32 – Friction
Measured in a straight line, about four-hundred miles of open water lie between the west end of Crete and the south-east corner of Sicily—our first truly offshore passage. Don't forget that sailboats can't go in a straight line if that so-called line even hints at the direction the wind is coming from. No siree! What it means is tacking three times the actual distance you need to go, back and forth, in a denigrating zigzag across your intended course. Doing the maths, four-hundred miles becomes twelve-hundred, and that’s in a best-case scenario, which we were far from capable of achieving.
As it is, all that zigzagging to literally nowhere is bloody demoralizing. But then, halfway to Sicily, the sky turned brown, and we were pelted with mud. When it wasn't actually raining muck, the air was so thick with dust, it was like breathing dirt. You couldn’t see from one end of the boat to the other, let alone anyone—or any thing else—out there choking on the dust. As was our luck, we had sailed into a full-blown, too-real-for-words, Saharan sandstorm. At sea, nonetheless!
Elena was one cranky sailor, moaning about eating sand, shaking it from her ears, scooping it from her eyes and digging it from her nose. “We can't see anything; the waves are huge. There's mud everywhere. Why would anyone do this?”
I cranked a salty, mud-encrusted rope through a winch. Its precision, internal mechanism crunched and squeaked. “Aye, we're really blowing the black snot now!” I spat overboard.
“That's disgusting.”
“It's a lot like hobby farming. My Dad loved climbing off the tractor, absolutely covered in dirt. He would blow his nose in one colossal, hanky filling honk and proclaim, 'You know you're a real farmer when you're blowing the black snot!' I'm thinking the same applies to sailing: it's not real unless it's really crap-awful.”
“He was a doctor! He did not have to be on a tractor. Why did he do farming if it is so terrible?”
“For fun!”
~
We sailed far enough north to get clear of the dust blowing off the Sahara. The corollary to no more dust was no more wind. We ended up adrift. Directionless flotsam in mist so bright it watered one's eyes. Of course, I was typically het up and snarky. “Aarrrg, becalmed again! What fun.”
“So, we motor?”
“Not a chance! Who knows how much petrol we need to reach Gibraltar? Besides that, we're basing a landing in British territory entirely on a good feeling Jon has about cruisers on sailboats.”
To motor, or not to motor, was suddenly moot when the radio crackled to life. “This is NATO warship blah blah blah, calling vessel at position blah blah blah.” VHF has a range of about twenty-five nautical miles: too close for comfort. Besides that, they were asking questions we didn't want to answer. Like: embarkation port; destination; type of cargo; and the most frightening of all, the nationalities of those on board. We killed the radio, fired up the motor and got the hell out of there.
The fog never lifted. In fact, it became thicker. Then, the poxy radar failed! Long-distance sailing isn't as much about endurance or skill as it is about balancing risk and equipment failure. Kind of like being a juggler while someone tosses you more balls—or chain saws. It's just a matter of time before it all comes crashing down.
Luckily, a breeze picked up. We killed the motor and listened for ships out in the murk running full steam straight for us. We certainly couldn't see them; until, that is, they loomed suddenly from the fog, only to vanish, seconds later. We didn't talk about it. There were many things we weren't talking about by then. Like, does one's life flash before their eyes, or just the bow of a ship?
Sicily's southernmost point is called Capo Passero, and when it revealed itself under a lifting blanket of mist, we hugged and danced around in the cockpit, congratulating each other on our first successful offshore passage. Then we rounded the point into the Strait of Sicily, and all hell broke loose. We were head-on into some blustery, Mediterranean wind of lore. It howled down the south coast, churning the sea into a frothy stampede of white horses. We gave it all we had for maybe five hours before turning tail and beating a hasty retreat.
I hollered over the din. “This is what dyed-in-the-wool sailors call, beating into a gale!”
“Well, it sucks! How long is it going to last?”
“Forever!” I’d checked the weather before heading into the strait, hoping the forecasters got it wrong. “It’s stable. Some kind of wind named after minstrels.”
Far from being musical, the Mistral was killing us. Turning around probably saved our boat, our lives, and most certainly, our relationship. The Strait of Sicily was no longer an option. Giving up and heading north put the Sicilian landmass between us and that vicious wind. There was just no other way to go on.
Jon objected to our plan in capital letters. “RECKLESS-RISKY-STUPID. Between Italy's big toe and Sicily is something called the MESSINA STRAIT—DON'T FUCK WITH THE MESSINA STRAIT!!!”
“Ah, what does he know?” We had the charts. The Messina Strait didn't look like much; a narrow passage between the Italian mainland and Sicily. “It might have some sea traffic, but how long can it take to get through a little traffic?” It definitely beat thrashing hundreds of miles into the legendary, mutiny inciting, relationship destroying Mistral.
“I don't know. Maybe we should listen? He knows a lot.”
“Slag it! We're here. He's not. We're going north!”
“Then, do it yourself!” She burrowed into her cabin and slammed the door so hard the whole boat shook.
~
A hot, dry headwind blew south through the Messina Strait. We had to zigzag back and forth between Sicily and the Italian mainland. And you can take it from me, it’s got an astonishing abundance of boats in it and not a lot of room to zigzag around them. There’s a pile of non-commercial traffic and it's absolutely mental! We had some really close calls and screamed Italian language lessons from jet skiers and kite surfers. I'm thinking, it wasn't the kind of language one would use at the dinner table.
We hit the narrowest part of the strait just in time for sunset. A rusty ferry shot from its berth and came so close to ending-it-all for us, I still get collywobbles just thinking back.
“Maybe, that is what Jon is talking about in your fucking Messina strait!”
“Aye, maybe.” Sure, the ferry traffic in the strait puts the Thames to shame. “But I think he meant those.” I pointed at an aggressive powerboat with official markings, lights, antennae, and a gun. I had a feeling those gentlemen wouldn't be our friends.
Centre channel, ships, and tankers ploughed up titanic wakes going opposite directions. Those man-made mini-tsunamis collided into rogue waves that simply tossed us off course. We were like a ping-pong ball tossed into a room full of cats. My mood didn’t get any better when Elena pointed ahead at a landmark we zigzagged past an hour earlier! A strong current from the north added to all the crap we were already dealing with, and I was more than done with trying to sail our way clear of the Messina strait. “Drop the sails! We're going to motor.”
“Drop em, yourself!”
And people tell me, home renovations cause friction!
Pitch dark. Crazy wave action. So close to out of the Messina strait you could spit an olive pit, and the bloody autopilot stutters, grinds, hoots and self-destructs.
“Meeeaaaag!”
“Oh, I see, we are on speaking terms again?”
“I think there's something wrong with the autopilot.”
“Aye, you think?” I poked restart. It caught, ran for a second or two and died.
Watches became interminable! One couldn't leave the wheel for a second. Taking a leak was at the mercy of the other and usually engendered a snide remark or two. Sleeping happened more often but with way less effect. Something had to give, or there would be mutiny.
Elena had become a competent sailor. Then again, it wasn't as though she had a choice. It was a sink-or-swim—or in our case, a sail-or-die—kind of situation. While Elena manned the helm, with Boadicea close-hauled and beating to windward, it dawned on me between slurps of precious coffee; I trusted her with my life. It was disturbingly fey. I was in the habit of trusting no one.
She steered. I crawled through lockers and access ports under the cockpit. No matter how much blood and skin I left behind, I couldn't resurrect the autopilot. I did, at least, diagnose the problem: a failed, hydraulic pump motor. To test my hypothesis, I yelled from under the floor. “Power on. Engage autopilot!” The pump’s motor got hot and smelled like my dad’s car when I drove it for miles with the parking brake engaged.
It’s a good thing we had a long-handled scrub brush amongst our vital equipment stores. I hacked off some of its handle, hammered it into the windvane's busted rudder shaft. Jumped off the back of the boat with what was left of its rudder, and impaled it on the wooden stake I whittled from the scrub brush.
It worked like a charm! We didn't know for how long, but every second away from the wheel was golden.
~
Endlessly tacking—that's zigzagging, and more like meandering—into barely a hint of wind was boring beyond belief. My moaning about it, on the other hand, was highly under-appreciated.
“You want to make this worse than it is for me? You would prefer gales? At least we are safe out here. Nobody is going to get us.” She was right. We were alive, together, charting our own course and reasonably safe—as long as the weather held.
I worried that winter would come before we even got out of the Mediterranean. All around us, yachts, ferries, and cruise ships—plying the seas for a good time, and allowed to land—heightened my feelings of exile and isolation.
Weeks of clear sky and oppressive heat gnawed at us. I tried to sleep through the midday furnace while Elena babysat the boat and studied English. Good thing Bernadette sent a bushel of old Hollywood DVDs. It enhanced Elena's language acquisition but gave her an American accent. Computer games—notably, The SIMs—provided her with another distraction and virtual community that she nurtured throughout our psyche crushing isolation.
My hours of consciousness were spent jury-rigging makeshift repairs and coaxing just a few more miles, minutes, days, watts, litres, and calories from the boat, its systems and our dwindling provisions.
~
An explosive series of thunderstorms off Sardinia heralded a change of weather. The pace of everything picked up. A welcome break from the stultifying morass of inactivity and oppressive heat. Strong wind from behind felt great. Boadicea surged forward but wallowed in waves overtaking us. “We have got to put up the spinnaker! In this wind, we could be flying!”
“Are you crazy? We have never used it. Do you even know how to rig it up?” Elena asked.
“No problem, it's not rocket science, but we'll go like one! Come on, are we sailors, or are we sailors? Garrr!”
With the giant, colourful sail flying before us, the knot meter shot into the double digits. Dolphins came to play in our bow wave. Elena, clinging to the bow-rail, shrieked with joy at their antics. The boat quivered with speed and sliced through the water like a knife. Everything was perfectly stable, so I engaged the windvane self-steering and joined Elena at the bow.
There was a sharp crack, followed a half-second later by all hell breaking loose. The yacht veered broadside to the wind, pitched on its side and drowned the spinnaker. Elena was thrown into the water amidst tangled lines, brightly coloured sailcloth and curious dolphins goading us into taking up the chase. We weren't exactly sinking, but the boat wasn't righting itself either. The spinnaker pole was like a mast that worked best with the boat on its side. The partially inflated spinnaker was still catching enough wind to drag us deck-first through the water.
“Mamatchkie!” Elena spotted the dolphins. “Do they bite?”
“I suppose if you upset them. Forget the dolphins. Get on board before you’re dragged under by all those ropes.” I tripped the spinnaker cleats. The boat bobbed upright. Elena clambered aboard, and oooh, was she narked! For the second time during our luxury cruise, the floorboards were afloat. The inundation was extensive and clean-up took hours in a rough sea. The windvane was re-busted. Not the scrub brush handle, though. Astonishingly, it held! It was yet another steel component that shattered. Gibraltar and repairs undeniably felt a long way from wherever we happened to be.
~
The weather went from crap, to crappier. Blustery gales came at us from all over. Days, hours, minutes dragged inexorably by with the yacht heeled hard over and slamming its way through steep waves. Without any self-steering, one of us was always on deck, taking the full brunt of mother nature. The other one, down below, was no better off. It was a shambles of wet clothes, dirty dishes, tools, and rubbish. All of it in constant motion and crashing about.
We'd taken to eating right from tins, chewing through our ample but uninspiring supply of actual food. Weirdly, our provisions included a ludicrous supply of hyper-salty olives, pickles, and condiments. Cooking was out of the question. Doing anything at all was a slippery, uphill battle with an environment that was trying to bash our brains out. As a result, maintenance took a hit, and things started breaking down. One system after another, jury-rigged or not, failed in a horrible, slow-motion cascade. Sailing became a matter of, hang on, shut up, and endure.
Approaching the Spanish Riviera, the wind died, but the waves didn't. They just kept right on bashing away. We had no choice but to run the motor before the boat’s giant arse pounded itself right off. Then the fog settled in. Don't forget, the radar was dead. It was a bloody good thing Bernadette sent my hand-held backpacking GPS from home. It became our only source of navigation when the chart plotter conked out somewhere between tripping on our own spinnaker and ending up in pea-soup fog.
At two AM, a desperate need for coffee revealed a failure in our freshwater desalination system. With a lot of swearing, a metal bar, a hammer and continuous dashes down from the helm, I managed to put about sixty litres of freshwater in one tank. Until, that is, the unit failed catastrophically in an explosion that blasted seawater everywhere and embedded shrapnel in the plywood sides of the watermaker's compartment.
“Meeeaaaag.” Elena moaned. “I'm trying to sleep. Did we hit something? Are we sinking?”
“No, everything's fine. I was just making coffee.”
“Well, please make coffee a little quieter.”
Sigh.
~
A couple of days out of Gibraltar, we lost all our electrical power. The engine was running, but the alternator and batteries were dead. Since the motor was going at the time, and there was no way to start it without electricity, we kept it running. “No big deal.” I reassured Elena, “Diesels are meant to run continuously. It sounds like a Massey Ferguson combine-harvester because it’s got the same engine.”
“Wonderful. We are riding a combine to Canada.” She clambered topside.
I unscrewed an access port on a water tank, stuck in a drinking straw, sucked up mouthfuls of freshwater and spat it into the kettle. Without electricity, it was the only way to get at drinking water. Getting propane to the stove was another challenge. Swearing and thrashing around for tools, I performed a quick and dirty bypass of the cut-off solenoid. Nothing gets between me and my coffee!
~
We were blind, deaf, dumb—and obviously stupid—motoring into one of the most congested shipping lanes on the planet without radar, vision, communication, or navigation. Something about how we assessed risk and valued our lives had changed by then. Eventually, safety goes away, one failure at a time, and you just kind of say to yourself, “Wow, I’m still alive. I might as well do whatever needs doing.”
I was counting on Jon’s good feelings about the cruiser community to get us into Gibraltar. Trouble was, the satellite communicator ran off the boat's now-defunct electrical system. The solar panels didn't gather enough diffuse sunlight through the fog to do anything for the huge battery banks. They were, however, generating enough electricity to power the satellite transceiver directly. I scrounged wire from an extension cord and hard-wired the transceiver's power input to the solar panels' output. Its lights went green and it found a satellite. I hooked up the laptop and emailed Jon. “We're 50 hours from Gibraltar. Looking forward to stopping for repairs and rest.” For good measure I added: “Current condition: failed radar; failed autopilot; failed wind vane self-steering; failed water maker; failed engine alternator; no onboard electrics or engine starter, but it's going now; two functional sails, shredded the spinnaker, ripped the Genoa; almost no freshwater; no maps for the Atlantic; estimate adequate fuel to make Gibraltar.”
Daylight drained away. The solar panels' output dropped. The satellite communicator went dead. And still, we hadn't heard from Jon.