Десмонд Бэгли - The Golden Keel

Shortly after noon the wind speed increased gently to force eight verging on force nine — a strong gale. We handed the mainsail altogether and set the trysail, a triangular handkerchief-sized piece of strong canvas intended for heavy weather. The foresail we also doused with difficulty — it was becoming very dangerous to work on the foredeck.

The height of the waves had increased tremendously and they would no sooner break in a white crest than the wind would tear the foam away to blow it in ragged streaks across the sea. Large patches of foam were beginning to form until the sea began to look like a giant washtub into which someone had emptied a few thousand tons of detergent.

I gave orders that no one should go on deck but the man on watch and that he should wear a safety line at all times. For myself, I got into my berth, put up the bunkboards so that I wouldn’t be thrown out, and tried unsuccessfully to read a magazine. But I kept wondering if Metcalfe was out in this sea. If he was, I didn’t envy him, because a power boat does not take heavy weather as kindly as a sailing yacht, and he must be going through hell.

Things got worse later in the afternoon so I decided to heave-to. We handed the trysail and lay under bare poles abeam to the seas. Then we battened down the hatches and all four of us gathered in the main cabin chatting desultorily when the noise would allow us.

It was about this time that I started to worry about sea room. As I had been unable to take a sight I didn’t know our exact position — and while dead reckoning and log readings were all very well in their way, I was beginning to become perturbed. For we were now in the throat of the funnel between Almeria in Spain and Morocco. I knew we were safe enough from being wrecked on the mainland, but just about here was a fly-speck of an island called Alboran which could be the ruin of us if we ran into it in this weather.

I studied the Mediterranean Pilot. I had been right when I said that this sort of weather was not common in the Mediterranean, but that was cold comfort. Evidently the Clerk of the Weather hadn’t read the Mediterranean Pilot — the old boy was certainly piling it on.

At five o’clock I went on deck for a last look round before nightfall. Coertze helped me take away the batten boards from the companion entrance and I climbed into the cockpit. It was knee-deep in swirling water despite the three two-inch drains I had built into it; and as I stood there, gripping a stanchion, another boiling wave swept across the deck and filled the cockpit.

I made a mental note to fit more cockpit drains, then looked at the sea. The sight was tremendous; this was a whole gale and the waves were high, with threatening overhanging crests. As I stood there one of the crests broke over the deck and Sanford shuddered violently. The poor old girl was taking a hell of a beating and I thought I had better do something about it. It would mean at least one man in the cockpit getting soaked and miserable and frightened and I knew that man must be me — I wouldn’t trust anyone else with what I was about to do.

I went back below. ‘We’ll have to run before the wind,’ I said. ‘Walker, fetch that coil of 4-inch nylon rope from the fo’c’sle. Kobus, get into your oilskins and come with me.’

Coertze and I went back into the cockpit and I unlashed the tiller. I shouted, ‘When we run her downwind we’ll have to slow her down. We’ll run a bight of rope astern and the drag will help.’

Walker came up into the cockpit with the rope and he made one end fast to the port stern bitts. I brought Sanford downwind and Coertze began to pay the rope over the stern. Nylon, like hemp and unlike manila, floats, and the loop of rope acted like a brake on Sanford ’s wild rush.

Too much speed is the danger when you’re running before a gale; if you go too fast then the boat is apt to trip just like a man who trips over his own feet when running. When that happens the boat is likely to capsize fore-and-aft — the bows dig into the sea, the stern comes up and the boat somersaults. It happened to Tzu Hang in the Pacific and it happened to Erling Tambs’ Sandefjord in the Atlantic when he lost a man. I didn’t want it to happen to me.

Steering a boat in those conditions was a bit hairraising. The stern had to be kept dead in line with the overtaking wave and, if you got it right, then the stern rose smoothly and the wave passed underneath. If you were a fraction out then there was a thud and the wave would break astern; you would be drenched with water, the tiller would nearly be wrenched from your grasp and you would wonder how much more of that treatment the rudder would take.

Coertze had paid out all the nylon, a full forty fathoms, and Sanford began to behave a little better. The rope seemed to smooth the waters astern and the waves did not break as easily. I thought we were still going a little too fast so I told Walker to bring up some more rope. With another two lengths of twenty-fathom three-inch nylon also streamed astern I reckoned we had cut Sanford ’s speed down to three knots.

There was one thing more I could do. I beckoned to Coertze and put my mouth close to his ear. ‘Go below and get the spare can of diesel oil from the fo’c’sle. Give it to Francesca and tell her to put half a pint at a time into the lavatory then flush it. About once every two or three minutes will do.’

He nodded and went below. The four-gallon jerrycan we kept as a spare would now come in really useful. I had often heard of pouring oil on troubled waters — now we would see if there was anything in it.

Walker was busy wrapping sailcloth around the ropes streamed astern where they rubbed on the taffrail. It wouldn’t take much of this violent movement to chafe them right through, and if a rope parted at the same moment that I had to cope with one of those particularly nasty waves which came along from time to time then it might be the end of us.

I looked at my watch. It was half past six and it looked as though I would have a nasty and frightening night ahead of me. But I was already getting the hang of keeping Sanford stern on to the seas and it seemed as though all I would need would be concentration and a hell of a lot of stamina.

Coertze came back and shouted, ‘The oil’s going in.’

I looked over the side. It didn’t seem to be making much difference, though it was hard to tell. But anything that could make a difference I was willing to try, so I let Francesca carry on.

The waves were big. I estimated they were averaging nearly forty feet from trough to crest and Sanford was behaving like a roller-coaster car. When we were in a trough the waves looked frighteningly high, towering above us with threatening crests. Then her bows would sink as a wave took her astern until it seemed as if she was vertical and going to dive straight to the bottom of the sea. The wave would lift her to the crest and then we could see the stormtattered sea around us, with spume being driven from the waves horizontally until it was difficult to distinguish between sea and air. And back we would go into a trough with Sanford ’s bows pointing to the skies and the monstrous waves again threatening.

Sometimes, about four times in an hour, there was a freak wave which must have been caused by one wave catching up with another, thus doubling it. These freaks I estimated at sixty feet high — higher than Sanford ’s mast! — and I would have to concentrate like hell so that we wouldn’t be pooped.

Once — just once — we were pooped, and it was then that Walker went overboard. We were engulfed in water as a vast wave broke over the stern and I heard his despairing shout and saw his white face and staring eyes as he was washed out of the cockpit and over the side.