Good Hope: The Long Way

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Photo by: David Pollard Illustration

I have not finished my cigarette when an enormous breaking sea hits the port beam and knocks us flat. All the portholes have shattered…no, they are intact (at least in my cabin); I can hardly believe it. A muffled torrential roaring and a sound almost like sheet iron under a blacksmith’s hammer fill the air.

I open the hatch and stick my head out. The sails are flapping because the boat has luffed. Incredibly enough, the booms are not broken in spite of the preventers. Luckily I had slacked off the one on the mainsail, just in case we were suddenly hove down on a broad reach. The 3/8 in. nylon preventer on the mizzen had parted. The line was three years old; I probably should have got rid of it long ago…but I liked it, and had got used to it during Tahiti-Alicante. Its parting probably saved the boom, but the latter, pushed amidships by the force of the water, neatly snapped off the wide vane shaft. Not serious: half a minute is all it takes to change the vane, thanks to a very simple rig. I have seven spare vanes left, and material to make more if necessary.

I go on deck to connect the steering wheel, and quickly duck below again, soaked by a blast of spray. The aft cabin portholes are intact, a sight that warms my heart. I fill the sails again, steering with the inside wheel, and go back on deck to replace the wind vane with a much smaller one set for running downwind, since Joshua was on a broad reach when the breaking sea hit. The only other thing is to replace the mizzen preventer with a new line. Quickly done. This time I give it plenty of slack as I did for the mainsail.

Everything is shipshape on deck. I can go below to get warm and straighten up the cabin. I pick the globe out of the sink, on the starboard side, and wedge it back in place, to port. The island of Java is a bit scraped.

The sextant…I had forgotten it on the port berth, buried in the pillows. Now it looks out at me form the starboard berth. Poor little pal, if this hasn’t done you in, there really is a guardian angel for sextants, and morons too. First I leave it in the cockpit, then on the windward berth…It took an eight foot free fall through the cabin when Joshua went over. One of its legs sheared off at the thread, though it is nearly ¼ in. thick. There are three holes in the plywood facing of one of the drawers. The one on the left is at least a ¼ in. deep, the right one a bit less, the top one barely visible. They are the holes made by the legs of the sextant when it smashed into the drawer.

Joshua has a second sextant, a big Poulin micrometer drum model, very accurate and easy to read; a light in the handle makes it particularly handy for star sights. The other one (now an amputee) is an old vernier model which I very much like for sun shots in the high latitudes because it is small, light, and easy to handle. I will try to glue the leg back with epoxy cement when I find it. I will also have to adjust the mirrors, which must be out of alignment after such a shock.

By and large Joshua, the sextant and I came through all right. But two such serious mistakes, one after the other, are inexcusable, and cause for concern.

Barely an hour later, Joshua had another knockdown. This time, I saw nearly all the action.

I was squatting on the insider steering seat, watching the sea through the little rectangular ports of the metal turret. The wind had noticeably eased since the first knockdown, to force 6 at most. But the sea had become strange, with peaceful areas where it was very heavy, yet regular, with no dangerous breaking waves. In those areas, I could have walked blindfolded twenty times around the deck. Then, without any transition, it would turn jerky and rough; high cross-seas overlapped to provoke sometimes very powerful breaking waves. It was probably one of these cross-seas that hit us earlier. Then Joshua would again find herself in a quiet area for ten minutes or more, followed by another rough one.

From time to time I stood up on the seat to take a few deep breaths and get a better feel of the conditions. During the quiet periods I went out in the cockpit, but without letting go of the hatch cover handle, ready to dive below.

If I were rounding Good Hope in the same direction again, I would probably stay between the 41st and 42nd parallel (instead of the 40th), to avoid skirting to closely the area of convergence of warm and cold currents. True, this would force me much further beyond the red line on the Pilot Chart, with a longer period of vigilance. Last night’s watch for icebergs was enough, but I will hardly need to stand one tonight as we will be practically clear of the red line. So if I had to do it over, I might just do the same as now, if the barometer behaved. Which it is; it has even tended to rise since this morning.