Once Is Enough

by Miles Smeeton

  For three days we pitched into the swell and made fair progress against wind and current. For some of the time the wind was in the south-west, so that, as close-hauled as we could sail, we didn’t make much to the south. We didn’t mind how far offshore we went as Beryl was feeling better every day, and we wanted to be sure that she was fit before we got out of the good weather. It took me a long time to find my sea-legs and I was gloomy and depressed. On the fourth night we were becalmed, and I couldn’t sleep, and because I couldn’t sleep was beset with morbid thoughts about the dangers of our landfall and the entry into the Straits.

  ‘What on earth’s wrong with you, you old mope?’ Beryl asked me next morning.

  ‘Good God,’ I thought, ‘how perfectly dreary I must have been!’ and took a deep breath and shook off the depression, feeling ashamed and selfish that it should have been so obvious.

  From then on, although we were idling so slowly down into the forties, about 300 miles offshore, I have never enjoyed a trip more. Every day Beryl looked better. She was delighted to be at sea again, and away from the worries of fitting-out. At breakfast she drank her second and even her third cup of coffee, buried in a book, sitting in the cook’s chair with the cat on her lap, and knowing that she could take as long about it as she liked. At lunch she chumped up her raw onions, blissfully aware that there were only Pwe and I to complain, and I became a confirmed onion-eater in self-defence. We were near the track that we had sailed under jury, and marvelled at the runs that we had made with so little sail, for here we were with every stitch set and unable to equal them.

  While we had had the wind the current had been against us, and now that we seemed to be out of the current, there was no wind. The glass climbed slowly up to 31·2 with a cloudless sky. We were really yachting, and Pwe, like us, spent much of the time on deck revelling in the sunshine. It was like being on leave during the war. We knew that somewhere in the south was hardship and danger, and that we had to go back into it, but for the time being we were making the best of this lazy weather, enjoying every minute of it but knowing that it had to come to an end soon.

  At seven o’clock every evening I used to get the time signal from London on the B.B.C. news. At seven o’clock Edward would be turning on his radio in the Avenida Pedro Valdivia and Lydia we hoped would be bringing in his Pisco sour, or perhaps he had got into bad habits and was no longer drinking Pisco. We always thought of him when we got the time signal, but we decided not to broach the case of Pisco until Christmas Day.

  We had told Clio that it would be two months at least before she might expect any news of us. If we were caught by a gale on our way in towards the Straits, or in case of bad visibility, it might be necessary for us to run further south for the Horn. We thought that two months should cover any eventuality, and didn’t feel any necessity to press on now. Nor did Tzu Hang. She crept south, doing what Captain Bonnafoss had recommended and taking it easy. Slowly south she went, over a great rolling desert of a sea, with nothing to be seen over all its changing distances except a leisurely quartering albatross, appearing and disappearing over the blue dunes.

  Eleven days had gone and we had had one short period only when the wind had got up to gale force. We lay a-hull for a short time, not because it was really necessary, but to reassure ourselves of Tzu Hang’s behaviour. Now, on December 21, there were signs that our honeymoon was over. During the night the glass fell quickly, and soon after midnight we reefed the mizzen and the main. Reefing was easy now, with the roller reefing, and we never hesitated to adjust the sail to the wind’s force. But after reefing, the sail didn’t seem to set quite so well as it had in the more laborious days, when we hauled down the reefing cringles and tied the reef points. The wind veered slowly until it was coming from the north-west. Our first depression, a small one, was on its way, but as we were down to 45º S. it was time to expect one.

  At four in the morning we handed the mizzen, rolled down some more of the main, and set the small staysail, steering now because the wind was on our quarter on a southerly course. There was a fresh cold wind and breakfast tasted doubly good after the watch on deck. We steered all morning. By midday the wind was backing and we were able to set more sail and let Tzu Hang off on her own again. We had made 120 miles by noon, and most of them since midnight, so that at last she had been stepping out in her old style. But it was a grey miserable day, typical of the onset of another southern depression, and the glass rallied for a short time only and then continued to fall. From 31·2 inches, which had marked the long sunny windless high, it fell to 29·5 inches, and we were sailing south under the full main and the small jib only.

  At nightfall on the 23rd the wind dropped altogether, but the glass was still falling, so we made all secure for a gale. It was the night of the new moon. ‘If there is bad weather on the night of the new moon there will be bad weather every fourth day until the moon changes,’ the Admiral had said to us, ‘on the fifth and ninth day, and as she came in so she will go out. That is the Chilean saying.’ I told him that I didn’t think that the meteorologists would agree that bad weather had anything to do with the moon. ‘I don’t know about other parts of the world, but that’s how it is in Chile; any fisherman will tell you, not true?’

  By four o’clock in the morning it was blowing hard from the south-west. When we went on deck and checked the lashings and ties on the sails, the wind whipped our collars against our cheeks, a familiar cold wind which we had felt so often on the passage from Australia, so that I looked at the hatch, expecting to see John’s burly figure coming up to lend a hand. Down below Tzu Hang felt safe and warm, and by the time it was over and she had ridden it out without any trouble, we felt confident that all we had to do, in much worse conditions, was to ‘take it easy’. With reefed mainsail and the small staysail we made off for the south again; making five knots and rough going.

  All across the Southern Ocean, especially during the latter part of our previous passage, depression had followed depression, with only occasionally a high. As each depression had passed, and the wind had swung to the south-west or south, with the sun breaking through clearing skies, the glass had shot up, and it had only started to fall again with the approach of another low, and the wind veering to the north. But now two depressions had passed, and yet the glass had scarcely halted for the change in the wind, and nothing seemed to stay its slow and ominous fall.

  On the morning of December 24 the wind was round in the north again, and we decided to rig the twins. We handed all sail while we had breakfast, and then started to work, rigging the staysail booms with lifts and foreguys, so that when we wanted to take in sail, we need only let the halliards run, and then we could lash the sails to the booms before trying to bring them in. With this rig one of us could look after the sails, while the other watched the helm. As we worked, the wind swung to the west again, and we set the jib and sailed under it alone. In the afternoon we set the reefed mizzen, and later the Genoa, making some wonderful sailing all through a brilliant afternoon. We were joined by some porpoises, leaping and diving about our bow. They were white with black saddles and piggy pink faces which we had never seen before and altogether the most striking and charming porpoise visitors that we have ever had. We changed back to the jib for the night, with the wind veering once more to the north. It was Christmas Eve and a very solitary one. We thought of Clio in England.

  Next morning we set the twins early, and hurried on to the south. We opened our Christmas parcels at breakfast and found Pisco and Vermouth and cigarettes and biscuits, a feast for the sailors. The glass continued to fall. The wind was soon blowing force 7 and strengthening. Somewhere to the north-west a dark monster was brooding, sending his messengers on before with the news of his coming, so that his shadow already seemed to brood over the sea, and the ragged clouds came flying, and the sea’s long swell came rolling, to tell us that the danger which had threatened for several days was approaching now.

  By midday the wind was blowing force 8. We d
rank Clio’s health, and then Edward’s, and Marta’s. We finished everyone else off in a single bumper toast, and ate the second torta Doña Paulina in a finger-sucking orgy. We ate sitting in the doghouse below the half-open hatch, with all the washboards in place. Above the noise of Tzu Hang and the hum in the rigging came the rising and angry talk of the waves.

  In the afternoon Tzu Hang’s progress was beginning to be too exciting. To stand in her bow in front of the twin staysails, with one hand on the forestay, and to look down into the valley of the sea below, was to realise all the thrill of topping a steeplechase jump and seeing a sudden drop on the other side. There was something reckless about the feel of her movement, as if she would run whatever the weather, flinging herself gamely forward on each succeeding crest. She was exultant, not overburdened, it was akin to the feel of a good horse, who will not tire and, if the rider is able, will not fall. The riders in this case had had enough of it before nightfall, and we decided to shorten sail.

  We hanked the storm-jib to the forestay, and rove the sheets and then put a tie on the sail while we turned our attention to the staysails. They were beginning to flutter at their peaks again, and it was time to take them down. With Tzu Hang stern on to the seas we let the halliards go together, the staysails ran down the stays, and in a moment we had tied them on the booms. Tzu Hang slowed, and she began to swing slowly. Beryl walked aft to the tiller, slipping the snap-hook of her life-line along the rail, until she could reach the shrouds, when she jumped into the cockpit and corrected the helm, while I set the jib. With the jib up Tzu Hang began to sail again, so that we were able to lash the helm, and she continued to sail with the wind and sea on her quarter. Together we brought the booms inboard, unbent the staysails, and secured the booms along the rails.

  Beryl was wearing her black oilskin trousers, sea-boots, and her yellow oilskin jumper and hood. Her knife and spike were hanging on a cord from her waist, where her life-line was also knotted. She opened the spike and undid the shackle at the tack of the sail. Then she bundled up the sail in her usual vigorous manner and pushed it up to the hatch. Perhaps with a Pisco-induced sentimentality, I thought of her as I had heard someone describe her in Chile, ‘Qué buena compañera’ … There was a flavour of buccaneers and swords about the Spanish words.

  We went below and Tzu Hang ran on into the night under her little storm-jib, heading south with the wind and sea on her quarter, and it was still safe to leave her unattended. We didn’t think that we would be able to let her run for long, as the glass was down to 29·2 inches when we turned in.

  Through the dark restless hours she reeled on, while the mugs on their hooks, the stoves in their gimbals, and the shadows from the cabin lamp, swung in unison to the quick lurches. There was little sleep for either of us, and we were glad when with daylight the rising note of the wind, the almost incessant noise of spray on the deck, and the deeper sound of the seas, told us that it was time to stop. We got on deck to find that the spindrift was lifting and that wide crests were breaking all round. Tzu Hang had done well to keep on going through the night. Beryl took the helm while I pulled down the jib and put it away. Then I joined her in the cockpit. As a wave passed we put the helm down, and she swung slowly. The next wave caught us beam on, but without breaking and nothing came on board, and then she swung slowly up towards the wind, but fell away again into the trough, and began to drift sideways to the wind and sea. We lashed the helm down so that if she fell away and began to sail again, it would bring her up. The water boiled up from underneath her keel as she drifted and made little swirls and eddies along the weather side of the ship, but it made little difference to the water to windward and in a very few yards the smooth trail of her sideways drift had disappeared. As I went below I looked at the glass and saw that it was 28·8 inches. When I tapped it, it moved downwards again.

  By ten o’clock the gale was at its height, and the glass was down to 28.6. There it stayed. The sea had taken on its whitish look again, all streaked and furrowed with foam, the low raddled sky was grey, and the wide white tops came roaring up on the spume ridden wind. ‘Don’t let the tigrés get you,’ they had said to us when we left Talcahuano, and here they were after us in earnest, flinging their raging crests far ahead of them, and striving for a kill.

  We either lay on our bunks and read or watched the seas through the doghouse windows. Sometimes we could see a shaggy monster raise his head above the others, and sometimes a wave would seem to break all down its front, a rolling cascading mass of white foam, pouring down the whole surface of the wave like an avalanche down a mountainside. There was no point in speculating what would happen to us if one of them hit us, in fact the whole business of watching the seas seemed to us unprofitable. The most terrifying toppling masses of water as often as not passed us without even a slap, but the wind would bellow as we rose on a wave, and Tzu Hang would heel away from it. Then we would hear the wave grumbling and growling away, spreading an ever-widening swath of foam behind, and as we sank into the hollow the noise in the rigging fell.

  ‘What do you think?’ I said to Beryl. ‘Do you think that we should try and put the sea-anchor out?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I think that it’s a bit late. She seems to be doing all right, doesn’t she?’

  ‘The glass seems to have stopped falling now, and she’s done all right so far, and we don’t really know how the sea-anchor is going to work, so we’ll leave her as she is.’

  I did not think of using oil, and although we had some spare engine oil we had no oil-bags. I decided not to use the sea-anchor because I believed that with all the sea-room we needed we would do best lying a-hull. I knew that there was danger, but I thought that the sea-anchor would only succeed in holding the bow half up to the sea, offering an ineffectual resistance, which would be worse than drifting away. Moreover, although we had had the opportunity, we hadn’t yet tried out the sea-anchor, and now it looked as if it would be dangerous work getting it out. We were doing what we had done successfully in other gales, but never in such bad conditions as these.

  ‘Do you think that we’re imagining that it’s worse than it really is?’ Beryl asked.

  ‘I don’t know about imagining. I know it’s quite bad enough and I’ll be damn glad when it’s over.’

  ‘So shall I,’ she said with feeling.

  We lay down on our bunks again, Beryl in the forecabin and I in the main, and both on the port side, the side of the greatest heel, but we kept our boots and oilskin trousers on. Sometimes, when Tzu Hang heeled very quickly and steeply, or when we heard a deep rumbling roar approaching, we clutched the side of our bunks tense and anxious, and held our breath, and when it was over we looked at each other with a rueful grin. The cat went from one to the other to be petted, pricking her ears and crouching at the more alarming sounds, but on the whole less anxious than we were.

  At four o’clock I thought that I’d make some tea. It was summer and for ten hours now it had been blowing a full gale, so I thought that the change must come soon, now that the glass had steadied. When the glass began to rise the wind would still blow for a few hours, but this must be the worst of it now. Almost as I thought this, Tzu Hang heeled steeply over, heeled over desperately into a raging blackness, and everything within me seemed to rebel against this fate. All my mind was saying, ‘Oh no, not again! Not again!’

  Again the water burst violently into the ship, and again I found myself struggling under water in total darkness, and hit on the head, battered and torn in a kind of mob violence, and wondering when Tzu Hang would struggle up. I could not tell what was happening to me, but I knew all the time what was happening to the ship. I felt her heavy and deep as the keel came over, and felt her wrench herself from the spars deep below her. I heard the noise of their breaking, and saw the light again from the port skylight, as it spun over my head. I found myself struggling to my feet knee-deep in water, and saw Beryl doing the same in the forecabin. I scrambled aft. The doghouse was still there, b
adly stove-in on the lee side, and the hatch was gone. When I looked out, I saw that the mainmast had gone at the deck, and the mizzen at the lower cross-trees. The broken spars were lying on the weather side of the ship.

  CAUGHT BY …

  … A BREAKING CREST

  CLEAN OVER

  UPRIGHT AGAIN, WITH WRECKAGE TO WINDWARD

  ‘It’s all the same again,’ I said to Beryl, who was just behind me, and as I said it a sluice of water poured into the doghouse. I climbed up on deck to look at the ruin, and heard Beryl say, ‘I’ll get the jib.’

  The ship was drifting away from the broken tangle of spars fast enough to prevent them smashing into her when they rode up on the waves, so they were not endangering her. The first thing to do seemed to be to get the doghouse covered and secured. The whole top had cracked off and shifted forward, but it was still held by the after corner posts, which had pulled away from their corners. The cockpit also had been burst open, and one of the skylights in the main cabin was torn off. ‘By God, we’ve done it once, and we’ll do it again!’ I said and at once felt stupid, as my detached and cynical self noted the heroics, and noted also that there was no one to hear, and that Beryl was already doing something about ensuring that we did ‘do it again’. I jumped down to her, and we pulled the No. 1 jib into the doghouse, and found some rope to make it secure. For hours we had been waiting under the threat of the storm. Now the crisis had arrived and we had something to do. Mercifully it looked as if we might be able to deal with it, and there was a feeling of relief that we were not, as far as we could see, in such desperate straits as in the first accident—a feeling of relief, too, that at last we were at grips with the situation that had haunted our imagination for so long, and troubled our minds until we had come south to meet it and do our best.