Johnson-Johnson 06 – Dolly and the Nanny Bird (21 page)

The luff of a sail of this kind is made to hold and run up the mast by being sewn at intervals with bracelets of ash parrel balls which have to be clipped round the mast one by one as you are hoisting. The sheets are double, and work through two blocks at the clew. From there, they run to a single block which is shackled to the mainsheet bolts.

Trifun didn’t know what a mainsheet bolt was, or where to look for it. Petar, his arms embracing the boom, had to be shouted at by Zorzi before he would kneel on the slanting deck and fumble with luff toggles. If the mainsail had been up instead of stowed neatly round the boom, we could never have done it. The jib I bent on myself.

I had both sails sheeted in and was back in the cockpit, explaining to Trifun, when Zorzi started the engine again, turning the wheel at the same time to point
Dolly
’s bows across the heaving black expanse of the first of Kotorska’s three basins.

Above the crash and slap of the waves, above the whining snarl of the wind there came only a coughing sound, quickly guttering to a halt. Zorzi tried again, and then a third time. No response. Water, perhaps in the exhaust. More likely the fuel was done. In either case, the engine was finished. Cut our losses.

I looked at the chart and the compass. ‘Bring the wheel round and keep the needle there. You see. If the wind stays steady, we can cross the basin and get through the first set of narrows without tacking. What about hazards? What depths do you have?’

‘Read it!’ he said, and pushed the Pilot at me, shouting angrily above the wind to the other two as he turned the wheel. I read it, lying beside me in the light of Trifun’s torch while I sheeted in and waited for the moment to cast off the lee runner. Then our bows were pointing across the first of the three basins with the wind on our port beam, and we were moving, faster and faster. I settled down and began to explain, slowly and clearly, what the ropes were for and what had to be done with them. Then I made them all put on their life jackets and harness, and took the wheel, my own body-rope tied to a cleat, while Zorzi went below to change also.

Across the bay, nudged and blackened by all the intervening waves, lay the brilliant bouquet of lights that was Herceg-Novi. With a good pair of binoculars I could have picked out the hotel where Bunty lay fast asleep, with Grover and Sukey. A car headlight showed, on the winding road which edged all three waterways, and lights from a street or a jetty where the villages were. The fishing boats you might expect, lantern at prow, were quite absent. Those who made their livelihood from the sea knew when the sea was at its most dangerous.

When Zorzi came back I said, ‘It would be best if I have the helm. Do you agree?’

I thought perhaps that pride would stop him, but he consented. Long before I could steer for harbour, they could remove me. And my life as well as theirs was in danger. I took the tiller, instead of the wheel, so that I could sit up, my feet on the cockpit bench, and see all around me. I had it for five minutes only. Then, the lines in the darkness ran white, and I knew the first squall of the Bora was coming.

Like a damn bursting, Lenny had said; and it was just that. All the lights blackened and there was a roaring which drowned my voice screaming at Petar. I saw him pull in the runners. Then, sheeting in with one hand, I turned
Dolly
into the Bora.

She was half round when the wind struck, throwing her back like a card as her bows began to climb the first wave. Behind the blast of buffeting sound I could hear the groaning of overstrained timber. For a moment she balanced there, shuddering. Then her bows came down, the body of creaming black water moved backwards under her keel and I paid off, easing the sheets, shouting to Trifun and strained my eyes, as the water swirled round the cockpit and ran down my neck and streamed from my sodden hair, to see where the next one was coming.

There was another, and another a moment or so after that. I took them each on the shoulder, and
Dolly
righted herself every time with a stream of water inboard on the weather side. I reckoned the last was a 40 to 50 knot gust. Then it died, though the seas it put up were still coming on, of an average steepness.

One experience like that in a trip and you would say you had been lucky; it had chipped the barnacles off; and the story would gain in the telling. But we were more than an hour from the island, with another basin and the next set of narrows to get through, and the Bora was only beginning.

I set Trifun and Petar to pumping out oil and seawater. I told Zorzi I needed to know how the baby was faring. Also the state of my two friends. He listened, then without comment vanished below.

From his point of view, Benedict had to survive. Nor did he want any damage to Lenny and Donovan which would invite police attention. I doubted if my lashings would stand up to another roll such as that. Of all of us, short of stoving in or capsizing, Ben was probably safest, but I wanted to be reassured about that. In a while Zorzi came back and grunted, which was all the reassurance I got. I took it that Mihovil was still senseless.

Between fright and seasickness, Petar was becoming less of an asset as well. After Trifun had been pumping alone for a while Zorzi joined him and after some words between them, Trifun went below and I heard pans rattling in the galley. Someone had suggested soup, it seemed a long time ago. You needed something on a bad night or your efficiency dropped, with the cold and your spirits.

I shut the door into the saloon with my foot. Absolute darkness was imperative. The danger of the Bora squalls lay in their suddenness. Next time the wind would be stronger, the wave would be higher. And if I didn’t see it in time we would broach, and fill and roll over. I had a hard weather helm and I held it with both my hands, my feet braced on the opposite locker, and kept my raw stinging eyes on the blustering dark to the north.

We did eleven knots, in uneven gusts, into the second basin, and Trifun put a hand on the helm while I drank my mug of hot soup. I think it surprised him how heavy it was. Perhaps he thought you don’t have to be strong to handle seven pound babies. Most people think just that, who haven’t lifted a pregnant mother, or an eleven- or thirteen-year-old spastic. It’s partly a knack. It also develops fairly strong muscles.

When I’d finished the soup I took the helm back again. I had explained once more, as simply as I could, about the stresses on the sails and the rigging, and the various ways of easing the strain on the ship: of meeting the waves so that they did the least harm, using the sails to give her way so that she would answer the helm.

Elementary seamanship, including even a lesson in tacking. The booms, thank God, were on their crutches and lashed. A flying boom in a storm can kill more than landlubbers. That was why the trysail was up; small and strong and loose-footed to give just enough power without catching so much wind that the yacht could blow over. I thought, from the way the helm answered, that with another crew I might have risked a scrap of canvas on the mizzenmast, but that was out of the question. We should have to do as we were.

Now we had sea room, which was a mixed blessing, for the waves could develop. The wind also was stronger. I brought
Dolly
up to it, and she answered like a fine lady, sliding over the kicking, seething force of the sea with her port rail throwing spray from the water. Beside me, Zorzi jammed his feet on the lee bench of the cockpit and Trifun lay huddled on the same bench, his back to the saloon bulkhead. I could hear Petar retching below.

Across the bay lay the lights of the naval dockyard at Tivat. If a naval frigate appeared at this moment, sailing alongside, she could perhaps winch us aloft: six men, a girl and a baby; and put a seaman aboard to bring
Dolly
safely to harbour. But there was no frigate sailing helpfully in the basin, and even if I disregarded the men, and the guns, and got to the radio telephone and summoned them, we should be across the basin and into the narrows before help could get to us.

And I should be dead, or disabled, and when the boat sank, no one would save Ben from drowning.

Then Zorzi said, ‘
White sea
!’ and the second squall hit us.

I had expected with the bilges cleared that I could count on turning into the wind that much more quickly. It was easy to allow the helm to drag my hands down, but although the bows swung to the left, it was an irregular movement which lost its drive as the wind smacked us.

It punched the masts, the sails, the rigging and took away all the air I was breathing. I could see Trifun, in the dark, with one hand clutching the saloon roof and the other stretched to the sheets. Then the first wave was there, a little too much on the beam, with the breaking spray avalanching into the cockpit.

Dolly
rose, and hesitated, and then slid down the trough: paying off as I pulled the helm towards me, and then scooping round as I eased her ready to climb up the next. My sight kept blearing with the water dashing into my face and my lashes and I shook my head, trying to clear it.

The safety of all of us depended on my night vision. On judging the shape and nearness of every wave, so that I could present
Dolly
with a slope she could climb in spite of the wind force. This squall was fifty knots, and the waves were between fifteen and twenty feet, trough to cap. I had seen a yacht laid back at the wrong moment by a gust. That time, the wave fell on her mast, and rolled her clean over.

For us, the next wave was less frightening, though water came racing down through each of the side decks and poured in waterfalls through the scuppers as we bore away, and we had lost steerage again. The wave after that was less steep and I didn’t luff, but we took more water and the next time I did bring her nearer the wind. Above the deafening noise I could hear the slamming and creaking of the standing rigging over my head, and wished I knew the boat, and how far I could push her. We heeled down into another trough and there was a shattering crash, this time below decks and beside me.

It was, I thought, the saloon table, but there was no time to investigate: under our feet green water was hurling itself backwards and forwards. I shouted ‘Pump!’ to Zorzi and saw him lay hands on it. Trifun still had charge of the sheets on the lee side. Petar had not come up.

The squall lasted ten minutes, and at the end my hands were quite numb and my back and shoulder muscles pulled raw and burning. But when I wiped my eyes and took my bearings, I found we were nearly abreast of the light at Bijela. We had driven across the whole of the basin. Between us and the island which was our destination lay only the Verige, a mile and a quarter of narrows.

I did wonder, while we had sea room, whether to do anything about the mizzen. Or whether to try the opposite: to take Trifun with me forward and try to hand the jib, leaving us better balanced with only the trysail. What decided me against either action was the interval we had had so far between squalls. We were now at the mouth of the narrows. Even in the darkest part of the night I could see the white water within. Squeezed in that long, confined neck the steep seas would push and jumble, forming no pattern; and we should have to tack to make any progress. We would be facing the teeth of the wind.

There were horrors enough in that prospect. But if a squall hit us, I had no idea whether I could pull us through it.

Best to go now, without thinking.

I gave Trifun the tiller and clipping myself to the rail, made one quick cast over the boat with my torch. Then I opened the saloon door and shone the beam inside.

The floor of Johnson’s comfortable sitting place was heaped with broken wood and rolling and smashed china-ware: a door had come off one of the cupboards and the table, as I thought, had uprooted itself and lay half across Donovan’s legs. He and Lenny were still unconscious, lashed to their benches. Lenny had a long bleeding scratch by one ear, caused probably by flying glass. There was no sign of Petar or Mihovil, but no sign either of any water on the elegant carpet. We seemed to be dry.

I was closing the door when the wind moderated enough to let me hear, from the forward stateroom, a baby’s thin, frightened crying.

I could do nothing about it. I closed the saloon door in Zorzi’s face as, hearing it also, he stopped pumping and made to go forward. I said, ‘He is frightened, not hurt. I need you here.’

He stayed. I think I disliked him more at that moment than at any time up to that point. He cared nothing for Benedict, and had shown it. He only wished to protect his investment.

The sailing directions for the Tjesnac Verige said that the bottom was mud, and there were no dangers outside a distance of about fifty yards from either side. Whatever I did would be a gamble. But if we were caught by a squall, a push to the right or the left could send us hurtling on shore and wreck us. We had to sail up the middle, and because the wind was dead ahead, we had to do it in short zig-zags, by tacking.

I took my class of two through the procedures again, hoarsely shouting, as the Nedjalja and Opatovo lights opened up, one on either side of the channel. Then I pronounced the magic words
Ready about
, and put the helm slowly down, and as the sails whipped, pulled in my sheets and slackened the runner. On the other side, Trifun did the opposite with Zorzi watching him. I pitched him out of his seat and took his place, my feet braced again where I’d been sitting as
Dolly
veered over and tilted. Trifun, who had not been expecting it either, stumbled down the new slope and just stopped himself from hitting the lee locker with a spectacular crash. They fitted themselves, tight-fisted, into their new positions and swore at one another as they got in each other’s way. Zorzi had lit a cigarette while he was below and it hung from his lips, the tip glowing red in the windy dark. The wind blew the smoke past my face and it smelt, rank as it was, of land and of comfort.

It also smelt of whisky. He had had a quick private nip, had our leader, in those few minutes below; but had made no effort to allow us to share it. More face-saving, perhaps. And the kind of leader who can’t admit that he’s scared is not the man I would choose to rely on.

A little while later I said
Ready about
again, and this time they were smarter in getting to their new positions, but the boat herself lingered for a fraction of a second in the eye of the wind. Then she came over and we settled on the new tack, but I could feel the sweat running down inside my soaked jersey.

Sailing close-hauled in a lumpy sea, there is always the danger that your boat will hang in stays, pointing into the wind without moving into one tack or the other, and so quite at the mercy of the weather. And with her ill-balanced sail,
Dolly
had been given a much harder task than she merited.

The helm kicked, and I straightened my shoulders and pulled against it while I watched and thought. The motion was fearful: I could see the pallor in the two men’s faces by the swimming blue light of the compass: my own was probably even whiter. I had reached no conclusion when we reached the end of the short leg I allowed myself and, waiting for the fractional easing of wind that might help, I shouted again to go about.

I should perhaps have seen the heavy seas that were coming but I didn’t, largely because they formed no regular pattern but approached simply as a mass of heaving black water. They threw
Dolly
off her course just as she was swinging and this time what I was afraid of had happened. Instead of veering she stayed pointing ahead, her keel crashing and slamming as the waves struck her.

There is a trick and I used it. If she couldn’t come round by her bows, she would have to turn the other way. I put both hands round the helm and instead of easing it down brought it up. I slackened the trysail as she turned and went on turning, until her stern faced the wind and her trysail and jib flapped and shuddered and whipped. Then she was round and they filled, and we were on the new tack by courtesy of a gybe which she had suffered only because she was the lady she was. I drew a breath of relief and then a sharp explosion from above made me hold it. With my mind on the backstays and mast, it was a moment before I saw what it was. The jib halyard block had given way, freeing the top of the scarlet triangle to crouch and snap over the foredeck.

If I had been there, trying to hand the sail, I should have been swept overboard. As it was, it beat for a few moments longer and then, as the snap shackles gave way, freed itself from the sheets altogether. For a while it flew like a handkerchief, but with a strain like that, even the strongest cringle must rip. The last I saw of the storm jib was when it flew undulating into the white-surfing black upon black which was the shore. We were under trysail alone, and better for it. Then Trifun shouted ‘
Gospoda
!’ and I looked, but it was too late.

The wind and sea came together, and the first wave was twenty-five feet high and almost on us when I saw it. We went through the edge like a corkscrew, the sail throwing water backwards and forwards and a solid weight of green sea crashing down on the saloon roof and side deck and pouring full-throated into the cockpit.

Zorzi and Trifun were both swept off their seats to the floor of the cockpit. I fared better, braced with the tiller. I could see nothing and hear nothing but the water pouring over my head and shoulders but I could feel the boat slide into the trough and her bows buck and tremble and falter in their swing round to the next wave and the wind.

The tiller was running with water but I gripped it and pulled the whole weight of the ship up towards me as the next wave appeared and grew bigger. The bows began to respond. I was shouting to Trifun to ease off the sheets when the wind, outracing the wave, pushed the
Dolly
as with the flat of a hand and held her, shuddering, as the thing towering over us grew and advanced.

It struck us on the starboard quarter so that the port rail went under and the two men huddled on the floor of the cockpit received the first over-spill, coughing and choking, from the lee side. Because I was more exposed on the weather side, the water took me this time with a force that nothing at all could resist. I was spooned from my seat and flung upwards and outwards over the near-vertical cockpit.

The force, had I landed on the deck or the rail or the cabin roof, would have smashed my ribs and very likely my spine, but the violence was of a greater order even than that. It threw me clear of the boat altogether, and into the sea.

It seemed reasonable to suppose that was the end. Zorzi and Trifun had no reason to help me. Profit no longer mattered, only surviving. Then my head came above water and I found that I was still clipped on to my harness, and that my harness was still attached to the backstay, and that the toe rail of the boat was just under my nose. Against which, the piece of wood I was clutching with both hands was the broken tiller.

Trifun had already struggled up to the pump and Zorzi was baling when I heaved myself on board and took the wheel, helping the yacht to come round into the wind as slowly she lifted her mast to the sky again. They glanced at me and then away again, that was all.

I waited for the mast to crack with the strain, but it didn’t, although the gusts pushed and swung it and the seas threw the keel this way and that. Nor did another wave of like dimension fall upon us, although from moment to moment I was awaiting it. With no way on the boat, there was nothing I could have done to counter it. And the only reason I could see for its absence was the surfing line of the shore, and its configurations. Somewhere here there must be cross currents and eddies which had deformed the regular pattern. Two waves had been thrown up, which had all but capsized us. But there were no more.

Slowly, we realised it. As the water went down and the ship lightened, she began to answer again to the wheel and I had to take the next risk: to go about before the shore rocks could hole us. And to lay on sheets, stays and sail, a strain there was not all that much hope of their taking.

I had to shout this time before the men would listen to me, or even look for themselves to see how near the shore we now were. They wanted to lie in the yacht and be taken to safety. So did I. But there is no such thing in life as lying down and relying on someone else’s goodwill, or strength, to get you out of a hole. I nagged them until they returned to their posts, the water still slapping about our ankles and pouring off through the scuppers as
Dolly
nudged through the jostling sea. Then I filled the sail and went about while she was running, and she swung round this time and landed fairsquare on the opposite board, the trysail filling again. The rigging had held, and the mast, and the precious storm-sail with its double sheets. Trifun said something in Serbo-Croat and after a moment, Zorzi threw it at me, in English, ‘The wind is dying.’

The squall had ceased. The sea remained, something to reckon with even after both men had taken turns again at pumping and baling. We had to go about again very soon after that, and again, and again. But each time it became easier, and more automatic; the men knew what they had to do, the helm was lighter. It was just as well. I had no strength left now to call on, whatever the emergency.

We sailed out of the mouth of the Verige at four o’clock on Thursday morning.

The seas, joppling over the race, became easier as we turned to the north, over the broad lagoon which swept to left and to right of us. Ahead, the pin between the wings of the butterfly, lay two black patches, denser than the rest. The island of Sveti Djordje and the island of Gospa od škrpjela, on which Benedict and I were to be landed.

One had to hunt for them, because the eye was caught by something far beyond them, also lying on the water in the north-eastern basin, about where stood the town of Risan. A floating palace of light, long and low and brilliant, with coloured lamps swagged and flickering still in a geometric canopy over her. The
Glycera
in shelter, her portholes and windows ablaze, her beautiful people still celebrating the fiftieth year of the Warr Beckenstaff cosmetic empire.

I said to Zorzi, ‘You can sail her now,’ and left the wheel so that, after standing a moment, he had to move quickly to right it. I wondered as I turned for the saloon steps if he would pull me back, but he didn’t. If he and Trifun couldn’t manage her now, they were worse fools even than I thought them.