Atlantic High (29 page)

Toward the beginning there is exhilaration. “Log 465,” Danny made his entry, “wind gusting to 30, seas—rolling chop, speed 8.8, making terrific headway, love it. What a way to begin a watch, blow a sail, reef main, put up headsail and topsail, bring aboard dinghy, get soaked and enjoy Chris Little’s happy expression. He finally got his action shot.”

But there are exasperations, including the episodic failure of the Indians to follow your instructions…. “One purpose of a watch captain,” Danny, too diplomatic to upbraid his watchmate directly, addressed his admonitions to the logbook, “is to assume the safety and procedures of his watch and when asked to secure oneself with a life harness, please do so.” And, lest he sound too hortatory, a propitiatory ending. “I thank thee.”

On the state of health of his confederate, Danny was succinct. “Log 433.6. Tom’s a ghost.” And, a little later, a reappearance. “Log 442. Wind up again to 20 knots. Tom’s a ghost.”

Tony, as is customary, was more detailed in describing exactly what happened:

“At
2100
, we double-reefed the main. Experienced difficulties:

“1) Topsail sheet prevented main boom from going out to supply sufficient luff.

“2) Topping lift parted.

“3) Double-reef clew outhaul stuck, so that winching it in proved very difficult, resulting in
protracted experience.”

Let me explain the new procedure for reefing the mainsail—so to speak, the third-generation reefing procedure of my lifetime.

When I began sailing, you lowered the mainsail completely when you wanted to reef, made all the adjustments, then raised it. This procedure, for racers, was an awful concession—all that time without the propellant force of the mainsail. There evolved the idea of roller reefing, and in a matter of years, if you didn’t have it—well, it was as if you didn’t have winches. Now the idea was to permit you to specify the extent of your reef. Instead of having to sacrifice one eighth the area of your mainsail (a single reef), or one quarter (a double), or one third to one half (a triple), you could contract your sail by exactly as much as you desired.

How? By redesigning your boom, making it circular, stripping it of all accretions of hardware, and winding the sail around it. Where the boom joins the mainmast (the gooseneck), instead of a simple locking device, you installed a worm gear that when cranked causes the whole of the boom to revolve. One man would stand at that winch, slowly turning the boom, while a second man would lower the main halyard,
pari passu
. As the sail comes down, naturally the aftermost corner of it comes progressively closer to the mast. Perhaps a clearer way of stating this is that the foot, which is the base leg of the triangular mainsail, shortens. Typically at the moment of reefing there are great pressures on the mainsail. When using the old method of reefing, it was required that the new clew be disciplined—that is, brought down close to the boom and stretched tight along it. Indispensable, else the reef points holding the unstretched sail to the boom rip out under the force of the wind. In roller reefing this is no problem because the boom is using up the unwound sail, and the original clew outhaul keeps the sail structurally sound.

We did this for years, and it worked, though somehow it was never as facile as advertised, and often things went wrong. The strain on the roller reefing device was always very great.

The new system—and the
Sealestial’s
new mainsail was devised to use it—went back in the direction of the first, with this critical improvement. If you decide, let us say, to take a single reef, you find, already passed through the single-reef cringle (a clew grom-met becomes a “cringle” as you travel up the leech or hypotenuse of the sail), a light line. By reaching for this and attaching it to a durable line, say three-eighths Dacron, you have, already strung out, ready for use, the new clew outhaul. That line now comes from the cringle down to a corresponding sheave on the boom, and forward to a winch on the mast. The decision having been made to take a single reef, two men can handle the job. The second lets down the sail as the first winches in the reefing cringle, simultaneously bringing down the new, corresponding tack and engaging it to the gooseneck. When he is satisfied that the reefing cringle is good and tight, and after the tack is secured, the second man tightens the halyard. You have now an area of sail, no longer in use, fluttering about but not doing anyone any harm. At your leisure, you take the little lines (reef points) sewn into the sail every twelve inches or so, and tuck in the unused sail by tying the lines around it, as though furling.

Experience (ah, experience!) showed us that when it is extremely windy, it is a good idea to throw the instructions overboard. In this case: let the mainsail down completely. Bring in the clew reefing cringle without wind pressure; attach the new tack without wind pressure—then raise the sail, the helmsman having brought you into the wind to help eliminate all wind pressures. No doubt racing boats would disdain this alternative, and their crews are practiced enough to reef without snag. When cruising, with men inexperienced in your particular boat, you are best off lowering the sail.

It was now blowing very hard. “Wow!” one entry reads, simply. Another: “Log 616. Speed 10.15. Winds now gusting to 45 knots! Very cold and wet. Reg and CSVL [Christopher] somewhat happy and extremely exhilarated.” Ah, but inevitably, “Log 627. Speed 10.25. Winds 30-35 with higher gusts. Cold, wet. Novelty eroding with each wave that breaks over my head.”

Meanwhile, below …“Bill and Tom,” Tony wrote, “took the usual 8-12 and we all suffered through a horrid night. I don’t care what it was like on deck, because down below I didn’t get any sleep at all. Torrents coming in the hatches all over. The waves found totally new places, and all sorts of shelves to get into. Every fifteen minutes after a new inundation you could hear screams and groans coming from the other cabins as beds became progressively wetter and tempers ever shorter. After a series of really bad bangs, I wanted to go on deck to tell Bill to shape up, because he was ruining my sleep, but I decided he couldn’t do too much about it. So he was luckily spared my scorn and wrath.” Close shave, that.

Tony rose for his watch: “Coming on deck was a shock. The motion had been very pronounced down below, but I was not prepared for the size or steepness of the waves coming down toward us. They glistened in the bright morning sunlight, and had those rows and streaks of foam made by the wind that you get with the ‘over 35 crowd’; I mean over 35 knots wind. Danny was steering pretty robustly to keep control, and I was chomping at the bit to get my hands on the wheel. And when I did, what bliss. I had been thinking that my 2-8 of the evening before was going to be my last real sail of the trip. But no! There’s more where that wind comes from. We estimated the big ones between 15-20 feet, and I don’t care, by my standards that’s big. You can get in trouble in that sort of stuff.”

Tony meditated on the vessel’s virtues, reaching conclusions slightly at variance from his original ones: “…Thundering along at 10 plus knots, the whole thing vibrating and hissing, luckily not banging into waves, but riding easily over them. With Dave helping out Allen, I managed to get in a few really long tricks, steering more than the three hours of the watch which I am entitled to. This is really my idea of what a passage should be. The waves requiring some real steering, picking a route out through the waves bearing down on us, and trying to keep the bow and the stern from getting pushed around too much. What continues to impress me is how
Sealestial
feels like a dinghy under these conditions. The response is phenomenal, and it’s exhilarating.”

But the discomforts were not always transcended: “The action was starting to get a little boring by dinnertime, and we had to eat below. I was having my usual discomfort readjusting to the sea once more, but I was able to enjoy the leisurely dinner. Unfortunately, it was quite obvious that Tom was not. He would stretch out on the settee, closing his eyes and chewing, contemplatively and at great length. I could imagine the effort with which he had to talk. I guess he had been pretty well sedated by Bill’s various anti-seasick tablets so he was O.K. But then he started to press his luck. Bill, who believes that there is a magic pill for just about every ailment, suggested that Tom counteract the soporific with a ‘Ritalin’ or something which was a mild stimulant. No. His stomach, I think, became a raging battleground, and he lost.”

Poor Tom. It was a dreadful initiation. His journal had begun with a grandiose sense of well-being, including amicable characterizations of his companions. “Tony Leggett, sailor, preppy, Harvard grad, traveler, and banker-to-be—an altogether fine young man; Danny Merritt, upbeat, agile, ready and eager for anything, fine sailor; Chris Little, teddy-bearish, youngish professional photographer—amusing and knowledgeable …the immensely professional jack-of-all-things-navigational skipper, Allen, and his young helper-athlete—competent, muscular young man originally from New Orleans who did the derring-do necessities at mast-top, for example. Reggie—bibulous, sentimental, wise about the sea, friendly to the point of attracting crowds where’er he goes, including and perhaps especially children.”

Then the departure: “…the casting off and smooth heading to seaward was spine-tingling. This, thought I, was living.” The succeeding sentence, for Tom, foretold it all. “From here on I will not try to trace events day by day.”

Much much later: “For at least half the voyage, I felt slightly nauseated.”

So it was, for four days. At the end of which, sometime after dinner, Allen, who speaks infrequently, sniffed the air, ducked a great wave that splashed across the deck, and said quietly, “Tell you what ah think. Ah think tomorrow, this time, we’ll be under power.” We all smiled; but at 1800 the following day I said, “We’re doing only 5.5 knots. Let’s have some power,” and there was great rejoicing for lo, we had a prophet in our midst. Two hundred miles to go. The ordeal was not, however, at an end.

Tom is asleep above me, and I can hear the waves from my bunk, but the moon just eludes me. The voices of the helmsmen on watch can’t be heard. I am protected from falling out of bed by canvas leeboards. When the port side of the ship is the windward side and you are heeled over hard, as we have been now for two days, you need to extricate the lee straps from under your mattress. They come conveniently equipped with snaphooks, so that you need only find the corresponding eyes under Tom’s bunk and hook them in. Every time, you pause to consider alternative ways of proceeding. The first is to snap in both ends (the canvas is about three feet long, protecting you from somewhere just under your armpits to below your hip) and then grope your way through the upper or nether aperture until you are in full possession of your bed. Or, you can secure the lower end, sliding your body in quite easily; but you then have to contrive to snap on the upper end when your whole body is being directed by gravity to put its full weight on exactly that part of the canvas that you need to stretch tight in order to fasten the hook. Extreme exertion, combined with isometric control, permits the latter, and I chose this way in, this time around.

It has been a mysteriously unsatisfactory day. The conditions of course are hard. Tom, simply put, is miserable. But Tony is preternaturally silent, and I fear he is sick. Even Reggie and Christopher are rather more dutiful than lusty as they go about their business. Only Danny is, as ever, zestful, twice coming to me in the morning, on instructions interrupting my paperwork, to tell me he thought I might snatch the sun through the clouds. Because although the conditions are stormy, the visibility is good, and for perhaps twenty percent of the day we had glimpses of the sun, even as now the moon is fitfully out, causing the monstrously wonderful shadows that augment the savagery of the waves as they thunder past us, so that sometimes you are plunged from near midday visibility into utter darkness.

All the meals were strictly utilitarian. We were given deep bowls, with a gruel of sorts. That and bread and cheese and wine. At that, we spilled much of what we were given. Allen has taped a two-by-four down the length of the table, but it isn’t high enough to serve as efficiently as one of those fiddles Tony speaks of. It will resist only that in which the center of gravity is low. Coffee in a heavy mug, yes; wine filling a plexiglass goblet to the brim, no.