Cruising Kitty

    It was wet season at River Bend Marine, off the New River in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and rain had fallen for days. Not the spirited rain of the sub tropics, with wind and swirling clouds, but a dank grey downpour that felt like it would never end. Trips ashore, to the communal toilet or laundry, meant squelching through an ankle deep quagmire of mud and boating chemicals and it was too damp to glue or paint. Yacht refits slid to a halt and people sat in their hatchways listlessly watching rain drops dapple the limpid water of the marina.

    Boatyard time is precious to cruising sailors on a budget. Yard bills mount on a daily basis, so every waking moment is spent working to reduce the job lists that accrue during the previous years of cruising. The big structural jobs are generally done during daylight and the small, satisfying cosmetic work continues well into the night. Spending time in a boatyard without working on your boat is particularly galling and can quickly scuttle one’s cruising kitty.

    Elkouba was freshly launched; we’d rescued her from among the hulks in the long stay backblocks of the boatyard, with a flurry of sandblasting, grinding, welding, painting and varnishing. We were anxious to finish off her refit and take our new cruising home out to where the waves were, where she belonged and head north for summer in the Arctic.

   But the rain wouldn’t stop - maybe for weeks. Standing on the companionway stairs early one morning, shaking my head ruefully at the grey pall of rainfall, a cup of coffee steaming in my hand and rain thrumming on the canvas dodger over my head, I  noticed a sodden ball of grey fur tightly furled on a pile of rags in the corner.

    River Bend Marine hosted a variety of cruising yachts from all over the world, They chugged up the river, to the heart of suburban Fort Lauderdale, to haul out of the water, re-antifoul and make the myriad repairs or improvements that yachts on the move always require. Some had cats aboard, which mated with local cats and formed a gang of semi feral felines which slunk around the boatyard feeding on handouts, rodents, geckoes and garbage.

    As I gingerly reached towards the kitten which was curled up under our dodger, it opened one big black eye and lifted it’s head slightly and met my eye with an imploring(I thought) stare. The small body shivered uncontrollably as I scooped it into my hands and carried it below. We soon had it slurping warm milk from a saucer on the cabin sole and installed it in a cardboard box where it curled up on an old blanket and went to sleep.   

    Just about the last thing we needed was a cat. After the refit was over we were heading for the Arctic and Europe. To countries where it would be easier to get an atom bomb on an airliner than getting an animal past their border quarantine rules. It was extra hassle, extra food, extra expense, where would it poo? … we just didn’t need it.

    The kitten snuggled deeper into the blanket and it’s flanks heaved with a contented, full belly sigh. It was descended from animals which were hand- fed with delicacies from the fingers of the Pharoahs of Egypt; animals that had been associated with humans for over 9500 years and colonized laps and sofas all over the world. In ancient Egypt, the cat-god Bast was the god of households, daughter of the sun god Ra, and is credited with saving the civilisation from many rodent infestations. The prophet Muhammad had a favourite cat, Muezza, and it’s said he would go out without his cloak rather than disturb the cat sleeping on it.

    But we didn’t have any rodents, our cloaks were PVC wet weather gear and our home was a minimalist ocean cruising yacht on a budget. We needed a cat like we needed a hole in our mainsail.

    And we weren’t alone in our staunch anti feline stance. When the weather had cleared, we hawked our wee kitty round the boatyard, trying to palm it off on other yachts. People politely declined, but their body language said they’d rather dump acid in their bilges. Cats and cruising yachts don’t mix.

    So we ignored the cat…well, almost ignored the cat. We got on with our refit; hammering loudly near where it slept, drilling and grinding. The cat slept through it all then rose at the end of the day; leapt nimbly from the cardboard box and rubbed it’s obsequious little grey head against our ankles and purred until we reluctantly poured some biscuits, or scooped cat food onto a plate.

Well…WE COULDN’T LET IT STARVE COULD WE?

    We door knocked at all the houses that edged onto the boatyard, like Seventh Day Adventists bearing felines, and almost succeeded in palming it off on one old lady resident but she reneged at the last minute. Sarah and I developed a cat riddance sales patter that would soften the staunchest anti-feline stance and could easily have been adapted to sell Greenpeace memberships among the Japanese whaling fleet. But nobody wanted our cat.

    OUR cat?... I think the turning point came when he got a name. The entire boatyard breathed a collective sigh of relief after they’d all, in turn and several times, spurned our attempts to pass it on and they enthusiastically entered into naming the orphan animal. People suggested the standard “Moggy” – and “Tabby”. Someone else put “Stormy” forward, for the prevailing weather when he came aboard, (“Downpour” would have been more appropriate). The German people on the big fibreglass yacht near the marina entrance which boomed out a daily diet of orchestral music, suggested “Jonannes”but we couldn’t quite make the connection between a German classical composer and a scruffy Florida boatyard stray.

    As the waif fleshed out on a regular diet and the little bit of begrudging affection we gave it, the dark grey stripes on his fur stood out from their light grey furry backdrop. One evening, over a few beers after work, I decided he looked like a pin striped Italian dandy and dubbed him Luigi  - a name he wore for the rest of his adventurous life.

     There were a few practical considerations: our yacht, Elkouba, had no refrigeration and we had no intention of wasting time, money and space installing it. The cat would have to, like us, eat fresh food when it was available and dried or canned food when it wasn’t.

    The big problem was at the other end of the feline food chain – what to do with the pussy doodoo. We asked around the other yachts who had cats on board and they all advised using a standard plastic cat litter container, kept above decks when that was practical and emptied over the side on a regular basis.

    So, when Elkouba finally bid farewell to the boatyard of her rebirth and motored out of River Bend Marine, she had a new crewmember sitting smugly on the foredeck and taking in the sights and smells as we negotiated the four lift and swing bridges and through the harbour basin that stood between us and the Atlantic Ocean.

    We stopped at Fernandina Beach, in North Florida to finish off the refit and moored at a boatyard up a muddy creek. Almost every morning there would be one or two small, muddy fish left in the cockpit and we suspected that local fishermen had thrown them to Luigi on their way home from fishing until, at low tide one morning, we noticed a set of feline pug marks, like a pygmy lion’s, through the mud on the riverbank towards the water. The return paw prints had  a drag mark beside them which trailed all the way to the muddy fish in Elkouba’s cockpit. Luigi turned fishercat after dark and was dragging his catch home to show off in the light of day.

    By that time Luigi had taken over the boatyard and slept in whatever sunny spot took his fancy during the day. The yard workers came down to see the proof of his fishing prowess. Y’all orta be careful,” they cautioned, ”this here river’s full of alligators – they’s getting dawgs here alla the time.” But cat meat can’t have tickled the alligators’ fancy because Luigi fished there almost every night for the few months we stayed.

    Another favourite pastime was lounging on the mainsail cover then launching himself onto the humps in the canvas dodger made by peoples’ heads as they came and went through Elkouba’s main hatch. This satisfying pastime was guaranteed to raise startled shrieks from some visitors.

    Our little grey cat must have come from a line of seafaring felines. As Elkouba covered ground northwards, he settled in as though he’d been at sea all his life. We were boarded by black clad, gun wielding US Coastguard personnel south of Cape Hatteras who searched the boat for drugs then stayed with us for several hours while they waited for further orders. Luigi, the traitor, took the interlopers in his stride and even managed to soften their hard military demeanour by rubbing his ears on their combat boots. Perhaps they assumed we were communist infiltrators – two aliens in a red boat – but the CIA could neither confirm nor deny and they eventually left us alone to continue our voyage.

    We’d lived at Essex, Connecticut for a couple of years before buying Elkouba and beginning her refit in Florida, and we called in to say goodbye to all our friends there before we left the US. In the event, were offered work and decided to stay for another year to refurbish our cruising kitty. We did several delivery trips down the Intracoastal Waterway, generally accompanied by the little grey cat who paced the deck, sniffing the breeze, or taking the sun as the scenery slid past.

    One job was delivering a 58’ Hatteras Gamefisher from Connecticut to take part in a game fishing tournament from Palm Beach.. We’d crunched a thin layer of surface ice in upper Delaware Bay but the ambient temperature rose with every mile of southing and by the time we got to Coinjock, North Carolina, Luigi’s winter coat was beginning to fall. We tied to the dock, had dinner and turned in but were woken early next morning by the marina manager. “Y’all got a liddle pussy cat on thet thyar boat?” he drawled. “I nodded assent. “I thought so,” he replied; ”he done comed home with me for the night and was waiting in the ol’ pick up truck for a ride back to the boat this morning.”

    We worried about our feline shipmate missing out on the fun and skills his shorebound fellows enjoyed. Once, on a charter trip to the Bahamas, we anchored off Norman Cay, a nature reserve where metre long iguanas warmed their cool blood on the sunny beaches. We wondered what Luigi would make of these giant lizards and coaxed him into the Zodiac inflatable for a trip ashore. The little grey cat became a feline St George with a bevy of dragons to tackle. He hid behind rocks and leapt on the iguanas as they lumbered past, then nimbly skipped out of their path when they charged in retaliation. For over an hour he stalked iguanas, leapt on their backs and batted them about with closed paws until we scooped the exhausted kitten off the sand and took him back to the boat.

    As the Zodiac neared the mother ship Luigi took his usual flying leap for the deck but, being tired, missed the toe rail by 100mm, thudded into the hull and plopped into the sea. While we maneouvred the Zodiac to pick him up, he swam unconcernedly around to the stern and scrambled into the nearest dry refuge, the 150mm diameter exhaust pipe which was mounted a couple of centimetres above the waterline. Once inside, he began to yeowwlll piteously, the noise amplified x 10 and resounding through the metres of exhaust pipe.

    Eventually we lured him out with a selection of his favourite food, rinsed him in warm fresh water and put him on deck to dry out in the sun, exhausted by a days hard adventuring.

    Luigi was a great hit back at Essex, skipping from boat to boat while we bobbed rafted up in the river for a final farewell party before heading north east to Nova Scotia. Local sailors call it “Down East” – because the prevailing winds are almost always from astern and we had a few months of God’s own gunkholing through the little ports of New England; Connecticut, Rhode island, Massachusetts and Maine.

    Luigi was no problem with the affable gentleman who cleared us into Shelburne, Nova Scotia. By then he’d been neutered and had an “Animal Pratique Passport” with his photograph and all his innoculation records, signed off by the veterinarians who had administered them. In the fishing ports of Nova Scotia, he flourished. As dusk crept across the waterfront, Luigi would slink out to the sidedeck nearest the wharf and sit there, feigning disinterest while he scanned the horizon for dogs or other hazards and plotted his nights activities. Then, with a flick of his tail under the lifelines, he would be gone. A sleek grey shape merging into the dusk among the packhouses, fishing gear and piles of net on the wharf.  

    When we rose in the morning he would be sitting in the cockpit, smugly licking his paws and emanating a palpable aura of self satisfaction. Or curled up and dead to the world in his cardboard box near the mast step.

    If the night life at any particular port of call had been especially good, Luigi wouldn’t make it back aboard and, the first few times it happened, this worried us greatly. But we soon found that if we walked around the vicinity and called his name a few times he’d come bounding out from under the nearest warehouse or boat shed, or slither down a neighbouring tree trunk and be on board in time to sail.

   As we sailed further north the tropical cat’s coat thickened up to protect him from the plummeting temperatures. He was welcomed to Lunenburg by the local constabulary who’d seen our New Zealand flag and came down to see if we had any postal stamps he could add to his collection. Luigi had the run of the replica schooner, Bluenose 11, which we rafted up to in Halifax and amazed her crew by running up and down the rigging on the ratlines.

    At Baddeck, in the Bras d’Or Lakes we tied up to the government wharf and bought cod cheeks or tongue for breakfast. Two each for the humans and one for the cat. Luigi even developed a taste for Solomon Gundy, the delicious pickled herring that’s a local delicacy.

    We motored gingerly into the fogbound harbour at St Pierre, guided partly by Luigi’s nose, which we figured must be pointing at the fishing wharf and radar, sampled some French cuisine and felt our way through the fog to Newfoundland.

    Luigi became a hit with the small boat fishermen of St John’s. At first light the staccato bark of their make or break petrol engines echoed across the harbour and Luigi would be on deck to greet them (and relieve them of a choice cod liver or two). “There’s a swish party at Quidi Vidi – you ought to come on over,” they invited. We motored Elkouba into the perfect, almost land locked harbour with it’s lining of smooth granite boulders and cliffs and were directed to a mooring among the fishing boats.

    Just after dusk we rowed ashore, tied our dinghy to the fish restaurant dock, and followed the directions we’d been given to the party. In the old days, dory schooners would fish the Grand Banks for cod, salt the catch and sail to the West Indies to trade it for rum. The rum was shipped back to Newfoundland in oak barrels and repackaged for smuggling into liquor hungry ports in the USA during prohibition. The rum was called “Screech” and still is, but the empty barrels were filled with water, left to steep a year or two before the contents, called “Swish” were broached by the locals. Almost any party, these days, is a swish party and it was well on the way to midnight before, arms linked, we stumbled through the fog to our dinghy.

    No light penetrated the dense fog; we walked into a few road signs, bounced off some walls and finally found the wharf where our dinghy waited. “Damn….we should have left an anchor light or something on,” Sarah whispered. I rowed gingerly into the dark – there were no landmarks, no visibility, just a thick, dank fog. We rowed into a wall of thick smoke.

    “Sshhh…did you hear that?” Sarah whispered. Somewhere in the fog there was a high pitched yeowll…like fingernails on a blackboard, piercing through the thick fog. “Luig…” she called and the cat yeowled again. “Over there,” she pointed and I rowed towards the noise. We stopped and repeated the process until, a few minutes later the dinghy thunked into the red side of our yacht as it materialized out of the mist. Safe on board, we lit our little pot bellied stove and Luigi curled up beside it; basking smugly in its warmth and our appreciation.

    After a few weeks in Newfoundland we headed Elkouba towards Iceland and nosed Elkouba between Reykjavik’s twin breakwaters about ten days later. Luigi’s ocean going regimen consisted mostly of sleeping, eating and toilet which had worked out pretty much as our advisors in Florida had recommended. We’d long since given up on buying sacks of kitty litter though and, instead, just collected sand from the local beach wherever we happened to be and used that instead.

    Luigi knew what it was like to spend a long trick at the helm on a cold North Atlantic night and would meow at the hatch, leap out after we’d opened it, and squirm his way up under our wet weather gear and cuddle up, purring in our laps. Otherwise he’d be curled cosily beside the pot belly stove. There is surely nothing more guaranteed to restore one’s body core temperature than the sight of a warm, contented cat. He responded to stroking from our white, frozen fingers with the same deep purr he’d given in the tropics.

    As soon as land came within range of Luigi’s keen olfactory senses, he’d be up and running around the deck; his nose winkling like a hyperactive butterfly, keen for the next adventure. Icelandic quarantine authorities weren’t too keen on letting him (or us) ashore for a start and it took a day of negotiations with officials and frequent referrals to combined paperwork for us, Elkouba and the cat before they relented. Luigi quickly made himself at home on the whale chaser we were rafted to.

 Reykjavik is often called the “smokeless city” – all buildings are heated with clean and ultra efficient geothermal steam, so I prowled the wharves, often accompanied by the cat, who had formed a longstanding love affair with the pot bellied stove, collecting every little piece of wood I could find.

    We rafted up to a fleet of whale chasers in the inner harbour and soon had hardened whalemen leaning over their bulwarks miaowing to attract Luigi’s attention as he lolled on deck in the late summer sun.  

    The next port of call was Heimaey, a small island south of Iceland proper, where Luigi once again made friends with the local fisherman; using the combination of leg rubbing sycophancy and self confident savoir faire he had developed to wangle titbits out of the hardest hearted fisher. People in many of the ports we visited will have long forgotten Elkouba, Sarah and I, but I’m sure most remember Luigi. In Heimaey classes of school kids trooped down the dock to observe at first hand the cat who’d sailed the Atlantic. We were just the side act – like we’d flown in to help tie up in port. But he was great PR and we didn’t mind playing second (or third) fiddles in our oceangoing quartet; Luigi, Sarah, myself and Elkouba.

    Weeks later; after a stormy October passage from Heimaey, Luigi caught his first whiff of Scotland and ran excitedly from one end of Elkouba to the other or romped on the canvas dodger, as we spent the night navigating down the western approaches, round the Mull of Kintyre and into Campbelltown. By dawn he had run out of steam and squirreled himself away amongst the sails in the forepeak where he stayed, sound asleep, while the customs and quarantine people were aboard. This was where we expected our first real quarantine problems and was the reason we’d been so scrupulous with Luigi’s innoculations and paperwork.

    Britain’s island status, with continental Europe full of foreign diseases looming, just a few kilometers away across the North Sea, has led to a certain siege mentality among the British. “Are there any animals aboard?” the clearance papers asked. One of my great failings is the inability to tell a lie. It has effectively precluded me from a career in politics or boat broking and I often admire some peoples’ability to lie their way out of tight corners. So I ticked the little box marked “yes.” “If so, give details.” A larger box demanded….and I left it empty….which isn’t really lying.

    It was early Saturday morning and maybe our customs officer was in a hurry to get home to his haggis or weekend football game. It was an oversight that may have cost a case of whisky in more corrupt countries, but the customs officer glanced at the completed forms, shuffled them into a pile, stamped our passports and prepared to leave. “Welcome tae Scootland,” he said cheerily. I quietly closed the foc’sle door so Luigi didn’t come waltzing out in mid farewell.

    So Luigi became a Scottish cat. I reasoned that if anyone wanted him quarantined or deported it was up to them to prove that he hadn’t strolled aboard in Campbelltown. As we motored slowly into Douglas, Isle of Man, a few days later, Luigi sat proudly on the foredeck  and a launch with “Harbourmaster” painted on the side pulled out and said we weren’t allowed in the harbour with a cat aboard. “But – he’s a Scottish cat – from Campbelltown,” I protested. They grudgingly let us stay for a few days but twice I caught them studying Luigi through binoculars from the watchhouse windows. Looking for signs of foreign-ness no doubt.

    We locked into Swansea Marina on the Welsh coats and nobody seemed to care about Luigi as he strolled the docks, sniffing around whatever boat took his fancy. He soon became a favourite of the liveaboard yachties and their children jostled beside Elkouba to pat the cat as he lay in the paltry patches of sunshine.

    Elkouba, Sarah and I melted into down town Bristol, living on the docks and working in the city. Some passersby expressed concern at seeing an animal, possibly rabid, living on a foreign flagged vessel but backed off when we explained that he’d come aboard in Scotland.

    Luigi had a few adventures; falling into the rancid water of the docks while returning on board at low tide from an overnight rat hunting mission in the neighbouring warehouses and often snoozing in some secluded nook ashore for the day.  We had about 30cms of snow on deck during the winter and Luigi, tropical feline that he was, stayed curled up beside the stove which kept Elkouba snug all day. We had a Honda 175cc motorcycle and he took a few turns around the city on that; peeking from a shoulder bag that was slung around my neck, his eyes narrowed and ears flattened against the slipstream.

    In the spring Luigi sailed north; up the coast of Ireland and through the Hebridean Islands. Someone must have reported the foreign flag vessel with an animal aboard at Fort William and an earnest young bloke in HM Customs uniform pursued Elkouba through all eight locks in Neptune’s Staircase, near Fort William, demanding proof that Luigi was Scottish. He had retrieved our original clearance forms from Campbelltown and pointed out that I’d ticked “yes” to having an animal aboard and refused to believe that it was just an error made by a tired sailor.

    The customs bloke badgered us, on and off, the entire 100km length of the canal and must have passed the word on to the local police forces. Coppers demanded to see our papers in Inverness and a policewoman in Kirkwall, the Orkney Islands capital, insisted that we lock Luigi up in case he contracted rabies from the German yacht tied alongside us. Meanwhile, the source of all the excitement blithely followed his normal regimen of food, sleep, daily promenade round the deck and trot ashore of an evening.

    Rabies really is an issue in the Arctic though, carried by foxes that cross between America and Scandinavia on the winter ice pack, and we didn’t want to take Luigi to Norway. We made friends in Shetland and Luigi moved into their barn while Elkouba sailed north. He quickly earned a reputation as an ardent and lethal mouser and spent a feral summer on the land until we returned to pick him up in late September.

    Bitter gale force winds had started to sweep the north and Elkouba’s cosy confines must have looked pretty attractive to Luigi as he sailed to Stornoway on the Isle of Lewis. Elkouba, and Luigi, settled in amongst the inshore fishing fleet and it wasn’t long before he had the tough Scottish fisherfolk wound round his little grey paws. “Och here,” they’d say and proffer a gut splattered bucket, “I saved some livers for yer wee poossy.”

      We didn’t bother with Britain a second time round and sailed straight to Bangor, beside the Belfast Lough. We were almost the sole occupants tied to the near new breakwater and Luigi stayed boat bound until we pulled into Dun Laoghaire. We tied alongside a local trawler and Luigi, ever the brash American, bounded aboard and befriended the two brothers who worked her. This bit of trans Atlantic diplomacy (Luigi was back to being American by then) secured us a supply of free flounder for the duration of our stay.      

   

    Elkouba anchored at Crosshaven and we rowed up the Owenabue River with Luigi to pick blackberries, to make into jam. The sight of the little grey cat stretching himself in the sun and strutting around the river bank enchanted an elderly couple who swapped some apples from their tree for blackberries so we could both make blackberry and apple jam.

    Luigi’s next landfall was Muros, in the Galicia area of Northern Spain. After a particularly foul spell of weather, Elkouba lurched into the seaside village for sail repairs. Luigi seemed pleased to be back among yachting folk and soon made himself at home among the few French, German and Spanish yachts tied to the small wharf.

    He accepted praise and admiration in a variety of languages but had a preternatural ability to sense when boats were about to sail and would scarper home to Elkouba  before people took him to be an errant local and added him to their crew.

    Other people who have taken cats to sea say that their feline shipmates have been seasick and suffer from incontinence brought on by the misery of mal de mer, but big seas never seemed to faze Luigi. In the gusty conditions between the Hebridean Islands he took a few memorable tumbles but generally he found a comfortable nook to wedge himself into and rode the worst of weather out as well as we did.

    Luigi befriended a Japanese singlehander in Portugal who sailed off determined to find his own feline shipmate and he basked in the attentions of admirers on the wharves at Leixoes and Lisbon before heading out to Madeira.

    At Funchal in Madeira, the affable American moggy wandered around among the cruising boats but the busy road around the waterfront put him off nocturnal expeditions further afield into the city proper. The humid weather suited his tropical temperament much better and he found several spots around the boat where open hatches funneled the cooling breeze and would move from one to the other as the sun tracked across the sky and left him in the shade.

    Christmas was spent in mid Atlantic with a few feline treats but the sailing tabby was no slouch when it came to fresh food. Often at night, he’d be belowdecks in what looked like a sound sleep, when he’d suddenly leap to his feet, eyes wide and ears erect. He’d streak through the yellowy light of the kerosene lamp, out of the hatch and onto the deck then return seconds later with a flying fish flapping frantically in his mouth.

    Elkouba spent most of her Caribbean time riding to an anchor in Simpson Bay, St Maarten, but we’d often row Luigi ashore for the evening and return to pick him up next day. He would sit, just after sunrise, under a clump of bushes at the end of the beach, completely spent after a sailors night on the town, spent chasing crabs on the beach or rats and geckoes among the palm trees..

    But our indomitable little moggy eventually fell ill, so we sailed across to Anguilla which was reputed to have the best vet clinic in the West Caribbean. Kidney problems were diagnosed and part of his treatment had to be administered at the clinic every day for a week.                                               Each morning I’d put his limp grey form, curled up in a private pain, in a plastic laundry basket, lash a piece of plywood across the top and row him ashore. On the beach, I’d put the basket on my head and, emulating the island ladies’ load carrying style in the African fashion they’d learned from their forebears, I’d walk him across the island to the vet.

    The locals watched me curiously for a few days before one; Belter, a wizened old island boatman, approached me: “Hey Lindsay mon – where you goin’ wit’ de cat? he asked curiously. “I’m taking him to the vet mate – he’s sick,” I replied. “Wha?...wha’?...” Belter stared at me incredulously. ”Put he in a sack wit’ some rocks mon,” he advised scornfully.

    But Luigi, the seacat, deserved a better end than sharing a sack wit’ some rocks on the bottom of Road Bay. He had other oceans to sail.

    Elkouba’s on board dynamics changed a bit with the addition of our son Alisdair, who was born at Road Bay, Anguilla. Luigi took the new addition in his stride and spent hours on patient watch while Ali’s cradle swung backwards and forth from its fastenings in the deckhead. Sometimes at sea, he’d snuggle up beside the baby – the only other warm blooded animal anywhere near his size for miles around.

    Luigi supervised operations from Elkouba’s foredeck all through the Panama Canal and superciliously ignored the gangs of Panamanian line handlers who called out: “pusspusspuss” to try and distract him. The close proximity of a live, rustling tropical rainforest around our anchorage in the Gatun lake, kept him on deck all night, patrolling the deck to ward off jaguars, crocodiles or other unwelcome visitors.

    In the Gulf of Panama we hooked a 1.5m shark, hoisted it aboard and Luigi played rodeo rider while it thrashed around the cockpit in its final death throes. With no refrigeration we ate shark, in every possible guise, for the next four days and Luigi gorged himself in cat heaven.

    At the Marquesas Islands, parents paddled their children out in dugout outrigger canoes to meet le chat who lived on the yacht. Luigi would hear them coming and welcome them at the rail, purring loudly and stretching to his full length to rub against their outstretched hands.

    I’d been in touch with the New Zealand embassy in Apia, Samoa about Luigi coming home New Zealand with us but the answer was a draconian “no.” Well, not quite an unequivocal refusal, but we could sail into New Zealand with him but we’d have to sign an undertaking he’d never leave the boat, could only stay for a limited time, fly a special flag and pay for a Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries officer to come and check on him every second day. Or fly him to Australia and/or the UK where he’d be quarantined for six months before flying back to New Zealand for a further quarantine period. This would all cost the equivalent of a years cruising kitty.

    I showed them his passport/inoculation record, pleaded that he’d been in effective quarantine for the last four months at anchor or at sea in Elkouba, offered to sail direct to Wellington and drop him off at Somes (Matiu) Island, the quarantine depot in Wellington Harbour. We’d had the cat for six years and lived in close quarters with him, I explained, any disability or disease would be readily noticeable. Couldn’t he be given a check over in New Zealand and quarantined on board?  But the answer was an adamant and impassive bureaucratic negative.

“Welcome home to New Zealand…” I thought disgruntedly as I rowed out to pass the word to Sarah and wondered what to do with Luigi, our faithful feline mate.

    We set sail with heavy hearts for Penrhyn, the northernmost island in the Cook archipelago and one of the largest atolls in the Pacific. The only vehicles there were a couple of mopeds and the island council had long since banned dogs. Penrhyn’s an enchanting place and we spent some weeks there; readily accepted by the locals, attending church at the coral and cement church /cyclone shelter, walking and fishing in the lagoon.

    When Elkouba sailed out, Luigi watched from the wharf, safe in the arms of a local family. For years afterwards we received photographs and stories in the mail of his tropical lifestyle; chasing crabs and rodents. His new Cook Islands family visited us in New Zealand and reported on the little grey moggy’s happy transformation from sailor to atoll dweller.

    Years later we received notice that Luigi had died peacefully from old age on Penrhyn. The secret life of Luigi was over.

 RIP faithful shipmate, intrepid adventurer.

To read more adventures buy BLUE WATER  by Lindsay Wright.