'Agreed,' replied Brockton. 'Yet data the computer supplies contributes critically to the ship's performance by working out the optimum speed made good. In other words, the best course that will take the boat to the next waypoint, plus the best sailing angle, plus the best trim of each set of sails ...'
In reply, Tideman activated the read-out dials on the last of the three big control consoles.
'This is Jetwind's own special box of tricks,' he said. "There are sensors on every mast from mast-head to keel logging wind direction, wind speed and apparent wind angles. There are other sensors in the hull recording the ship's speed, drift, rudder angle, heel. All this information is fed into a micro-processor inside the console and here are the answers - ' more dials came alive ' - apparent wind angle, true wind angle; true wind speed; ship's speed; speed made good to windward.'
'It looks goddam good,' Brockton said in admiration.
'The ordinary sort of compass isn't sharp enough for the degree of sensitivity these readings require,' Tideman went on. ‘Jetwind has a special electronic dual-axis flux-gate compass which is linked to the autopilot.'
Listening to their technical conversation, another link in my break-out strategy formed in my mind: I would use Brockton and his expertise.
I said, 'In the face of all this, I reckon sailing by the feel of the wind on your neck or cheek is out.'
'I've done both,' answered Tideman. 'You'll find very soon what Jetwind's is the more challenging way of sailing.
You're dealing -' he indicated the banks of the dials' - with real data. You can't bluff yourself. If the computer says the ship is sailing at only eighty per cent of what she is capable of, that's it. You have to accept it. Trying becomes much harder.'
'We found that with the Twelves,' Brockton added. 'All data is subjected to interpretation - the better the skipper, the better the interpretation. That goes for the skipper likewise, when it comes to the final decisions.'
'Even the electronic experts recognize that the human element is the final judge,' said Tideman. 'We've got a couple of small mobile hand-held terminals which operate in the crow's nest. The idea behind them is to have manual input - that is, what the look-out himself is spotting - to supplement what the electronics are recording. The skipper can use this information in conjunction with the computer or by itself. The method is especially valuable when you're conning the ship in confined waters where there are frequent and rapid changes of course. We found it worked splendidly when we brought Jetwind into Montevideo through the mass of shoals and shallows of the River Plate estuary.'
Confirmed waters; shallows; frequent and rapid changes of course - it added up to the Port Stanley Narrows.
'What about navigation?' I asked. 'Apparently Jetwind has everything that opens and shuts.'
'Come here, I'll show you,' said Tideman. He led Brockton and me to an office abaft the bridge. On the way he paused at a bulkhead clustered with switches and readout lights.
'Control for the ship's fire-alarms, automatic extinguishers and cross-flooding controls,' he explained. 'There are five doors throughout the accommodation as well as watertight bulkheads. All emergency doors are held open magnetically until they are released from here. It's a super-safety system and it's backed up by monitors in case of ice damage to the hull.'
The navigation room itself was like a space-shot control centre. Focal instrument was a JRC satellite navigator which, Tideman explained, could plot Jetwind's position to within half a kilometre. The instrument, he added, was automatic and gave highly accurate and continuous position fixes while the ship was under way. There was also a Nippon Electric deep-sea echo sounder, a weather chart repeater from a bridge master instrument, repeat read-outs of the mast-head anenometers, relative wind speed and direction recorders.
In the adjoining radio room we surprised a fair-haired young man who seemed to be engaged in some esoteric ritual with a hand-held electric radio and direction finder held over a chart. Tideman introduced him as Arno, a Swede. Arno's enthusiasm for the equipment was unbounded - it had been installed by Marconi - and he rattled off names like Apollo main and reserve receivers, Seminal crystal unit, two Conqueror main transmitters, Seacall selective receiver, Siemens teleprinter with world-wide range. There was, of course, radar in addition, an exact twin of the Decca set on the bridge.
I surveyed the instrumented room; I realized what was bugging me, as it had done on the bridge and in the navigation office. All these superb instruments were dead. Not one of them was functioning because Jetwind herself was not alive. She was fast asleep in a god-forsaken port at the backside-end of the world. They needed a Prince Charming to light up their sophisticated faces.
Not a Prince Charming, I corrected myself. The kiss of a Force Nine gale and a free-wheeling sea.
That kiss I meant to give Jetwind.
Tonight.
Chapter 10
Back on the bridge with Tideman - we had left Brockton involved in technical conversation with Arno - I said, 'You've demonstrated push-pull levers and toggle switches until my mind boggles. What I really want to see now is the power plant - the sails.'
He consulted a bank of dials before answering. 'It would be too risky while at anchor to set even a royal to demonstrate for you. You've no idea how powerful even Jetwind's small sails are, given a light breeze only.'
'I'm not asking you to set any sails. I want to go aloft and see for myself,' I added. 'I would also like to inspect the place where Captain Mortensen met his accident.'
For the first time since our introduction I felt a shadow of reserve onTideman's part.
He nodded at the mast towering through the roof of the bridge. 'Up there, in Tuesday - Number Two mast. Tops'l yard service bay.'
'Let's go.'
He seemed unwilling to take me aloft. He said, 'You can't see much while the sails are furled. Is there any particular point you'd like explained?'
'The whole works. Everything is new to me.'
'I think the best person to do that is the sail-maker. The aerodynamics are above my head.'
'Fine,' I replied. 'I'm in a hurry. I have to go ashore soon. Give him a call.'
Tideman picked up an intercom phone and said to me, 'Not him, sir - her.'
'Her? What do you mean?'
'Jetwind's Number One sail-maker is a woman - Kay Fenton.' 'A woman?'
He held the phone poised. 'Why not? Mr Thomsen discovered her when she was taking a sail and mast course at the Stahlform yard in Germany - the world's master mast-makers. He enlisted her as a junior member of the Schiffbau Institutes design team. She's been intimately concerned with the wind-tunnel testing of Jetwind’
I looked at him questioningly. 'So have you, from the sound of it. I thought you'd joined the ship after she'd been built.'
'No,' he replied. 'I was involved at the design stage as well'
'I didn't know the Royal Navy was as keen as all that on the lost art of sail.'
I felt somehow that I had trodden on thin ice. He replied impersonally. 'We have the Navy Adventure School for sail trainees. I sailed yachts belonging to the School round the world.'
'You mean, skippered?'
'That's right. They gave me the experience in sail necessary for Jetwind’
Something still eluded me about Tideman. 'As second officer,' I added.
He answered me a trifle defensively. 'Captain Mortensen was a very fine sailor. He'd graduated in square-riggers and knew deep-watermen. My background did not include them. Also, he was from the Aaland I sips. You know what that implies.' Holding the telephone still, he asked, 'Shall I call Kay?'
'Yes. Tell her to come quickly.'
He dialled 'S' on the intercom and said to me while the instrument rang, 'Jetwind's phones are automatic - all the main control-points have code-rings, "S" for sail-maker, "O" for bridge - officer of the deck, "E" for engine room -and so on.'
We waited. 'I'll bet Kay is stretched out full-length on the deck stitching a sail,' he said. 'You mu
st visit the sail-room - it's big enough to house a whole sail spread out. Kay's favourite habit is to lie down and work at them.'
The phone came alive. I heard a burst of background music and Tideman said, 'Kay! Switch that damn thing down, will you? The skipper wants you . . .' There was a pause and he eyed me. 'No, the new skipper, Captain Rainier. Yes, he's on the bridge now. At the double, please.'
'You will have common ground with Kay - she's another Cape Horner,' Tideman said.
'Was she one of the all-women crew yachts in the last Round the World?'
'No. She was sail-maker in Peripatetic II. There was one other girl aboard, the navigator. I reckon it must have been the Round the Worlder which threw Kay's marriage. Marriage and the deep sea don't go together.'
' She's divorced, then?'
'Aye. The guy was a starchy up-and-coming young London stockbroker, I heard. Couldn't stand the absence, and the adulation Kay got over the race. Peripatetic finally finished sixth, which was no mean feat.'
'Is that all that broke it up?'
'Kay's not that sort. Aboard Jetwind we sort of regard her as the Old Lady of the Sea.' 'Meaning?'
'Well, she's twenty-six, and that's a ripe old age amongst this crew. Their average age is twenty. They even look upon me as the Ancient Mariner - I'm twenty-seven.'
'Same as me.'
'Jack, our other sail-maker, is really our Old Man of the Sea - he's thirty.' He grinned. 'He's a wonderful practical sail-maker but he hasn't Kay's flair for the theory. I myself don't understand half the maths she talks when she gets on to sail aerodynamics.'
'Are there any more Cape Horners aboard?'
'Aye. Four of my own lads from the Adventure School. Then there's Pierre Roussouw, who sailed with Tabarly. And the bo'sun, Jim Yell. As you probably realize, a bo'sun in this sort of ship has a very special position. There are only two officers, apart from the captain - Grohman and myself. Yell is a sort of sergeant-major - not that this crew needs chasing. But they're fretting, and the sooner we get to sea, the better.'
Tideman's remarks about the chain of command made me wonder again where Grohman was. Protocol required that he should have been on the bridge to greet me in the first place. Nevertheless, I had resisted a temptation to summon him. I wanted to find out about things without him around. It seemed to me, however, that he was cocking a snook at me by his continued absence.
I said, brusque with inner tension, 'I hope they get their wish. There is an Argentinian destroyer on her way here to detain Jetwind’
Tideman stared at me in disbelief and then exclaimed, 'Detain!’
'That is my information. She will arrive tonight or tomorrow.'
I was saved from further explanation by Kay Fenton's arrival. I had been unprepared, in the light of Tideman's 'Old Lady of the Sea' description, for the person who came quickly through the bridge door. She was tallish, with a mod style hair-cut which made her blonde hair lighter than it really was where it had been sun-bleached above her ears. The long legs of her black velvet corduroy pants were dotted with scraps of dacron sail thread. Her slim breasts were free under a green woollen shirt. The Pacific seemed to have left something of its blue in her wide eyes, and Cape Horn something of its greyness. The damped-down turbulence at the back of them was her own.
She held out her hand to me. As I gripped it we both laughed. She had forgotten to remove her sail-maker's leather palm.
'I'm not really as horny-handed as all that,' she said. I welcomed the way she repeated the handshake after removing the palm. I also liked the low modulation of her voice. Like her eyes, it seemed to have a background of sadness.
She by-passed a whole ocean of social conventions by getting down to the subject which, basically, interested both of us.
'You made the correlation between the theoretical performance of the Venetian Rig and its practical one look a bit battered. Captain Rainier, she said. 'We tested your rig at the Schiffbau Institut. If we had had Albatros's actual performance figures then, we could well have plumped for a Venetian Rig for Jetwind’
Tideman added, 'It takes a sailor to achieve Albatros's results, Kay.'
Then she asked me with the same eager air as Tideman had shown previously, 'Now that you're here, will we be sailing soon?'
I dodged the question. 'Mr Tideman has given me a rundown on Jetwind’s controls. Now I want to see the sails themselves - the real power house. I would also like to see the exact place where Captain Mortensen met with his accident.'
She flashed a glance at Tideman. 'John?'
His voice lacked any inflexion. 'I considered you'd be the best person aboard to explain the merits of the sails.'
'Let's make it as quick as we can,' I said. 'I have to see the chief magistrate shortly after lunch.'
She gave Tideman another inquiring look and then said, a little uncertainly, it appeared to me, 'Let's go.'
After operating one of a bank of switches on a nearby console, she led me down a ladder to a central well immediately abaft and under the wheel-house itself. The mast ran through it. Access to its interior was via a steel door which slotted into the curvature of the mast. Kay explained that this servicing door was held shut magnetically until released by the bridge control she had manipulated.
She put on the lights. I was surprised at the diameter of the mast inside. There was room for two people abreast, although it narrowed higher up. A steel ladder was clamped to the wall and a trunk of intertwined copper tubes, which combined were thicker than my leg, sprouted skywards out of sight above. These were the hydraulic pipes to control the yards. They were linked in twin, each pair with dials and valves. It looked more like a plumber's paradise regained than a ship's mast.
'Come!'
Kay started up the ladder. Her sneakers made no sound on the rungs. Within seconds she had outpaced me. Up and up we went, Kay drawing ahead at every step. Finally, out of breath, I reached her, perched in a compartment on what looked like a tiny steeple-jack's seat. This compartment was the juncture point of topsail yard and mainmast. Higher, the diameter of the interior narrowed to become the top-gallant mast, and the material changed from high tensile steel to light alloy. The top-sail yard-arm itself was largely hidden from view except via slits through which the sail rolled in and out along stainless steel runners.
Kay followed my inquiring scrutiny of the gleaming mechanisms and valves.
'These hydraulics are basically the same as are used to operate the rudders of large ships - suitably adapted, of course.'
I said, getting back my breath, 'I heard you're called the Old Lady of the Sea. If old ladies go up ladders like that, give me the advanced generation any day.'
She laughed with a mixture of humour and reserve. 'The guys all think I'm crazy. I have an exercise routine. I run up this ladder to the crow's nest every morning before breakfast.'
'What's that in aid of?'
'All day I sit at a sewing-machine stitching sails or at a desk doing maths. Put simply, the bottom doesn't benefit by it.'
I gestured at the servicing compartment. Its most unusual feature was a pair of what looked like gigantic vertical roller-blinds, about nine metres tall, tightly wound with sail.
'I suppose I'll get used to it,' I said, 'but at the moment it all seems like black magic to me. Strangest is having hollow masts.
'They're correctly termed unstayed rotatable profiled masts,' she answered seriously. 'They've been custom-made by aircraft manufacturers.' She added with a touch of anxiety, 'You're going to try and make time, aren't you? Sail her?'
'My brief is to reach Gough Island within a week. I intend to.'
She considered my statement for a moment, then answered, 'You'll need all the luck.'
'Isn't it a tradition that any sailor who has sighted Cape Horn will have good luck for the rest of his - or her -career?'
Her face became expressionless. 'It didn't bring me luck.' 'Meaning?'
She shrugged and was silent. Then she resumed in a different tone al
together. 'It's also a legend that anyone rounding Cape Horn has the right to have a pig tattooed on the calf of the right leg.'
Her amusement had an infectious quality, contrasting with her serious, sombre air of a moment before.
'I did.' She reached down and pulled up the leg of her corduroy pants. 'There. It's mainly gone now. It wasn't a real tattoo, only a kind of self-eradicating transfer.' Her mood changed mercurially. 'Louis thought it was disgusting. How could a lady go out to a party in London with a pig tattoo showing through her stocking?'
'Louis?'
'Husband. Ex. I did it for a laugh. Strangely, it was one of the things he battened on for the divorce.'
'I expect it was only a symptom.'
The colour now in her cheeks had nothing to do with the effort of climbing the ladder. 'Why shouldn't I? Old grandfather Fenton -I remember him still - had his whole forearm tattooed ...'
'Is that where your sailoring genes come from?'
'He wasn't a sailor - he was a prospector’ she replied. 'Believe it or not, he went and lived on Gough Island between the wars prospecting for diamonds! Those were the days when a ship might have called once in a year - or never.'
'I never knew Gough was anything but a weather station.'
'Grandfather's expedition was long before it was inhabited. Maybe I'm a throw-back to the old man Perhaps it's his same spirit of adventure which brings me here, or made me sail round the world. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see Gough.'
Her remark brought me back to the hard realities facing Jetwind.
I replied a little offhandedly, 'I don't intend to stop. If you do see Gough, it would only be a glimpse. From there I'll be high-tailing to the Cape like a bat out of hell.'
Again she asked eagerly, 'Then we're sailing - soon?'
'I didn't say so. But the race against time, the week, starts tomorrow.'
I sensed that by being non-committal I had lost her. She said distantly, 'John said you wanted to know about the sails?'
A Ravel of Waters Page 8