Sea Over Bow

by Linda Kenyon

  I rouse myself from the sail bag, look back at Chris, sprawled in the cockpit, reading his book. He looks up, smiles.

  “Time for dinner?” he says hopefully.

  As I walk back towards the cockpit, something catches my eye in the distance. A dolphin arcing out of the water, bounding towards us. There is another one not far behind, and another, and another.

  “Look, Chris!”

  He joins me at the bow. There must be thirty of them in all, racing to see who will get to us first. Next thing we know the water around the boat is churning with dolphins, playing in the bow wave, swimming along beside us. These aren’t the bottlenose dolphins we usually see. They’re much larger, and these dolphins have dark backs, almost black, and white sides, which we can see clearly as they leap out of the water for the sheer joy of it. They tilt their heads slightly as they swim by, fix a dark, shining eye on us. Watch this! Watch what I can do! Or maybe, come on in!

  Then, as if on command, they suddenly swim off. We watch them disappear in the distance.

  “Dolpin TV,” says Chris, with a smile.

  At dusk, the wind dies altogether. We have no choice but to motor. We leave the main up to catch the occasional slight breeze, but most of the time the sail just flutters uselessly.

  So far we’ve been sailing north in order to take advantage of ocean currents and the prevailing winds from the west. Having the wind on the beam — as opposed to beating into it or sailing downwind — is our most comfortable point of sail. We’re also trying to avoid the big calm section in the middle of the North Atlantic, but now I’m wondering if we’ve strayed a little too far east.

  Chris reassures me that we’re fine, right on course. I look at the chart plotter, which is still just a blank screen with the words Atlantic Ocean written across it, and I raise an eyebrow. He goes below, comes back up with our pilot chart of the North Atlantic, checks our latitude and longitude, then makes a little “x” on the chart.

  “We’re right here,” he says. “Now you go and sleep — it’s my watch.”

  Just before midnight, I am jolted awake by a screaming sound coming from the engine room. I leap out of bed and fling the engine room door open, looking for flames or maybe water rushing in — it sounds that catastrophic. The screaming stops when Chris shuts the engine off. He grabs a flashlight, pushes past me, dives into the inner workings of the engine.

  “I think it’s the thrust bearing,” he says as he strips off his T-shirt. “Hand me that trouble light. And please go and try to keep the boat steady.”

  This is easier said than done. We are dead in the water. Fortunately, the seas are almost flat so we just bob gently. I make tiny corrections, trying to keep the boat from wallowing around. The last thing we need right now is for Chris to get seasick.

  He’s down there for a long time. I have to resist the urge to go down and ask how he’s doing. But I can hear him banging away at something, so I know he’s okay. I look up at the fluttering sail, wonder if dropping it would make things better or worse.

  Finally the engine room door opens and Chris emerges. The thrust bearing has been a problem right from the start of this journey, but it’s not the thrust bearing this time. The propeller shaft won’t budge. Clearly something is wrapped around the prop.

  “I’ll have to dive on it in the morning,” he says, wiping the grease from his hands on a paper towel. He can see the horror on my face. “Don’t worry, there won’t be any sharks this far out,” he adds, not very convincingly.

  Chris goes down to sleep and I start my watch. There isn’t much to do — no sails to tend, no gauges to keep an eye on. No sense plotting our position, even — if we’re wandering off course, there’s nothing I can do about it. At one point, I see a light off our stern — a fishing boat, I’m sure of it. Maybe they do longline fishing out here, maybe we’ve snagged one of their lines and we’re trailing chunks of bait behind us. The sea will be swimming with sharks.

  I look through the binoculars. It’s just a sailboat heading for Bermuda.

  It’s going to be a long night.

  We’ve seen sharks, of course. We saw several in the clear, shallow waters of the Bahamas, but we’ve never had a close encounter with one — unless you count the shark that took our fish as we sailed out of the cut in Antigua. The fiercest creature we’ve had first-hand experience with is a barracuda. We were snorkelling happily around a coral head in Staniel Cay, admiring all the pretty fish, when suddenly they scattered. A large, snake-like fish had come from behind the coral head and positioned itself between us and the nervous little fish, who were now hiding in crevices in the coral. It was a handsome creature, dark blue on top, silver on the bottom, with silver and black spots along its sides.

  But I wasn’t paying much attention to its colouring — I was looking at its teeth, sharp fangs in a jaw that seemed to go on forever. Chris swam in for a closer look. The fish lunged towards him. They were fang to mask.

  I’m not sure how I got there, exactly, but next thing I knew I was in the dinghy. I must have catapulted myself out of the water. Chris wasn’t far behind.

  “What was that?”

  Our first barracuda, we discovered when we looked it up in our guide. Ferocious predators who don’t like people messing with their food supply. Chris was lucky to get away with all his fingers.

  In the morning, once the sun is well overhead, Chris puts on his mask and flippers and lowers himself carefully into the water, not wanting to attract any more attention than necessary. I lean anxiously over the rail, watch his descent. I’m amazed at how clear the dark blue water is. Shafts of sunlight disappear into the depths, lighting the water around him. I can see him sharply even when he’s six feet under. He keeps turning his head, scanning for sharks as he inspects the prop. He returns to the surface almost immediately.

  “There are three little fish under the boat,” he says. “Blue and green, very pretty.”

  Then we both realize what this means. Dead in the water just a few hours and already we’re becoming a floating ecosystem. Little fish come, then big fish, then bigger fish. He dives again, is down longer than I think possible. He’s under the boat now and I can’t see him.

  What if he doesn’t come up? What if he’s knocked his head on the hull or passed out from holding his breath for too long? What do I do? I look at the Lifesling tied to the radar arch. I haven’t studied the instructions on the bag closely, but I know that the thing to do is get the Lifesling around him somehow and winch him aboard.

  Then what? What if he’s hurt? Or worse? We have antibiotics and antibiotic cream on board, a skin stapler (and a staple remover), and lots of bandages. Lots. I took a first aid course for offshore sailors before we left, practiced stapling an orange (very like human skin…except, obviously, for the colour). I learned how to deal with some of the more common injuries at sea — a screwdriver in the lung, for example (never stand at the foot of the mast when someone is working overhead). Don’t try to remove the screwdriver — just cover it with sterile bandages and call for medical evacuation.

  The course almost scared me off sailing altogether. If someone dies at sea, we were told, put them in the dinghy and cover them with coffee grounds to hide the smell. I think we have enough coffee on board to do that. They didn’t say whether you should use fresh or used coffee grounds. Fresh, I hope. By the time I drank enough coffee to cover Chris with wet grounds, a dead body would be the least of my problems.

  Suddenly he surfaces.

  “Bolt cutters,” he says grimly.

  It takes him a long time. He dives, then surfaces again, clings to the swim ladder for a minute while he catches his breath, dives again. Fifteen minutes and many dives later, he comes up and hands me the bolt cutters, then dives again and surfaces with a huge ball of nylon rope and some shredded fishing net. It’s at least two feet in diameter. So there are fishermen out here. And sharks, I presume.
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br />   I’m glad when he’s safely back on board. And so is he.

  He’s exhausted and smudged with bottom paint, which is full of toxic chemicals that discourage things from growing on the underside of the boat. I help him wash it off, scrubbing him down with dish soap and rinsing him with pails of seawater. Then I send him down for a nap.

  He’s asleep in no time, apparently none the worse for his misadventure. In fact, he’s smiling slightly. He’s clean now, from his swim, but he hasn’t shaved since we left Antigua, his chin is covered with dark stubble. His hair has more grey in it than when I met him and curls a little at the nape of his neck. He needs a haircut, I suppose, but I like his hair a little longer. It makes him look like the bad boy he must have been when he was younger.

  He’s told me stories of hot-wiring his father’s car and taking it for a joyride in the middle of the night when he was just fourteen. Then he got his own car, which he tinkered with until it would run, borrowing parts from his father’s car as necessary, sometimes remembering to put them back. Then he got a motorcycle, which wasn’t licensed (neither was he), but that didn’t stop him from tearing up the highway on it. In time he got an MG. Then a sailboat. Then he discovered airplanes.

  He’s a man who has to move. No wonder he’s so happy sailing across an ocean. He looks ten years younger when we’re at sea.

  At the moment, I probably look ten years older. What if I had seen a shark? Yelling wouldn’t have done any good. I guess I could have banged on the hull, or thrown something overboard to get Chris’s attention, but that would have brought the shark over to investigate. No, I would have been helpless. And utterly alone in the middle of the ocean.

  Well, what did you think was going to happen?

  May 28

  Day 7

  We’re 300 miles southeast of Bermuda, too far east to sail there comfortably. The wind is coming from the northwest and we’d have to beat right into it to make landfall there. We’ve decided it’s just not worth it for a couple of full nights’ sleep and an armload of fresh produce. We’ve got lots of provisions on board, and water and fuel. If we hold this course, in another two or three days we’ll be far enough north to make the turn towards the Azores.

  But I’m in no hurry to head out into the middle of the North Atlantic. The sailing is so easy, our days so pleasant. It gets a little cool at night now, but by the time the sun comes up, it’s warm enough for me to shed my fleece hoodie.

  Quietly, so as not to wake Chris, I make coffee, taking the beans above deck to grind them. The smell of coffee usually wakes him, but if not, I get him up in time to check in with Chris Parker at 6:30. We set the sails for the morning — we always reduce sail at night — then have breakfast in the cockpit, reviewing the day’s forecast, making our plans for the day.

  Today I’m going to hang the bedding out to air, do a couple of Portuguese lessons, spray WD-40 on the porthole latches so I can close them quickly if I need to, and make some bread.

  But the day has other plans for us.

  My bread is in the oven, I’ve hung the sheets from the handrails on the ceiling in the salon where they’ll catch the breeze that comes in through the portholes, and I’m just finishing my Portuguese lessons when Chris calls from the foredeck where he’s working.

  “Better close up down there.”

  I close and latch the hatches and portholes, and by the time I come up on deck, there’s a bank of rainclouds heading towards us. We can see sheets of rain slicing down. I get ready to release the main halyard so we can drop the sail.

  “Wait,” Chris says. “Let’s try to sail around it.”

  We’re getting pretty good at this. First we reduce sail in case we aren’t successful. We reef the main as far as it will go, leaving just a small triangle of sail up, and reduce the genoa to just a slip. Then we tack out of the path of the squall. The wind is rising, so even though we have hardly any sail up, we move smartly along. Five knots. Six.

  We almost make it — but we’re caught by the trailing edge of the squall. The wind suddenly rises to thirty knots and we heel over sharply, then we’re pelted with rain. But it’s over quickly, and in no time, we have the sails re-set and we’re back on course and feeling pretty smug.

  “More coffee?” I ask.

  “Sure.”

  The porthole latches can wait till tomorrow.

  “So how are the Portuguese lessons going?” Chris asks, as we settle in with a fresh pot.

  “I can now say ‘The car is white’ and ‘A man is running.’ That should come in handy, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe.”

  Chris has gone down for a nap and I pour myself another cup of coffee and open my computer to write to Brenda. First I take a look around. Nothing on the horizon as far as the eye can see.

  Well, Beek, it’s another beautiful day at sea and we’ve just made the decision not to stop at Bermuda after all — we’re heading straight for the Azores! Of course as soon as we decided this a squall appeared on the horizon, but we managed to sail around it. Aren’t we clever??

  You will be at a resort right now, stretched out on a lounge chair, I hope, with a good book and maybe a nice cold glass of wine. I can see the condensation running down the side of the glass from here… We never drink when we’re on passage — not, of course, that I mind, or even think about it, no, not me. Chablis. I’d make mine a nice cold glass of Chablis.

  Anna, you know, will be absolutely fine. She and Peggy will be strolling to the playground, Anna chatting away, Peggy listening patiently. Then a quiet supper together and bath and stories and Peggy will put a line through one more day on the calendar while Anna watches and they will count the days that are left and then Anna will drift happily off to sleep.

  Speaking of stroking off the days…seven days at sea now, and all is well. That doesn’t mean I don’t still have my doubts about this enterprise. Shall I tell you about a dream I had the other night?? Ha ha ha! You don’t have any choice.

  You and I were standing on a hill, looking down at MonArk at anchor in a sandy cove below us. Chris was busy on deck, running flat lines of nylon webbing from bow to stern on either side of the deck.

  “What’s he doing?” you asked.

  “Rigging the jack lines. It’s the last thing we have to do before we set out in the ocean.”

  “What are they for?”

  “They’re something to clip our safety harnesses onto if we have to go forward at night or in big seas. I’m not so worried about getting swept overboard myself — Chris could turn the boat around and come back for me. I think. But if he goes over, I’m in trouble. And so is he.”

  I don’t know what happened next, but suddenly the boat was sinking, Chris was nowhere to be seen, he was gone. As the boat settled, I could see in through the companionway, the new leather settee darkening as sea water poured in, the brass lantern on its side, a pool of oil spreading over the water that rose steadily. Water reached the portholes, the top of the companionway, and things began to float out: a blue jay feather, my well-worn biography of Vanessa Bell, my journal, open to where I left it on the table, pages fluttering in the wind. The photograph of Emily I keep tucked inside the front cover was carried away, up, up into the sky then gone.

  As the boat went down, our things spread out over the water for all to see. A couple of dinner plates, a stained tea towel, our olivewood-handled corkscrew, a frying pan, the sleeping bag we use as a duvet on our bed, one pillow, then the other. Chris’s fishing rod floated slowly away, spoon boy glinting in the sun. Soon, only the mast was visible. Then it too was gone. And Chris was gone, his red Antigua race week cap spinning in a slow circle where the boat had been.

  A crowd had gathered on the beach below us. You took me firmly by the elbow, turned me away.

  “Come,” you said. “It’s all gone.”

  What would I do, Beek? We’ve only been together
for a short time, but already I can’t imagine a life without Chris. May I never have to.

  Time to take the bread out of the oven — yes, I’m making bread in the middle of the ocean. I started it first thing this morning, set the bowl of dough out on deck in the sun to rise while the oven heated up — it takes about an hour to get up to temperature. Once I put the bread in the oven, I had to keep a close eye on it. The oven has no temperature control, so I have to keep fiddling with it to keep it more or less in the 350 degree range. But it smells like it’s done now. Fresh bread for lunch!

  It’s sunny again, Beek, and as warm as it’s going to get today. I could oil the porthole latches, but I think I’ll read the afternoon away, rest up for this evening’s round of the Great Trans-Atlantic Backgammon Tournament. I am lagging sorely behind.

  Love you.

  Linda

  As I’m climbing down the companionway ladder, I spot something huge and white looming behind us. It’s a massive freighter just off our stern! How did it get there? I leap into the cockpit and punch it in on the radar, which is how we usually track the paths of ships. Then I realize that this guy is close enough for me to watch through my binoculars. When I’m satisfied he’s going to pass safely behind us, I breathe a sigh of relief. How have I missed him in my admittedly haphazard scans of the horizon? I resolve to do better. I set my watch to beep every fifteen minutes to remind myself to look around.

  As the ship disappears in the distance, I sit with the binoculars in my lap, scan the horizon dutifully every time my watch beeps — and holy cow, there’s another big boat, coming from the other direction. It’s a huge oil tanker, called No Smoking, as so many of them are. He’s close enough for me to make out the lettering on his deckhouse.