait for someone to sleep in, fuck up, crack the shits or turn up pissed straight from the nighty. The word was there were no second chances in this game, no written warnings, you were there when the boat sailed or it left without you and I was the first waiting in line. By the time a ute finally pulled up and a voice out of the darkness  drawled " you right to go?" there were another four blokes sitting behind me.

In less than half an hour my relief at finally getting on deck was being tempered by the skipper's raging diatribe against the sea. We sat in a narrow channel with reef all around flaring an effervescent white in the darkness. Faintly illuminated by the spotlight, great foaming walls roared lumpenly past, port and starboard, before reforming bruised and swollen over our immediate past path. The channel ahead was indistinct and looking like it would close out any moment. The only gauge I had of our immediate danger was the brief time I'd spent on a jet boat, which worked the reef hard up in big surf. I'd rationalized then that your fear does not always correlate with the real danger at hand, so the the best policy is to stay cool and take your cues from those around you and then at least you won't look stupid if nothing happens. So here I was, peering out into the night thru a small humming clearview with a complete stranger, salt and spray obscuring the full gravitas of the situation. The only thing I knew for sure was that the surf was much bigger than he had anticipated and that he had been here before and was not very happy about it. Sometimes ignorance is a blessing.

" OHH FUCK! JESUS, FUCKEN FUCK HANG ON"

Suddenly we were racing at full throttle, headlong at a feathering breaker. We crashed wildly through the lip, and were momentarily weightless, engine shuddering and roaring as the prop cavitated before we pitched into the blackness off the back of the wave with a bone jarring thud. It felt like we would fall for ever. The third in the set was the biggest by far but we were almost clear by then and it closed the channel behind us completely.

Once we hit the deep water he backed off the throttle and told me how last season, his first as skipper, he had tried to take the same passage. Straight off the Point Moore lighthouse and just outside the marina, the south passage cuts out 20 minutes of steaming time if you are heading Greenough way. It's a complicated and dangerous zigzag through the reef, even in daylight and is often more of an idea than a reality; really little more than a way to get out to the back of the break on a surfboard, or windsurfer, once the southerly kicked in. But if you want to get to your pots at first light it's passage earned you a little more time in bed.

Last time he only made it over the first wave before the second broke square on the wheelhouse. It blew out all the glass and tore the bulkhead clean off the cabin, taking the sounder, radio and safety gear with it. The engine stalled and the water which had filled the boat to the gunnels poured back down into the forward hold making it sit nose down in a breaking sea. To complicate things my predecessor on deck had leapt up off the bench seat when told to hang on and braced himself on the handrail, facing the oncoming waves. When the window shattered the glass shards cut him badly, severing arteries in one of his hands. Somehow the boat started again and they scraped over two more waves before limping, bleeding and battered around to the shipping channel and back into the marina.

We didn't take the channel again after that and after a couple of days he got sick of steaming into southerly chop each morning and we took the pots north to the seagrass country.