Isvik (28 page)

There was silence, Iris standing on the wheelhouse roof with one hand still on the spoke of the upper steering wheel and Iain on the step of the wheelhouse entrance, just his head and shoulders showing and his eyes half-closed as though thinking it over. Finally he raised his head, looked at me and said, ‘Fine. On deck ye're the boss. Ah accept that.' He laughed suddenly. ‘Ye dae it right an' we'll work our arses off fur ye, but ye get too full o' yersel' an' by God Ah'll gi' ye hell down below an' on the ice. An' so will Iris – won't ye, luv?' He jabbed his finger at me. ‘Ye're in command up here because ye know yer stuff, but just remember, this is me expedition. Ah pay the piper. And Iris – she's the cause o' the five o' us bein' here. So watch it, 'bor. Ah don't take very easy to people who like throwin' their weight about.' He nodded and swung himself below, saying, ‘Just pray fur some good weather on Thursday.'

It was late afternoon by then and my patience had been exhausted. But what did they expect? On the last run-through there had been a sudden blattering gust of wind that had threatened to tear the ship from the quay, possibly break the mast or rip the main. Anyway, I was tired, we were all tired, and Iain letting go the topping lift when I had called for the main to be lowered … The thought of the damage that could result from inexperience sent cold shivers through me and I found myself hoping to God Galvin would prove a good hand.

I didn't have any coffee that evening and fell asleep at the table. It was Nils who woke me. The other two had left. He was still the only one of us sleeping aboard. ‘The rain is taken away. You go to bed now.' I looked round the saloon with its big, gimballed table. It was like a carpenter's workshop, took and wood shavings everywhere. But it was taking shape. The cabins and the heads now had doors and we had handholds conveniently placed all along the roofing timbers. ‘Is good,
ja
,' he said, seeing me reach up to steady myself. ‘We are all like apes swinging from one handhold to another.' He drank the dregs of his akavit and got to his feet. ‘But is better with handholds, much, much better. We don't break many bones, eh?' And he showed his stained teeth in a cackle of laughter.

I was asleep again almost before I had climbed over Iain into my bunk and I did not wake until a shaft of sunlight streamed through the window onto my face. Immediately after breakfast I took them through the reefing drill again, Nils included, and then explained the gybe procedure for bringing the boat round into the wind in the event of one of us being knocked overboard. It is not easy to carry out man overboard drill with the vessel moored alongside a quay. I had them do a couple of dummy runs and left it at that, for there were changes I needed to make to the genoa leads, also the positioning of the main boom kicking strap needed adjustment, and the others also had things to do before we finally went to trials. And that evening I tried to tell them how to read a chart and lay off a course. Iain was very quick at picking it up, but even so, I was appalled to discover what an awful lot there is to learn on a boat of this sort, and we were going out into one of the worst sea areas in the world.

Next day, Thursday, I was again woken by a gleam of sun, but it did not last. By the time we had finished breakfast the sky was overcast, the tops of the heights to the west of us capped with dark masses of cloud and the wind beginning to funnel up the Strait. I tried to persuade Iain to switch the order in which we tried out engine and sails. He saw my point about the need for light winds, or said he did, but he still refused to take the sail trials first. ‘If there's anythin' wrong with the engine or that prop-shaft the sooner Ah know about it the better. Engine trials first, then we'll get sail up and test out the shaft clutch and that new auxiliary dynamo. Okay?'

The Merc was already thumping out its hymn tune and ten minutes later we cast off from the quay and were away with Iris at the wheel and Iain laying off the course on the chart under my direction. I could have done with Captain Freddie at the wheel. His presence would have given me confidence, too, but unfortunately he had been called on board a Panamanian tanker so we left without him. The noise in the deckhousing made speech almost impossible. Nils had the sound-proof cover boards off and was sitting on the floor, his legs dangling over the noisy monster as we slid away from the quay. Out in the Strait we turned onto the southerly course we had run on Sunday in our semi-rigid inflatable, heading for the Brunswick Peninsula with wind over tide and the bows slapping noisily into a short lop.

Iris leaned away from the wheel, calling down to Nils, ‘Everything okay?'

‘
Ja
.' He nodded.

She looked at me, smiling. ‘Everything's fine. No problems.'

I agreed. ‘No problems.' So far. My mouth felt dry. The wind was increasing.

Nils was over an hour tinkering with his engine before finally asking me to get the sails up and turn downwind so that we could have the prop turning with the engine disconnected and test the dynamo and its drive. By then the wind had risen to something over force 5 and there were intermittent outbursts of storm rain. The sails went up with only one hitch, when I did what Iain had done two days ago, grabbed the topping lift instead of the jib halyard. I decided on Number 2 jib, and while we were still headed into the wind under engine, I had the mainsail lowered and a reef tied in. The result was that, when we turned downwind, we were under-canvassed, and with the engine disconnected there was insufficient power from the prop. It had to be that, for shortly after the dynamo had been installed Nils had gone up the ratlines and rigged the two-bladed wind prop to the upper crosstrees of the foremast and it had worked off that perfectly.

‘Ye're being over-cautious,' Iain told me. ‘We'll have to unreef the main and get a bigger foresail on her. And if that doesn't work, then we'll hoist the squares'l.'

In the end I agreed. It was a mistake, of course, but it was his boat and we had land on either side of us. By then we were cumbered with oilskins and safety harness and it took much longer than expected to change jibs and shake the reef out, so that by the time we turned downwind again we were well past Puerto Hambre and the end of the Brunswick Peninsula and were being set down on to Dawson Island, close to a mass of rock guarded by kelp.

I went about then, for it was blowing force 7 in the gusts with visibility cut to less than a quarter of a mile and snatches of heavy rain. Nils was aft, testing the quick-release system for the prop. Both prop, and the arm to which it was attached, could then be swung up through the slot in the transom to save the blades from damage by ice floes. I switched the radar on, thankful that our sailing speed now provided enough power from the dynamo to give a clear picture of the shore. The speed indicator, now that the wind was aft, was showing 10½.

Nils was gone a long time, so that we were well past Punta Arenas before he rejoined me in the wheelhouse. ‘Is okay. It verk fine.' He peered down into the engine compartment, then he was at my elbow, flipping on just about every switch the instrument console possessed – echo-sounder, Decca navigator, Satnav, masthead, stern and navigation lights, the lot. There was enough power now to drive them all, the only exception being the searchlight mounted on the deckhouse roof. When he switched that on all he got was a feeble glimmer.

‘Okay?' I asked him.

‘
Ja
. Okay.' He switched everything off and tried the little cooker Iain had insisted on installing to save fuel. It worked even with hot plate and microwave oven switched on.

‘Okay, that's enough,' I shouted to him. I wanted the engine on again, for by then we were already abreast of Puerto Zenteno, which marked the turn eastward through the second, then the first narrows and out into the Atlantic The Strait was narrowing fast and already the Tierra del Fuegan shoreline was showing dangerously close on the radar. A moment later we could see it with the naked eye. There was kelp and rock there and I went about in a hurry, yelling orders, a course to steer to Iris at the helm, to Nils, particularly to Iain as he began hardening in on the jib sheet. I passed him the winch handle. At least he could work the winch one-handed. The main was flogging wildly, the noise deafening.

I got her round on to the port tack, heeled right over and water hissing along the side deck as we gradually pulled away from the shore. Suddenly we were in a void, nothing to see but mist and breaking waves, the boat heavily over-canvassed, and what scared the life out of me was that we were into the Segunda Angostura, the second narrows, being thrust rapidly sideways by the tide. If we were thrust right through into the expansion area of the Strait between the first and second narrows, we would be into the area where the Pacific and the Atlantic tides meet. The Pilot gave the tidal rate through the even narrower Primera Angostura as anything up to 8 knots!

The squall passed, the cloud-mist lifting to give us a visual impression of the grip the current had on us,
Isvik
moving sideways very fast, the shoreline slipping by.

I don't remember much about the next half-hour. Somehow we managed to get her reefed, but it took time and there were moments in the frequent squalls when I was afraid those old sails would be torn to shreds, even that we might break a mast. Twice we had to put about because she kept making up towards the Patagonian shore, and all the time at the back of my mind was the knowledge that if we were caught up in the first narrows we could be in trouble. There were four tides a day here, not two, and I had a horrible vision of our being forced to sail back and forth across this section of the Strait for the rest of our lives.

By the time the ship was properly reefed and we were motor-sailing, the tide was past its full force, but even so it seemed for ever before we had left those second narrows astern of us. I steered as close to the shore as I dared and suddenly we were out of the tidal grip. After that I think we all had an almost euphoric sense of satisfaction as we switched the engine off and beat back under sail alone.

A truck was waiting for us at the quay, the driver fuming as we bungled the first attempt to come alongside and tie up. Another freighter had come in and it was not easy berthing in the small space left between them. The truck had been there over four hours. It contained the first consignment of stores Iris had ordered and we had to turn to, unload the truck and hump the stores on board without even a break for a cup of tea.

We had that some two hours later when all the boxes and containers had been transferred from truck to deck and roped down under a tarpaulin we had obtained for use in emergency. By the time Iris had a meal ready for us we were almost past caring about food, and at the end of the meal Iain served us coffee heavily laced with an almost black Jamaican rum.

I slept like a log that night, surfaced late, and then, when I crossed the quay and went down to breakfast, there was another man sitting eating at the saloon table. He half turned as I entered, and Iris, standing at the stove, said, ‘Carlos.'

I recognised him then. He had jumped to his feet, holding out his hand. ‘Carlos Borgalini.'

I ignored the proffered hand, muttering my name and going straight to my usual seat. ‘Carlos came in on a special charter flight early this morning,' Iris explained. ‘We are to pick up Ángel at Ushuaia.'

‘Ushuaia! But that's in the Beagle Channel, down by Cape Horn.'

‘I know.' She passed me my breakfast and turned back to the stove. ‘Coffee or tea this morning? You have a choice.'

‘Coffee.' I said it automatically, prodding a sausage and biting into it on the fork. ‘It's out of the question. Ushuaia means going out through a maze of rocks into the Pacific, then turning back into the Beagle. Not the way we want to go at all, headed straight into the prevailing wind.'

‘I can read that much from the chart.'

‘But why?' I turned to our visitor. ‘Tell him to meet us here.'

‘No. As I have already told the
señora
, he will meet us in Ushuaia. Not here.'

‘Us? You said
us
.'

He nodded, smiling, and I thought I saw a little devil peeping out of his eyes. I may have been mistaken, for the gleam of wickedness was gone in a flash, but I was convinced his presence here on board meant trouble. He was dark and very Sicilian, smooth-faced and handsome, almost too good-looking to be true. But the way he moved his hands, the little smile that indicated pleasure at the violence of my reaction, everything about him suggested a vicious streak of effeminacy.

‘He wants to come with us,' Iris said.

I began to argue, but she told me to wait until Iain was here, then we could all of us discuss it together.

‘I've done quite a bit of sailing. I can give you a hand on deck and I'm a good helmsman.' His English was almost perfect, barely the trace of an accent.

‘What sort of sailing?'

‘Dinghies mainly, but some cruising out from Buenos Aires after the war.' He meant, of course, the Falklands war. ‘My family has a small cruiser-racer.'

‘You were cruising with your father?' It seemed unlikely from what little I had heard of Rosalli Gabrielli's boyfriend, but perhaps he was referring to another member of the Borgalini family.

He smiled and shook his head. He was very beautiful when he smiled. ‘You're short-handed so I think you find me useful.'

I nodded and got on with my breakfast. It did not really matter who he had sailed with. The point was that he had the best range of experience, dinghy as well as cruising. By then Nils had joined us and we were all sitting, drinking our coffee, when Iain came in. He was in a foul mood. He already knew about Carlos. The woman who looked after Captain Freddie and his house had told him. Carlos had knocked her up shortly after six, and because he had said he was related to the
señora
, she had made up a bed for him in the little box-room at the back. ‘You.' Iain stood glowering down at him. ‘What the hell are ye doin' here?'