Morgan Stone: The Russian Factor

Anna hadn’t budged the life raft. She probably hadn’t tripped the releases. “Why didn’t we practice abandon-ship procedures? Stupid, stupid, stupid!” While berating myself I watched Anna skid backwards and slam into the mast. She struggled to hang onto it. “Forget it! Get back here!” I screamed from the cockpit. She couldn’t hear me. I figured we were seconds away from waves sweeping her from the deck or a whipping sail braining her.

Still no helm control but the yacht was more-or-less upright. Reflexively, I slapped the fuel open and turned the key to start the engine. What sounded like a shotgun blast into a barrel of water came from below and the lights went out. The electrics were dead. “The engine’s underwater, you stupid twit.” I muttered to myself. “Stupid, stupid, stupid!”

Anna shrieked as a line cracked her wrist. Her flashlight went airborne, arcing through the air into the water. It was still shining as it went down.

“Bring me a jib sheet.” I yelled over the wind. “Hurry! I need control.” I used my flashlight to light one of the thick whipping ropes while clawing and grasping my way toward Anna. Finally she pressed a thick line leading from the forward sail into my hand and tumbled back into the cockpit with a splash. I slammed the line into a winch and pulled like hell. The forward sail took on a bulging grotesque shape, and dragged the bow downwind.

With Anna at the helm, I stabilized what functional sail area I could. We moved sluggishly downwind. The wind vane self-steering contraption had been destroyed; parts were torn away and what was left was twisted and broken. Anna wiped wet hair from her face with a bare hand. Her mitt long gone, I caught a glimpse of her wrist and a ragged wound centered in tendrils of blood and seawater. I shone my flashlight right on it.

“Oh, look at that. Huh…” Anna examined her wrist with detached interest.

Shadow was sitting low in the water and waves from behind poured over the transom. “The battle’s not over yet.” I pumped the manual bilge pump for hours. At least I knew it wasn’t hooked up backwards this time. Anna spelled me off when she could. Slowly, Shadow rose from the water and waves stopped breaking into the cockpit. When the pump started gulping air, I went below.

My flashlight revealed the heartbreaking mess. Everything was drenched, smashed, ruined or just plain gone. Ruined books, charts and notes lay in sodden heaps. Water dripped from mattresses, seat cushions, piles of clothing and blankets. Only the food in cans remained viable — although missing labels would make for mealtime intrigue. The electrical panel was dead. The choking smell of chlorine and an ominous sizzling below my bunk wasn’t a good sign. The battery compartment is down there. I knew we’d lost some, maybe all of them. Recalling my idiotic attempt to start the motor, I hoped the system had shorted out before the engine turned over and inhaled seawater. I didn’t know if I’d be able to start it again. Neither of us had anything dry and, seeing my breath, I became suddenly aware of how seriously cold it was.

I moved up to sit on a bare cockpit bench. The cushions had all been swept overboard. I watched Anna at the helm. “I’m sorry. So bloody sorry. For everything.”

Her lips were blue and her teeth chattered. “I am also sorry.”

I switched off my flashlight. For all I knew it was the only source of light we had left. After a few minutes I could see the faint phosphorescence of bioluminescent plankton in our wake and the foaming waves around us.

Anna said nothing. She leaned into the wheel, anticipating a wave from behind.

I think I saw her, in the almost nonexistent ambient light, lick her wounded wrist. After a few minutes I went on. “I’m thinking the batteries are wrecked. There’s acid down there reacting with seawater. Without electrics we’ve got no nav, engine, autopilot, weather or email.”

“You’ll fix it. We had the same problem in the Mediterranean.”

“I don’t know. This time it’s different. Everything is wrecked. The laptop is probably drowned. What good’s the sat-modem without it?”

“No, the computer is in the kayaking bag Sandy gave me in Panama. It’s probably okay, the bag is watertight, it’s in my closet. I’ve been making sure it did not get wet.” Her teeth chattered on the t in wet.

“Wow, great! At least…”

“How far to Canada?” Anna cut me off.

“Oh geeze, maybe a thousand miles, and they’re all further north.” I squeezed icy seawater from my mitts with aching hands. “And it’s going to get a lot colder, rougher too.”

“Okay, tell me, Jess, can we make it?”

“I don’t think we have a choice. We have to. We land anywhere but Canada and you’re as good as dead.”

“That’s not what I want to hear. Not what I need to know.”

I opened my mouth to speak, but had nothing to say. Eventually, “We’re a thousand miles from land, somewhere in the North Pacific, west-northwest of San Francisco. I’ve heard the offshore sailors at the club say ‘nobody sails north of San Fran in winter,’ and it’s winter now.”

“I don’t care what you’ve heard others say, they aren’t here now — we are.”

“Oh geeze, we were so close. So close, Anna! One more week and we might have made it. The only reason we’re upright now is because we are going downwind. Heading south — running away.”

“I have nowhere to go but north.” Anna’s disembodied voice spoke slowly and clearly from the darkness. “If we don’t go north, my life is as good as over.”

“But…”

“No, let me speak.” Anna cut me off. “If going north means we are both going to die, I won’t have that. I think we cheated death tonight.”

“I think we’ve been cheating death since…”

“Let me finish.” I heard her inhale slowly. “I have been ready to die for a long time now. I think it maybe started for me in the Atlantic. I look at things like it is for the last time. I look into the water and I imagine my last breath. I have grown accustomed to living always with my last sunset, last meal, last look, last feeling. I guess, as you would say, ‘I am damned if I do and damned if I don’t.’”

“Anna, I didn’t know…”

“But you aren’t. You have a choice. We can go to Panama, or Mexico, or even America. You might lose this boat, or what’s left of it, but you won’t lose your life.”

“You won’t…”

“Yes I will, or I might as well. I will be returned to Russia eventually. My life will be over. It’s just a fact. But Jess, and this is what I need to know, I don’t want to die needlessly in this goddamned ocean. If you don’t think we can make it to Canada, I don’t want to try. You told me you didn’t want to watch me die. The same goes for me.”

“You’re ready to die getting to Canada?”

“I guess I’ve been ready to die for a long time, but I’m not willing to let you die for me too. So, if you tell me honestly we can or we will make it, we’ll turn this boat around at first light, make what repairs we can and we’ll fight the battle again. But only if you say we can win, we can survive, we can make it.”

“I’m not a hero, Anna.”

“You have to be. We both have to be or we won’t make it. So, Jess, what’s it going to be?”

A couple of weeks later we were motoring under Vancouver’s Lions Gate Bridge without ceremony. It felt surreal. I’d emailed Tom that we were in the Strait of Georgia, and, since my Fido phone was no longer roaming, I’d called Gavin as we sailed by Point Grey. He was arranging our arrival with officials and I was following his instructions. Shadow was a veritable wreck, but at least I’d gotten the motor going. We’d made it!