Devil's Rock - Chris Speyer [13]
‘We’d better put that arm in a sling,’ said his father, ‘keep the weight off the shoulder.’
Zaki’s father improvised a sling out of an old scarf, a scarf that Zaki’s mother had left on board. The perfume from the sunscreen she used on holidays had penetrated its fibres and was released as his father arranged the soft, silky fabric around Zaki’s neck. He closed his eyes and, in that moment, it was his mother, not his father, who adjusted the sling, her familiar scent comforting and upsetting him all at the same time.
‘We won’t get a lifejacket over that, so don’t go falling overboard,’ said his father. ‘You go up, I’m going to start stowing everything we don’t want to take ashore.’
Zaki climbed up the steps and out into the cockpit. Michael, on the helm, gave him a cheery smile as he emerged.
‘Urgh! You look awful! You’ve gone all green.’
‘Thanks,’ said Zaki.
‘You’re not going to be sick, are you? Because if you are, do it downwind.’
His brother’s banter, together with the refreshing breeze, began to dispel the nausea he had felt in the confines of the cabin. He settled himself next to Michael, hanging on to the cockpit edge with his good hand. It was perfect sailing weather: a steady wind blowing out of a clear, blue sky; a gentle swell with white horses brightening the tops of the waves. ‘Morveren’s going like a train,’ said Zaki, borrowing one of his grandad’s favourite expressions.
Michael grinned. With the wind sweeping the mop of dark hair off his freckled face, he looked like the old Michael, Zaki’s best friend, the one he could talk to about anything.
‘I had the weirdest dream.’
‘Yeah? What was that?’ asked Michael.
‘I kept being chased by things. First I was a fish, with an otter after me, then I was a bird, then a rabbit, or something, and other things kept wanting to eat me.’
‘Who’d want to eat you, you smelly little toerag?’
‘Well, it was really weird. And there was this great big eye.’
‘You’ve been watching too many scary movies,’ said Michael. ‘Can you make yourself useful and have a look under the sail? Tell me if there are any boats downwind that I can’t see.’
Zaki scrambled down, taking a little more care than usual, his left side stiff and sore. There were a few open boats fishing for mackerel a fair distance off and a crab pot buoy just downwind.
‘Don’t change course until you pass the crab pot,’ called Zaki.
‘What crab pot?’ shouted Michael.
‘That one!’ Zaki called back, as the buoy bobbed past, only a few metres clear.
‘Thanks for the warning,’ said Michael. ‘Anything else you’re not gong to tell me about until it’s too late?’
‘No. All clear,’ said Zaki.
‘As you’re going to be next to useless pulling ropes, you’d better steer,’ said Michael, as Zaki clambered, one-armed, back up to the windward side. They swapped places, Zaki taking over the helm.
Rounding Bolt Head always seemed to be the slowest part of any journey Morveren made west of Salcombe. No matter how well they planned the passage, the tide was always against them.
Unlike the other great headlands of the West Country coast – Start Point, Prawl Point and the Lizard, which stab their jagged blades out into the Channel – Bolt Head appears to have been chopped off square and blunt by a mighty guillotine, leaving a precipice that runs for several miles like a massive granite curtain, torn in the middle by Soar Mill Cove, with its narrow beach in a deep cleft.
‘If you come up on to the wind now, we should make the entrance,’ called Michael.
Zaki brought Morveren round to point at the tip of the headland as Michael hauled on the main sheet and then winched in the jib.
Since the tide was approaching dead low, Zaki chose to play it safe and lined Morveren up with the red and white way marks that guide boats over the Salcombe bar and, as they passed the starboard Wolf Rock buoy, their father joined the boys on deck to get the sails down and furled away.
As is usual for a sunny day in the summer holidays, Salcombe Harbour was busy with day boats and dinghies, launches and tenders, and Zaki was kept on his toes