Adrift: A True Story of Love, Loss and Survival at Sea. Susea McGearhart

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СКАЧАТЬ I hummed.

      “I want to dive with you, Tami,” Richard murmured in my ear. “I want to surface and dive as these wild mammals do.” I reached back and undid his shorts. They fell onto the teak deck.

      With growing momentum we surfaced and dived, surfaced and dived, wild and free like the whales, before God, and heaven, and sky. Hazana, the queen whale, set the rolling rhythm we matched.

      I later wrote in the logbook: “Bliss!”

      * * *

      Day Twelve: We hoisted the multipurpose sail, the MPS, which is very lightweight, and made four knots with the southeast trades finally catching us. The trades stayed with us for a number of days, pushing us to the east. We often saw whales, and now dolphins were showing their cheerful faces.

      * * *

      Dawn of October 8 broke gray, rainy, and miserable. The winds were unpredictable. They gusted from southeast to southwest and back around from the north. We were up near the bow checking the rig when a small land bird crashed onto the foredeck. The poor thing panted, unsteady on its short toothpick legs. Richard got a towel and dropped it over the bird. Scooping it up, he brought the bird to the cockpit, out of the rain and wind. Behind the windscreen, on top of the roof of the cabin, it squatted low, ruffling its wet feathers to warm its tired body. I crumbled a piece of bread, but the bird appeared too afraid to eat. The absurd winds must have blown the tiny bird far offshore. Richard later scribbled, “Cyclonic?” in the logbook.

      As I read the word “Cyclonic?” in his log entry, I wondered what that meant to him. Could it be that we were sailing through some rogue whirlwinds? Is that possible? Had the little bird gotten trapped in the clocking wind without the strength or wherewithal to break free? Did Richard fear our getting trapped too? I’d been in plenty of clocking winds in the past few years and never considered them cyclonic. Richard didn’t appear overly concerned, so I took it in stride too.

      The next day the weather channel WWV informed us the storm they had been tracking off the coast of Central America was now being classified as Tropical Depression Sonia. They said it was centered at 13° N by 136° W and traveling west at seven knots. That put her over a hundred miles west of us.

      WWV also warned of a different tropical storm brewing off the coast of Central America. They were referring to it as Raymond. In comparing our course, 11° N and 129° W heading north-northeast, to the course Raymond was traveling, 12° N and 107° W and heading west at twelve knots, Richard wrote, “Watch this one.”

      “Watch this one?” Storms come and go, I thought, often petering out. I had learned that while fishing in New Zealand. Making note of it was Richard’s way of staying on top of things. Unfazed, I just kept up with the odds and ends of our daily routine like cooking, cleaning, steering, and reading. It was especially joyful to sit in the cockpit writing a letter or two to friends left in Tahiti that I would later post in San Diego.

      Near midnight the wind dropped. Then it came around to the east-northeast, which fueled Raymond’s fury. We got hit with squalls and rain.

      * * *

      Monday, October 10, the wind veered to the north. At five in the morning, we changed our heading to north-northwest to gain speed. Our goal was to get as far north of Raymond’s track as possible.

      The wind died down to one to two knots, and we ended up motoring for four hours. But by noon, when the wind started screaming, we shut down the engine and put two reefs in the main. It was the smallest we could make the sail without taking it down, and we needed all the speed we could get. We had the staysail up and the genny was reefed also. We were plowing away at five knots to the north-northwest. Tropical Storm Raymond was now at 12° N and 111° W, heading due west. The bird was gone; it had flown the coop.

      We decided to fly more sail in an attempt to run north of the oncoming storm. Taut lines, also known as jack lines, ran along each side of the boat from the bow to the stern. This gave us something to clip our safety harness tethers onto while working on the deck. We pushed Hazana to her max. There was no choice—we had to get out of the path of the storm. This storm was quickly surpassing the two horrendous storms I had experienced in the Pacific before I met Richard. I knew Richard had had his ass kicked while crossing the Gulf of Tehuantepec in Mexico on his way to San Diego. But this storm was rapidly turning into the worst conditions we had ever experienced together.

      Richard and I got busy clearing the decks, just in case the conditions continued to worsen; we didn’t need heavy objects flying around. We hauled the extra five-gallon jury-jugs of diesel down below and secured them in the head. They were heavy and it was difficult to move them in the rough seas.

      At 0200 the next morning, the genny blew out. The ripped material thrashed violently in the wind; its staccato cracks and snaps were deafening. Turning on the engine and engaging the autopilot, Richard and I cautiously worked our way up to the mainmast, clipping our safety harness tethers onto the jack line as we went forward. “You slack the . . .”

      “WHAT?” I yelled over the wailing wind.

      “YOU SLACK THE HALYARD WHEN I GET UP THERE, AND I’LL PULL HER DOWN.”

      “OKAY,” I shouted back, loosening the line.

      Richard fought his way to the bow. I was terrified watching him slither forward. Gallons of cold water exploded over the bow on top of him, drenching me too. Hazana reared over the rising swells. The ruined sail whipped violently and dangerously in the wind.

      Richard couldn’t get the sail down. Finally he came back to me.

      “SHE WON’T BUDGE. CLEAT OFF THE END OF THE HALYARD, AND COME UP AND HELP ME PULL HER DOWN.”

      I did as he said and slowly worked myself forward on all fours, ducking my head with each dousing of saltwater. We tugged and pulled on the sail as it volleyed madly in the wind. Finally, after my fingers were blistered from trying to grip the wet sailcloth, the sail came down with a thud, half burying us. We gathered it up quickly and sloppily lashed it down. We then slid the number-one jib into the foil, and I tied the sheet—the line—onto the sail’s clew. I made my way back to the cockpit making sure the line was not tangled—fouled—on anything.

      Richard went to the mainmast, wrapped the halyard around the winch, and raised as much of the sail as he could by hand. I crawled up to the mainmast and pulled in the excess line while he cranked on the winch, raising the sail the rest of the way. It flogged furiously, like laundry left on a line in a sudden summer squall. We were afraid this sail would rip too. Once the sail was almost completely hoisted, I slithered as fast as I could back to the cockpit while Richard secured the halyard. I cranked like hell on the winch to bring the sail in. Richard came back to the cockpit and gave me a hand getting the sail trimmed. This sail change took us almost two hours. Richard and I were spent and wet, and we needed to eat. In between a set of swells, I slid open the hatch and quickly went down into the cabin before cold ocean spray could follow me in.

      It was hot inside Hazana with all the hatches shut. She was moving like a raft in rapids. What would be simple to prepare, I questioned myself, instant chicken soup? As I set the pot of water on the propane stove to boil, I secured the pot clamps to hold it. I peeled off my dripping foul weather gear and sat down exhausted on the quarter berth.

      * * *

      Seven hours later, after the horrendous sail change, Raymond was still traveling west at latitude 12° N. Richard scribbled in the logbook: “We’re OK.” Obviously our northerly СКАЧАТЬ