Caught by the Sea (6 page)
There was never a time when it abated. Not a moment when I could shrug and shake and take a breather or catch up or even react sanely to what was happening. The boat slammed and pounded and rolled and shuddered and the cockpit filled and she would seem to be foundering and then she would roll and empty—the three little inch-and-a-half cockpit drains were a joke; the boat would take on two or three hundred gallons and turn the large cockpit into a full-size Jacuzzi. I was under water more than I was out of it. I had closed the companionway, but hundreds of gallons went down into the boat and I could hear the twelve-volt bilge pump working to get rid of the water, putting out a little half-inch stream while gallons poured in through the louvered doors of the companionway. Thank God the motor kept running; it could do nothing to move the boat in such waves but it kept the electrical system from running down, so the bilge pump kept working.
And then it was over.
Just that fast. I was suddenly standing on a boat that made sense; the rolling and pitching had stopped and while I could still hear the wind roaring and tearing, it was back past the stern, and the boat was once again in the lee of the island in quiet water.
Later I figured what had happened. We had just barely nosed past the island, only just come out into the wind-shear line, where we got hit. The wind tore at the bow, smashed it around as it pounded the boat over, completely turning it end over end, and though it was moved sideways the keel caught the water and the wind propelled it forward as well, except that we were now moving in the opposite direction, the boat hull itself acting as a sail to drive her back into the lee. I had nothing to do with it. She went out and came back herself, sail hanging in tatters from the mast and boom.
The motor propelled us peacefully at five-and-a-half knots. The boat moved smoothly, flat in the quiet water along the kelp beds, and I stood, soaked, blasted into a kind of shock, my hand on the wheel in a counterfeit control. I could hear the hum and squirt of the bilge pump and I looked back into the darkness, tried to see what was there, but there was only blackness and the roaring of the wind and the loud smashing hiss of the breaking waves.
I knew that I had been close to death and that only luck had kept me alive and that I would go back down to the other end of the island and take a mooring in the little harbor of Avalon and make a hot breakfast and spend a day and a night sleeping and resting and thanking whatever higher power it was that kept me alive, and I shivered and the motion pulled up the sleeve of my foul-weather jacket and I saw my watch and thought, no, it’s broken, this can’t be.
The total elapsed time was twenty-two minutes, start to finish. My life was completely changed and I would never look at the sea the same way again.
And only twenty-two minutes had passed.
Later I learned: It was truly a killer storm. Boats were lost, lives were lost. One of the large ferries that went back and forth to the mainland had been hit by a wave so high and strong that it took out the second-floor windows on one side and then went on
through
the boat and tore the windows out the other side as well, from the inside out.
The storm went on through California and Arizona and destroyed buildings and killed people all the way to El Paso, Texas, before it finally broke apart and ended.
I don’t know how strong the wind was that hit me because I had no anemometer on my boat. But when I got to Avalon the wind coming over the back and blowing out through the sheltered harbor itself had sporadic gusts up to fifty knots and a man there said there’d been measured gusts north of Catalina Island that went over a hundred knots.
All that day I lay listening to the wind screaming overhead, dozing safely in my bunk, and all I could think was: There are people who have been in storms that lasted many hours, sometimes
days,
in the open sea.
I was nearly killed in twenty-two minutes.
But I was still there, and that very night I began making plans. That night I decided: Someday I would try the one great passage of the sailor’s world. Someday I would try to sail around Cape Horn.
About the Author
Gary Paulsen is the distinguished author of many critically acclaimed books for young people, including three Newbery Honor books:
The Winter
Room, Hatchet
and
Dogsong.
His novel
The
Haymeadow
received the Western Writers of America Golden Spur Award. Among his newest Delacorte Press books are
Guts: The True Stories
Behind
Hatchet
and the Brian Books, The Beet
Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer, Alida’s
Song
(a companion to
The Cookcamp
),
Soldier’s
Heart, The Transall Saga, My Life in Dog Years,
Sarny: A Life Remembered
(a companion to
Nightjohn
),
Brian’s Return
and
Brian’s Winter
(companions to
Hatchet
),
Father Water, Mother
Woods: Essays on Fishing and Hunting in the North
Woods
and five books about Francis Tucket’s adventures in the Old West. Gary Paulsen has also published fiction and nonfiction for adults, as well as picture books illustrated by his wife, the painter Ruth Wright Paulsen. Their most recent book is
Canoe Days.
The Paulsens live in New Mexico and on the Pacific Ocean.
Also by Gary Paulsen
Alida’s Song
The Beet Fields: Memories of a Sixteenth Summer
The Boy Who Owned the School
The Brian Books:
The River, Brian’s Winter
and
Brian’s Return
Canyons
The Car
The Cookcamp
The Crossing
Dogsong
Father Water, Mother Woods:
Essays on Fishing and Hunting in the North Woods
Guts: The True Stories Behind
Hatchet
and the Brian Books
Harris and Me
Hatchet
The Haymeadow
The Island
The Monument
My Life in Dog Years
Nightjohn
The Night the White Deer Died
Puppies, Dogs, and Blue Northers
Sarny: A Life Remembered
The Scherno f Discoveries
Soldier’s Heart
The Transall Saga
The Tucket Adventures, Books One through Five
The Voyage of the
Frog
The Winter Room
Picture books, illustrated by Ruth Wright Paulsen:
Canoe Days
and
Dogteam
Published by
Delacorte Press
an imprint of
Random House Children’s Books
a division of Random House, Inc.
1540 Broadway
New York, New York 10036
Copyright © 2001 by Gary Paulsen
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Paulsen, Gary.
Caught by the sea : a life in boats / Gary Paulsen.
p. cm.
1. Paulsen, Gary—Journeys—Juvenile literature. 2. Authors, American— 20th century—Biography—Juvenile literature.
3. Boats and boating— Juvenile literature. 4. Ocean travel—Juvenile literature.
[1. Paulsen, Gary. 2. Authors, American. 3. Sailing. 4. Boats and boating.]
I. Title. PS3566.A834 Z’.5403—dc21 [B]
2001017336
Maps by James Sinclair
October 2001
eISBN: 978-0-307-43321-3
v3.0