A Mile Down (13 page)

The diver was having trouble. He seemed tired. Matt was supporting him in the waves, helping him. And then the diver pointed at our boat, gave Matt a weak push toward us, and swam the other way toward the helicopter.

We couldn't believe it. The diver was saving himself, leaving Matt in the water. Emi was the first to yell and start looking for a line. We all scrambled for lines to toss overboard for Matt.

“Swim toward the bow!” I yelled to Matt. “Around the bow to the boarding ladder!” I didn't know whether he could even hear us in forty knots of wind. We couldn't bring him up on the port side. There was no ladder, and he could be pushed under by the rolling of the hull.

Emi was frantic. Nick and Nancy and Barbara were all grabbing lines, too. We had several docklines and several halyards overboard for Matt. I was afraid to use the engines because I might just make things worse. I could run him over or send us too far away, or wrap a line on a prop.

Matt was swimming hard for the bow as we drifted down onto him. He caught a line that Emi and Nick led under the bowsprit from the starboard side, so he was able to hold onto this as he swam, and he cleared the bow. He kept holding on, and stayed close to the boat, Emi and Nick pulling him aft toward the boarding ladder. Then I threw him a life ring attached to a line, and he grabbed onto that. Someone lowered the boarding ladder, I'm not sure who. Emi went down the ladder as Matt came close, and she grabbed him by the collar of his lifejacket to help him onto the lower step, which was plunging into the seas, and then up the other steps onto the deck.

Matt was exhausted. We all went back inside the pilothouse. The helicopter had vanished.

“We're going to need that liferaft,” I told the German captain.

“It is already inflated and towed behind us. Can you see it?”

It was raining hard and the visibility was bad, but the ship was not far away, and I could just make out the orange raft.

“Thank you,” I said. “Are you going to come around with it?”

“I am turning into the wind now. You will need to come to it.”

“Make sure all the lines are up,” I told my crew. “I don't want a line around a prop.”

In a few minutes, they reported the lines were up, and I engaged the engines, trying to go straight. The liferaft was about five hundred yards away and moving at several knots.

As I closed the gap, I told the crew what the procedure would be. “I'll try to put the raft beside our stern on the starboard side. I'll come in close and hit reverse and that should pull our stern close. Matt will be the first one in, if you're feeling up for it. Can you jump holding a line and then tie it off?”

Matt nodded.

“Okay, Matt jumps in first with the line, and Nick holds onto the line from our deck. Wrap it around a shroud so you're not holding all of the weight. Then it will be Emi, then Nancy. Then it will be Barbara. I'm sorry I won't be jumping with you, but you'll have lots of area to jump into, and Matt and Emi and Nancy will be there to help.”

“Okay,” Barbara said.

“Then I'll take the line from Nick, and Nick will jump in. Then I'll jump in, bringing the line with me. Okay?”

I was having trouble bringing the bow around to get up to the raft. One of the lines had wrapped around my props.

“Fill the ditchbag,” I said. “You can bring your most valuable items, just a few things, whatever will fit in the bag along with the emergency stuff that's already in there. We can toss it in after Matt. But you have only the next five minutes or so to do it.”

I was having a lot of trouble with the engines, having to punch the throttles to get anything out of the props. It was getting dark and this was our last chance before we'd have to get into our own liferaft, and I didn't know how the freighter would pick us up in our own raft. In these seas, we could be killed if we floated under their stern.

“Come on,” I said. “Come on.” I asked the captain if he could let out the line a bit more, but he said that was all there was. I asked Nancy to put the portable VHF in a baggie and then in my foul weather gear pocket, and I had my knife. The others were done gathering their things and were waiting on deck. The EPIRB and Inmarsat were flashing red and beeping. It was a scene I hadn't imagined I would ever see.

“Let's rehearse the order,” I said, and everyone called out what they would do and when. “Make sure your lights are turned on and working, make sure you have a whistle.”

It took much too long to get up to the raft. The props were badly fouled. But the liferaft did get closer, and closer, and finally I was within a hundred feet of it. I brought the bow in, almost ran it over, and hit reverse.

“Go now!” I yelled. I ran from the helm to the rail and saw that the raft was touching us. Matt was already in, tying off the line.

“It's on!” he yelled, and Emi threw the ditch bag. Then she jumped. It was about ten feet down to the raft. She hit right in the center. The raft had a partial enclosure on the top, and Matt and Emi were trying to untangle themselves from it to leave room for the next.

“Now Nancy.” And Nancy was in, then scrambling to get out of the way, then Barbara jumped with a yell and was fine, then I grabbed the line from Nick. His foot caught on the wooden rail as he jumped, so that he spun forward in the air and landed on his face at the edge of the raft, his legs in the water. The others pulled him aboard. I unwrapped the line and jumped, trying not to land on anyone.

And that was it. We had abandoned ship. I sat there in the raft, in the storm, and watched my boat float away. It was rocking wildly, the dark wooden masts arcing low to one side and then the other, but it was not taking on any water. It could rock in those seas forever, it seemed, and yet I had abandoned it.

We were being pulled in by the freighter's crew. I took the VHF out of my pocket, protected in its baggie, and talked with the captain.

“Please be sure to keep us well away from the stern,” I said, and he said he would. I could see his crew with the line going forward over the deck to pull us from midships and keep us clear. They had a rope ladder over the side with wide wooden rungs. I felt only sad, and tired, not excited or scared. But I still had the task of getting the crew safely onboard. This was why I couldn't have stayed with my boat. The side of the freighter was lower than the stern but still high, and when it rolled away from us, we'd see thirty or forty feet of steel, and then it would roll back down at us. Barbara was overweight, without a lot of upper-body strength, and she couldn't see without her glasses, and she couldn't swim.

“I'll help you at the ladder,” I told Barbara. “I'll climb on behind to help hold you onto it, but you need to get your feet onto a rung quick and don't let go for anything. We have to time it for when the ship rolls toward us. Grab the ropes then and get your feet on a rung immediately. Then the ship will swing away and you'll be lifted from the water. Once you're on, keep moving up, and their crew will help you. Nick will come after me, but otherwise we'll use the same order for climbing the ladder that we used for jumping into the raft. Matt will be our guinea pig, as always.”

“Call me chum,” Matt said.

Up close, it was pretty frightening. The ship rolled a hell of a lot, and sucked at the water. “Keep your arms and legs inside the raft!” I yelled. My crew were trying to push off the ship when we were sucked in close. “The raft can take it.”

The ladder was made of crappy old rope and chewed-up wooden rungs. And the rolling was so extreme that the ladder would stay close for only a second or two before it was yanked high into the air away from us. I didn't know if Barbara would make it. I wasn't strong enough to hold her on if she wasn't holding on well herself.

Matt went first, catching hold fast and then yanked upward, his feet slipping. He was strong enough to hold on, but I was glad Barbara had her glasses off and couldn't see what it looked like. Emi went next, grabbing the ladder late because we were thrown by a wave, but she caught it and had no problem once she was climbing. The crew pulled her onboard and now she and Matt were looking down at us from the rail, shouting encouragement.

Nancy grabbed the ladder, but we were thrown so hard to the side, swirling past it, that she couldn't hold on and was pulled out of the raft before she let go. This put her in the water between the raft and the steel hull, and I felt the sudden panic of losing her. In an instant, it was clear how much I loved her. Nick and I lunged for her and pulled her back in just before the raft rubbed up against the steel.

“Oh God,” Nancy said. “That wasn't good at all.”

“I'm sorry,” I said.

She was more hesitant the next time, so we waited for several waves, and then she caught one, climbed, and was pulled aboard.

That meant it was Barbara's turn.

Nick and I were talking her through it, one of us on either side, holding the ladder when we could and waiting for a good wave.

“I think it's going to be the next one,” I said. “Get ready to grab on quick and get your feet onto a rung.”

The wave came, we were lifted high up against the ladder, and she grabbed on, but the wave pushed us to the side and I fell, holding onto the ladder with only one hand. Nick had fallen, too. Barbara stepped onto the rungs just as the ship lurched away from us. I managed to get one hand up to push on her backside, but I wasn't there behind her on the ladder as I had promised. Both of her hands were holding a wooden rung, not nearly as good as holding onto ropes, and her feet were on a rung not far below, so that she wasn't standing up straight but was in a crouch. The boat was heaving very hard, with a lot of force to fling her off. I didn't think she was going to make it, and I was ready to try to catch her, but I was afraid she would slide down the hull and be pushed under water as it rolled back.

Then I heard Barbara growl. It was a low, guttural growl, a primal refusal to die, and she held on and climbed up to the next rungs, and by the time the ship had rolled back toward us, the freighter crew and my crew were pulling her aboard.

“Oh God,” I said. I was so grateful.

Barbara hugged the crew on deck, and we waited a minute or two, collecting ourselves, then the ship rolled close and Nick climbed up the ladder, and when it rolled close again, I went, holding a line to pull up the ditch bag, and we were safe.

THE FREIGHTER CREW, all from Kiribati in the South Pacific, were warm in their welcome, and the two Germans, the captain and first mate, were gracious. We were given their own dry clothing and excellent quarters. I didn't change but went up to the bridge and looked at my boat, half a mile away now, still heaving back and forth. It looked small from here, but riding high off the water. I couldn't grasp that I had lost the boat, that it was no longer mine. I still hoped I would somehow get back on board. But most of all I was grateful that no one had been hurt. We were all safe, and the only issue now was property, which is only money.

I was thinking also, though, of the time when a captain I had hired had abandoned
Grendel
near the Guatemalan border with its engine destroyed. I'd had to replace that engine with no facilities, no marina even, and it had taken almost four months to get the boat out of there.

The captain told me he would circle my boat all night, to keep it safe from pirates. He showed me on the radar. A ring of small vessels about three miles out, waiting. Moroccan fishermen who would come aboard to strip the electronics and anything else they could use. I was surprised at his interest, having assumed he would continue on to Kinitra, his intended port, as soon as we were aboard. But he had given up on Kinitra, and said he would try to tow my boat in the morning if the seas died down. He would tow it ninety miles back to Gibraltar.

I didn't say anything at the time, standing in the bridge with the captain, but I knew what was going on. Now that I had abandoned ship, he was going to claim salvage rights. I wondered if we would suddenly see better towing gear, and I wondered if he had pulled this scam before.

The captain was a deliberate man, in his fifties, sitting at his comfortable helm seat and chain-smoking. He was dressed in a white shirt and gray slacks, as if he were at the office. He spoke almost perfect English, as did his first mate. The bridge was quiet and dark, the sound of the strange two-cylinder diesel like a great vacuum pump far below. He steered with a small joystick, just tiny adjustments to circle my boat. His claims about only being able to go upwind in a straight line seemed not quite true.

“
Ich kann ein bischen Deutsch
,” I said. I spoke a bit in German about hiking in the mountains of Germany and visits with my German grandfather to the
konditerei
, the bakery, for sweets. The captain indulged me and spoke of boyhood treks and blueberries.

We slipped back into English to discuss the Moroccans and their lack of a VHF. He had never heard back from the Moroccan Coast Guard.

He had also contacted my insurance company, as I had. I assumed the owners of the ship would try to recover towing fees, and I suspected they would ask for some outrageous payment for salvage rights. I wanted to know whether the first mate or captain had ever been involved in this before. “Have you ever rescued any other boats?” I asked.

“Yes,” the captain said. “Another sailboat, a similar size as yours.”

So this captain had known what he was doing. I felt sure he would produce better towing equipment in the morning.

I said goodnight and descended to our quarters to change out of my wet clothes and take a hot shower. The freighter crew had invited my crew to watch a video about their home in Kiribati, but everyone had said no because they were tired. They were stretched out in dry clothes in a small sitting area eating lunchmeat and crackers.

I woke several times that night. The captain and his first mate were taking turns on the watches. Neither of them seemed inclined to speak. They had more or less the same attitude. Whichever one was awake would sit smoking and making small steering adjustments in a manner that looked contemplative, as if trying the joystick for the first time, over and over. The glances at the large radar screen below, showing my boat and the ring of Moroccan fishermen/pirates, the glances at depth and radios, then more of staring three hundred feet to the bowlight and beyond. The slow rolling and the vacuum pump sound of the diesel. I had no idea how they could spend years like this. I suppose it was peaceful and ordered and safe.