This is a story about faith and commitment in dire straits.

This happened when I was fishing up at the top end of New Zealand, around North Cape and Cape Reinga. Reinga is where Maori legend has it that the spirits of the newly-dead go to depart this land. The bay under Cape Reinga is called Spirits Bay. There is a pohutukawa tree on the cape, which is like a sprawling oak tree but with large flowers with a circle of hanging fronds like the tassels on old lamp shades. These flowers are a beautiful deep red colour and when in bloom these trees are quite magical. The departing spirits will arrive at the tree, clasp the trunk, and then go off through Spirits Bay to the next place.

This time I was around the corner under the light at North Cape, had anchored up for the night and was feeling quite concerned about the weather. In those days there were no satellite forecasts - the only satellites in the sky were military - and normal radio forecasts were not reliable as the prevailing weather hit the top first and which meant that we were the first to know about it. So we learned to look at the weather and make our own forecasts. Having said that, if you were catching fish you didn't run off back to harbour just because you thought the weather was going to go bad, but you kept fishing until the weather turned bad enough to drive you back home.

This time it turned bad and drove me home in the middle of the night. It turned very bad, not one of the hundred knot cyclones that happen up there but so bad that the poor old boat I had at the time could not have survived by itself without being babied along. An engine breakdown would have seen the boat overwhelmed and me drowned. Excellent seaboats have in fact been overwhelmed and sunk on that stretch of coast, and this was a poor seaboat.

To get home meant steaming down the coast for two hours or so, turning past the headland leading into the bay and then through the harbour entrance in the corner of the bay. There were two problems with that: firstly the night was pitch black, no moon and the stars completely clouded over. Normally starlight is enough to see by at sea, but on this night I was blind. The second problem was that I couldn't just steam down the coast and hope for a gap in the clouds so as to find the headland, but the weather required a big zig-zag out to sea and then a sharp turn to run down-weather to harbour. The trouble with that was the rocks off the headland, invisible in the dark and sure to sink me. And getting too close to the wrong part of the headland would have produced a sea too turbulent to let a boat turn and escape from, while going past the headland by too much would have put the boat onto the beach. Standing out to sea and waiting for daylight was an option, but I frankly didn't think the boat would last till daylight in that weather.

So there I was, at sea between a rock and a hard place, thinking that doom was the only prospect. But there was another prospect, and the dolphins brought it. Two dolphins came at first, playing around as dolphins do - they don't care what kind of sea is running as it's their home anyway. I was happy to see them but just saw them as 'friends', as most seamen do. Then one dolphin went, leaving only one dolphin who stayed. And stayed and stayed. Dolphins never stay around by themselves, you always see them in groups but never as just a single dolphin. Every time the boat rolled the navigation lights would light up enough that I could see what he was doing, and it was plain that he wasn't playing any more but keeping station, just off the port bow where I could see him. Seamanship only gave me one choice as to my heading, but I became convinced that he was there as a guide. The first leg of this zig-zag took four hours instead of the normal two because of the weather, and by the time that dead-reckoning told me that it was time to make a sharp turn to starboard and run down-weather to the harbour, I found that I had placed so much faith in this dolphin as my guide and pilot that I was just following him anyway.

At this point he got himself up ahead into some broken water where I could see him and made a sharp turn and very visibly headed off down where I knew I had to go. So I turned and followed him.

I kept following, straight down to where I knew the invisible rocks and the dangerous part of the headland would be, but by now I had complete faith and trust in my guide. After an hour or so, the seaman in me was screaming at me to get out of there and stand out into open water, but my faith told me to follow my guide and so I did.

And then I caught a glimpse of the headland between clouds, and I was past the rocks that would have sunk and drowned me, past the wrong part of the headland that would have overwhelmed and drowned me, and on my way down to the harbour entrance.

That dolphin had put me in the dark exactly where I would have put myself in daylight, in close and safe.

From there on I could manage myself without needing a guide, and the dolphin knew that - he went up ahead into broken water, flicked his tail to wave goodbye and left.

What this story means to me is that when you're in such dire straits that you simply can't manage by yourself and you then give complete trust and commitment to Spirit, then in some shape or other Spirit will partner with us and Spirit will bring us through.

Lyn