Chapter 1
Pamela Drake strained over the rail of the
boat, her slim body arching in spasms of tortured muscles, and vomited into the
dark waters of the Southern Ocean. They had rounded Cape Horn despite the virus
that had struck down both her, and her husband Alec, a few days before. Long
intervals of delirium had taken them mostly by turns so that just when it had
appeared that one of them was recovering the other would succumb to it again or
vice versa. It was more due to luck than anything else that they had rounded
that most dangerous of all capes with any margin of safety at all, but they
were round and the worst of the voyage lay hopefully in their wake.
The objective of the voyage had been to
celebrate their first wedding anniversary and was in fact the honeymoon that
they’d been obliged to forfeit a year ago. Forgoing their honeymoon had been no
real loss as both of them were deeply involved in their outside interests. He
had spent the year consolidating his new business by obtaining the dealer
concession for Toyota cars for the area in order to boost his services as a
garage. She was given the welcome opportunity of time to research dolphins in
the Pacific to complete a paper she had to write for her university course. She
was well on the way to becoming a marine biologist and the cruise was a welcome
opportunity to do some field work. It was all coming together for both of them.
From their first meeting their lives had
changed in many positive ways. In Alec she had found the perfect counterbalance
to her mother’s perpetual criticisms of her capabilities. Not once had he ever
found fault with the way she was doing anything. It still took a lot of getting
used to, not having everything she said or did pulled apart by a dominant
tongue. It was almost like she had not begun to live, or be a complete person,
until the day she met Alec. He gave her room to grow and find herself without
any obvious effort on his part. She had once asked him about it but he had
simply shrugged, genuinely not knowing what she was driving at. She soon came
to realise that his attitude, like most peoples, was normal and her mother’s
abnormal. It was a freedom she had never known, and she was forever finding it
difficult to adjust to it. She often found herself waiting for some negative
reaction to something she did, but nothing ever happened. She and Alec got
along like two bodies sharing one soul. Anger was never a part of their
relationship and when she looked at those of their friends’ she wondered how
many marriages were so perfect.
Having finally taken her degree in medicine her
mother had assumed that Pamela would continue her career as a doctor but Pamela
had had other dreams. Alec had allowed her the space to grow, and still did,
willingly giving her the time she badly needed to find her true worth. Her
mother, for whatever reason, had always held her back when Pamela’s tendencies
had been to follow paths that went against her mother’s ideas of what a young
woman of Pamela’s character should do. After their engagement she had entered
the university to study marine biology and Alec had always been there to
encourage and support her. The fact that he was a keen sailor with a well-found
boat had made so much difference. He would sail her, using his personal
knowledge of the area around Gisborne, to show her places that had some
interest to her studies. While still macho he had a lot going for him when it
came to considering her needs. He taught her by degrees to sail and handle the
eleven and a half meter wooden ketch. He never appeared to be worried that
anything she did with it would result in any severe damage. He left her often
to sail it on her own, although it was his pride and joy, confident that the
cold laminated hull could resist almost anything. The inner layer was of
mahogany which gave the interior a warm, homely glow. Next came two diagonal
layers of oak for strength, with a final skin of teak as defence against marine
worm. The total thickness of the hull was close to forty millimetres, tough
enough for almost anything it could hit. They had cruised, for miles, before
they were married and Pamela could handle the ketch as ably as he and her
navigation was improving all the time.
Pamela's grip on the stanchion post tightened
as her body retched again to evacuate her already empty stomach. A rope, she
had secured to her ankles to prevent her going overboard, strained as her
involuntary retching tried to throw her into the sea. Gagging for breath she
leaned back in an attempt to put an end to the agony; gulping cold air down
into her stomach, air that seemed as black as the ocean itself, until the
sickness seemed to abate. Clinging to the rail, and spreading her legs against
the incessant rolling of the boat, she gazed out over the constantly shifting
ocean, screwing her eyes up to aid her in the impossible task of seeing
anything. Overhead the impenetrable ceiling of black clouds raced along, at the
vagaries of the wind, starving the scene of any light that might have come from
the moon, or the sun, which didn’t quite manage to completely set at that time
of year. The horizon, had it been visible at all, she knew would be a glowing
deep pink, a smudge of colour that would slowly move eastwards through the
night until the sun rose again in the early hours of the morning. Gleaming like
a miniature sun from three-quarters of the way up the mizzen mast, the solitary
spotlight cast a yellow funnel of light down onto the boat producing the effect
that they were sailing inside a pot of the blackest ink. Nothing was visible
beyond its golden cone of light. As the spray was licked up by the wind it
glittered like diamonds cascading through the powerful beam.
Their voyage had abruptly taken on nightmare
proportions. When they could have sailed straight back home to New Zealand they
had decided to continue by way of Cape Horn for two reasons: Alec had always
nurtured every yachtsman’s dream of circumnavigating the globe, so they had
decided between them to head for Cape Town by way of the Horn, where some of
his relatives lived. This particular aunt and uncle had at the time been unable
to attend their wedding, and had never actually met Pamela, so this looked like
a good opportunity to meet this part of his family. Then their intention was to
sail around the other great cape, the Cape of Good Hope, and continue east on
the last leg and head with, mutual reluctance, back home to Gisborne, New
Zealand.
Apart from the fiasco of sickness that had
stricken them, the whole voyage had been idyllic, but now Alec lay sweating and
moaning behind the lee-cloth of his bunk, a canvas sheet set there to prevent
him from falling from the comparative comfort of his berth. His mind slipped in
and out of consciousness, just as she had done the day before. However his
discomfiture was added to by a badly injured leg from taking a fall on deck
during one of the many vicious tempests they had encountered two night ago. He
had not been able to move from his bunk since.
She felt her stomach heave once more and gripped
the stanchion with heavily gloved hands still numbed by the bleak polar wind.
The smothering cloud cover cracked briefly to shed an eerie light from a
winking moon. Blue hints of illumination that flickered across a tempestuous
sea dotted here and there with growlers, small pieces of ice that derived their
name from the sound they made as they rubbed against each other and along the
sides of boats at the vagaries of wind and current.
The waves appeared to grow slowly in the
distance, developing fearsomely, becoming massive and jet, rushing at them like
a moving wall causing the counter of the boat to rise crazily. On the face of
the angry water she could just make out the huge loop of heavy hawser that Alec
must have laid out to help keep the boat stern on to the remorselessly
advancing seas and to slow them down a little as they plunged down the faces of
each successive wave that lifted them. As she watched, they raced down into a
deep trough. The bow dug into the surface of the next wave throwing up spray
that mixed with the flying spume torn from the peaks to sweep out on the gale,
like old men's beards. It carried on the wind to smart like pellets against any
area of unprotected skin . She turned her face downwind as it lashed her. The
loop of thick rope bit into the water behind leaving its own trail of agitated
water. The wind moaned in the rigging, rising slowly to a screech as its
intensity increased, pressing the bow under. Glancing forward, she noticed that
Alec had also set the small storm sail on the inner fore stay. Creeping, on her
hands and knees, she returned to the cockpit just as another mammoth hump of
water passed under the stern hissing like a crazed leviathan. A monstrosity of
mythology that became real to any sailor at sea in such conditions.
Almost falling from weakness down the
companionway, she flopped into the seat at the chart table, struggling to bring
her mind to bear on the problem of fixing their position on the chart.
‘That can't be right,’ she muttered in
disbelief after a few frustrating minutes of calculations that just would not
come right. According to their dead reckoning they were almost six hundred
miles from Cape Horn having moved in a south-easterly direction. She checked
again, but their entries in the log had been sporadic and mostly illegible due
chiefly to their malady. Had they, while confused in their delirium, neglected
to keep the log up to date? Could they have missed a couple of days? What
mistakes had they made during the worst of their sickness? The spidery scrolls
on the pad, what did they mean? Was that a two or a seven, and that a five or
an eight? Whatever calculations her fuddled mind made she still came up with
the same sort of results: They were many miles from where they should have
been!
The GPS, that wonder of modern navigation, which
would have given them an instant and accurate position was out of commission
with the antenna broken during Alec's fall and he had been unable to fix it in
his present condition. Their hand-held unit had been stolen during their short
stopover at Tonga when the Stella Maris had been broken into and burgled.
Though they had tried but had failed to find one to replace it. It could also
have been at Tonga where they had bought the food that had given them this
sickness.
She went to Alec in the hope that he was lucid
enough to understand what it was she was trying to say. She was nothing like
the sailor he was; she hadn’t the experience he had and couldn’t find the
solution to this problem on her own. Only he would know what to do. She found
him with his wetsuit trousers down revealing an angry, abnormal looking
swelling on his right thigh. Bringing the lamp closer, she immediately
diagnosed that it was a fracture rather than just the bruise he had claimed it
to be. It was typical of his need to maintain a macho image that he had not
admitted just how seriously he was injured. Nothing must tarnish that notion,
and she wondered just how much of him was image and how much the real him. Was
she in love with a dream? What was the real Alec like, the persona he kept so
well hidden by this need of his to always appear so manly? She didn’t like
these thoughts racing unaided through her mind. She judged them to be childish,
that they were edging towards disloyalty, so brushed them aside as she reached
across to feel the leg.
‘Alec. That’s broken.’
‘I know.’ The sheepish admission made the look
in his amber-brown eyes appear anything but manly. Together with his unkempt
dark curly hair he looked so boyish. ‘I didn’t want to worry you. I figured
we’d reach Port Stanley any day, where I could get it fixed.’
For two days she had been handling the boat on
her own because he was sick and had often cursed him for his weakness in that
sickness. How she had felt guilty for all the bad things she had thought about
him, but saddened for the extent to which her own weakness had been increased
because of these feelings, things she had never voiced, notions that he was
making too much of his illness. Port Stanley, she thought, was well away from
where they found themselves but she said nothing for the moment as her sympathy
drove all other thoughts from her mind.
‘Dear God! You must be in agony, especially
through these storms.’
‘It has had me cussing at times,’ he grinned
boyishly.
‘It has had me cursing aloud on deck because I
thought you were malingering. You great ox. Didn’t you just think, for one
minute, that by being honest with me you would have, in some way, helped me to
cope better with all this extra work? And not all of your foul language was
under your breath.’ Her anger at his deception melted as she took in his
youthful smile. ‘Most of your language was so heated that we haven’t seen a
single bird for days. You scared them all off with your blue outbursts,’ she
joked, unable to hide her genuine concern for him.
‘I don’t suppose it has anything to do with the
fact that we’ve been in a constant storm and that they can’t land?’
‘Nope! I saw them flying off with their wings
over their ears.’ She began collecting together an assortment of things from
the well-stocked medicine chest. ‘This is going to hurt like hell, darling, but
it has to be done.’
‘It can’t get any worse than it is now,’ he
grunted between clenched teeth. ‘Do what you have to do, doc’
‘It won’t be easy for you, but you must try to
relax the muscles in the leg.’
He nodded and mentally prepared himself for
what was to come. Struggling against the motion of the boat, she pulled the
limb until the ends of the bone were aligned, then fastened a piece of towel
around his leg before applying the splints. He gritted his teeth while she did
this but was forced to cry out loud when, as she was tightening the fastenings,
the boat lurched unexpectedly causing her to stagger and apply more torque than
she desired. She administered to him with painkillers and antibiotics with
plenty of water to drink. When she had done everything she could to make him
comfortable, she explained their situation as she saw it.
‘We are heading for the ice-fields, Alec, if we
keep on this course. I can't be certain of our position but I think we are
pretty close to the South Sandwich Islands.’
‘Jesus! What's the sky like?’
‘Too overcast for the sextant,’ she responded
recalling the compact covering of rolling clouds competing to block out the
sky.
‘I don't know what I can do with it, but I have
to try to repair the antenna. If you can strip it from the deck, that is.’
‘And why not? Why shouldn’t I be capable of
unfastening a few screws?’
‘Bolts!’ he corrected.
‘Bolts, then. I’ll get some spanners.’
‘The sea water won't have done it any good at
all.’ Alec settled himself into as comfortable a position as the boat would
allow him while she climbed on deck to detach the antenna from its bracket.
Being new at the start of the voyage it should
have come away easily but the bolts had become heavily corroded so she had to
return below to hunt out a can of releasing agent from the tool locker by the
engine. Returning on deck she sprayed with one hand while shielding the bolts
with the other to prevent the agent from being whipped away uselessly by the
near gale. The oil also penetrated the many cuts and scratches on her hands
until they stung. Her arms were bruised from hanging on against the erratic
movements of the boat. At times she had to pause in her work while she held on
for dear life, as the boat tossed defiantly against the confused seas. After a
prolonged combat with the elements, during which she almost lost the spanners
twice and almost had her arms pulled out of their sockets, she managed to
unfasten the stubborn bolts and bring the whole contraption below. She passed
it triumphantly to Alec. Her smug expression was not lost on him.
‘I knew you could do it. If you hadn’t been so
handy I would’ve signed somebody else on for this cruise.’ This was a side of
him that she really liked; it was such a contrast to how she had been treated
at home, and in particular by her mother. Her father had simply grunted about
the amount of money he was having to find for her education.
‘Oh, would you? Bearing in mind this is our
honeymoon.’
‘Some honeymoon,’ he grinned as he inspected
the antenna closely, wedging his thumb through the wide split in its plastic
cover so that he could see inside.
‘Well, it will get worse if you can’t fix that.
We’ll be spending the rest of our married lives at the South Pole with the
penguins.’ She tried to make light of the situation.
‘Well, you’d have the perfect opportunity to
study them for that paper you keep wanting to write,’ he muttered turning the
contraption round in his hands. He was competent to repair any type of engine,
but with sophisticated electronics he was well outside his league. Even if he
could diagnose the fault, he doubted he would be able to replace any damaged
parts, but he had a talent for utilising anything to hand though.
‘You always turn the negative into a positive.
I don’t know how you do it. Some-times I think your brain must be up-side-down
inside that skull of yours,’ she laughed.
‘It would never do for all of us to think the
same way. If the occasional man did not come along with a different thought, or
way of approaching a problem, we would never have a genius to guide us forward.
Without such unconventional thinkers mankind would never have evolved into the
fine, intelligent creature that he is.’
‘Oh, sure. Spears and clubs have been replaced
with guns and weapons of mass destruction. Fine, intelligent creatures indeed!’
‘Man has to have his weapons,’ Alec retorted.
‘He would feel infinitesimal without them. The reality of the fact escapes him
under the illusion that through his technology he is capable of destroying his
own existence, if he chose to do so. He doesn’t want to, and I don’t think he
will, he just has to be in a position to be able to exercise that power.’
‘And in his search for these wonderful crutches
to prop up his macho tendencies, he almost destroys the environment that
succours him. His constant experimenting is laying waste millions of square
kilometres that should be used more productively to feed and clothe the world,
not to mention poisoning the oceans and generally upsetting the whole balance
of the planet,’ she protested against this, his latest theory on the brilliance
of man.
‘Well, that’s all a component of the cycle of
life, don’t you see? Technology begets technology, knowledge leads to further
knowledge. Eventually we will have devised ways to counteract all that we have
messed up. We will achieve the perfect world.’
By now he was getting into full swing with his
hypothesis while still taking apart the antenna using tools that she passed to
him. But Pamela bristled at this last statement.
‘Is that what the nuns at St. Gregory’s taught
you? They taught me that in the beginning God gave us the perfect world and our
part in his creation is to help complete it yet all we have is done nothing
short of trying to destroy it.’
‘My nuns were more forward thinking than yours.
The world God gave us was perfect for man at the beginning of his development.
But if you insist on giving this a religious connotation I’ll go along with it.
We were given the task of husbandry of the earth with the purpose not of simple
maintenance but of improvement. Our sole remit from God is to complete what he
began.’
‘That stinks of foul blasphemy, Alec, and if
you don’t go to confession when we get home then I’ll dob you in to the bishop
himself.’
‘It’s not blasphemy it’s...’
‘No! Stop right there. Enough is enough. Let’s
change the subject. Are you hungry O modern man?’
Alec chuckled and squinted at the antenna.
‘What’ve we got?’
‘Well I fancied a chicken chow mien with all
the trimmings but as the kitchen is a mite on the mobile side it will have to
be soup.’
‘Chicken, I suppose?’
‘Correct. Just imagine it is chow mien.’
Pamela wedged herself in the galley to heat
some soup from packets, juggling against the unremitting roll of the harassed
boat. At least that was performing as it should and keeping them afloat. Stella
Maris, Star of the Sea. She felt that they had let her down by their
involuntary neglect in failing to keep the log properly. She poured soup into a
deep bowls, cut great wedges of bread, and took some to Alec, who could only
move now in an extreme emergency. Every slight change of position called for
great strength and resolve on his part. She braced herself at the small table
in the galley and made a valiant effort to eat hers knowing that within the
hour she could be feeding the fish again.
After eating she lay in her bunk to sleep the
strange sleep of the yachtie which equates to that of a dog in that it is
shallow and, from a human point of view, hardly worth the while. This time she
awoke before the alarm went off. The motion of the boat felt sluggish and was
rolling about wildly. She girded herself up for another trip on deck to make
sail. It was a struggle but, although her body was tired, her mind was soon refreshed
by the icy blast of the wind. Why wouldn't it make up its mind what it wanted
to do? It either blew hard or not at all. Things had taken on a slightly
brighter hue in that she could now see the ocean around her with its angry
waves covered with white spume. The sky continued grey with dense clouds that
boiled as they raced ahead of the small yacht. An hour later, with the main set
with two reefs in it, the boat was again moving along with some grace. She
paused at the hatch knowing that she would be forced to venture up on deck
again before long to take in sail; she hoped she could get some rest first and
made her way to her bunk. She was exhausted. Sleep came instantly.
As she slept she dreamed she was a child doing
something under the instruction of her dominant mother and everything she did
was wrong or not done well enough. Frustration and anger grew inside her but
she seldom fought back. It would be pointless, her mother always won even when
she was so off the mark. Dominance was right and that was the end of it.
Looking in vain over her shoulder, for any support from her father, she tried
harder and vigorously to get the task done to her mother’s satisfaction which
was never shown even when the high expectation was achieved. ‘You are just not
doing it right Pamela’, her mother railed at her and she awoke filled with a
confused anger and her mind haunted by her fathers sad deviated eyes.
The boat was being thrown over on its beam ends
and she knew at once that they were moving too fast. Knowing Alec could not go
on deck she was compelled to and struggled to get herself dressed against the
wild elements she had to face. She pushed the hatch open just far enough to
allow herself to crawl onto the steeply sloping deck. Below her was the angry
grey water of the Southern Ocean which meant death; above her the windward side
which meant being exposed to the full strength of the wind not to mention its
wind-chill factor. She took this latter route gripping with both hands while
she spread her legs for leverage against anything on the deck or cabin side
that would afford her a grip, if only temporary. It seemed an eternity before
she reached the mizzen shrouds where she linked her harness up to a safety line
that ran to the base of the main mast. With both arms embracing the mast, she
slowly stood up.
The boat appeared to be in a boiling seething
gigantic cauldron with the port bow being pushed under by the frequent hard
gusts. The wind bearing down on them was like something solid; a tangible wall
of Antarctic air, numbing and unforgiving. Each thrust as it rose above the
norm pressed the small ketch dangerously under by the bow. She had to get all
sail off the Stella Maris quickly if she was to survive and them with her.
Edging her way forward she began work on the mainsail hoping none of the slides
were jammed or frozen or that the boom would take it into its mind to smash the
boat to pieces. She took a few turns of the topping lift around the winch and
strained to crank it on the winch. With the some of the weight off the sail it
was still slow work because the violent wind made the canvas as tight as a
board and this fought against her. Her hands became so numb that she no longer
had any feeling in her fingers. As she gasped for breath the chilled air stung
her nose, mouth and lungs. The task, which in normal weather she would have had
it done in less than thirty minutes took an age. She had been working now,
pressed to the deck, for at least an hour and the sail was still big enough to
be causing the boat some distress. She sang a hymn to herself as she struggled
on, a hymn she remembered from her childhood about the Virgin Mary, the Star of
the Sea. At last the head-board was in her grasp, the unruly sail lashed to the
boom with the boat beginning to rise and take command of herself. She was
making just enough way to be in balance with the elements. Pamela made a quick
visual inspection around the deck. Nothing seemed to be out of place and
everything that should be there was there.
Without a rest she moved cautiously forward to
trim the small storm jib, a stiff piece of sail designed to be set in a strong
winds but nothing like this. She reset it just the same. Now the boat was
making its way as she should: under control with the regal dignity bred into
her by her designer’s pen all those years ago. Reefing the mizzen was slightly
easier than the main but still a mammoth chore that had to be done to balance
the downwind thrust of the jib. With the boat under control returning below was
less arduous than her trip upward and she was feeling good about herself. The
whole operation had taken her more than two and a half hours during which time
she was chilled to a numbness that made her joints stiff.
‘How's it going with the GPS, Alec?’ she asked
as she massaged the feeling back into her arms and legs. Before long they would
be warmed through and the aches and pains of a dozen or more bruises would have
her wishing she was still frozen.
‘Nothing wrong that a new one wouldn't fix,’
‘I'll heave-to at the next shop,’ she laughed,
but she knew the situation was serious. They had little idea of where they were
or how long they had been sailing on that course and could only guess at what
lay before them in those dark grey waters. They had not had a positive position
fix for five days. He pointed to a piece of the antenna that had sheared inside
the cover.
‘There’s the problem I think. If I can join it
back together somehow it might work.’
‘Are you confident?’
‘Always, my darling, but that doesn’t mean I
can fix it.’
‘What do you need?’
‘To be up and about so that I can solder it for
a start.’
‘Is that wise?’
He shrugged. ‘It’ll be damned awkward to do
laying down.’
‘Could I do it?’
‘You can do anything you put your mind to, my
angel.’ Alec would always say things like that. He encouraged her in everything
she attempted, always with constructive criticism that was worded not to hurt
or offend. He had helped her to develop so much self-confidence and self-esteem
during their time together. She smiled down at him as he gathered the bits and
held the two pieces to show her how it went together.
‘You need to hold the
soldering iron on it until it gets up to temperature. If you keep dabbing it
with the solder you’ll know when it’s ready because the solder will melt. You
might struggle though with the boat moving like this. It won’t be easy at all.’
He almost added ‘for anyone’ but held back. He always tried to guide her
without making her feel that he was patronising her.
‘I’ll give it a go,’ she said with a confidence
she barely felt. Having retrieved the soldering iron and solder from the tool
chest she moved into the galley and set to work at the table with both the
pieces propped and wedged on stacks of cork coasters. With each movement of the
boat they slid out of position and she had to reset them while keeping the iron
from burning anything. After several failed attempts she developed the
technique of resting her elbows on the table while pulling herself towards it.
Her eyes were stinging with fatigue and the thin wisp of smoke that rose from
the solder; the pieces swam before her so that she stopped the heat to
reposition them only to find that they had not moved after all. Finally the
solder began to flow into the joint. She wondered how much she should apply and
shouted to Alec for advice.
‘Keep it flowing until it begins to dribble
from the bottom,’ he supplied just as it did so. She withdrew the iron and
waited.
‘I think I’ve done it, Boss,’ she shouted in
glee.
‘Nice one, Pam. I’ll put it together later.
Right now I need to sleep. These painkillers are beginning to kick in.’
Pamela waited until it had cooled sufficiently
for her to touch it then took it to him. He was already sleeping. She had
immobilised his leg by packing extra cushions and bags of clothing around him.
On a towel on his chest were all the bits which he hoped he could put back
together when they were dried and free from salt. It looked far from likely
that he would be able to put together again. It did not look too promising at
all to her but she wished he didn’t have to sleep just yet. If he could
assemble it she could refit it to the deck mount while he slept. Hiding her
disappointment she lifted the towel by its corners and tied it up in a bundle
so that none of the pieces would not get lost. She did all that she could do
for him before returning to her bunk to catch up on some sleep with the boat on
a new course that should bring them closer to their intended passage.
She slept soundly for, not two hours, but four.
As she extricated herself from the tangled sleeping bag she was assaulted by
all the aches and pains that the heavy going had given her. Her ribs were
bruised; her arms and wrists were stiff and aching; and four of her fingernails
were painfully split and bloody. In addition to this were all the countless
cuts, grazes and scratches her hands had received during the last few days. Her
first thought though was to check on Alec who was in a deep sleep but his
colour worried her. He was grey beneath the thick black beard and obviously in
pain.
She was cold, so terribly cold, and so grateful
that Alec had suggested they buy wetsuits for this part of the voyage. They
were difficult to put on, especially on top of thermals, but once dressed you
remained fairly warm. On deck it made little difference what you wore with that
relentless chill blowing straight off the Antarctic ice cap. Reluctantly, she
clambered up the companionway and crawled out onto the deck to make an
inspection. The sea was still in a wild mood but the gale seemed to have
dropped just a little in strength. The waves were still piled high and the
strong wind streaked their peaks white with spray that lashed her skin. She
raised the mainsail and the mizzen sail to their first reefing point leaving
the tough little storm jib as it was. After a few minutes of trimming the boat
was striding along quite respectably, slicing her way up and down the massive
swell. Up and down, up and down. She clambered below again with the warmth of
her bunk enticing her but she had to pay a visit to the heads first.
Damn this sickness! What had caused it? Was it
the tinned fish they had bought in Tonga? Who could tell? It could be down to
anything they had eaten. She rinsed her face before turning into her bunk fully
dressed to sleep fitfully having dosed herself with antibiotics and set the
alarm to give her a couple of hours. As she slipped slowly into the darkness of
slumber she was aware of Alec groaning in his bunk and felt she should go to
him. He was still asleep. She checked the bottle of painkillers and saw that he
had taken some more. Before going back to her bunk she kissed him gently on the
forehead. What a mess. They had to make land soon and get that leg seen to if
he was to keep it. The antibiotics would hopefully prevent any complicating
infection setting in. Nothing was ever certain and she needed so badly to make
him well. He was by far the best thing that had ever happened in her life and
she knew she would do anything to keep him. Her love for him was like a
melancholy ache. There had never had a cross word between them because
essentially they thought the same things, as though their minds were one. She
gently stroked his forehead then stopped for fear her caress would awaken him
from the tranquillity he so sorely needed.
But Alec was not asleep. His pain-filled mind
was working on their situation and he feigned sleep so that he would not have
to look into the worn face of the woman he loved so much. This was all his
fault, he thought. Why had he been so persuasive, when they were planning this
voyage, that they sail around the Horn? They could have sailed so easily for
New Zealand without going into the South Atlantic at all. Visiting Aunt Alice
and Uncle Doug had just been something to add to his argument for
circumnavigating the world. He tried to tell himself that it was not his fault
that they had been made so ineffective by the food poisoning. That had made a
difference, but they might just well have coped better if they had not had to
sail, at that time, through the most treacherous seas on the planet. He twisted
his position in the bunk almost screaming as the ends of his broken bone ground
against each other. He bit hard until the pain subsided. Damned! he screamed
inwardly at himself. Because of his dream he had subjected Pamela to all this. She
had not complained once, simply appearing to submit to his dream and had done
all she could to make it come true. Even now she was doing it all while he lay,
a useless article incapable of doing anything but add to her already heavy
workload. She was too good to be treated like this and he vowed that in the
future, when they had somehow pulled themselves out of this mess, he would see
that things were different. He would try so hard not to be selfish and consider
what she wanted out of life above his own desires. He had to find it in him to
work with her to ensure their future and not be in charge of every situation.
It wasn’t as if she was incapable of doing anything. He knew she had the
intelligence and inner strength to complete any project she undertook. He had
seen the way her mother had treated her over even the simplest of things and
had railed at her in Pamela’s defence. Why did Pamela put up with it? Why did
she never fight back? It was as though she was playing a waiting game, that
some day her mother would be gone and Pamela left not grieving but in peace.
His wife’s patience seemed endless. His altercations with her mother had not
really been of any help and had done much to drive a wedge in what could have
been a normal family relationship. What is normal? Doesn’t every family have
strife like this? No. It was unnecessary. There was nothing like this between
his mother and Pamela. She thought she was a wonderful catch, and so she is.
Too good to be dropped into a situation like this. And in a way I am guilty of
using her love for me, her insecurity too, in order to get what he wanted out
of this voyage. He knew that she would do anything to please him and had taken
advantage of that love. Or had he? Could he really accuse himself of such a
selfish and cruel act? In all honesty he could not fully deny it because it was
partially true.
Guilt for their present predicament weighed
heavily upon him. While he endeavoured to ease this guilt by trying to find
extenuation in the sickness that had certainly been the root of the problem he
found little comfort. Swallowing another handful of pills he tried to relax to
allow them to take effect and spare him these torments of the mind and body.
Once again the alarm clock failed to rally her
to her duties. She checked that it was working properly by setting it to go off
and it did. It was a consequence of her fatigue that she had slept through it
once again and a tired sailor is a dangerous one. Night had fallen again and
the sea was still raging with spray whipping in sheets from the crests of the
high waves. It was difficult to estimate their size but they were big, cold and
black, and that was sufficient for the thirty-two year old woman, who to all
intents was single-handedly sailing the boat. At that moment Alec was little
more than another part of the boat to be taken care of. She crawled on her
stomach around the deck, clinging like a spider to what seemed like invisible
handholds, inspecting everything that she passed, and was pleasantly surprised
to note the small amount of damage to the boat sustained during the worst of
the storm but when she saw that the life-raft canister had been washed
overboard she froze. Its loss worried her considerably. The Southern Ocean was
probably the last place to be without one. While realising the dangers she
tried not to dwell too much on the consequences of its loss. They were
unthinkable!
Turning her attention to the sails she spent
time trimming them before the chill of the wind and her nausea drove her below
once more to take some more antibiotics with plenty of water. She administered
to Alec too who looked deathly pale in the light from the lamp. The clammy skin
of his forehead almost burned her hand. Her heart ached with concern.
‘Hang on in there, Alec. Another day and your
stomach will settle at least. How's your leg?’
‘Comfortable,’ he answered trying to hide the
pain he felt with every movement of the boat. She could imagine without any
difficulty how each plunge and twist of the boat was adding to his pain.
‘Shall I heave to so you can rest?’ It was an
option. Another couple of days would not make much difference and with the
absence of the plunging of the boat, as it tried to crash faithfully through
the waves, he would get some relief.
‘No, I can take it. Let's push on, but don't
overdo it yourself. You're looking beat.’
‘Now that's some way to compliment a girl,’ she
ran her fingers through his tousled hair then took the bucket he had been using
to pour its contents down the heads. Hanging it back by his bunk she began to
tidy the cabin. ‘I’ve tied all the bits of antenna up in the towel for when
you’re ready to do some work. Right now I’d better get this lot cleared away.’
It was as though every article on the boat had
burst out of its locker to form a sliding mess on the cabin sole. After
spending almost an hour crawling around she had everything more or less back in
its original place then set about heating some chicken on the stove. This task
was hindered by the amount of clothing she was wearing but she persevered. To
presume to go on deck with just one layer of clothing less would be inviting
trouble. Hunger gnawed at her stomach as she poured soup into two large enamel
mugs and hacked some chunks of bread. Pinning herself into a corner she ate her
own meal before coaxing some down Alec, feeding him like a child. Neither had
been able to eat anything substantial for three, or was it four days?
The jolting crunch came without any warning and
for a split second she froze with fear. She could hear water surging into the
hull and before she could move it was rising above the cabin sole. With swift
movements verging on panic she threw items of food into a hold-all with a
bottle each of painkillers and antibiotics. If they were forced to abandon the
yacht Alec would certainly need them. By the time she had reached the
companionway water was slopping around her feet when the boat heeled and Alec
was struggling to free himself from his sleeping bag. She zipped the top of the
bag of food and tossed it up into the cockpit before scrambling below again to
help him.
‘Start the engine!’ he was yelling, ‘The
electric pump will slow things down a bit.’
Her shaking hand turned the starter and she
prayed. The engine fired up on the third turn and the bilge pumps went to work
with a will, miraculously overtaking any ingress of water, but her feeling was
that they were far from safe. The situation seemed unreal. It was a nightmare
from which she must awaken. The yacht sinking beneath them had never entered
her wildest nightmares.
‘Alec. If we are forced to abandon we only have
the dinghy. The life-raft was carried away in the storm.’
‘Right. You'd better get on deck and check the
dinghy then. But don't launch it yet. There's no cause for panic at the moment.
The pumps are holding her. If you sit me down there I'll help out with the
hand-pump.’
She took a hold of him, straining beneath his
heaviness as she helped him out of his bunk into a sitting position by the
companionway and passed him the bilge pump handle. With his characteristic grin,
measured to hide the pain that burned in his leg, he began to work the pump
with rhythmic strokes while she scrambled by him.
On deck she was met by absolute chaos, a
nightmare of disorder with both masts swaying on the verge of crashing over the
side where vicious rocks rose like blackened teeth amid the frothing water. The
boat lifted slowly on a wave, swinging again towards the rocks. Pamela plucked
herself from the effects of terror that had her frozen to the spot. Putting the
engine into forward she fought to steer the stricken yacht clear of the waiting
rocks but the might of the sea was greater than her and the engine. The bag
which she had so hastily stuffed with emergency provisions slid around at her
feet. She snatched it up and attached it to a life belt so that it would float
if the boat went down.
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