Weeks in PR have gone into rebuilding Me and cleaning the boat, which isn't yet finished and may never be. One kind of dirt or another seems to accumulate, spread, and build up. Six and seven inches of bright green hair grew out of the sunken boot top. One side scraped off and the other wiped out by water motion on my recent trip East.3/7/88Swimming--my latest sport is sea swims. Distance stuff. Interstate, and now international. I participate as a spotter, guide, target, waterboy, emergency transport. I don't swim. Even here in the Caribbean, not more than a few minutes. The sea swims are great, I'm out there with the swimmers before and after, and doing something useful with my beloved young people. So I took off from here for St. John [to meet Debby for an event] on a Thursday PM east-bound against the trades. Wilkie couldn't make it, so I'm alone. Looked like long and short tacks so I let the first one take me thirty miles offshore, figuring to get back to shore by daylight and no sooner. 6-1/2 hrs on each tack did indeed get me back to shore, but disappointingly close to where I started, sixty-odd miles of beating for a net gain of thirty. Gaff rig and sleepy sailing, in a constant head sea. This is open ocean. I sheltered behind an Island in the afternoon, cooked up a storm of chicken stew, had a real lie-down sleep while the afternoon high winds blew themselves out, off again before dark. Still a lot of air moving--double reefed, but whole jib and mizzen.
Same scenario--six hours offshore, and because of the shoreline tending north, I was out of sight very soon, sailing fast, bashing up a lot of seas. Decks awash with spray rather than green water. All systems go. Coupla three good naps, delicious chicken stew but I couldn't put the bowl down. Had to eat it braced between stove and head. Very bouncy sea, but regular and easy to compensate for. Good way, but still poor real mileage towards my objective. Full moon too. So on with the whole foul weather gear and nurse the self-steering to try to get a few more degrees to windward. Breeze still very fresh, perhaps a bit over twenty kn. Apogee bouncing a lot, but making good way, I could nurse another five degrees out of her by anticipating the waves. We were doing fine. Should make St. Thomas in mid-afternoon of the third day. It's an easy approach from South and West, and well lit if we were later than I calculated.
So I'm sitting there full of stew, a bit wet but not uncomfortable, bright moon, a day short of full. Flying fish. Twice I saw porpoises, but none came to play in my bow wave. A really gorgeous night. And crunch, the mast leaned over while I was looking at it! Bounced once and plop. Out fwd, pulled over by the jib. One of the bolts below the dead eyes had failed.
For my readers who are not sailors, a mast floating in the water is a great danger. Its period of motion has to be different than the boat, so if there is a tie onto it it's almost impossible for it not to act as a battering ram, and right at water level too. I am now at the place were sailing alone is most dangerous. Even going forward to assess damage has a new set of risks. Slapping lines, the heavier stays, sometimes snapping right up tight are added to the normal hazards of being on the foredeck in a big sea. There is also the fore and aft motion of the three or four-hundred pounds of mast and rigging which is still firmly fastened to the vessel by three stays and the forestay. It moves fore and aft with every wave, sucked away by the sea as the bow rises, and jumping aft as the bow falls. The spar is still over the rail, and I cut the first handy line into a length I could tie it on firmly with, got it inboard a bit more so it would stop bashing the stump of the mast, and made fast.
Now what? Salvage? Not a chance. Even if I could get it alongside without damage there's no way I could work on it without bashing myself to bits in these seas. I tried to lower the main--which was now uphill of course. No way. It wouldn't budge. Bottom still on the boom dble reefed, top in the water held under and apparently fouled. No way to save any of it that I could see. Adrenalin flowing very free, cut everything loose and get out of this particular piece of ocean. Now that I look back at it there MIGHT have been a way to save some of the rigging and all the sails. Doubtful if I could have done it alone. Even with a strong and able assist it would have involved considerably more exposure to accident, so I'm glad I didn't think of it then.
Cut it loose and get out I did. Knife along the second reef line-- amazing how easily a very tough sail cuts! Coupla seconds the sail was severed and coupla more it was half flapping in the water, raising itself up the mast down into the water. Lines snapping and whipping all over. Hearing aid knocked out of my ear, I got it tucked into my FW gear. Pull as much slack as possible out of the million lines tangled across the rail and cut as soon as they stop coming aboard. The second or third snapped the sharpest knife I had out of my hand and into the drink. Gone. More knives--kitchen knives will do it. They did. Another snapper caught me in the mouth and took a front incisor out of my upper denture. I didn't notice it was gone 'till much later. Lines all cut, sever the electric wires that had pulled out of the mast and were still off-and-on pulling tight on the butt of the mast. Pliers did that--my little pocket vise-grips.
Then the heavy stainless stays. Four of them. The one that gave way was still tangled aboard with its lightboard and pin rail. And I had The Tool for IT. Bermuda race rules say you must carry a clipper sufficient to cut the heaviest shroud on board, but it was the utter limit of my strength to do it--my weight alone would not. One, two, three cut. Second and third a little easier because I knew it could be done. Stop there and figure how to get free of the wrack. One stay and my retaining line still tied on. Clear out under the rail where it will go over. Knock off the jiffy cleat that was hanging half off so it wouldn't tangle in the rail as the body of the mast passed overboard. Yup, ready. Wait wait (Stan's sentiments in every emergency). What will happen? Which way to fall? How to avoid the wrack after it falls? Really no hurry now I've been in this position for an hour or more, and it's gotten no worse. Wait wait. Look it all over--I'd forgotten the forestay. Glad to have Stan's 'wait'. I went out on my half-mile bowsprit hanging on something desperate. Lucky me, somehow the wrenching sidepull had sheared the cotter key, so all I had to do was pull a rigging pin out. That's all, but with the entire drag of the jib in the water pulling against me. (The mizzen was up, and sheeted tight amidships to keep the boat on the wind and backing slowly. Open up the vise-grips from zero to 3/4". Takes hours with one hand, can't see if I try both under the sprit, and I could lose all including me! By the time I did get it open and a bite on the head of the pin, an odd wave had swished the wrack a bit further to port than it had been swishing. The leverage it had was tremendous, and it sheared the eye off the band of the sprit, which then snapped off into the moonlight, along with the pin and my pliers, and nearly my hand, arm, shoulder, and etc. I wasn't smart enough to let go, had to save the pliers. I didn't but I saved me.
Now I'm free except for one stay wire and my retaining line. Mast is overboard 80% and being dragged gently from the bow of the boat as we drift backwards. So I started the engine, let it tick over at moderate speed in reverse, took off my retaining line and as the stay tightened, put my all into squeezing the bolt cutters. Slither, slide, and splash. I'm clear immediately but keep on backing for a bit--it takes a while to get way enough to steer Apogee, and I have no desire to tangle her up in her own rigging. Made it. Now I have time to be scared, even tired. Life and death dangers there weren't. Overboard with no way on, and in warm water, is not dangerous. The ones I can see now looking back at it: being pinched between the broken mast and the standing stump; being whipped by a breaking line or wire, which could be painful, even cutting or blinding, but not very likely; or losing my hearing aid. And I was wait, wait, waiting after each operation. Was being thoughtful about being alone, without a radio (antenna under water) and twenty-odd miles across a stiff breeze from the nearest land.
Emergency over. Backed down a hundred yards before powering fwd and turning West for five minutes at moderate power, to be certain of avoiding wrack which was difficult to identify among the white caps. Breathe deep. Set a few minutes. Eat something. Drink something, drain too, at leisure. I could get to StT & St John under power. Do I want to without a mast? And having gotten there, done my biz. under power altogether, and worse than that showing off a crippled rig. Explaining to very wharf rat and passing boat. Nope. Purely pride or embarrassment or something that I have difficulty naming or even admitting to. I don't want to. I've failed Debby before and survived--maybe she'll forgive me one more time. Go West, set it home and figure out what to do. Tired of course, but must stay awake. OK, Go. Took in the mizzen, which made a lot of steering for not much contribution to way and screamed back to Guanica, nearly planing on the down-sides of the big seas.
Land lights in sight presently. Oblique approach--it was a full two hours before I got a fix from them and then I'd just passed Jobos. Good shelter, easy entrance, mud bottom, but I'd already passed it and hated to turn and power UP wind, giving away double miles, and hard work. Cuppa coffee and push on to the next snug harbor. Managed to pass that one too before I'd positively identified it. Next one is the lee of either of the Mangrove Islands off Ponce. I'm doing the nod and jerk routine by this time. Wind abating, moon leading me on now. Isle Caja de Muerte showing clearly which is within sight from the hill above my harbor, and a clear shot. To hell with the lot of them let's go home. Daylight a-comin' too. Brilliant pink sunrise behind me, off course, as often looking at it as I was sleeping. Many tiny clouds close to the eastern horizon, pink all through, brilliantly highlighted at their upper edges with the promised sun, and a broad pink band of clear sky behind them. Better than the land-bound sunrises ever are. Hard to stay awake. Found Talaboa, and then Guayanilla, which is next to Guanica. Realized in plenty of time that I was in too close. Turned South for a mile to clear the reef outside of Guanica. In with a couple of quizzical waves from familiar fishermen. Picked up my mooring, refastened the dink astern. Noon. I hit the sack and woke about 6 pm. Carried myself ashore and crawled into bed without dinner! Good sleep too.
Eleventeen options now. So far the most practical seems to be to have Nat Wilson design me a new rig, make the mast here while he's making and collecting. Wood is a difficulty. I haven't found what I want (spruce), don't know whether the available fir and Pine are suitable for glued-up construction. Some of this will be decided in the morning when I speak to Nat again.
Raising the new mast without another vessel will be a bit of a challenge, but it's been done before. The great schooners and clippers raised their rigs from the deck or alongside, and I do have a quiet harbor, a heavy dink and a sailfish. Any suggestions?
This was only going to be a coupla three lines in the intro of the next All Hands, and look what it's done...Fiesta de acabe de cafe in Yauco today. Band, parade, people by the million--no idea how many really. Souvenirs, earrings, hand-made junk. Some really fine hammocks, $110. Noise. Two PA systems (politicians and teachers) pretty evenly matched machine-gunning the assembled captive public while tired kids in costume go by at a deadly slow psce in the hot sun, some walking, some riding on florally decorated trux. Horses and riders, even donkeys. And one plastic oxen leading a chevy float of charcoal burners. Very loud music, even louder speakers. Lucky me, I could turn them down. Never again. But I've said that before too... .
 Catalog |  Next |