Three Ways to Capsize a Boat - Chris Stewart [44]
Tom was unruffled; he gave orders with absolute coolness as he hauled the boom in amidships and kept an eye on every one of us. Ros, too, seemed to keep resolutely calm as she battled skillfully with the bucking wheel. As the sodden mainsail crashed down onto the boom, we all leaped to gather it and tie down the first reef. Each of a dozen ropes had to be passed beneath the sail and tied.
With the crazed rolling of the boat, the icy cold in your fingers, the difficulty of getting a purchase with your feet, and the cold, cold terror gnawing at your very innards, this is not an easy task. When we finally got the first reef tied, John dropped the sail a bit farther and we set to tying in the second reef.
The whole job took about half an hour, then we hauled the now-much-reduced sail back up and tightened the outhauls. Tom cupped his hands over his mouth and yelled down the screaming wind: “OK, Ros, pay her off the wind now and see how she sails like that.” Ros spun the wheel until the sails bellied out with wind and Hirta drove her bow into the boiling waves once more.
“Patrick,” said Tom, as we tumbled back into the shelter and relative calm of the cockpit. “Please don’t ever do a thing like that again, not on my boat and not with a single member of my family and my crew onboard.”
“Come on, Tom, it wasn’t that bad, and we both know the old girl was up to it well enough.” Patrick was bristling, but there was an element of sheepishness in his voice.
“This boat is a hundred years old, Patrick. She’s well built and she’s sound, but there’s a limit, and you took her all the way to that limit. I shouldn’t need to say this, but I’m the skipper and it’s my responsibility to get you all safely to landfall. I cannot have you driving the boat on as if this were some sort of bloody military maneuver.”
Tom was furious, but he just about managed to rein himself in. The restraint was more intimidating than any outburst would have been.
“You’re right, Tom,” said Patrick. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”
AS IT WAS WELL into the after-midnight watch, Patrick and I sloped off guiltily to our bunks for a couple of hours’ sleep. Sleep, or at least rest, is mandatory, as you need to be fit enough to take the next watch.
So I slumbered, listening fearfully to the storm that was still gathering strength. I was in my sleeping bag, wearing long johns and a T-shirt, with my moleskin trousers and heap of sodden jerseys at the foot of the bed and my oilskins hanging on a hook nearby. When the storm had started we’d each of us rigged up a lee cloth, a canvas strip tied to hooks above the berth, to stop ourselves from being hurled bodily from our beds.
As I lay there, thinking perhaps a little guiltily about Ana and her worries on my behalf that I’d so glibly dismissed, I became aware of John tumbling down the stairs and disappearing into the saloon to wake the skipper. A minute later Tom joined him by the chart table and I listened to them conferring. “We can’t carry on like this,” asserted John. “The weather’s still getting fiercer. If we don’t put the third reef in a bit quick, we could lose the mast.”
I was already groping under my pillow for my glasses when Tom’s shaggy mane poked into my berth. “Get your butt up there on deck, Chris. Time for a third reef. Now!”
He went to wake Patrick while I rolled out of the berth, crawled into my oilskins, and staggered up the pitching companionway steps straight from the warmth of my rank berth into the awfulness of a full gale on an arctic night.
“Right,” said Tom. “You know what to do; do it. I’ll take the wheel.”
The third and last reef was a little easier than the others, as there was less sail to deal with and fewer ties, although this was offset by the fact that the ferocity