Three Ways to Capsize a Boat - Chris Stewart [18]
“Isn’t there anything we can do to stop that horrible crashing?” asked Tim.
“Well, as a matter of fact there is, but it would impede our progress.”
“We’re not exactly making a lot of progress anyway, are we? What can we do?”
“Well, we could tie a bucket to the end of the boom and throw it in the water. The drag would restrain the boom from banging … but it’s a hideously unseamanlike solution. And we haven’t actually brought a bucket with us.”
“But we have to do something. We can’t just sit here like this; we’ll go bonkers.”
“Heavens, man—we’ve only been becalmed for fifteen minutes.”
“Perhaps,” agreed Tim. “But the problem with the Mediterranean is that in summer the calms are almost constant. The Ancients didn’t do very much sailing at all, you know; they rowed everywhere. But they didn’t have the internal combustion engine then, of course,” he added as an afterthought. Then blinked.
“Of course,” I echoed thoughtfully, wondering what he was driving at.
“We have, though.”
“We have what?” I asked, absently.
“Internal combustion engines. We have an internal combustion engine right here on this boat.”
“Aah …”
“So why don’t we start it up?”
I had suspected all along that this was what Tim wanted: he wanted to forget sailing and use the engine.
“Well, it’s smelly and noisy, and it makes the whole thing rather disagreeable, don’t you think?”
“But surely it can’t be more disagreeable than sitting here becalmed with that boom banging the hell out of the poor boat. And besides, we’re supposed to get to Spetses today. At this rate we’re not even going to make it to Aegina.”
There was something in what Tim had to say. I held my ground a little longer … then I started up the engine.
WE PULLED THE SAILS in tight and set course for the northern tip of Aegina. With our forward speed an apparent wind sprang up and cooled us down; the warm sunshine had become a searing furnace while we were becalmed. The Crabber churned on across the glassy waters toward Aegina, and the progress cheered us up. The engine didn’t sound too bad, a pleasant chugging coming from somewhere deep down inside the boat. We ate some figs and had a sip of water. It wouldn’t do to get dehydrated.
“What’s that smell?” asked Tim.
“What smell?”
“There’s a sort of a hot smell.”
“That’ll be the engine, I suppose.”
“But it didn’t smell like that before.”
“No, that’s because we had it turned off.”
“No, but I mean since we’ve had it running.”
“Engines always smell like that when they’re running—it’s because they get hot. And this one is new, so probably all the paint is burning off it. It’s what always happens.” I rabbited on, not altogether convinced by my own sophistry.
Then a plume of smoke appeared from under the lid of the engine cover.
“Jesus, the goddamn boat’s on fire!” Tim cried.
“Nonsense, man. It’s just a bit of hot paint. I’ll take the cover off it.”
I shipped the tiller out of the way and bent down to lift the heavy wooden cover off the engine box. It was hard to budge—and a little hot—and when I finally shifted it, it came away with a great jerk. A thick cloud of black smoke burst upon us and, with the sudden hit of oxygen from the violently lifted lid, the whole damn thing burst into flames.
“Fuck! You’re right. We’re on fire. Get some water, quick!”
“How?”
“From the sea, of course! Get some water out of the sea with a bucket!”
“But we haven’t got a fucking bucket! We haven’t got anything for chrissakes!”
The essence of being a good seaman is to keep your head when things go wrong, as in their inimitable way they inevitably will, and to be able to improvise. How to put out a fire at sea without a bucket … hmm.
“I know,” said Tim, “we can take our shirts off and dip them in the sea and wring them out over the engine.”
No sooner said than done. We dipped and scooped and wrung for