Three Ways to Capsize a Boat - Chris Stewart [29]
“Kill that sail!” yelled Tom from the wheel.
I leaped to grab a snaking rope. It upped and smacked me in the head like a kick from a mule. I fell and grabbed at a stay to stop myself slipping overboard. Swiftly, Patrick, a bigger-built man than me, and far more alert to the real danger of a flogging sail, managed to quell its fury. But not before the long free end of the sail’s rope had fallen overboard and snarled up in the propeller, thus putting the engine out of action.
Tom cursed, Patrick was ashen faced. It was humiliating for seasoned sailors like them to be caught in such a balls-up so close to the land, even if none of them were culpable. For myself, I was mortified. What sort of asset was I going to be if I couldn’t even grab hold of a rope? But there was no time for such reflections; Tom was shouting to us to reef the sail. This is where you loosen and then tie up the lower segments of the sail—making it all a lot smaller and therefore offering less resistance to the wind. It’s one of the crucial maneuvers, that every sailor learns to lessen the impact of a storm.
With an alternative sail taking the place of the storm jib, and with the mainsail substantially bundled and tied (or double-reefed), we headed east, and four hours later decided to put in at Newhaven to clear the propeller. God, I thought. I hope this is not the way it’s going to be all the way to Newfoundland. Summer in Greece didn’t prepare me for this. There was also a worry playing on my mind. How the hell, I wondered to myself, do you go about clearing a rope from a propeller without actually diving beneath the bottom of the boat? It didn’t bear thinking about.
IT TURNED OUT THAT I did not have much time to ponder the issue, as I was soon to find out firsthand.
“Right, Chris, are you ready? I’ll hand you the knife once you’ve got that safety rope sorted out; we don’t want you slicing bits off yourself by accident.”
It was Tom, leaning like the others over the side while I slid, tied to a safety line and fully clothed (for we hadn’t a wetsuit and, even when immersed in water, wool still imparts a certain warmth), into the cold, cold sea. The odd thing was that I felt almost glad that I was the one to have pulled the short straw. It made me feel important and useful and redeemed that sense of guilt that maybe I could have prevented the rope slipping overboard. At least that’s how I felt before the first gush of freezing water welled into my trousers, agonizingly consumed my nether parts, and then made a grab for my neck. God, it was cold!
Cold sea is always better once you’re fully immersed, so I dived down, groping my way along the keel until I came to the propeller. I kept my eyes shut because the water in Newhaven Harbour, as well as being cold and fast moving with the tide, was about as clear as mushroom soup. The knot, thankfully, was easy to find—a mass of thick rope wedged tight into every turn of the propeller blades, like a grotesque sinewy growth.
Clutching the keel with one hand so as not to be whooshed out to the open sea by the tide, I started cutting. To my dismay the rope had been twisted so tight by the force of the propeller that it had taken on the consistency of steel cable. I sawed feebly through a few fibers and then burst to the surface, panting and spluttering.
My shipmates looked down at me expectantly. “Are you OK? Have you done it?” they asked.
“Very nearly,” I lied as I wheezed and honked for air, and then ducked under again.
A few more fibers, a lunge to the surface for breath. Yet more still, and another lunge for breath. I continued in this manner until my fingers and face were half frozen and my body began to quake with cold.
“I think you should come up,” Ros insisted after nearly half an hour had passed. The others had stopped asking about my progress; they too thought I should stop for a break. But it would be unthinkable to stop without finishing the job. There was my pride to consider, as well as the fact that we wouldn’t be going