The Trojan Sea

For Sheila,
who made all this possible

The Caribbean

Jane Ryan huddled under the dodger as the sailboat met the eight-foot swell head-on. It was almost 6:00
A.M
., and she was cold and sleepy as she neared the end of her four-hour watch.
Temptress
took the swell easily. Jane loved the forty-two-foot boat with its cutter rig, classic lines, and strong hull. In many ways it was her alter ego, a seagoing version of what she was: sturdy, totally reliable, a little too broad of beam, and handsome in an old-fashioned way. No one would ever call Jane Ryan slim or beautiful. But perceptive people did look at her twice. Just like
Temptress
.

But she had a problem. Mike Stuart, the boat’s owner, had worked hard, taken all the required classes, and been certified by the U.S. Sailing Association for offshore passage-making. As a final touch he had hired her to be his instructor for a test in the real thing on a six-week cruise in the Caribbean. But something was not quite right. She moved the problem to a back burner. They could talk about it in Miami, another three or four days away. Automatically, she checked the barometer at the navigation station just inside the cabin. It was falling rapidly.
Strange,
she thought. The forecast twenty-four hours ago had called for good weather with the possibility of a tropical storm well to the south of them. She shook away the cobwebs of sleep as the eastern horizon glowed with the first golden red of sunrise. Mike Stuart climbed out of the companionway to take the next watch. She squeezed past him and stood on the ladder. “Coffee?” she called.

“Super,” Stuart said, his voice raised against the wind.

She disappeared into the cabin as
Temptress
slammed into a wave and shuddered. “Update weather,” she mumbled to herself. She braced herself against the roll of the boat, lit the stove, and within a few minutes handed Stuart a mug of steaming coffee. “Breakfast?”

“How do you do it?” Stuart asked, taking a welcome sip. “I could never cook in all this motion.”

“Practice,” Jane answered. She was given to one-or two-word communications, and she considered anything more than four blabbering. She studied Stuart for a moment. Forty-one years old and five feet eleven inches tall, he was remarkable mainly for his red hair and bright green eyes.
Too bad about the glasses,
she thought.
His eyes are his best feature.
She ducked back into the galley, still thinking about him. After cruising on
Temptress
for over a month in tropical climates, she had come to enjoy his dry humor and gentle manner. An image of them in bed with her responding to his tender touch played in her mind.
Where did that come from?
She was being a blabbermouth and hit her mental delete key to obliterate the image. But it wouldn’t go away.

Stuart stuck his head inside the companionway. “Jane, the wind’s starting to kick up. Should we furl the jib and take a reef in the mainsail? Maybe fly the staysail?”

“I’ll help,” she replied. If it were her watch, she’d have done it by herself, without asking. Why was she coddling him? Deep down she knew the answer. Mike Stuart was truly one of the good guys, and there was something about him she wanted to mother and protect. Or was it caress and cuddle? She couldn’t make up her mind. She slipped into her life vest and harness.

Stuart had already furled the jib on its roller reefing and turned
Temptress
into the wind, all simple tasks. He was clipped onto a tether and ready to go forward to reef the main while she stayed in the cockpit. They were a well-practiced team, and within minutes they’d shortened the big sail down to its first reef. Stuart worked his way aft, tidying up the lines and the reefing tie-downs.

Now there was enough light for her to study the sky. She didn’t like what she saw. “Mike, head north.”

“North is Cuba. That’s never-never land.” He grinned at her, and she felt her heart do a little flip-flop. “I can never, never go there. Never.” Stuart was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force with a security clearance that forbade his even thinking about going to certain places. Cuba was high on that list.

“Big storm to the south. North is away.”

“Right. Any port.” Another thought came to him. “Isn’t this too early in the season for a hurricane?”

“Tell the hurricane that.” She climbed down the companionway and sat at the navigation station. Her hands darted over the single-sideband radio as she hunted for an open frequency. Twelve minutes later she had a current picture of the weather and for the first time in her sailing career she was deeply worried. She laid in a course to Cienfuegos in Cuba and its sheltered harbor before joining Stuart in the cockpit. She gave him the new compass heading, and he dialed it into the autopilot. “That tropical storm southeast of us,” she told him, “has turned into the granddaddy of hurricanes. Caught everyone by surprise.”

“The weather gurus blow it big time,” he quipped dryly. “That’s what comes from never looking out the window before they make up a forecast. How bad is it?”

She shook her head. “It’s gone all the way—a category five. That means winds greater than a hundred and fifty-five miles per hour.”

“Ouch. How big will the waves get?”

“Don’t even think about it.”

“I’ll try not to.” He gave her his lopsided grin. “Are we in deep doodoo?”

“Not yet. By going north, we should outrun the worst part.”

“Can the boat take it?”

“Oh, yeah,” she replied.

Again the wry grin. “But can we?” He started the diesel engine to charge the batteries and make sure it was running properly.

Four hours later they took the second reef in the mainsail and reduced the staysail to half. By noon, they had taken the third and final reef in the main. Just before she finished her noon-to-four watch, Jane furled the main and flew a fourth of the staysail, relying on the diesel for power. Stuart took over then, and she went down below to secure the cabin, stow all loose objects, and rig lee straps on the settee for sleeping. Then she fixed their last hot meal and forced Stuart to eat it. Finally, she prepared a large thermos of hot soup and tied the thermos in the sink. With the galley cleaned up and all the drawers pinned closed, she lay down on the settee to rest.

She was sound asleep when a rogue wave knocked
Temptress
down, laying the boat flat on its port side. The lee straps saved her from tumbling about and injuring herself. “Come on,” she coaxed. Slowly
Temptress
righted herself, and Jane felt the boat stabilize as Stuart restarted the engine. But it wouldn’t catch. Rather than drain the batteries, he gave up. “Good boy,” she said. She donned her life vest and harness and went topside. It was dark, and Stuart was at the helm, guiding
Temptress
down the backside of a huge wave.

“No damage up here,” he called. “How’s down below?”

“No problem,” she shouted, clipping a tether to her harness. “The bilge is dry.” Even if there had been damage or spillage below, she would have ignored it as long as they weren’t taking on water. She worked to control her voice. “Mike, we’re going too fast. We need to slow down coming down these waves. Otherwise we’re going to bury the bow and pitchpole.”

Stuart gulped visibly at the thought of the bow’s digging into a wave and
Temptress
somersaulting onto her back. Again, the grin. “And here I was having fun.”

She shook her head and smiled in spite of herself. That was the Mike Stuart she loved. “You lying scumbag.” Back to business. “We need to rig a drogue.”

“No problemo, señorita.”
She shook her head at his fractured Spanish and took the helm. “Hey, I’m just practicing the lingo if we’re going to Cuba.” He opened the cockpit locker and pulled out the stern anchor rode, dumping all 250 feet of thick line on the deck. Then he pulled out a small tire off an old trailer that Jane had insisted they bring for just such an occasion. He tied the tire to the end of the line.

“Hurry!” Jane shouted as they crested a huge wave and rocketed down the backside. Stuart threw the drogue over the stern and watched in horror as all 250 feet of line paid out and then disappeared. He had forgotten to cleat off the end of the line.

“I can’t believe I did that,” he moaned.

“Get the small anchor and tie it to a docking line,” Jane said, ever practical. Stuart clipped his tether to the jackline that ran along the deck to the bow, where their smallest anchor was stowed. A wave rocked the boat so hard that he fell to his knees. “Shorten your tether!” she shouted. But he didn’t hear this last command as he crawled forward.
Temptress
bottomed out in the trough and dug her nose in as water crashed over the deck. Slowly the boat rose to meet the next wave, shaking itself free of the tons of water on the deck and in the cockpit.

Stuart had reached the last handhold on the cabin trunk. He had lost his glasses and could barely see. “Go!” Jane shouted. “You’ve got time!” Stuart darted forward, pulled the anchor out of the forward storage locker, and started back. He reached the mast before another wave hit and had to hold on. But before he could move,
Temptress
crashed over the crest and steamed down the backside of the wave. He dropped the anchor and held on to a halyard with both hands.

“Oh, shitsky!” he shouted as
Temptress
dug her bow into the wall of water at the bottom of the trough. The stern started to lift, threatening to pitchpole them forward. But at that exact instant a cross-wave broadsided them, knocking the boat over on her side. The force of the water tore Jane’s grasp off the wheel, and only her short tether kept her from being swept overboard. Her harness twisted around her arm as she fell. She almost passed out from pain as her left shoulder dislocated.

Eventually,
Temptress
righted herself. Jane pulled herself to her feet and grabbed the wheel as the cockpit rapidly drained. She looked forward. “Mike!” But he was gone. Then she saw his tether trailing around a shroud and over the side of the boat. The tether was stretched taut from his weight. She looked over the side of the boat. He was being dragged alongside and banging off the hull.

Rapidly running out of time and ideas, she spun the wheel and laid the boat abeam, or across the waves. Their forward motion stopped, with Stuart sheltered on the lee, or downwind side of the boat. But Jane wasn’t sure if
Temptress
could lie abeam of the waves. There was a very real danger of the boat’s tripping on the face of a wave and rolling over. But she didn’t have any other options. She crawled forward and grabbed Stuart’s tether, bracing her feet against the low bulwark. If a wave washed him overboard, one could wash him back on board. She timed her move and waited for the boat to rock as the next wave hit. She felt the tether go limp and then pulled for all she was worth. Stuart came crashing out of the sea and onto the lifelines, the plastic-coated cables that acted as a railing. He was sputtering with life but on the wrong side of the lifelines.

Jane felt
Temptress
start to go over.

She grabbed the back of his harness with her good hand and pulled, dragging him over the lifelines. He fell on her, and she passed out from the pain.

Temptress
struggled upright.

A blast of water jolted Jane back to consciousness. Somehow they were still on board, and Stuart was pulling her into the cockpit. But they were still abeam the waves. Another wave crashed into them. Luckily it wasn’t a big one, or they would have capsized.

“A fine mess you got us into, Stanley,” Stuart muttered. No answer from Jane. He looked up as they rose to the top of the next wave, still on the verge of a capsize. A prolonged burst of lightning illuminated the night, and even without his glasses all he could see was wave after wave marching down on them.

“Turn,” Jane groaned. “Run before it.” Stuart grabbed the wheel and gave it a spin, trying to bring
Temptress
’s stern into the next wave that was bearing down on them. Nothing happened. Then, with maddening slowness,
Temptress
responded. The wave crashed over them, and Stuart felt the boat shudder. Jane washed up against him, banging them into the steering pedestal. For a moment he was certain they weren’t going to make it. But
Temptress
shook off the wave, and the bow came up. They accelerated down the front of the wave and surged up the next one, again going far too fast. At the top the boat leaped out of the water and slammed down.

Again the lightning flashed, and Stuart saw a dark gray mass on the far horizon. “Oh, my God,” he whispered. The fear of all sailors held him tight. They were running out of sea room and being driven by the storm onto a lee shore. Once more they crashed off the top of a wave, rocking violently.
Temptress
tried to respond, but she was taking on water in the cockpit and was too sluggish.

Stuart set the autopilot. He timed the next wave and slid open the cabin’s hatch. He lowered Jane down the companionway as the next wave crashed over them, and washed him down the open hatch. The cabin was awash in a foot of water as he placed her on the settee and jammed a sodden pillow between her and the lee straps, immobilizing her shoulder. The storm had beaten him to a pulp, and he was out of ideas.

Jane looked at him, paralyzed by the pain. A voice from Mike’s distant past echoed through him. It was his father, urging him on, telling him to do something, even if it was wrong. He grabbed a handhold as the autopilot let go and
Temptress
broached. “Help her!” Jane shouted. The boat rocked violently, and he held on, unable to move. He was certain they were going to capsize. Again
Temptress
fought off the raging sea.