Aloft on Auckland's Hauraki Gulf - David Mills of the Sunday Times of London tells of his trip.

(This is the complete version of his piece first published in the Sunday Times Travel Section)

The first question everyone asks after you have been sailing on a tall ship is, "Did you climb the rigging?" Now here looming over the ship are two masts, each around 98 feet high. For weeks beforehand, not being a circus performer or extreme window cleaner, the question of whether I'd be up to it had been looming over me. I knew by heart the passage in the novel Master and Commander, when Stephen Maturin climbs aloft for the first time "in a state of rapidly increasing terror. Forty feet is no very great height, but it seems far more lofty, aerial and precarious when there is nothing but an insubstantial yielding ladder of moving ropes underfoot."

Everyone follows up their question by blandly assuming, "Of course, you wear a safety harness." Well, yes, but as I discovered standing on deck peering upwards, there is nothing to clip it on to until you reach the foretop platform, and that happened to be 60 feet up on this ship. Then there was another wrinkle. Maturin is able to go straight up on to the foretop platform through a gap called the "lubber's hole", a "convenient square hole next to the mast itself", although proper sailors ignore this and instead climb round the overhang "by clinging to the futtock-shrouds." The idea of clambering round an overhang on a swaying mast several stories up in the air haunted me and I had decided that if I managed to get up that high I would go through the lubber's hole. So it was with a certain amount of alarm that I realised the foretop platform above me did not have lubber's hole. It was clinging to the futtock-shrouds or nothing.

I am not comfortable with heights and I didn't have to do this, but as everyone's question implicitly recognises, "climbing the rigging" is the defining tall ship experience. And I had come a long way. I swung my leg over the side and started up the main shrouds (that's the rope-ladder type rigging up the side of the mast). At once into my mind popped a fascinating statistic that I had deliberately not told my wife before setting off for the ship. During the Napoleonic wars, Britain lost 92,386 sailors, only 6,663 of whom were killed by the enemy. All the others (93%!) died through disease, shipwreck or accident, ie a lot of them fell off.

Up I went, not looking down, not looking up, entirely focussed on my hands inches in front of my face. The futtock-shrouds I went round in one breath (okay, I nearly passed out, but at least I avoided hyperventilating). Then I stood on the foretop. I looked up: above me stretched almost as much mast again as I had climbed. The topmast shrouds swayed in the slight breeze. I glanced down at the deck. It seemed so far away that I dared not look again. The thought of having to go back round the futtock-shrouds was already gnawing at my stomach. What was the possibility of spending the whole voyage up here and being taken off by the fire brigade with a cherry-picker when we were back in harbour? My grip tightened. I decided to go back down before I became cataleptic.

Back on deck, I felt a vague sense of achievement. Okay, the ship might have been at anchor in a calm bay with three of the crew on hand watching my every foothold, but I could still say I have been aloft in a square-rigger. My brush with death would come later.

It was my first morning aboard Soren Larsen. We had spent the night anchored in Smuggler's Cove, Whangarei Heads, off the North East coast of New Zealand and we were about to spend five days sailing around the islands of the Hauraki Gulf. I'm not sure whether I was indulging a fantasy, a mid-life crisis or coming to terms with our national identity. Certainly a psychologist would say my reasons were overdetermined; my wife just says I'm pretentious. I had found Master and Commander, starring Russell Crowe as O'Brian's hero Jack Aubrey, captain of a frigate during the Napoleonic wars, fantastically exciting and decided there are two essential characteristics to being English: the ability to fly a Spitfire and to sail a square-rigged ship. I had done neither.

If you have a dream of sailing ships, then Soren Larsen has probably already figured in your imagination for she is the ship in the Onedin Line cleaving the waves to the strains of Katachurian. For all that she was built in Denmark in 1949 and worked as a cargo ship in the Baltic until 1972, she is essentially a 19th century oak brigantine, restored and run by Tony Davies. After her stint in the Onedin Line, she started earning her keep giving paying passengers the experience of square ship sailing (although still finding time to appear in such films as The French Lieutenant's Woman and more recently Shackleton). In 1987 she sailed to Australia for the bicentenary celebrations as the flagship of the First Fleet Re-enactment. Sailing on to Auckland in 1989, Soren Larsen adopted New Zealand as her base and now spends summers cruising the New Zealand coast and the winters voyaging up into the South Pacific to Easter Island, Tahiti, Cook Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu and beyond.

She has a permanent crew of around 12 and a maximum "voyage crew", as paying guests are called, of up to 24. There were 19 on my trip and it was fate, or kismet as Nelson might have put it, that after exclaiming at the political correctness of the exhibition at Auckland's National Maritime Museum, "A Tribute to our Seafaring Women", I should have been one of only four men with 15 women.

Most of the them were single women on adventure holidays and regular customers of Explore: Frances was on her "fourteenth or fifteenth" expedition, and seemed to have been everywhere from Nepal to Patagonia. All were spending several weeks travelling around New Zealand and the voyage was just an incidental part of their itinerary. "So, you're not Master and Commander fans at all then?" Blank looks, apart from Frances who had managed to see it in Auckland the night before we left.

Still, everyone had their own romance invested in the ship. Maggie, a physio in her 20s from Telford, had a hankering for a Swallows and Amazons-type adventure and she remembered seeing the ship 12 years ago when it was in Liverpool. There were two Australian sisters in their sixties: Judy who wanted to see a full moon from a tall ship and had planned the timing of the trip accordingly, and Jill who devoured maritime adventure novels (but preferred Alexander Kent to O'Brian). The three other men, all in their 60s, had fallen for the ship when they saw her berthed in Auckland harbour. I found Dennis, a refugee from the Canadian winter, pacing the deck just before dawn one morning studying the stars. Here was a man who wore grey socks with his sandals every day; when it rained he wrapped his feet in plastic bags and then put his sandals on, but he still had enough poetry in his soul to be enraptured by the southern sky. It was Ron who turned out to be the most romantic of all.

At first the ship appears to be a bewildering forest of ropes, but directed by members of the permanent crew we began to understand them. It's a bit sad, I know, but having been baffled by the jargon in O'Brian's books ("Fore topsheet, fore topbowline, stays'l sheet, let go" and so on) I got quite a kick out of shouting "Upper tops'l bunts and clew, let go". Picking up nautical terminology comes very quickly largely because when you let go of, say, the clews and bunts you are rewarded with the sight of the sail shaking itself free of the yardarm, cascading down and catching the wind. When you haul on the "course brace", you can see the yardarm move around the mast, repositioning the sail on the wind. Although the rigging looks complicated, you soon see the beautiful simplicity of its logic.

As soon as the sails were set, I lay back in bowsprit netting and looked at the ship. This is what I had come for. The sound of the sea running on the bow and the wind in the sails, the sails startlingly white against the blue sky, the taste of the sea on the air and the motion of a ship at sea. I lost hours lying out there.

In proper nautical manner, we had been divided into watches, groups of about nine, including two permanent crew, responsible for running the ship for four hour periods. (You don't have to take part if you don't want to, you can lie around reading, but where's the fun in that?) My watch was 8 to 12, and as we sailed into the night on that first full day, so we were quite busy: as well as setting the sails, we were taking the helm, standing lookout, walking the hourly safety round, checking the bilge and entering the ship's position, sea and wind conditions in the log. From Whangarei Heads we were heading for Great Barrier Island.

I wanted to stay up on deck until we reached the island, which the captain, Jim Cottier, thought would be around two in the morning, but after midnight I kept falling asleep curled up on deck even though it was now raining. I was also worried that if I went below decks I might be sick. There was quite a swell and the wind was not strong enough to push the ship comfortably through it; she rolled and pitched and several of both the permanent and voyage crew were throwing up.

In the fresh air I felt fine, but below deck in a cabin six feet square, I thought I would have less chance of hanging on to my dinner. Eventually I went below, lay on my bunk only to discover that I loved the deep-swaying motion and the accompanying cracking creaks of the ship's timbers as the shifting waves moved the stresses around the hull. Accommodation may be snug, but it's comfortable. (You marvel that Cook's Endeavour was not much bigger than Soren Larsen and he had nearly 200 men on it, as well as livestock.)

When I woke the ship was so still it was as if we were on land. We were in Kaiarara Bay, tucked into Great Barrier Island. This looked like the New Zealand Captain Cook found when looking to repair the Endeavour, sheltered bays thickly forested with trees coming right down to the water's edge, and lots and lots of rain. A launch would take anyone who wanted to go over to the island. Some people wanted to visit the small village. Despite the rain, four of us, Peter and James from the crew, Maggie and me, decided to trek up to the kauri dam on Mount Hobson.

It was steep, hard going and water cascaded down the path. Every so often a stream that snaked down the mountain crossed our way. The rain came steadily down, but James was still managing to keep his trainers dry, skipping from rock to rock.

After a couple of hours we reached the dam. A weird, ingenious wooden construction, it looked like some tribal sculpture or Andy Goldsworthy artwork. We admired it for a while and ate our soggy sandwiches. The dam had been in use until the 1920s. Into its reservoir loggers had felled the enormous kauri trees. When the lake would hold no more, the dam was smashed open and the logs crashed down with the water into the bay. It puzzled us how such a feeble stream could have coped.

Rounding the first corner on the way back we found the answer: the feeble stream had become a cascading torrent. Our descent was by turns exhilarating and terrifying. Each time we came to cross the stream it seemed wider and faster than before. Finally we faced the the daunting prospect of a wide, featureless torrent moving very rapidly towards sharp rocks some fifteen yards or so downstream where it broke in a crescendo of turbid white foam. We thought about this for a long time. We scouted out alternatives. None: the forest was too thick. Linking hands, facing the current and leaning into it we headed diagonally across. Peter led, then James, me and finally Maggie on the end.

My feet were pushed from under me as the ground was washed away by the water. This was not walking so much as sliding in a vaguely controlled way. The water was chest high and already we had been driven much further downstream than we intended. For the briefest moment the thought flickered across my mind that we weren't going to make it. "Come on," I shouted. "We can do this." Maggie's full weight suddenly tugged on my left arm. My shoulder felt it was being ripped out, but the ground was rising, the opposite bank was closer. We scrabbled out of the water whooping and laughing. Maggie had lost her footing completely and been swept under. We were all on a high, until we emerged from the trees and found we had to cross it all over again.

The more we looked at it the wider we realised it was and instead of the exhilaration all I could think about was the moment when I thought we were not going to make it. Faced with another turmoil of brown water I finally felt my age, not because I felt physically incapable, but because it seemed irresponsible as a father. I decided I wasn't going to do it; I would finally assert the authority of my age.

"Peter, radio the ship and tell them to send a party up with a rope and lifejackets." He was already assessing likely trees and working out how much rope we would need.

Bizarrely a face appeared in the forest gloom. "Hey, what are you guys up to?" It was a ranger with a botanical expedition up the mountain. "I've only known it this bad twice in five years." She showed us a new track that had just been cut which meant we could avoid this last crossing. I reached for a glacier mint. My pocket was full of sweet, sticky water and floating wrappers.

We tramped down to the shore. My pocket was full of sweet, sticky water and soggy paper as my Fox's glacier mints had all dissolved. Maggie decided she wouldn't tell her mother until she got back to England. Back on the ship they were impatient for our return. A good wind had been reported out in the gulf.

Captain Jim gave lessons most days in various aspects of seamanship. We learnt basic knots: I thought I was quite good at knots, but apparently taking the rabbit round the tree and back down his hole is not the way sailors do a bowline. We learnt how to use a sextant and navigate by the stars. Jim has been at sea for 55 years; his knowledge and enthusiasm is boundless. Nothing was too much trouble for him and I had to restrain myself from monopolising his company as I had built up such a stock of questions through my nautical reading. He answered it all, from Captain Cook's mental state to the cutsplice (to give the bowdlerised form). He let me experiment with working out the ship's speed by throwing a chunk of wood on the end of a line over the ship's stern. I determined the ship's position taking bearings from the compass and pored over the charts. I came to disdain the GPS display: the true romance of sailing a ship is going where the wind takes you, knowing where you are by the sky and feeling a connection with the world around you.

Jim was also inspired at dealing with people. Soren Larsen exists for its voyage crew and he made sure no one felt left out. The permanent crew too worked hard at involving us. and together we accomplished some triumphant bits of seamanship. Under the direction of the first and second mates, Barry and Alan, we successfully sailed off anchor and back on to it again at the end of the day.

Of course, it wasn't all sailing. We'd had a dolphin swimming around the ship as we left Whangarei and whales were spotted twice, though I managed to miss them for reasons so banal I won't mention them. As well as Great Barrier Island we also anchored in Mansion House Bay, Kawau Island, where we visited the 19th century house of Governor Grey and walked in the woods high above its spectacular coastline. I discovered that I yell just as loudly whether a snake slides over my foot or a wet agapanthus leaf. There was swimming too, and I fulfilled another small ambition by diving in from the side of the ship.

"Good grief," I said to Dennis, "you've actually taken your socks off."

"Is that some weird English way of saying I'm underdressed?"

The last night aboard happened to be 70th birthday. The dressing-up bag was dragged out and we went to town. The voyage crew recited a poem they had written. The permanent crew produced a calendar and some avant garde performance poetry. Barry performed a Shetland reel he had written. Ron then surprised everyone by announcing that he and Isobel were going to get married on the ship in the morning. We ended up on deck dancing reels to Barry's fiddle.

The last morning we were all up at dawn. The ship was hung with flags and flowers. Jim, visibly moved (though not as much as the bride) performed the wedding ceremony on the poop deck. It seemed the final permutation for the romance of the sea, except I still wanted to conquer the last 30 feet of mast.

In the last two days I had returned to the foretop several times and was now quite at ease up there, but the cross trees still seemed a long way off. Once Maggie and Liz, had come up too, and accompanied by Ian they had gone all the way up. The seafaring women had egged me on, but I didn't feel ready. Now it was the last day.

I took myself off to the foretop again, thinking I would just stay up there as we came into Auckland harbour and take in the view. Ian appeared - "So, going to for the top?"

"Well..." I prevaricated.

"Going out on the yardarm might actually be easier. You just step across on to that rope there and then one step and you're there." I looked at "that rope there". It was the merest piece of string and swung alarming to an irregular rhythm all of its own.

"I'll go up instead." Ian went ahead and I followed up the narrowing shrouds. With each step the slightestmovement of the ship became more apparent. I reached the crosstrees. "I think this'll do for now," I said to Ian's foot as he stood on the topmost part. Then just behind the ship I saw an enormous ray moving through the water. "Look, look," I shouted and without thinking I took a hand off and pointed. For that brief moment I was comfortable. Then I saw the enormous ferry coming out of Auckland, the bow wave heading towards us. "I'm getting down now." I just made it to the foretop as the wave hit and the ship bobbed and swayed.

And now I want to do it all again and this time stand on the crosstrees and go out on the yard!

David Mills,
Sunday Times UK
/ London.

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