On the clear blue sea

Back on earth: Author and skipper Chris McMaster takes a break from writing, skippering and deep space on the deck of the MV Takitimu. Picture by Paul Rickard

“What I learned moving back to the States for that year, was I wasn't an American any more, and I missed aspects of New Zealand culture. After having lived here for 10 years, I realised I was more Kiwi than American.”

When he's not coming to terms with being a Kiwi, Dr Chris McMaster is a writer and editor, body surfer at Wainui, skipper of Tairāwhiti Waka Hourua and the MV Takitimu, and a fisheries inspector for the Ministry for Primary Industries. He's as happy talking about fish earbones — otoliths to those in the know — as he is about sailing on the waka, deep space, Einstein's physics theories or academic books, of which he has written eight.

“Every fish has a different type of earbone,” he says.

“Scientists use fish earbones to find out about fish and the health of the fishery. I've heard them compared to tree rings and how the tree rings tell a lot about a tree, so part of the work as an observer is collecting otoliths on target species. You scalp the fish then pick out the otoliths with tweezers.

“It gets pretty surreal at times. The orange roughy has a little pouch which holds them. Oreo have tiny otoliths, and hoki have otoliths that nearly jump out into your hands. After doing hundreds you get quite good at it.”

The year Chris and his wife, Wendy Stuart, lived in Minneapolis he was professor of special education at an inner city university, but returning to Gisborne without much need for professors called for creativity on his part.

“When I heard the Waka Hourua was being built and its purpose was to work with young people, I leapt at the chance. I left with a few crewmates to help. After it was launched there was a lot of work to get it seaworthy and that's when I fell in love with waka and sailing.

“The waka is something that education should be — for everybody. It engages your heart, your mind, your hands, it demands your full attention, asks you to be your best for the waka and your crewmates.

“I was very lucky to meet Tony Armstrong, a former trustee who helped bring the waka to Gisborne. Since that time I've been crewing on his yacht, Eos, a wonderful 38-foot sloop. I'm the baby on board, which isn't a bad position to be in, especially as I get to soak up experience and lessons from such experienced sailors.

“I used to find my core, that place deep inside where it's quiet and life starts to make sense, up a mountain path, days from people and towns. I grew up with wilderness out my back door or not too far up the road, and even lived in Alaska where the wilderness and solitude is even closer.

“With sailing, I have discovered that that wilderness solitude is there right outside The Cut, and the ocean now gives me what a mountain trek once did.

“I've also been fortunate to skipper the MV Takitimu, a classic old workhorse of a boat that takes groups of tourists out on to the bay. It's a real joy piloting such a classic vessel and to work with people who do it because they love it.

“Being on a boat is an environment where the ego gets in the way. To work as a crew and be in the moment and respond to the moment, you need to set ego aside.

“When the work on the waka slowed down during Covid, I looked for a job on the water that was Covid-proof. I did a stint as a factory hand on a Sealord vessel, going out to sea, working around the clock, eight hours on, eight hours off.

“It was unrelenting and it nearly broke me, but one thing that the skipper talked to me about was MPI observers, and when I got back I applied and started two months later.

“It's been a really neat experience, seeing the deep sea miles from shore, sheltering beside the Auckland Islands in heavy winds, or so far east of the Chatham Islands that we're almost in yesterday.

“It's a great job because I get to be my own manager and use my down time how I want to use it, so every trip is like a writer's retreat.

“Because of the conditions by the Auckland Islands, I wrote my fourth novel Pirates Come Down, whose main characters are a fisherman and a fisheries observer, so my work became my research.”

Pirates is set in the near future where neighbouring countries are hungrily eyeing New Zealand's fish stocks, which have been better managed than their own. It fits into the so-called “cli-fi” genre, but reads like a thriller. Enough to say that fishing in this alternative — or possible — future requires special weapons training and more than a net.

All of Chris's fiction has a science fiction bent. He grew up devouring sci-fi, and his works explore alternative realities or possible futures in outer and “inner space”.

He wrote his Lucid trilogy on returning to Gisborne in 2017.

“They play with time travel and alternative realities through ‘lucid dreaming', which is where you are in a dream and you become aware you are dreaming. There's a moment where you say ‘oh wait, I'm in a dream'.”

Those books are published by Dreaming Big Publications in the US, and explore alternative realities and histories.

“Earlier last year I wrote a collection of short stories — Journey to the Stars — set in the bottom of the ocean and in deep space.

“Being on a fishing vessel is very like being on a space ship. You're in a self-contained world that has to support itself. Instead of the vacuum of space, you're in the ocean, instead of stars you might have albatross circling you. You can't get outside the ship, the ship is your world and you're totally dependent on it like you would be in deep space.

“At the end of the month my sci-fi novel Misstep comes out, set in deep space.”

He describes Misstep as an interstellar drug deal gone very wrong, but there's more to it. The book delves into a concept Einstein showed was theoretically possible — “bending” space to bring colossal distances closer to each other.

“The easiest way to get from A to B is to put them in the same place. So I made a future where we solve that technological problem. Humans have learned how to harness the energy to do it. That's the fun of being a writer, you get to solve physics problems with the stroke of a pen.”

For the physics nerds among us that folding of space is called an Einstein Rosenbridge, otherwise known as a wormhole.

“It's how our main character gets from A to B until the aliens attack, and then things go pear-shaped.”

Its sequel, Seeders, is due out on October 1, and Chris is already hard at work on his seventh novel, a romance that traverses time as well as space.

“What I like about novel writing is that the stories force you to take them by the hand and walk really slowly with them, and to sometimes learn from them and sometimes let them choose the path.

“I wrote a scene once and I had in mind how I wanted it to play out and when I finished it I was surprised where it took me. It was much better than how I could have planned ahead of time.”

Like his sailing, writing is not something just done solo. It has also been a way for him to engage with the community.

“I worked with a great bunch of writers on a local anthology of stories and poems called Kaituhi Rawhiti: A Celebration of East Coast Writers. We're now working on number two, which will have a launch and celebration towards the end of the year.”

The first edition carries a fine little story by Chris, set on a deep sea fishing vessel, but visited by an alien.

For now he's stowing gear and re-rigging the waka, dreaming of otoliths, and somehow, solving that next physics problem.