Rowboat in a Hurricane

by Julie Angus

  BANG

  The noise came from the starboard side. I clambered to the edge, expecting to see a log or other oceanic debris. Instead I stared straight into the large, round eyes of a giant sea turtle. It was about a metre in diameter, accompanied by an entourage of small grey and black striped fish, miniature versions of Fred and Ted.

  “It’s an enormous turtle!” I shouted.

  During the voyage up to that point, we had seen dozens of turtles, but they were all tiny in comparison, and shier than blushing schoolgirls. They would edge up to investigate, but quickly turn tail as soon as Colin or I moved in a manner unbecoming of a piece of flotsam. Our newest visitor wasn’t shy at all, and was obviously unperturbed by my nearness or even the way the tumultuous waters were heaving our vessel up and down onto its hard shell with a thump.

  “I see it,” Colin said as he leaned out the roof hatch, holding the video camera. “He’s doing a great job cleaning the bottom of the boat. We’ll be sliding through the water after he’s done with us.”

  While Colin filmed, I took photographs. The turtle’s leathery neck protruded two hand-lengths from its fortified home. Its beak, which looked capable of snapping a finger in half, effortlessly nipped off the inch-long barnacles. Its long flippers swept through the water as it scrabbled against our boat to graze. Its carapace was shades of brown—the archetypal tortoise-shell coloration—and made up of multiple plates strong enough to protect it from most predators, including mid-sized sharks.

  This was a loggerhead turtle. We knew that five species of sea turtle inhabited this part of the Atlantic Ocean—green, Kemp’s ridley, leatherback, hawksbill, and loggerhead—and until then, we had only seen hawksbill turtles. Because of our visitor’s blunt jaws and long flippers, we knew it wasn’t a hawksbill, which looks quite similar except for its sharp, pointed beak and two claws at the tip of each flipper. This turtle’s size was also a giveaway. We guessed it would tip the scales at 250 kilograms, several times heavier than the largest hawksbill, and would dwarf those we had seen several hundred kilometres off the coast of Africa (which were never larger than a bicycle tire). Although we hadn’t yet spotted the other types, we knew from our reference book that they looked quite different than this one.

  If size was any indication, our turtle was a geriatric, which in turtle years is only forty or fifty. She or he (I couldn’t tell) was drifting on the ocean currents looking for food and perhaps en route to a warmer place for winter. Unlike other sea turtles, loggerheads even searched for love along their migration routes, and we hoped our new friend wouldn’t mistake our boat for an amorous mate. But then, mating season was only between March and June, and it was November. More likely this turtle had already gotten lucky and, if it was a female, had laid her eggs in a hole she dug on a Mediterranean beach a few months before. By then her clutch of 100 to 120 eggs would have hatched, and the young would have waddled to the water under the cloak of darkness to make their way to safer grounds.

  The sea turtle lives a dangerous life. Only a fraction survive beyond their first year, and far fewer return to the area where they were born to breed. When young they are vulnerable to natural predators, but even as they mature, the risks are great, especially from humans. Their meat and eggs are considered a delicacy, their shells a beautiful material for ornaments, and their fat a product for cosmetics and medicine. All seven species of sea turtles, including the five living in this part of the Atlantic, are classified as threatened or endangered. It is now illegal to hunt sea turtles in most countries. However, turtles still face dangers from boat propellers, fishing nets, longline fishing hooks, disruption of nesting grounds, and illegal hunting.

  The plight of sea turtles has garnered global attention, and ongoing efforts are making a difference in their survival. Changes in fishing practices—using slightly different hooks or bait, and nets that turtles can escape from—has led to a 97 per cent reduction in turtle by-catch by vessels that adopt the practices. In Florida, concerned groups dig up turtle eggs at risk of being trampled by beachgoers and rebury them in secure fenced-off areas. Conservationists in Central America monitor nesting sites to prevent poaching. “Don’t Eat Sea Turtle” awareness campaigns have been created to target the black market trade in turtle products. But turtles mature slowly, have offspring infrequently, and live long lives. It will take time for their populations to rebound.

  “I’m worried about our boat,” Colin said as another thump reverberated through our vessel. “How much abuse can quarter-inch plywood take?”

  “That would be an unfortunate end to our expedition. But it would make a great headline. ‘Boat holed by lovestruck turtle.’ ”

  My comment was punctuated by a splintering crash.

  “Maybe it’s time we moved on.”

  I untied the oars and started rowing.

  “He’s chasing us,” Colin yelled. “Row faster!”

  I put all my strength into the oars and laughed at the absurdity of our situation. We were trying to escape an overly affectionate turtle. Of all the dangers I envisioned prior to setting off, this one was not on the list.

  “I’m exhausted,” I said, after the turtle finally tired and disappeared astern. I lifted the oars from the water for a break.

  “You can’t stop now,” Colin said, his voice filled with dismay. “Don’t you remember what happened with the tortoise and the hare? He’s probably plodding along straight towards us, and any second he’s going to crash through the bottom of the boat.”

  ELEVEN DAYS HAD passed since we’d crossed the tropic of Cancer, and the trade winds should have blown steadily. Instead the winds were variable, frequently changing direction and often dead calm.

  As we struggled westward, a black wall of clouds appeared on the horizon ahead of us. The blue sky contrasted sharply with the ragged, undulating mass in the distance. Hours slipped by, but the system did not move.

  At night we could see an almost continual diffused flashing light in the horizon, created by heavy electrostatic activity in the distant clouds. The lightning was too far away to hear. I felt somewhat uneasy witnessing such a phenomenal release of energy while we sat upon a calm ocean. The stars above us twinkled, and a five-knot wind blew from the north.

  We rowed through most of the night. Morning light revealed a world that had changed little from the previous day. Above us and to the east, the sky was a rich blue scattered with innocent puffs of cloud. To the west towered foreboding thunderheads, a wall of shovelled coal smouldering and ready to explode.

  Generally, storm systems or squalls move across the ocean at speeds of ten to fifty knots, which means, from the perspective of a boat, that they are a rapidly moving entity. The squall system we were looking at, however, sat on the same spot, growing in strength and intensity. We could see the clouds rising in height and the frequency of lightning increasing. It ran in a continuous line as far north and south as we could see. Only our own slow progress of about two knots slowly closed the gap between us and the system. We guessed the storm to be about fifty nautical miles away, so if it remained stationary, we would still take another two days to reach it.

  That evening we were treated to another light show. This time we could hear the thunder, a continual throaty rumbling. It never ceased, only fluctuated in intensity. Even the lightning itself was almost non-stop. We didn’t see bolts of lightning; instead, different parts of the cloud formation lit up, and every detail of the anvil head became clear from internal illumination.

  The storm looked sinister, and, even more unnerving, it wasn’t moving. It cut like a felt marker across the sky, and we continuously advanced towards it.

  “Maybe we should stop rowing, or even go in the other direction,” Colin suggested.

  “I don’t know. It just seems that would be prolonging the inevitable,” I said. “It has to start moving at some point, and when it does, it will go east. It might even be more intense by that time. Plus, we’ll lose a lot of precious ground.”

  “I g
uess,” Colin said, shrugging his shoulders. “There’s always the possibility it might just die out. But you’re probably right; we should just charge through it and get it over with.”

  As we continued rowing towards the storm, it was hard not to feel like we were voluntarily heading towards our own doom.

  It took two more days of rowing to reach the wall of darkness. At 1:00 PM the sun slipped behind the clouds, and the world dimmed like a sudden solar eclipse. The light northeast winds ceased, and the air became still. Within minutes the air temperature dropped ten to fifteen degrees. Even though I was rowing hard, I felt cold. There was no wind, but violent, confused waves buffeted our boat and made it hard to row. Colin said the turbulent waves were caused by heavy winds blowing nearby.

  Finally, my shift ended. I wished Colin good luck, climbed into the cabin, and locked the door.

  “We’ve got to row as quickly as possible, no matter how rough it gets,” Colin shouted from outside. “This thing isn’t moving, and the only way we’ll cross through to the other side is under our own steam.”

  Colin started rowing and, as we approached the thunderheads, the wind suddenly intensified. It was though a switch had been flipped; the wind speed went from zero to about forty knots. The wind blew straight towards the centre of the storm.

  “I’ve gone from 3 to 5.5 knots,” Colin screamed from outside.

  He struggled to keep the boat from broaching. I watched him through the rain-splattered Plexiglas window. His muscles bulged as he forced one oar forward and the other back. Lesser oars would have snapped under the strain, and almost anyone else would have given up.

  The ocean had turned white with spray. Waves came from multiple directions and often collided into each other, shooting plumes of water tens of metres into the air. All around us, lightning flashed and winds shrieked. A few minutes before, the ocean had been dead calm, and now it looked like Hollywood animation for the film The Perfect Storm. We had passed through the black wall into an evil world. Hopefully it wasn’t a one-way ticket.

  “I CAN’T KEEP IT STRAIGHT ANYMORE! THESE WINDS ARE HURRICANE-FORCE!” Colin screamed.

  The boat turned sideways to the waves, water crashed over the cabin, and our forward momentum slowed to a crawl. If Colin couldn’t pivot the boat to face into the wind and waves, our chances of capsizing skyrocketed, and there was no telling when we would get out of there. But Colin persevered and eventually his efforts were rewarded. We accelerated forward, the waves once again providing more of a push than a pounding.

  Suddenly, the wind slowed, and the rain intensified. Colin was now rowing in calmer conditions, but under the heaviest deluge I have ever seen. The torrential downpour helped subdue the tumultuous seas. Lightning still crackled and flashed, and the level of illumination permeating the clouds was no more than that of a moonlit night. Though only two metres away, I couldn’t hear Colin through the noise of the constant thunder and drumming rain.

  He knocked on the hatch. It was my shift now. I put on my waterproof Helly Hansen rain gear and scrambled out into what felt like the inside of a waterfall. Colin flopped into the cabin, exhausted from his intense two-hour marathon.

  The blackness, the torrents, and the lightning continued through my shift, but now it felt more invigorating than terrifying. I rowed through the deluge, and near the end of my shift, the sky began to lighten. The proverbial silver lining had appeared in the western sky. As we neared the perimeter of the squall line, the rain slowed and the winds intensified. It was a delicate balance keeping the boat on course in strong winds; the slightest deviation was amplified by the twisting forces of the wind and waves. I was at the limits of my capabilities, exhausted and barely able to keep the boat under control in the buffeting winds. But finally we passed through the squall line.

  The weather on the other side stood in stark contrast to the blue skies and fluffy clouds east of the squall line: an unsettled mix of towering thunderheads, wispy cirrus, and churning cumulonimbus. The setting sun projected great shafts of fiery light between the clouds.

  “Thank God it’s over,” Colin said. “I’ve been dreading that for days.”

  “If our water-maker was broken, we could have collected enough fresh water for the entire voyage in there.”

  Colin peered into an upturned bucket that was half-full of rainwater. “It looks like twenty centimetres of rain fell.”

  “Do you think something weird is going on?” I asked.

  “I don’t know, but I think we should call Dean and have him check the weather forecast. This weather still looks pretty strange.”

  Colin went into the cabin to phone Dean, and I went back to rowing. I heard Colin’s side of the conversation through the open hatch.

  “Hey, Deano. We’re having some really odd weather here and were wondering if you could check the Hurricane Center website to confirm that there are no hurricanes in the region.”

  There was a pause while Dean looked up the information online. I scrutinized Colin’s expression, waiting for the relaxed look that would appear when Dean joked about what weather-chondriacs we were. But that didn’t happen. Instead, Colin’s face remained tight. Then he finally asked, “What direction is it heading in?”

  My stomach dropped.

  Colin closed the satellite phone and relayed the news. Tropical Storm Delta had just formed in the middle of the Atlantic, about two thousand kilometres northwest of us. For the National Hurricane Center to call it a tropical storm meant that it had all the features of a hurricane—an eye of low pressure and spiralling winds—but that its wind speed was not yet hurricane-force. If the winds of Tropical Storm Delta intensified to 120 kilometres an hour, Delta would be a hurricane.

  I just couldn’t believe it was happening again. It was almost the end of hurricane season, and we were still in a part of the Atlantic that rarely saw hurricanes or tropical storms. I couldn’t help but feel Mother Nature had a vendetta against us.

  Originally, Delta was predicted to travel west, possibly hitting Miami. Inexplicably, and to our dismay, it headed in the opposite direction. Now it had grown in strength and was on the verge of becoming a hurricane. Dean kept us informed of the storm’s progress, and we also called the National Hurricane Center directly for additional information. Each time we called the Hurricane Center, they were always professional and precise, never showing any surprise at getting a call from a couple in a rowboat or at the unusual hurricane season. But in their written comments, which were posted online and which we read upon completing the row, we realized that they often shared our frustrated sentiments. “The 2005 Atlantic tropical cyclone season refuses to end,” they said when Delta formed—exactly what we thought, but far from what we wanted to hear.

  When we had passed through the almost impenetrable squall line, our feelings of being sucked into a black hole weren’t entirely unfounded. The bank of unmoving thunderheads heralded a new world of confused and violent weather, the chaos fuelling Delta. When the squall line had appeared three days before, Delta was on the other side, morphing from an extratropical low into something more sinister. Now we were on the wrong side of the line, cozying up to a tropical storm.

  We waited nervously for updates from the Hurricane Center, hoping that the storm would veer west or north or even east. But instead, it continued moving towards us. On November 24, the storm slowed down, almost ceasing its forward movement. It remained there for many hours, as if trying to make up its spinning mind. The eye of the storm was only eight hundred kilometres away, and winds were already buffeting us at fifty kilometres an hour.

  We launched into the now-familiar routine of preparing Ondine for rough seas. We lashed the oars down and stowed all loose gear securely below decks. Colin and I retreated to the protection of the cabin.

  Finally, we received some good news from the Hurricane Center. They expected the storm to recurve and move to the northeast—a direction that would take it farther away from us. But, knowing the unpredictability of such intense
storms, we felt only nominally reassured. And sure enough, Delta defied these predictions. When it started moving—at the rapid pace of thirty-eight kilometres an hour—it did so in the exact opposite direction of what the Hurricane Center anticipated. Delta still wasn’t heading towards us, but we knew it probably wouldn’t continue on a southward trajectory for long. Soon it would recurve, as most south-headed storms in this region did, and that would be bad news for us.

  All day on November 25, we lay listlessly in the cabin, seeking shelter from the enormous waves buffeting our boat. As the winds shrieked outside, we slid back and forth across the plastic mattress. A strong current, most likely generated by the winds of the nearing tropical storm, moved our boat at a speed of 2.5 knots northeast. Discomfort and fear prevented me from sleeping, and at 6:00 AM, I called the Hurricane Center for the latest forecast.

  The news was bad. Delta had stopped its southward march and had now curved to a west-northwest trajectory. Once again a storm was moving straight towards us. This time, however, only seven hundred kilometres sat between us and the eye of the storm, and that distance was quickly shrinking.

  Colin and I continued to lay in the cabin, which was dark except for a grey, diffused light from outside. We analyzed Delta’s coordinates for hours, trying to come up with reasons why the storm might change track. In reality, however, it wasn’t likely. We readied ourselves for the inevitable.

  Like Hurricane Vince, the brunt of this storm would arrive in the night. I watched with dismay as the light drained from the sky. Colin and I didn’t talk much that night. This was our second named storm, and I was beginning to believe that Ondine really did have the capabilities to withstand anything. At about 1:00 AM, the storm escalated, and we thumped against the padded walls of the cabin as waves crashed against and on top of Ondine. I was exhausted, yet sleep mostly eluded me. Rest came in short bursts, interrupted by thundering waves or unexplained thumps that warned of our boat’s fragility. The storm abated in the early hours of the morning, and finally, I fell asleep. When I awoke, just before dawn, the wind still roared and the waves continued to wash over the deck, but it was better than during the night.