Ghost Wave - Chris Dixon [43]
“It’s kind of like a movie camera that’s gone into slow motion and now into still frame,” said Houtz. “I told everybody to get away from the anchor chain because, when it goes, it’s going to be something you do not want to be around. I came over to the port side and stayed there because that was the lee of the anchor.”
Houtz was wearing a life jacket. At this point, he might have simply jumped overboard to save himself. But he was, officially, the captain of this sinking ship. It was his duty to help everyone get out alive.
When Jalisco reached a forty-five degree angle to the waves, the chain’s weakest link split near the hull with another massive crack. It bullwhipped out across the water with enough force to cleave a boat in half. Jalisco gave a massive jolt and swung around with dizzying speed until she was stern first into the waves, roaring and gnashing against the stake that had been driven through her heart. As she sunk lower, the waves grew higher, not yet breaking but just beginning to wash over her backside.
The men stood just forward of amidship in a daze. Things had gone wrong so fast. Houtz said to everyone, “This thing is done, guys. We have to get the hell off this boat.”
As the swells swept farther and farther over Jalisco, it became clear that the men were soon going to be cast involuntarily into a riot of white water if they didn’t leap overboard first during a lull. Houtz ordered everyone into life jackets, but Kirkwood, Lesslie, and O’Malley refused. Houtz was flummoxed.
“I’m somebody who can swim a hundred miles, and I put on my life jacket,” he said, shaking his head. “And they wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t do anything.”
I asked Houtz if this was an example of the “incredulity response.” In the 2008 book The Survivor’s Club—an examination of the traits found in those who survive utterly harrowing experiences—author Ben Sherwood writes that those who die in critical situations often don’t believe what they’re seeing and freeze like marble statues. Sherwood also describes a condition he calls “brainlock,” when unhinged panic inhibits the ability to think your way out of a situation. A person might even do something completely irrational—walk in the direction of a fire or not put on a life jacket in the face of gigantic waves.
Houtz lit up. “That’s exactly what was happening,” he said. “I’ve had my life on the line quite a number of times. In each of those instances, it’s not a panic. It’s mostly a mode of ‘Okay, what do I do now to get out of this?’ But some people just don’t listen. There’s nothing you can do.”
The first breaking wave roused the men from their deer-in-the-headlights stupor. When Houtz yelled “Run!” there was no argument.
The wave stood perhaps 35 feet high and was a hypnotic sapphire blue. It gathered up concrete, cast-iron hatch covers, wood, rope, steel cable, and fifty-five-gallon drums of diesel. The debris-field overtook everyone at the bow except for the speedy Kirkwood, who leapt a few feet up onto the base of a small mast planted on the very nose of the ship. The others were bashed against the bow gunwale and hammered by the debris. Houtz felt a stabbing, crunchy pain in his side as the breath was squeezed from his lungs. He had broken at least one rib.
A terrified John O’Malley had been battered, too, but “Many Horses” Lesslie was in real trouble. He had somehow been stuffed ass-first into the jagged hole in the bow and was bent over double, his body blocking the rushing water like a cork, completely unable to free himself. Another giant frigid wave swept the bow, and another. Lesslie was going to drown.
Then the set passed and there was a lull. Houtz and Dan staggered over and yanked out Lesslie, who was spitting out oily water and moaning in pain. Lesslie was indeed hurt, and O’Malley had probably suffered internal injuries. The pair then helped