Morgan Stone: The Russian Factor

There would be no turning back. Especially after Tom’s warning, we’d decided to keep Shadow going when we hit the Pacific. I hung onto the rolls of film I’d shot in Kiev. It was safer with me than with Gavin. Especially since as he was doing the Eco-tourism thing. Besides, if I didn’t make it, the photographic evidence on that film was pretty much worth squat.

Once through the canal, the Pacific spread out before us. A pilot boat pulled up alongside and, while underway at five knots, the guys in the shirts and ties jumped aboard and were gone. A few minutes later, the skiff, we’d unloaded the groceries from in Colon, came bouncing up behind us. With great frivolity, the two young Panamanian men hurled the tires to their compatriot in the skiff, followed by the mounds of rope they’d brought aboard and finally, buckets of chicken bones and garbage. With the skiff piled up like a top heavy garbage scow, Gavin and Sandy climbed aboard. How that thing didn’t capsize is a mystery to me. With moist eyes, I watched Gavin and Sandy waving as it disappeared in the distance.

It got dark quickly. The sailing was unremarkable, with a light wind moving us smoothly south through the Gulf of Panama. Anna had been morose and silent. On deck, she’d watched the sunset until the last glow of crimson was consumed by blue-black. Then she went below. I knew she was crying silently, or at least trying to conceal it from me. What could we say to each other to make it easier? Sunsets were always the worst for Anna.

I hadn’t spent enough time on land to get used to it, but seeing Gavin and Sandy before heading back to sea left me lonelier than previous departures. The radar picked up targets all around, but nothing close. The sky was overcast, the air warm and saturated. Aside from the spilled light of the electrics, the darkness was total. I was sipping the last of the whiskey I’d poured myself earlier and Anna was asleep below. Compared to the company and activity aboard through the canal, the yacht was desolate. It was a good night for feeling sorry for oneself.

With the Gulf of Panama behind us to the southeast, days blurred into weeks. Winds got lighter and the sea became glassy. A hundred nautical miles off Guatemala, the radar hooted a collision warning. I woke Anna when I had visual and auditory contact with whatever was speeding right toward us. “We’ve got company. Get dressed.”

“Company? Where are we?” She yawned.

“Get up! It could be pirates.”

A rusty powerboat idled its engines and circled fifty feet from us. No flag, no identification, for sure this was serious. We sat in the cockpit, bolt upright and dead still, moving only our eyes while heavily armed scruffy men wordlessly sized us up. What felt like an eternity later an order was growled from the fly bridge and the boat roared away. It disappeared over the horizon leaving us speculating it wasn’t worth the bother to attack us. We were either pretty slim pickings or so pathetic the pirates passed us over for more worthy prey. It unnerved us to the point we sacrificed fuel just to get as far away from land as possible. Unfortunately, we ended up motoring right into the doldrums.

With no wind or waves, stormy winter conditions north of the tropics, pirates east of us and no real motivation to do anything, we killed the motor, packed the sails and just drifted. The yacht was more stable hundreds of miles out to sea than in a protected marina. The solar panels made electricity, powering the water-maker and refrigerator. We had plenty of food, including all the fish we cared to catch so we pretty much gave up the fight and transitioned into a numb waiting mode.

Our automatic satellite position reports brought our lack of progress to Tom’s attention around Christmas.

Waiting out the winter adrift in the Doldrums is plain stupid. You’ll get hit by a storm or run over by something big. Anna’s testimony and claim for protection isn’t getting any stronger while you piss away the time. Either get a move on or go back to Panama and call it quits.

I reacted by starting the engine and pointing the boat north.

Leaving our watery hermitage behind, we burned through the last of our fuel before we got to wind. When the engine hiccupped, coughed and died we were still becalmed. But this time, we were only a couple hundred miles south of Cabo San Lucas. “In the shipping lanes!” Tom complained. He was not impressed and suggested paddling if nothing else. He closed his reply to my ran-out-of-gas message by telling me to aim for the east side of the Baja peninsula. Apparently, he had a friend he’d ask to bring jugs of fuel down to some beach.

It took an agonizing week-and-a-half to cover the couple hundred miles to the Sea of Cortez. With almost no wind, we spent most of that time drifting back over miles we’d made north. We had to get close enough to land to see it before we felt our first breeze. Anna claimed she could smell it. Milking the quixotic breeze for all we could, with every square meter of cloth we could dangle from the rigging — including the spinnaker, we headed into the Sea of Cortez.

Following Tom’s detailed cloak and dagger instructions, we sailed through moonless dark to an area with the ominous name, Bahia de los Muertos — Bay of the Dead. Using the depth sounder, GPS charting and radar we maneuvered under sail, silent and dark, until we were off an invisible beach where I exchanged flashlight signals with Tom’s contact.

Return flashes greeted us. “Oh geeze, this is working.” I hadn’t thought it would.

Anchoring wasn’t an option because, even had I not pillaged parts from the mechanism to raise and lower it, the noise it would have made was unacceptable. According to Tom, who didn’t want us drawing attention to ourselves, people who actually like to cruise and sail have been known to frequent the Bay of the Dead.

Anna, who had rehearsed her part, used the mainsail, autopilot and hand-held GPS, to keep Shadow in pretty much the same spot, while I swam to shore with money in a Ziploc baggy. Tiny creatures flashed bioluminescent sparklers where my hands and feet created turbulence, lighting me up like a neon sign. The contact had no trouble seeing me swim to shore, and I followed the glow of his cigarette like a beacon.

He was Mexican, medium build, glasses, thick accent and rudimentary English. He used his cigarette like a pointer to indicate where the fuel was stashed and where I was to return the empty jugs. Our business done, he ground the stub into the gravelly beach with the sole of a work boot and was gone.

Six sixty-liter plastic jugs of diesel waited for me. I swore under my breath at the gravelly beach, my bare feet already feeling like I’d gone at them with a cheese grater. I knew the diesel fuel was lighter than seawater and the jugs would float, but the prospect of making six trips back and forth had me feeling around in one of a dozen or so beached open fishing boats for some rope. I dragged the jugs down to the water, got them tied together, and with the rope tied around my waist, dragged them through the water.

It was too dark to see Shadow and I was getting tired. Panting, I stopped to tread water, catch my breath and get my bearings. With my ears out of the water, I heard a splash a hundred meters to my right and saw telltale bioluminescence. It was either Anna trying to get my attention or a sea creature looking for a midnight snack. I headed ponderously toward her.

Taking deep and even breaths and swimming on my back, I worked on making each stroke count. Picking out familiar constellations helped me stay on course. I was slipping into a state of exercise-induced numbness when Shadow’s mainsail appeared against the sky. I passed the rope I’d had around my waist to Anna, “Cleat this and don’t let it go.” then climbed aboard, barely rolling onto the swim platform, worn out. Anna set a course away from the beach. My exhaustion made sense. The six big jugs of diesel trailing behind hampered even the boat’s movement through the water. For me, it had been like dragging six bodies through the water in the Bay of the Dead. No wonder I was exhausted. Finally flopping into the cockpit, I caught my breath and guzzled orange juice Anna brought me to fend off the hypoglycemic shakes.