Chapter Six

We live by conventions. Like the old fashioned western movies where the hero wakes up in the bedroom of the rancher’s daughter, to find out that he has been wounded and she has nursed him back to health.

When I woke up, it was like that. The mess was gone from the floor and the smear of coffee grounds and ketchup was gone from the bulkhead. There was a smell of fresh coffee in the air, and Raven had untangled her hair again. It hung in a fluffy cloud around her face and down across her shoulders, shaming Will’s ragged wool shirt with its elegance. Raven was leaning against the back of the opposite transom seat with her feet braced. She was three-quarters asleep.

I could only remember snatches of our later conversation. I must have been more tired than I had realized. Raven, too, although she had clearly outlasted me. At least I didn’t think the good fairies had cleaned up the mess.

The storm had abated. It was time to be getting out and beginning repairs. But looking at Raven, that wasn’t the first thing on my mind. Her foot was bare and close at hand. I brushed a fingernail from her elegant toes up to the cuff of Will’s baggy jeans. Her skin jumped under my fingers.

There was no getting around it. I was miles ahead of her in readiness. Rescuing her had given me a feeling of ownership; seeing her naked and vulnerable when I had first dragged her aboard had aroused me intensely. If I went ahead at the speed I wanted, it would frighten her terribly. She seemed to have accepted that I was not going to take advantage of her helplessness, but I could still easily lose that trust.

This trip wasn’t going to be easy. The Wahini didn’t even have a cold shower.

Raven yawned and stretched, and said, “I wasn’t sleeping.”

“Me, either.”

“Ha!”

She rose and went to the cupboard, poured coffee for both of us and handed me mine. Her motions were sure and easy; she must have spent a lot of time while I slept familiarizing herself with the layout. She said,  “Hungry?”

“Starved.”

“I couldn’t find any eggs.”

“I used the last of them a week ago. There are powdered eggs in that plastic jar, or you could open a can of hash.”

I left her and went on deck. The waves were still sizable, but nothing compared to what they had been. It was late afternoon and the sun was peeking in and out of scattered clouds. I made a slow circuit of the ship, assessing damage.  The mainsail was out of commission until I could repair it, but most of the standing rigging was intact. Only the port main backstay was strained beyond immediate use. Apparently the boom had hit it when it went overboard.

Raven shouted, “Come and eat.”

She was standing at the stove when I came below. I fished Will’s safety harness out and cinched her into it. Her clothing was not enough insulation for the electricity I felt pass between us. I felt! She just nodded and served up the hash. We ate it on deck, leaning against the deckhouse to stay out of the wind.

I set my plate on the deck and said thank you. She laughed and said, “Thank you, sir, and let me add that this has been one hell of a first date.” It was so unexpected that I laughed out loud.

We were sitting side by side, looking back past the lashed wheel across the dying but still lively waves. I wanted to take her hand, but decided not to. There was a feeling of companionship between us, but we were still strangers. I liked the way she looked, the way she smiled, and the sound of her laugh. I liked the way she had stood up to hardship and danger, and the way she had made herself useful without any fuss. And yet I knew nothing about her. I barely even knew her name, or maybe I didn’t know her name. Raven was too melodramatic to be real. more tomorrow

Everything seemed intact. The line to the sea anchor was becoming chafed where it passed through the anchor bits. I should have pulled it in somewhat, but that was out of the question. All I could do was let it out three feet to keep it from chafing further.

Up forward, the motion was severe. When the Wahini crested a wave, the deck fell away beneath my feet like a high speed elevator dropping from penthouse to basement. The line to the sea anchor was as hard as a steel rod; droplets of seawater danced on its vibrating length. I felt like Ishmael on a Nantucket sleigh ride. No amount of reason could convince my senses that we were moving backward more slowly than the waves. My eyes knew that we were surging forward.

I returned to the main hatch. Raven was there, her hair a black bramble in the wind. I took the canvas, hammer and nails, and dragged the hatch closed. The frame was shattered, but there was nothing I could do about that now. I simply nailed canvas over the hole, and trimmed it with my knife. Then I slid the hatch half open and clenched the nails over inside, took a last look around, and went below.

Raven was waiting. She looked so melodramatically woeful and bedraggled that I had to smile. I said, “Where were we?”

It took her a moment to shift mental gears; then she smiled too. “We were in each others arms,” she said. “Were! Now, you are going to tell me whether or not we are going to sink.”

I motioned her to the transom seat and sat opposite her, bracing my feet against the ship’s motion. “No, I don’t think so, but we’ll never come that close again and live to tell about it. The wind seems to be dying down just a bit, and the Wahini is riding properly again.”

“So we’re all right?”

“No guarantees, but probably.” I decided not to tell her about the Wahini’s inherent instability. “How do you feel?”

“Scared. Fine other than that, I guess. Tired. I haven’t gotten much sleep.”

“Me either.”

“So who was doing all that snoring?”

I smiled. I had to admire her for trying so hard. From a cruise ship, to near drowning, to this – she appeared to be holding up well. I wondered what it was costing her.

“What is happening to us?” she asked.

I explained about the rogue wave and the broken boom.

“Does that mean we are stranded?”

“No. It means we may have some heavy repairs ahead of us when the storm lets up, and that we may take longer to get to Marseille.”

She bit her lower lip and asked, “Will we have enough food?”

Another point for her, for intelligence this time. Not many people would have thought of that. I said, “Don’t worry.”

“I have to worry. I’m the one that got you into this mess.  Because I’m here, you have two mouths to feed.”

I shook my head. “No, Raven. I’m not putting you off. Don’t worry because there is plenty of food aboard. We stocked the the Wahini for two before Will had to fly on ahead. If we are much delayed, we may run out of luxuries like coffee, but we won’t go hungry.”

“I don’t want to be a burden.”

“You aren’t.”

She laughed bitterly. “So who went out to repair the damage and who stayed inside safe and warm.”

“This conversation could get tiresome. No, I didn’t invite you aboard; but you didn’t choose to be here either. There is no blame involved, and nothing to apologize about. You are welcome aboard, Raven.

Very softly, she said, “Thank you.”

“I think I could get to like you very quickly.”

Her face lit up. She couldn’t have looked happier if Ed McMahon had knocked on her door with ten million dollars. I wanted to say more, but I sensed a reserve in her, and the last months had left me emotionally drained. Perhaps that was part of the reason I was falling for her so hard and so fast. Not that I needed a reason beyond the fact that she was beautiful and we were alone in mid-ocean. If you rescue a mermaid, you’re expected to fall for her. more tomorrow

The hatch was canvas covered plywood, framed with oak. Something had punched a fist sized hole in the plywood near the back and the whole thing was jammed. I forced it open. The wind, fierce as it was, seemed to have abated slightly. We were once more on an even keel, riding to the sea anchor, but at a sharp angle to the waves. The Wahini’s main boom had torn loose from the harness that supported it’s outboard end at the mizzen, and was dragging in the sea along our port side. The mainsail was still furled between gaff and boom.

It actually seemed to be improving the way the Wahini met the waves, but I couldn’t leave it in the water. I did not have a spare mainsail; if we lost this one, we were dead in the water. Maybe literally. The sheet seemed to still be intact, so I tried hauling it in. The great mass of wood and canvas bent double, and I knew that the sound which awakened me had been the boom breaking. I released the sheet and threw the bitter end of it around the base of the mizzen. With that new angle I could drag the furled sail back toward the boat with less damage. To the sail; not to me. I had to brace one foot against the mizzen and put my back into it. Near the end, I had both feet on the mast and was lying on the deck with the sheet around my shoulders, heaving with my thighs, then taking up slack. Like doing deep knee bends to lift a Buick out of a well. When the sail finally came back aboard, I lay panting and sweating before I could get up to lash it to the deck.

Raven was standing with her head out of the hatch, looking scared and helpless. I moved to the pump, a hefty, old-fashioned type set amidships with a pair of short handles like an old pump handcar. I went to work. The pump dredged up gallons of seawater, smelling of gasoline and colored with ketchup and coffee grounds, and dumped them on deck. Passing waves quickly swept it clean again. Raven said something, but I lost it in the screaming wind and just shook my head. I put my hand on top of her head and pushed gently. She gave way and I stuck my head through the hatch where she could hear me.

“Forward, through that door, in a cardboard box marked canvas. Bring me a piece of scrap, at least a foot square. Then look under the ladder, beside the engine, high up on the left. You’ll find a tool box. Bring me a claw hammer and a dozen roofing nails. Those are rough gray nails with big flat heads.  OK?”

She nodded and I let her go while I shifted my harness line and worked forward. I scrunched along with my feet in the scuppers and my hands on the edge of the cabin house while the wind tried to pick me up like Dorothy and carry me away. Definitely, this wasn’t Kansas. more tomorrow

Chapter Five

The storm’s masterstroke came just after dawn. What actually happened, I never knew for sure. Perhaps some freak combination of waveforms resulting in a rogue wave much higher than the others. Perhaps the waves had changed their period and the Wahini was out of synch, and caught still rolling to port under the influence of one wave when a second one added its force to the first. The reason was irrelevant; only the result mattered.

I was shocked fully awake by a sound like an explosion, a shudder that ran through the hull and the sickening feeling of overturning. I sat up so quickly that I slammed my head against the overhead, but my curses were cut off by a firehose spray of salt water in the face. Before I knew it, I was out of the bunk and standing with my feet on the side of the cabin, looking down through the portholes into green swirling water that went all the way down, miles down, to the deep ocean floor.

Wahini was lying on her side. Raven’s bunk hung above me. Her eyes were like twin coals glowing in twin caverns, her mouth worked with fear but no sound came out. She clawed at the ropes that held her canvas restraint in place and came slipping out like the sudden, final rush of birth. I caught her as she fell.

Wahini’s masts must have been nearly horizontal. If she had had even one stitch of canvas set, it would have driven her down that last degree to her death – and ours. Instead she hung there for agonizing seconds that felt like years, mastheads just above the surging waves, rail buried, cabin sides buried so that we could look down between our feet out the porthole into the green depths where Leviathan sleeps. 

There was absolutely nothing I could do. Not even pray. Raven’s hands were making furious crosses, forehead to waist, shoulder to shoulder. Please, God! Please! Another bucketful of water came in the broken hatch and washed the canned goods, ketchup, and coffee grounds around our ankles, covering the portholes and hiding the sight of the depths that lay beneath us.

We braced each other up, arms wrapped around each other, trembling in the darkness, helpless as mice beneath a lion’s paw.

Slowly, regally, Wahini found her feet. The cabin side slid sideways beneath us and we scuttled back to the narrow floorboard. Wahini groaned around us.

I swallowed my heart, and as the fear-buzzing numbness faded from my ears, I became aware of the fact that I was holding Raven in a close embrace. She had buried her face in my chest and the scent of her hair was strong. Raven black. Long, firm body pressed close and trembling. And I had no time for her! I disengaged gingerly, cooing reassurance and cursing our timing. more tomorrow

The hollows between the waves had become like caverns. Wahini would crest a wave then plunge down into the trough with such speed that it seemed as if she would bury her bowsprit and keep on driving clear underwater. I could no longer trust my steering to prevent disaster. I had been up so long that I could hardly trust myself to stay awake. I had to put out the sea anchor.

It was a clumsy device of boards and welded chain that Will and I had fashioned months ago, hoping we would never need it. I turned the Wahini into the wind and dropped it off the bow on a long line. I paid out the warp until it coincided with the period of the waves and the Wahini settled into a wild but regular pattern of motion. The sea anchor dragged her bow around, holding Wahini’s head to the wind as she worked the waves. She seemed to move forward while actually sliding backward under the press of the gale. As we crested each wave, the sea anchor snubbed the bow down until green water came over and shot a thin sheet the length of the deck. Then the wind would catch the full height of the masts and Wahini would shake her head like a horse with a harsh bit in her mouth. Down the face of the wave then, nearly plunging through the swirling surface and on down to the sea floor miles below. In the trough, crashing into the face of the next wave; then struggling, shuddering, up to the next crest to repeat the cycle.

I lashed the wheel amidships and waited. I had been without sleep for thirty-seven grueling hours, but I had to stay long enough to know that I had done all I could for Wahini. Finally I slid the hatch back and went below.

All was chaos. The crazy motion had been magnified below decks. The latch on one of the food cabinets had broken and canned goods were rolling around underfoot. A bottle of ketchup had broken, turning the narrow deck into a smear of bloody-looking broken glass, mixed with grounds from the overturned coffee pot. The blanket I had wrapped up in was half soaked in the mixture. Raven was in her bunk again, clinging with both hands to keep from being thrown out as the boat shuddered and staggered from wave to wave. Her face was full of terror and seasickness.

I said, “Look,” and showed her how to adjust the canvas restraint that would pin her into her bunk so no motion, however violent, could throw her out. Then I replaced her seasickness patch and dug out a pair of chocolate bars. She refused hers, so I ate them both.

I shook the broken glass out of my blanket, wiped the worst of the ketchup and coffee grounds on the edge of the transom, crawled into the bunk opposite Raven’s, and fell instantly asleep.

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My night was broken. Every hour – it seemed like every five minutes – Wahini’s wild motion would bring me to wakefulness and I would lie staring into the darkness, feeling her drunken dance with the storm and gauging her condition. Eventually I would drift off again, and an hour or so later wake again with that steel-twisted feeling of helpless. So it went, all night. I made no move to go on deck. Unless Wahini lost her sea anchor and I had to makeshift another one, there was absolutely nothing I could do to make things better. There was no reason to look out for other ships. If one were bearing down on us, there would be nothing I could do to avoid it. It was better to just sleep and wait. more tomorrow

There is no accounting for what drives the engine of memory. In the midst of storm and danger, my mind went sailing again on a Swiss lake, on board one of the lovely old paddle wheel steamers. It was my first trip from Geneva to Montreaux by way of Luisanne, fresh out of the Army and happy to just play tourist. I stood for hours watching the bow wave curl back in smooth mustache of green water, probably dreaming of crossing an ocean in my own small ship. 

Funny thing, the mind. Here in the middle of screaming wind and angry seas, I should have been remembering scenes of similar violence in my past. The shock of cold, swift water as my canoe overturned in the rapids of the Canadian sub-arctic; or crouching silently in the dark, waiting with Greta for East German guards to find us. Instead, I remembered my first entry into Luisanne by steamer, with swans slipping gracefully and unconcerned out of the way. Beyond the embarkation pier were parks and a marina where I had spent an hour admiring the sailboats. The swans had come to beg crumbs, and I had shared part of my bread-loaf lunch.  Young swans – cygnets – as dark gray and ungainly as Hans Christian Andersen’s ugly duckling, trailed in their mothers’ wakes.

When I returned to the dock, two young femmes were sharing a park bench, singing to the guitar one of them was playing. They were perhaps fourteen, as fresh and awkward and innocent as cygnets. They were singing in English, with accents that said they were French. Suzanne, Leonard Cohen’s first real success, a song full of pain, disillusionment, and wry bitterness. Their sweet voices curled around his salt-sour words, singing of things they could not possibly understand. It made the words more bitter, and the beauty of their innocence more poignant.

When they sang that “the sun came down like honey”, the scene came together in my mind in one unbreakable gestalt. The awakened innocence of the girls, the honey warm air, the clear, flat green water with mountains rising up in the distance across Lac Léman. The sound of birds in the bushes; the swans parading awkwardly on dry land down near the marina. I took it all in – a small satori – and it was mine forever, to rise up again when least expected.

Like now, cold and stiff and a little fearful, caught in the midst of a gale a thousand miles from safety. With another girl, more awakened than innocent. With waves that rose up all around me, awaiting a moment’s inattention to destroy both of us. more tomorrow