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on to the floor and stepping naked into the bathroom. I noticed he kept the door open, rather than
struggling to shut it. A few minutes later, he walked right past me in just a towel to his cabin at the back of the boat. Easy.
I’ll have to be less of a prude
, I thought.
    When he came out he offered me a drink, ‘A proper one this time,’ and I accepted a beer. He finally sat down and we both relaxed. Steve said he wanted to set sail immediately for
Talang Talang, a turtle sanctuary island 50 or so miles away, so that I could wake up to my first morning in a really beautiful place. I got a crash course in sorting out the anchor chain to stop
it from tangling as it came up and then we were off. It was midnight and the hulk of the Gunung Santubong mountain was black against the night sky as we motored out of the river into a flat, calm
sea.
    After a while, and another beer, the breeze came up enough for us to sail, so we did. We talked, laughed and drank our way through the night, the awkwardness between us diminishing as the hours
– and the alcohol – passed. Quickly it felt like we were great mates, with a shared sense of humour. We retold each other the stories of our lives that we’d already covered on
email. I learned that Steve was a very sensitive man who had had a clear plan about wanting to live on a yacht and travel. I got the impression that when, in England, he met the girlfriend
he’d later lived on the boat with, he’d found out early on whether she would be interested in a life aboard so that he could have a partner with him afloat. And he wanted that again,
very badly, I realised, as I listened to his tales of disastrous internet dates since. His choosing to sit close to me might also have given me a bit of a clue.
    Now is the time to make it clear you’re not interested in him
, I told myself.
Tell him you like someone else. Give him the old ‘it’s not you, it’s me’
line. Anything. Just so everyone knows where they stand.
It would have been the smart thing to do. But, ever the ostrich, I merely shifted my body a few centimetres further away, tried to give
out ‘not interested’ signals and said absolutely nothing.
    At some point, probably not long before dawn, I fell asleep in the cockpit and Steve fetched a blanket to cover me. When I woke, about 7am, we were approaching a tropical island: a steep-sided
peak covered in dense rainforest, a few palm trees further down leaning crazily sideways, two wooden houses on stilts and a raised golden sand beach and spit covered with what must have been turtle
tracks. I smiled to myself – this was more like it.

2
We will have a fishy, on our little dishy
    T his was it – my adventure, my new beginning, my chance to change my life and take it in any direction I wanted to. It was really happening.
Sitting by myself on the deck, I felt one of those odd moments of pure happiness that had been all too lacking in my life recently, a swelling inside my chest that felt as if it could easily expand
beyond the confines of my ribs. I didn’t know this country, this boat or man but I did know that it felt natural just being there.
    So far there was sun, there was a gorgeous yacht, a golden sunrise, tropical settings – and now there was yellow sea. That’s right, yellow. Strictly speaking, if this new life of
mine was going to live up to expectations, it should have been a beautiful blue sea. But it was yellow. Not in as disgusting a way that snow can be yellow, I’ll grant you, but yellow all the
same.
    Steve and I had left the island with the turtle tracks early in the afternoon on a three-day passage to the town of Miri, where we would pick up our other crew for the approaching regatta. With
no wind, we had motored the whole way, offshore and mainly out of sight of land, without stopping, past oil rigs and into these vast patches of thick yellow water. At one spot the change in colour
was so obvious it formed a straight line on the