Kilo Class (20 page)

“Kerguelen has more than three hundred islands and about a zillion bays and fjords. The
Pilot
names and advises on all landmarks, dangers, bays, potential anchorages, cautions — and it takes up nineteen big pages, fifteen of ’em just naming and describing the places. Can you imagine trying to find a sunk ship in there? It’d take about a thousand years.”

“Yeah,” said Boomer. “Guess so. But I wouldn’t take this yacht in there. First of all, it’s not ours, and if we hit a rock or something, it would probably rank somewhere near me sinking the Japanese whaler on my résumé. But most of all, they are plainly dangerous, very lonely waters. Any traffic down there at all, Bill? Anything military likely to be around?”

“I can’t see any traffic routes at all. It simply doesn’t lead anywhere. It’s not on the way to anywhere. Unless there is a specialist penguin feeder or something, I cannot see one reason why anyone should ever go there, except for scientific researchers like those Woods Hole guys.

“Militarily? Jesus, there’s no one to shoot! I think the place is uninhabited. You couldn’t
get
an army down there, and there’s no place for an aircraft to land. The only thing that could get there is a warship, but I’d be amazed if there’s been a warship in those waters for sixty years.

“According to this, there was a big, old whaling station down there in the last century, but I think Ahab and his harpooner Queequeg pulled out a while ago. Militarily there were three German warships down there, Commerce Raiders in World War II — the
Pinguin, Atlantis
, and
Komet
. The Brits chased ’em out and then mined the place in case they went back. The
Pilot
has mine warnings all over the place. Not for floating mines; they’ve all been cut and exploded, but the hydrographers seem to think there’s quite a few left rolling about on the bottom.”

“Yeah, well that settles it,” said Boomer. “We’re staying offshore. Definitely. I don’t like loud bangs. Hey! You don’t think that’s what happened to the
Cuttyhunk
, do you?”

“No chance. I believe Goodyear on that one. He says those guys must have been under attack, otherwise they would not have sent a satellite message to say they were. Also if they’d hit a mine there would have been wreckage all over the place.”

“Right. There would have. One of those damned things can blow a ship to smithereens. When I was a kid in a frigate we once found four of ’em right under the surface in a bay in the Azores. The Royal Navy sent down a couple of minesweepers to clear them, and after they cut the wires we had a contest with rifles, see who could hit and explode one. I nailed one of those suckers from about a hundred yards, and I can still remember the spray from the blast raining down on the ship.”

“Yeah. Well, we’re definitely not going inshore,” confirmed Bill. “I don’t like big bangs either.”

“Well,” said Jo, “if you two wimps are afraid of a few underwater explosions, I guess Laura and I will just have to settle for a long offshore view of this romantic place. We’ll turn the CD up loud and hit the king penguins with a burst of Pavarotti.”

“Don’t count on anything down there,” said Boomer. “We may not even see it. You get huge banks of fog, low cloud over the water, and sometimes even snow. I’m glad we all brought warm clothes. It can drop to freezing very quickly.”

“What about icebergs?” said Laura.

“We’re running well north of the Antarctic convergence,” said Bill, confusingly. “And we’re out of the northern range of the icebergs. You don’t see ’em much at this time of year, and I’d be surprised if we met any on our route. Might be a bit different if this were July.”

By now the weather was closing in again. The spinnaker was down and stowed while Boomer was still pulling on his foul-weather gear, and the wind was rising out of the northwest as they jibed yet again. He yelled for Roger and the boys to “fit the tri-sail in place of the main.” Then he instructed them to get the mains’l below. “Don’t hoist the tri-sail… just have it well lashed in case we need it. Get the larger storm jib up and set. Then we’ll roll the jib away. Batten everything down, and get a couple of long warps ready in the cockpit for trailing astern… hold us down, right? From now on it’s full harness, clipped on, for
anyone
on deck.

“The rest of you might as well go below… close the hatch… no sense anyone else getting soaked… I’ll take her for the next couple of hours myself.”

He spoke to Roger Mills, told him to stand by in case the weather got worse. But he could feel the wind coming up, and he judged this next squall might be a bit worse than the one earlier that morning. He was right. The wind and rain came lashing in on big, breaking seas with great swells thirty feet high between trough and crest.
Yonder
rode them out easily enough, but Boomer kept the tri-s’l down, making less sail area to catch the forty knots blowing fiercely over the stern.

He held the southeast course, with Roger Mills standing next to him in the cockpit. Forty-five minutes later he saw the crest of a big wave break right astern of them, with a great roll of steep, white water. “I want to stay before the wind if we can,” he said. “I had a look at that jib before we sailed… she looks good and she’s brand-new. Should hold okay.”

The wind continued to increase and was soon blowing steadily at fifty knots. The sea was up too, big waves now cresting and breaking high above them astern. But
Yonder
kept rolling forward, staying out ahead, and Boomer sailed her with a lifelong expertise that made it look too easy. Roger and Gavin stood next to him in the cockpit, still in driving rain, all three of them admiring the brilliant way this big new yacht sliced her way onward, shouldering off water that occasionally slid over the bow.

Just before dark, Boomer felt the wind shifting. “Oh, Christ,” he said, “it’s backing round to the southwest, that’s not good.” At this point Bill Baldridge came on deck, battened down in his foul-weather gear. “This wind’s changing,” he said. “I’ll take her for a while, Boomer, but I’m afraid she’s going southwest. I can feel it. According to my navigation stuff, that means she’ll blow hard and colder, and we might get some confused seas… bump us around a bit.”

“Yup. I was just thinking the same. Everyone okay down below?”

“Fine. They’re both reading. No seasickness, yet. Laura says she’s never been seasick, but then some people don’t. But she’s only sailed a Scottish loch!”

Boomer laughed. “Okay, Bill. I’ll go below, and you wanna arrange a watch change? Thwaites has early dinner for Roger and Gavin, who are then going to turn in. Jeff can come up here now, give me a hand, and take the wheel while we have dinner around 2000. And the boys can take over at midnight.”

“Unless this gets a lot worse,” said Boomer. “Then we better get back here right after dinner.”

Bill took over the helm, and as he did the wind seemed to come up fractionally, and there was a sudden chill in the air. “It’s backing around, right now,” he yelled. “STAND BY, JEFF! I’m gonna jibe onto starboard, get down on that winch and haul the jib sheets across, under control all the way. Then when she swings over, ease the starboard sheet to port… and stand by to let her go some more when I yell.”

Bill turned
Yonder
a couple of ticks to starboard. The wind eased momentarily, then blasted around the trailing edge of the storm jib with a tremendous bang. Bill barked, “Right… now tighten it some… yeah, that’s good right there, Jeff… ease it a little… better… that’s real good. Hey, we just hit sixteen knots… shit, this baby flies, doesn’t she? Even on a storm jib.”

Throughout the night the wind rose and fell back, twice shifting to northwest, bringing more rain, but each time returning to blow from the cold southwest. Boomer and Bill were in the cockpit intermittently all night, and when the wind gusted above force nine they debated whether to heave to, and ride it out with bare poles. Boomer thought the big sturdily built
Yonder
was doing so well they could safely charge on. Her storm jib, made of the newest liquid crystal sailcloth, gave him huge confidence even in winds like this. In the fourteen hours between 1600 and 0800 the following morning, Boomer calculated they had covered over two hundred miles.

“How long will it take to Kerguelen?” asked Jo.

“At this rate we might be there before lunch,” chuckled Boomer. “Right now we’ve been going for two days, and we’ve knocked off close to five hundred miles. Not bad. I don’t suppose this wind will last quite like this.

“Matter of fact that last gust didn’t seem to have real conviction, did it? And it’s shifting round to the west. Still I don’t suppose anyone will mind a nice day, which is what I think we’re gonna get. Bill thinks we’ll be into the Roaring Forties late tomorrow, so we better make the most of it — summer’s very erratic down here. The weather never settles, but at least it never stays awful for more than a day or two without some kind of a break.”

They fought their way through the capricious Southern Ocean in varying hard westerly breezes. Sometimes it blew a gale, sometimes more, sometimes not so bad. The sun occasionally came out, but mostly it stayed cloudy. But they never once hove to, and it was a sharp bright February 8, shortly after lunch, when Bill Baldridge announced, “I think we might see Kerguelen at around first light tomorrow. Right now we’re about a hundred and fifty miles out, the winds steady and west, and we’re making around ten knots. According to the GPS we’re on meridian 66.50E, and from what I can tell, there’s no seriously bad weather around.”

“The boys are taking the helm tonight, so I think we might risk a glass of that good South African chardonnay,” said Boomer. “Splice the main brace, right? And let the boys have a glass each. We all deserve it. This has been a hell of a sail. And I hope you’ve all enjoyed it — I have. I needed it to take my mind off a few things.”

“So did I,” said Laura. “And you’ve all been wonderful. I feel very American, and for the first time in months, I feel really well. I can’t wait to see this bloody island we’ve been talking about all week.”

“Well, it’s not gonna be that long now,” said Boomer, pulling the cork out of a bottle of Rustenberg’s finest. “Here guys, lemme give you a splash of this.” He poured generous mugs for all four of them, so generous there was only about a drop left. At which point he went right back into the fridge and opened up another. “In the unlikely event anyone should want a bit more,” he chuckled.

“By the way, if your divorce is through, Laura,” he added, “I’m a man of my word. I’m still ready to marry you and Bill, although I am drawn to the conclusion that you might be a bit too good for him.”

Bill shook his head and smiled. “You coming to the wedding on May twentieth?” he asked. “It’s going to be in Kansas, since Laura and I are not welcome in Scotland. Her mother’s not speaking to us, and the Anderson clan would like us in some Highland dungeon for the rest of our lives.”

“’Course we’re coming… how about your dad, Laura, is he coming?”

“He told me he was,” said Bill. “And I hope he does. You’ll really enjoy meeting him, Boomer. He’s without doubt the most knowledgeable submariner I ever met. Funny, the President asked me a few weeks ago if Sir Iain was coming. He likes to talk to the Admiral. Says he’s coming himself; told me if it hadn’t been for him, Laura and I would never have met. And he’s right!”

And so the night drew in. They finished their coffee and retired gratefully to their quarters. The purity of the southern air had made them very tired, and all those off watch crashed before 2300, warm in the bunks below with the dark, freezing hell of the South Atlantic rushing by beyond the hull.

Boomer and Bill were awake by 0600, dressed, and up on deck five minutes later. And their disappointment was total. There was thick fog along the choppy water, and Roger was still holding their course, but no one could see anything. Bill noted from the GPS they were about twenty-two miles east-northeast of Rendezvous Island, the big rock that Cook named Bligh’s Cap.

“We passed that a coupla hours ago,” said Bill. “I’m putting us about twenty-three miles due north of Cap d’Estaing. That’s the northern tip of the entire island, the place where Goodwin says the
Cuttyhunk
headed for shelter fourteen months ago. We should steer south now if we want to have a look… Just hope the fog clears in the next two hours. The wind’s out of the northwest now. How about getting the main back up, and reaching down on starboard.”

“You heard what the man said,” Boomer told Roger. “We’ll come right to 180. I’ll take over as soon as you have the main up. Then you better go get some sleep.”

Two hours later, the GPS put them three miles north of Cap d’Estaing, but the weather was still very murky. Boomer reckoned Kerguelen was under a blanket of fog from one end to the other. Without their radar they could go no closer.

“Steer course 130,” said Bill. “There’s no sense going straight for the headland. We may as well sail down into Choiseul Bay, then if the wind gets up from the west or southwest and blows this crap away, we’ll have a bit of shelter and we’ll be able to see the island. If we haven’t found
Cuttyhunk
by lunchtime, we’re outta here.”

“Our frigate didn’t find her in three months,” said Boomer. “So we’d better tell the gals not to hold their breath.”

By 1030,
Yonder
was a mile off the entrance to Baie Blanche, and a northwester was rising. Bill held her on the starboard tack but could have sailed either side, since the wind was dead astern and still only force three. The fog was beginning to thin now, and the sun was not far away. The temperature was only thirty-eight degrees, and it felt very damp and cold on deck.

When the fog finally cleared, it happened swiftly: one moment they were peering through a thinning shroud of tallow-colored mist, the next moment they could see the shoreline of Kerguelen across two thousand yards of bright blue, but freezing, water. The five-hundred-foot rise of Gramont, between the Baies of Blanche and Londres, was still snow capped, and a mile off the port bow they could see the more gentle rise of Howe Island. “We’re not going anywhere near that,” said Bill. “It’s kelp city in there.”