Blue Mars - Kim Stanley Robinson [355]
Down near the point of the Sinai Peninsula, on the southern side, a large inundated crater called Arigato made a round bay. The entrance of the bay was about sixty degrees of the circle of the crater, facing southwest. The wind and waves were both also from the southwest; so the mouth of the bay, quite shallow, as it was a low part of the old crater rim, was bound to be broken water, a difficult crossing no doubt. But once inside the bay the groundswell would be cut off by that same rim, and both waves and wind much reduced, especially when they got behind the western cape of the bay. There they would wait out the howler, and be on their way again when it was done. In theory it was an excellent plan, although Sax worried about conditions in the mouth of the bay; the chart showed it was only ten meters deep, which was certain to cause the groundswells to break. On the other hand, in a boat that became a kind of submarine (and yet drawing less than two meters of water for all that) negotiating broken surf might not be much of a problem ; just go with it. The AI appeared to consider his instructions within the realm of the possible. And indeed the boat had pulled in the sea anchor, and with its powerful little engines was making its way across the wind and waves toward the bay, which was not visible; nothing of the lee shore could be seen through the dirty air.
So they held to the cockpit railings and waited out the reach, speechless; there was little to say, and the booming howl of the howler made it difficult to communicate. Sax’s hands and arms got very tired from holding on, but there was no help for that except to abandon the cockpit and go below and strap himself into his bed, which he did not want to do. Despite the discomfort, and the nagging worry about the bay entrance, it was an extraordinary experience to watch the wind pulverize the surface of the water the way it was.
A short while later (though the AI indicated it had been seventy-two minutes), he caught sight of land, a dark ridge over the whitecaps to the lee side of them. Seeing it meant they were probably too close to it, but there ahead it disappeared, and reappeared farther west: the entrance to Arigato Bay. The tiller shifted against his knee, and he noted a change in the boat’s direction. For the first time he could hear the hum of the little engines at the sterns of the two hulls. The jarring against the ice got rougher, and they had to hold on tight. Now the groundswells were getting taller, their crests torn off, but the bulk of every wave remaining, its face surging up as it encountered the sea bottom. And now he could see in the foam rolling over the water ice chunks, and larger bergy bits— clear, blue, jade, aquamarine— pitted, rough, glassy. A great deal of ice must have been driven against the lee shore ahead of them. If the bay mouth was choked with ice, and waves were breaking over the bar nevertheless, it would be a nasty passage indeed. And yet that looked like what the situation would be. He shouted a question or two at the AI, but its replies were unsatisfactory. It seemed to be saying that the boat could sustain any shocks the situation could inflict, but that the engines could not drive it through pack ice. And in fact the ice was thickening rapidly; they seemed in the process of being enveloped by a loose mass of bergy bits, driven onshore by the wind from all over the gulf. Their grinding and knocking was now a big component of the overwhelming noise of the storm. Indeed it looked like it would now be difficult to motor out of the situation,