The Triangle and The Mountain: A Bermuda Triangle Adventure (26 page)

***

The eighth day showed grey through the Plexiglass. They
pumped the boat dry, showered and ate. Even though they were at action stations
they were required to pump less and less frequently. Gradually the ride became
less jarring.

Toward the end of the day Madeleine caught Grant stroking a
bulkhead with a tender expression on his face.

“Yes, she held up,” she said.

“I don’t know of another yacht that could do this,” said
Grant.

“Perhaps it was God as well,” said Madeleine.

“And God as well,” said Grant. “Let’s play some music. Bar
the odd rogue wave we have made it. This time we have made it.”

“The rogues will always be there.”

“The rogues will always be there but I don’t think a rogue
will do us in now. We’ve seen the worst of them.”

Madeleine found a flute concerto from JS Bach. Grant did not
even know that he had something like that on his computer. It was time to take
stock.

He climbed up into the doghouse. Both masts were still
standing, but that was about all. The deck was surrounded by twisted stainless
steel stanchions pointing in crazy directions. As for the rest of the items on
deck, things were even worse. What bothered him most, with a view to the
critically low battery levels, was that the solar panels were sheared off cleanly
from their brackets, as if with an angle grinder. That was not the only item
that had disappeared. He stepped down into the saloon to tell Madeleine.

“You can re-stow the emergency supplies you got in those
bags,” he said.

“Sure,” she said.

“And you don’t have to worry about them again until we get
to port. We don’t have a dinghy or life raft left to use them in. The sea took
them both.”

“Is that what it is?  I noticed that there was something
different about the deck,” she said.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Over several days the heavens cleared and the seas gradually
calmed down.  Grant found the space to update the ship’s log with exact data on
the hurricane and recorded the recovery.

The parachute sea-anchor kept them facing into the waves and
Grant put the mizzen sail up again to help point them into the wind - should
any of substance appear. All they had was a faint breeze that seemingly came
from all directions. Grant downloaded a variety of weather maps and faxes and spoke
to the routers, just to make quite sure that there was no follow-up hurricane. Neither
of them had capacity left for more violence from the sea.

He need not have worried. On day eleven it was clear that the
high-pressure cell that was supposed to be their refuge a few days ago, had
finally settled around them. The next threat was not going to come from the
weather, but he could not know that at the time.

Meanwhile there was a lot to be done. Some halyards had
disappeared up the main mast and there were a few stays that had parted as
well. He got out the climbing harness to recover the halyards and busied
himself with fixing and sorting out the rest of the rigging. Fixing a few stays
took up an entire day. To maintain a boat properly you needed to be adept in a
number of hand skills and he did not know too many of them. A lot of the
specialised tools in the box under the work bench were strange to him.

Madeleine had the simpler task of reorganising the living
areas. She opened up all the hatches for fresh air and stowed things in their
logical places until the yacht felt dry and welcoming once more.

“We really need to use the washing machine and the tumble
dryer,” she said. “We have a mountain of wet clothing.”

“Sorry, but I can’t let you do that,” said Grant.  “The
little power we have left is getting lower by the minute and there is nothing
that is recharging the batteries. Hang the clothing up here on the stays.” He
took a spare halyard and fitted a clothes line.

“You also need to get better lids for your lockers,” said
Madeleine. “Some that don’t open up so easily.”

“I know that,” said Grant.

It was time to fix the rudder. First, he put the diving mask
to use again, but this time for its more conventional purpose and inspected the
defective rudder under the boat. It was as he expected. The stainless-steel shaft
was still there but somehow the connections between shaft and blade have broken
off. Was it because of corrosion? Had seawater somehow gotten underneath the
fibreglass and eaten away the inner metal structure? He guiltily remembered
that the anodes on the boat were overdue for replacement.  What else was being
eaten by electrical currents in unseen places? He could not think of any and
decided to rather focus on the job at hand. He unearthed the auxiliary rudder kit
and laid the pieces out in the saloon while he tried to figure out which part
went with which. He had an instruction manual with pictures and sketches and visualised
what he had to do. Some of steps he could complete by himself and for some of
them he needed Madeleine to assist him. He went into the machine room, got his
electrical drill from the toolbox and tried it. It still had good power. He was
ready.

He decided to postpone assembly for a day, just to let
things quieten down even more.

***

The appointed day for hanging the new rudder broke hot and clear
with a mild swell, with no wind worth mentioning, a nightmare for a sailor in a
hurry, but not for them. It was perfect for what they needed to do.

The first step was to mark out all the positions. Armed with
a permanent marker and a measuring tape Grant spent a lot of time hanging upside
down from the deck onto the transom. It was a precision job and he did not
hurry it. When his head started pounding he asked Madeleine re-check all his
measurements, which he ticked off on his drawing as she called them out.

“Don’t drop me,” said Madeleine, who got her spirits back.
“I see a shark down here.”

“Just swipe him on the snout with the tape,” said Grant, not
believing.

“If you look two metres down you’ll see it. It’s got a white
mark on its dorsal fin.”

Grant looked and saw nothing but he got ready to snatch his
only crew from the jaws of the predator.

“It’s ok,” said Madeleine. “I’m just kidding.”

“Just kidding got some people stuck in a tight spot before,”
said Grant. “Next time I might not believe you at all.”  

“Isn’t this thing going to interfere with the mizzen boom?”
asked Madeleine when Grant took the assembled rudder and held it onto the markings.

“You mean the wind vane? There is a way to let the boom
swing when we need to have it swing. We unscrew it like this and then the boom
can swing over it. The only thing we need to remember is to keep a preventer attached
all the time, in case the wind changes unexpectedly and we gybe. We don’t want
to lose the wind vane. It’s our new autopilot.”

“How long before this one breaks?”

“It’s not as sturdy as the one we have below. Which means
we’d rather avoid bad weather and we don’t put as much pressure on this rudder
as we put on the other one. See here,” he said and handed her the instruction
manual.

“Do not continue to race or to carry a heavy press of
sail,”
she read. “No surfing?”

“We try not to get into positions where we have to surf,
sail closely to the wind or heave to for long periods of time. And we cannot
operate this rudder from the doghouse. When we steer manually we operate this
thing, which, for your information, is called a tiller, from outside in the
open cockpit.”

“Which means that we are now fair weather people.”

“I know you like the rough stuff but that is the way it’s
going to be until the main rudder has been fixed.”

A bit later Grant was lying face-down over the transom again,
held only by the tether attached to his harness, drilling holes in his precious
boat, when Madeleine asked a question that was altogether more serious.

“Grant,” she asked, “When that Vodun priestess spoke to your
crew to warn them off sailing with you, did she use the word ‘drown’? They were
going to
drown
, weren’t they?”

“That was the word Terence used. But we haven’t drowned. The
storm has passed after trying its best but we are still here, so I don’t think
it applies anymore. I think you are safe.”

“OK, so Terence used the word ‘drown’.
You
have not
actually heard her use it?

“No. Why are you asking me about this? It’s all over.”

“I’m just wondering,” said Madeleine. “I’m wondering if she
might have used another word, not actually ‘drown’.”

“Like what?”

“Like ‘perish’.”

“Like a vegetable going off?”

“Exactly.”

“Where are you going with this?”

“I am asking you these questions because I’m right now
looking at the compass.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s acting very strangely.”

“Doing what?”

“Going round and round.”

“It’s just the drill affecting it. Look at it now.” He
pressed the button and continued with his work.

“The compass shows no change,” said Madeleine. “It’s still
going around in the same way."

“Just a moment,” said Grant. “I’ll be with you now. I need
to concentrate here. The drill’s battery is going flat. Strange, because I
thought it still had enough power. Just another two holes to go.”

A minute later he was finished with the second last hole,
with the drill just about dead. “Fibreglass should not be that hard,” he said.
“Come on, my little drill, just a teeny bit more.” All the coaxing did not help
because the drill slowly whined to a complete stop before the hole was through.

Garth expressed his frustration in a language commonly
understood by seamen of all ages and all tongues. “Sorry,” he said to
Madeleine. “Let me go get another tool to finish off the hole.”

“Before you do that just have a look around you,” she said.

“What? All I see is mist. There must be a hand drill
somewhere. Or perhaps a little round file to do the job with.” Grant scratched
around in the toolbox. He found a small file.

“Just the thing,” he said.

“Isn’t it strange that we suddenly have mist?” asked
Madeleine.

“Why would it be strange? The air has cooled down after the
hurricane and we are probably drifting on an offshoot of the Gulf current,
which is warmer. It is perfectly normal to see mist under these conditions.
Even as thick as this. When did it come over?”

“About ten minutes ago. Come and look at the compass,” said
Madeleine, beckoning him from inside the cockpit.

“That’s strange,” said Grant, once he had stooped over the
instrument and studied it. “There must be some magnetic disturbance in the
area. Perhaps we are drifting over a big concentration of iron or something.”

“Like an underwater mountain?” asked Madeleine.

“Exactly.”

“Well, they why don’t you check the depth sounder and see.
You do have one, don’t you?”

“Oh yes.”

He pressed the button of the Garmin screen in the doghouse,
since the one in the cockpit stopped working during the hurricane.

“Blast!” he said. “This one is now giving up the ghost as
well. It’s giving me a lot of stripes and stuff.” He slapped it but the screen
refused to settle. “Let’s try the one at the nav station.”

“Something is very wrong,” he said, when that Garmin screen,
which showed all information relevant to the navigation of the boat on one
screen, was exactly the same.

“It’s clear that we have an electrical fault,” he continued.
“You know, water came in everywhere. There is most probably a short in the
system somewhere. It’s most annoying. First the radar, now this. It means that
we will have to sail blind, or by my smartphone.”

“Your office computer was still working earlier, wasn’t it?”

“Oh yes, but I switched it off to conserve power.” He
laughed. “I can see where you are going with this,” he said to Madeleine. “You
are trying to scare me after your stories the other day of … what was it
again?”

“The grey mist or electronic fog.”

“But this can be explained. We had a lot of water onto
everything and it is perfectly normal for some of the electronics to have given
up. Perhaps the sailing computer is just low on power. In fact, that clearly is
the solution. The batteries have tanked at last. Why am I always surrounded by
people who pull practical jokes on me? Good one, Madeleine!”

Madeleine leaned over and switched on the SSB radio set. It
lighted up and crackled loudly. Then they heard a voice. The channel was in
use. It sounded like a Japanese talking to another Japanese. Probably a
fisherman talking to his home base.

“Not all power is gone,” she said.

“I’ll check on my computer,” said Grant and disappeared into
his office. “Damn,” he said, “I just get white screens. This can be serious. In
fact, it is serious. Let me think.” He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead.
“The radios are working but not the Garmin or the computers in my office. How
is that possible? These things are supposed to have their own batteries.” He
made another check and found the computers this time completely dead.

“Add in the drill that slowed down unexpectedly and the
compass that is rotating madly,” said Madeleine.

They climbed up to the deck and their eyes were drawn to the
compass. It was still spinning.

“I think it is spinning faster,” said Madeleine.

“Funny to see it like that,” said Grant and hit the instrument
with his hand. He took a spanner from the toolbox and hit it again, harder this
time, but there was no change. He looked around in the cockpit for something
heavier to hit it with.

“Perhaps you should not do that,” said Madeleine.

“Why not?”

“Because you might break it. It reminds me of the Marie
Celeste. Have you heard of her?”

“Vaguely.”

“She was not sailing through the Triangle, but way north
from here. My science teacher, Mr Hall, however, thinks that she might have had
a Triangle experience. He says all the signs indicate this as a probability,
including a smashed compass.”

“How’s that?”

“Well, Mr Hall thinks that the Triangle phenomenon is not
stable. It can move outside of the accepted borders. He thinks that, just for a
short time, it might have drifted northward, where the Marie Celeste passed
through.”

“What happened to her? Wasn’t she some sort of ghost ship?”

“She was found sailing toward Gibraltar, but there was
nobody on board. There were many theories as to what had happened to the
captain, his family and the seven crew members, but nobody could ever say for
sure what had happened. What made the mystery so intriguing was that their
departure was apparently so sudden, as if they simply disappeared in thin air.”

“I guess the possibility of a piratical attack was
investigated?”

“Oh, yes, especially since she carried alcohol in her holds.
There was no sign of a violent take-over, however, or a struggle amongst the
crew for that matter. What made me think of the Marie Celeste was that the
compass was shattered in the binnacle, as if somebody had hit it, exactly like
you were just doing just now with this one.”

“For what reason?”

“Perhaps for exactly the same reason you just hit yours. To
stop it from spinning. That is what Mr Hall guessed, anyway.”

“It’s nothing but a coincidence. So what does he say about the
crew’s disappearance anyway? That they dissolved in the mist?”

“He has a theory that relates to the fact that there was a
rope trailing behind the ship and the ship’s longboat was missing.”

“So they climbed into the longboat and tied themselves to
the ship. Why?”

“He thinks they were scared of something.”