The Great Wide Sea (14 page)

I leaned close to Gerry and shouted, “Hold your course, buddy. A few more minutes. We've got to get the jib down. Then I'll take over.”

Dylan and I hooked our safety harnesses on the lifelines and started for the foredeck. The wall of rain struck. We fell to our knees and crawled. I popped the halyard off the cleat and kept the tension until Dylan was crouched at the foot of the sail. The forepeak rose off a wave, then slammed down. Dylan held on and looked back at me, his lips grim and tight. I released the halyard, but the jib only sagged. The wind held it up long enough for me to make my way to the forepeak too. Then the sail began to fall in great heavy folds, stiff and salty. Dylan took the clew and began pushing the sail into the sail bag. I wrestled with the hanks until the whole sail was unhooked and stuffed into the big orange bag. We shoved it through the forward hatch and turned to the dinghy, now twisting back and forth on the single line holding it on deck. We tied it down then crawled back to the cockpit.

I felt my hand closing around the tiller. I saw Gerry's eyes.

“What about Dad?” he yelled. “How can we find Dad?”

I didn't answer him. He was soaked. His hair looked dark stuck to his head. He grabbed my arm.

“What about Dad, Ben?”

“Go below,” I yelled. “Get dry. Stay in your bunk.”

He still held my arm. He was shivering.

He turned his face up at me again, and I saw he was crying. His mouth was a wide, dark square and his eyes were big.

I shook off his arm and pushed him. He stumbled and sat just in front of the companionway. “Go below!” I yelled.

“But what about Dad!” he wailed.

“Forget Dad!” My voice sounded high and shrill in the wind. Dylan's hand reached out and pulled Gerry inside, then slotted in the boards to close off the hatch.

I was alone on deck in the dark of the storm. The boat rode up the back of a wave and crashed down into the trough.

I yanked the mainsheet loose and held it while I steered. I worked the sheet and the tiller together until I had the boat in a carefully balanced reach heading southeast. We would make it. We were under control. It would be hard, but we would make it.

“Forget Dad,” I said again. Then louder. As loud as I could. Out to the storm, the wind, the rain. Over and over again as I held us together, Dylan and Gerry and me, safe on the boat and screaming toward home.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

IT WAS GOOD sailing. The wind changed from northwest to north and I loosened up to a beam reach with the wind coming over our starboard rail. We climbed the backs of the waves at an angle then plowed down the fronts, cutting a deep wake across the sea. I sat high on the starboard side, wedging myself in so I couldn't slide. We were heeled over with water frothing over the port rail and spray flying back from the bow to wash over the deck and splash into my face.

It was like driving a car on a tight curve—fast. My focus narrowed to the feel of the vibrating tiller, the bounce of the white compass needle, and the tremble of the mainsail's leech. The tiller was like my body, attached to the rudder and sensing the pull of the boat, the nudging way she wanted to turn and head into the wind—just the way a car wants to pull a little to the right. You feel it without feeling it. It's part of the way you drive. It comes from your body, not your head. Either you can do it or you can't.

I could do it. And I could do it well. The wind tore past me, the waves rolled under me, the rain poured down on me, but I ignored them. There was only the pull, the bounce, and the tremble. I kept them in perfect balance. Sailing on the edge. Smiling.

But control is an illusion, and in a storm it is a dangerous illusion. You might forget to keep checking things. You might not notice the changes, and storms change. This one did, and I didn't notice. I was too busy thinking it was a good thing, that we'd get home sooner this way. Then the wind got stronger. I was fighting the boat harder. The rail never came out of the water. I was standing with my feet braced on the side of the port seat, clinging to the starboard lifeline with my right arm and fighting the tiller with my left. We sliced through the tops of the waves and surfed down the far side.

I felt an edge of fear start to blur my focus. “Think,” I told myself. “You're going too fast. What do you do now? Think.” But I was telling myself to think rather than doing it because there was nothing I could do. It was too late. We had too much sail up. It was like having the accelerator jammed to the floor and a mountain road in front of you. We should have reefed the main or taken it down. I should have thought of that.

Reefing the main was just a way of making the sail smaller. To reef the main in this old boat required first lifting the boom up so the bottom of the sail folded in a big loose flap. Then someone had to stand on the cabin roof and tie the bottom folds of the sail tightly to the boom. Meanwhile, of course, someone else was steering the boat. That would have been hard enough to do in this storm, but there was a worse problem. The first step in reefing was to center the boom over the cabin or at least pull it in close enough to reach it from the deck. That necessarily meant that the sail would also be centered over the boat—and taking the wind full into its belly. The boat would broach. Before we could even start tying the straps, the boat would be upside down in the ocean.

So we could not reef the main. Nor could we lower it. To loosen the pressure on the sail enough to allow it to slide down, we had to turn the boat into the wind. If we tried that, at some point the boat would be sideways to the wind and waves. Again, before I could get a good hold on the main, we'd broach. Knockdown. Three drowned sailors.

The speedometer was pegged at twelve knots. If we didn't slow down, we were going to plow straight into the wave in front of us and pitchpole forward. The huge white triangle of sail stood out against the dim light that was not night but black day. The wind howled after us, but there was no place to hide. No key to take out. No dream to wake up from. I had made a mistake and we were stuck with it. All of us—together.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

I LOST THE ABILITY to think. I wanted to call Dylan up to tell him, but I couldn't move and I couldn't yell loud enough to make him hear. What was the point anyway? I would just be telling him so I would have somebody else be as scared as I was.

And they were probably scared enough already, stuck down below in their bunks with no light. They couldn't see the storm, only hear it and feel the pounding on the boat and the sharp heel to port. I hoped they were wedged in somehow. Two hot bodies in the dark of a tiny boat smashed by the waves and wind. All they could do was wait. I wondered if Gerry was crying—or if he was too scared even for that.

And still
Chrysalis
tore through the waves, black in the half-light except where they foamed yellow over and past the hull. The wind shrieked through the stays and shoved the waves up higher and higher until the tops blew off and fell raining into the cockpit. The waves grabbed for the forepeak, then picked up the bow and slammed it down in the troughs.
Chrysalis
shuddered with every blow, every joint in her hull loosening. We were taking in water somewhere, but I couldn't go look. I could only steer and look at the sail, stretched by the screaming wind to a big, round, peculiar shape.

Then something exploded. Suddenly. Like a bomb detonated right on our deck. A crack, a boom, a roar of sound that knocked me backward and drowned out the shriek of the wind as the echoes reverberated in my head.

The sail. Our sail had exploded, ripped to shreds by the wind's pressure. The leading edge hugging the mast was still intact, but the leech was torn into a string of ridiculous signal flags flashing mindlessly at the storm. The boom swung wildly while yards of canvas hung from it, dragging across the cockpit and dipping into the sea.

I stared. One second we were screaming along with the sail bellied out tight and whole. The next, the sail was gone and the boat was stalled, turning slowly sideways to the waves.

I didn't have to call Dylan. The hatch boards were flying out of the companionway, and he was climbing into the cockpit as I hauled in the boom and pulled the longest shreds out of the water. Dylan didn't need me to explain anything. He saw immediately what had happened. He turned and motioned Gerry back down. I pointed to the tiller and yelled, “Keep the wind behind us. Keep the waves coming from the stern.”

I found the longest line we had in the cockpit locker and stood. Just as I looked at Dylan, a wave broke over the stern, dropping gallons of water straight down on us. I lost sight of Dylan for that instant. Then he was there again. Wet. Water running off his nose. And trembling slightly. I turned to go forward. My plan was simple. Lower the mainsail and tie the shreds to the boom. Under the conditions, it was an impossible plan.

I crawled along the edge of the boat. I could have brushed the rushing, bubbling water with my fingers if I could have let go to reach out.

When I got to the mast, I crawled slowly up to the center of the boat. I lodged the line between my knees and the mast and took hold of the main halyard to release it. My fingers were cold and felt like exposed bone. I picked at the wet, stiff line. It wouldn't give. Then suddenly it let go, and the force of the heavy slapping shreds of sail against the line almost jerked me up. I used the cleat as a pulley and let the sail down slowly.

As it lowered, it billowed out with the wind. Dylan tugged at the tiller to meet this new force. Then the sail was completely down, its acres of white canvas heaving in the wind, the torn edges flashing up and slapping at the deck.

I clung to the mast with both arms while the boat twisted back and forth, trying to throw me into the sea. I knew I had to let go with one arm. I had to gather the sail and tie it off. A pinpoint in my mind again thought of Gerry down below. Where could he be wedged? How frightened must he be?

I held on with my left arm and crushed down the sail with my right. I tied one end of the line around that first hump of broken sail. Then I stepped aft six inches and crushed, again and again, wrapping the line in a spiral around the flapping, soaked edges of the shredded sail as I hauled them in inch by inch and pound by pound and beat them into a sodden lump on top of the boom.

I couldn't feel my left arm anymore. It was just a hook that I slid along the boom to hold me on. The muscles in my right arm were past exhausted and moved like a machine. I caught every flap, every shred. I was screaming at the sail. I almost fell into the cockpit when my blind feet stepped backward. Then I was down to the last flying triangle of sail beating Dylan in the face. I grabbed it and pulled. It ripped completely off. It streaked out from my hand and disappeared into the sea.

The sail was quiet. I turned to Dylan. He pointed toward the companionway where we had forgotten to replace the hatch boards. I looked.

The cockpit was still awash from the last wave. Whirlpools spiraled down the scupper holes where the water drained out. As the boat slid down the back of another wave, the water in the cockpit sloshed through the companionway opening. The cabin sole was wet. Gerry lay on the sole with a cushion wedged on either side of him. He was not rolling. He was not crying. His eyes were closed and his arms were crossed over his chest, over Blankie and the red life jacket he had put on all alone in the wet, dark boat.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

I LOOKED AT GERRY for a moment and thought about going down to say something. But I didn't know what to say, and I figured if he was in his roly-poly mode, I would just break his concentration. I hoped he was doing that. Otherwise I didn't know how you could stand to be barely six years old, terrified of the water, and believing you were about to be thrown into the worst water you'd ever seen in your life.

So I crawled back to take the tiller from Dylan and sent him down below.

“Dry off,” I yelled in his ear. “Feed yourselves.”

I settled back to the helm. Now we were running bare poled before the wind, the hull alone giving the wind enough surface to push us flying across the seas.

Usually when you're steering a boat, it's like steering a car—you aim yourself in the right direction and move the tiller a little this way or that way to keep on course. Occasionally a stronger puff of wind or a sudden wave pushes you off—like a bump in the road or a car that swings too far into your lane. But you correct. You get back on course. And you start again with the little movements. It's easy. Anyone can do it.

But this tiller was a raging dog I had to hold at heel. We swung wildly from side to side as the waves lifted the boat and twisted it to one side. I pulled the tiller toward me with all my strength, leaning back to get out of the way so I could pull it more and more toward starboard. Then the waves dropped us and twisted us the other way and I was shoving the tiller to port. Away from me. Hard. Hard. As far as it would go. Then we rolled up the back of a wave and were dropped again, maybe this time in the other direction. Maybe not. The compass needle swung through eighty degrees with each wave as I fought to keep our stern to the wind and waves, to keep the boat afloat.

The wind kept shoving us over the waves and shrieking in my ears. The rain kept pummeling me with wet and cold and pounding on my face. The waves kept rising up under us, crashing on top of us, and washing over us. Still we rode on. And on. And on. The day slipped into night. The night slid away, and it was day again. I'd been at the helm for almost twenty-four hours. I hadn't eaten or drunk. I hadn't rested.

As the new day began to lessen the darkness, I realized the rain had almost stopped and the wind was less. It was still stronger than any I'd ever sailed in before, but it was less than it had been. I began to notice my body again, but it was as if it were someone else's. I couldn't change any of the things that were wrong. I was still a human machine acting as an extension of the rudder.