40 – Knockdown
I remember once, the plotter was showing us as far north as San Francisco, and I imagined the city with its usual life. We were one thousand miles from human lives, from cars honking in town, from people hurrying home. And outside the boat, the huge waves and merciless wind were playing with us, trying to break our will. I didn't see justice then. I realized there is no justice in nature or in the human world. There is one organism swallowing another, and in our case, there was the ocean, digesting us and our boat.
Elena
~
I noticed another city crossed off Elena's list. “We're north of San Francisco!?”
“Yes, we have passed it, but a lot west.” We might have cheered through chattering teeth. Maybe we even toasted the milestone with soggy biscuits and a tin of Turkish vegetable medley. The point is, over time, one’s mind has ways of numbing the horror.
I downloaded the latest weather chart. “This isn't good. There's a deep low headed for the Charlottes.”
“Tak shto, what are 'sharr lots?'”
“Islands off British Columbia.”
“Are they not far from us?”
“Well, sure, but this storm is pushing a cold front as far south as Hawaii.” I had never seen anything like it. “We can't get out of its way.” The wind arrows were bristly with speed notches. Crossing the front, they snapped around nearly 180 degrees. The air temperature behind that toothy line plunged to almost freezing. “Aye, this is going to majorly suck.” I skooched out from behind the nav station. An open bag of coffee had spilt onto the counter. “Bollocks Lenna! You don't even drink coffee!”
“No, I smell it. I need to smell something. I stick my nose in the bag, and I inhale.”
I clung to the counter with one hand, sweeping precious coffee into the bag with the other. “Well, if you need something to smell, I smell! In fact, I stink! It's been two weeks since I took off my reeking foul weather gear. Maybe longer since I changed, or even lay eyes upon, my unmentionables!”
“Bladt! I smell nothing, Meg. It could be there is salt in the air, or rotting clothes, or even my own body, but I am numb to it. I smell your coffee to keep from going insane. To smell something. Anything that isn't the ocean, or what it is doing to us.”
I stopped, dead. Looked at her. “Crikey. I didn't know. I haven't really thought about it, or anything at all. I’m just trying to go on, to survive. Like you, I guess.” The yacht slammed into a wave. I sacrificed the coffee for a handhold.
“And colour! Haven't you seen? There is no colour! The ocean is colourless here. The sky is colourless. When there is enough light to see, it is all black and white and shades of grey. It is like living in a film about the war. Grey sky, Black Sea, white waves.” Elena tugged at her scarf, a bright orange, polyester thing an Orange Revolutionary gave her in Kyiv. “I look at clothing to see colours. Colours that do not come from the sea.” She turned away. “God damn it, I want to hear again! The sound of a dog, or a child, or a bird, just once even. Here is only water, waves—pain. Nothing else.” She fled to the cockpit. The companionway cover slammed behind her.
I swept up the coffee, inhaled its aroma. It was weirdly comforting in a primordial way. Sensory deprivation coupled with North Pacific gales wore us down, tore at us, immersed us in a world of constant stress, gnawing cold, and despair.
~
We were overvolted lightbulbs, exploding at the slightest provocation. Elena spent more and more time in bed, cocooned in the spinnaker for extra warmth and shock absorption. Withdrawing. Vanishing. Gale by gale, day by day, wave by wave, I was losing her.
It was getting dark. I was exhausted, cold and brassed off. Like it or not, I was going to crash, and somehow, I didn't care.
A rogue wave hit broadside—hard. The bow yawed. Sails back-winded. I lunged for the wheel, skidded, and slammed a knee into something a lot more solid than the bones in that complex joint. Pain and nausea radiated from the point of impact. I screamed and hammered a fist into the floor.
“You are insane?” Elena hollered below deck.
“I must be! It's not like I had to sail this boat all the way to Canada.”
She flew up the companionway. “Yes, correct! You could land anywhere, be a tourist. For me, there is only ocean. You want to be sick in the head. Fine, be insane, but I am terrified. I am scared all the time. I don't say to you this. I don't tell you that I hate this. I don't say that I think we are going to die in this sea, but I do. All the time, I am—” Another broadside had her airborne. She came down on the folding table, rolled and bounced off a bench, then crashed to the floor.
I watched, and holy crap—I started laughing! It was like there were two of me. One was horrified. The other was watching the shite happen like it was some kind of demented sitcom.
Elena looked at me—both of me—concerned. Afraid. No, that's not it, she was bloody terrified. “You cannot fall apart, Meg. I trusted you. I go with you because you never break. Never! Nothing could stop you. Now look at where we are, the North Pacific in winter. If this can stop you, it can. It will. Oh God, it really will kill us! I cannot see you falling apart!”
A wave exploded under us, and our world canted forty-five degrees.
The poxy windvane lost control or broke. Boadicea turned drum-tight sails broadside to the blast. The tilt got one hell of a lot worse—fast. Everything, and that includes the two of us, avalanched to the lower side of the boat. Below deck, books, dishes, bilge water, rubbish, tools, clothing, and charts landed in one soggy heap.
“Someone has to steer this boat.”
“Meg, I will do it. You sleep. Rest, so that later you can steer, and I can rest. It is not getting easier, only harder, unless we turn back to the tropics.” She looked into me for non-verbal reassurance. “Go, sleep. I will call for you later.”
I wedged myself into the spinnaker-nest, shoved in earplugs and slept like a student at one of my lectures.
~
I fell out of bed, or something like that, sometime after midnight. There was a pile of bedding and sailing gear pinning me to the floor. Except it wasn't the floor: I was lying on the wall! Elena was screaming somewhere far away.
My blood ran cold.
The boat was on its side, crashing and violently shifting. I wormed my way out of the cabin. Being on the high side of the vessel probably saved my life. Something shoved the tilt past vertical, and the floor in the main salon came crashing down. It just missed me on its way past. A cascade of floor panels, food, and cookware rained down from the galley above. “We are rolling over!” Where in the hell is Elena? A cupboard door unlatched overhead. I was pelted by a hailstorm of melamine dishes. Faintly, above the din, I heard Elena screaming. OK, she's still with the boat.
The yacht was righting itself. I thrashed to the companionway. A mini torch revealed a chaotic scene of swirling water, tangled ropes and debris. Elena dangled from the wheel, arms outstretched, feet kicking uselessly in the torrent of water beneath her. I was only halfway out the companionway, convinced the boat would flip upside down with the next wave. But no, not that time. Instead, the sails rose from the sea in a maelstrom of spray and noise. The wind drove us backwards. The swim platform scooped a wall of water into the cockpit. It was like we stopped for a second. Like, everything stopped and just kind of hung there before the bow swung violently through the wind. The sails blew inside out, and Boadicea went hard over on the other side.
“We're turning turtle!” I screamed my throat raw. “Flipping over when the next wave catches the keel!” No time to think. I launched myself toward the helm and its handholds.
Zero gravity.
Everything: me, the boat, Elena, were free-falling into an oncoming trough. Shite! I'm going to fly right past the helm and over the side. Deep breath and brace for the icy abyss! The wave hit. The cockpit came up at me like a fist. I slammed into the helm, splintering the natty, Beneteau cupholders with my arse.
The sails slapped the water's surface. The mast sliced into the foaming waves.
Elena hung from the wheel. Was it jammed? Her mouth was open in a frozen scream. Her look was pure terror.
I shrieked. “You have to move!” If the boat came down on top of her, she was dead.
The enormous weight of the keel, which should have levered the sails from the sea, was no match for the waves. The yacht wasn't righting itself!
“Straighten the rudder. Let go of the wheel. Get ready to swim if this thing goes over!” I screamed into deaf ears. “Suka, shite, pizda, bladt, fuck!” I had to break through to her. “Want to die?”
She looked right through me. Water sloshed down the companionway. We were bloody sinking! If we didn't get the sails out of the sea, we were going down.
“Get off the fucking wheel!”
A fist came at me and missed. “I hate you! Hate you—”
“You can't hate me if you're dead!” I pulled the manual trip on her life jacket. It inflated with a demonic roar. She noticed that. “Piano keys! Go! Release every line.” I loosed a line from a big winch above my head.
Elena saw me, twigged and grappled her way forward. Cursing like a Russian longshore man, she snatched at line releases left-right-and-centre. Ropes sizzled through cleats; bitter ends whipped free.
I spun the wheel to what I thought was dead centre. The yacht lolled upright, but was still broadside to the wind and waves. Loose sails cracked like giant whips tipped with deadly steel shackles. If something didn’t tame the writhing monsters, the entire rig would tear itself loose and crash down on us.
We were nearly awash. I switched on the cockpit floodlights. The wind speed hovered around fifty-five knots. The boat was dead in the water. Waves washed over the deck and down the companionway, each cascade put us another wave closer to sinking.
“Take the wheel. Turn downwind!” I jumped into knee-deep water below deck. It was a last-ditch attempt to find the companionway covers and stop the water coming in. Somehow, I dredged them from the violently sloshing shambles, rammed them in place and vaulted back to the helm.
Elena wasn't there. Bollocks! She'd gone to the mast and was trying to wrangle the viciously whip-cracking sails. The boat spun. She skidded backwards, tried to grab the rigging on her way down, and slammed into the deck. Next wave and she'd be over the side.
Gone.
“Forget it! Get back here!” She couldn't, or wouldn't, listen. On hands and knees, she crawled toward the mast. I had to look away. I couldn't watch her flying over the side or getting brained by a whipping sail.
The yacht was more-or-less upright, but still refused the helm. “Sod it!” Fuel: open. Starter: engage. What sounded like a shotgun blast into a rain barrel, came from below. The lights went out. The electrics were dead. I kenned, “Motor's underwater. Stupid me! Stupid, stupid, stupid!”
Elena shrieked in the pitch dark. From where, who cares?
“Bring me a jib sheet.” I yelled. “We need some sail power for control.” She probably didn't hear. My throat was shredded. I shone my torch on one of the thick, whipping ropes. Elena got the message. Grabbing it and holding on with all the strength she had left, she crawled toward me. My fists closed on the line, and Elena tumbled into the cockpit with a splash. I slammed the line into a winch and cranked like a demon. The forward sail took on a bulging, grotesque shape and dragged the bow downwind.
Elena jumped for the wheel, “We have helm control!” and steered downwind. We picked up speed. Slowly, we took control of the yacht.
I stabilized what functional sail area I could. The windvane self-steering contraption had been destroyed. Not that you could tell, but that time, parts of it were torn away. Simply gone. What was left of the Voyager frame was twisted and broken.
The boat sat low in the water. Waves from behind poured over the transom. Elena steered while I worked the manual bilge pump for what felt like hours. At least, that time, it wasn't hooked up backwards. Elena traded places with me when I simply couldn’t move another gulp of seawater overboard. Slowly, Boadicea rose from the sea, and waves eventually stopped breaking into the cockpit. When the pump gulped air, I went below.
It was a heartbreaking mess. Everything was drenched and smashed, or just plain gone. Ruined books, charts, and notes lay in sodden heaps. Water dripped from mattresses, seat cushions, piles of clothing and blankets. Only the food in cans remained viable—although missing labels would make for mealtime intrigue. The electrical panel was dead. A choking stench and ominous sizzling from the battery banks wasn't a good sign. I knew we'd lost some, maybe all the batteries. Recalling my idiotic attempt to start the motor, I hoped the system had shorted out before the engine turned over and inhaled seawater. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to start it again. Neither of us had anything dry. Then, seeing my breath, I realized how seriously cold it was.
I clambered topside to join Elena in the cockpit.
“How far to Canada?” Elena's voice quavered from somewhere in the dark.
“Maybe a thousand miles, and they're mostly all north.” I squeezed icy seawater from my mitts. “It's a lot colder. Rougher too.”
“Tell me, Meg, can we make it?”
I opened my mouth to speak, but words didn't come. Eventually: “We're in the North Pacific, a thousand miles west-north-west of San Francisco. I've heard offshore racers say 'nobody sails north of San Fran in winter,' and we’re here, and this is winter.”
“I don't care what you've heard others say, they aren't here, we are.”
“We were so close. So close, Lenna! One more week and we could have made it. The only reason we're still upright and actually sailing is because we are going downwind. Heading south. We are running away.”
“I have nowhere to go but north.” Elena spoke slowly and clearly. “If we don't go north, my life is as good as over.”
“But—”
“No, let me speak. If going north means we are both going to die, I won't have that. I think we cheated death tonight.”
“I think we've been cheating death since—”
“Let me finish.” I heard her take a long, slow breath. “I have been ready to die for a long time now. I think it maybe started for me in the Atlantic. I look at things like it is for the last time. I look into the water and I imagine my last breath. I have grown accustomed to living always with my last sunset, last meal, last look, last feeling. I guess, as you would say, 'I am damned if I do, and damned if I don't.' But you aren't. You have a choice. We can go to Panama, or Mexico, or even America. You might lose this boat, or what's left of it, but you won't lose your life.”
“You won't—”
“Yes, I will, or I might as well. I will be returned to Russia. My life will be over. It's just a fact. But Meg—and this is what I need to know—I don't want to die needlessly in this god-damned ocean, especially if that means killing you too. If you don't think we can make it to Canada, I don't want to try. You told me you didn't want to watch me die. The same goes for me.”
We said nothing for a long time.
Then she went on. “So, if you tell me honestly that we can make it, then we can turn this boat around at first light. Make what repairs we can, and we'll fight the battle again. But only if you say we can win, we can survive, we can make it.”
