Mistress and Commander

by Amelia Dalton

  Red mark, close the valve.

  Back up the ladder to flip the switch and close down the gennie. I pulled the lever on the top and it stopped. Peace, just the burble of distant voices the other side of the bulkhead. OK, so far so good and I thought I could hear Donald too.

  I looked at the dials on the engine: beautiful brass casings surrounded the glass, each with its needle lying at ‘0’. I re-ran Bill’s instructions in my head. Stretching up to the top of the air bottle I again turned the wheel, and thought I could hear a little sigh of air.

  I considered the engine. The solid lump of red machinery stretched into the dark. Fifteen-foot long and as tall as me, it lay heavily along Monaco’s keel like a dragon asleep in its lair. What would happen if I’d got the air pressure wrong? The dragon glistened with a sheen of oil, powerful and purposeful.

  I looked at the red lever, as long as my arm, with a black knob shining on the end. It stood to attention beside my thigh: the starting handle. Holding my breath, I closed my hands round the smooth knob and pulled it hard down towards my feet.

  Nothing.

  A pause, then a whoosh of air.

  Boom!

  Boom!

  Boom!

  Monaco came to life. The solid, regular, purposeful thump of her dragon’s heart beat out. I stood grinning. I’d done it. Bill had been right. I never needed to be frightened of doing that again.

  After closing the valve on the air bottle, as casually as I could manage, I stepped out of the engine room wiping my hands on a rag, rather hoping someone was watching across the harbour.

  ‘Hi, Donald, it’s so good of you to come. Have you got your kit on board? Are we ready for the off?’ My knees shook, but only Kate knew that that had been a first. I busied myself on the quay with ropes and fenders, wondering if Donald could remember how to drive her. The Mull and the fish cage tow seemed another world. But a gap appeared between Monaco’s side and the quay, and smiling Americans came carefree onto the deck, enjoying the warm afternoon sun and views of Oban bay. Kate gave my arm a little squeeze, handing me a mug of tea and a chocolate digestive. Rather heavily, I sat down on a life raft.

  Three hours later the Sound of Mull slipped away astern as Monaco headed north-west and the white finger of Ardnamurchan Lighthouse came into sight, pointing skywards in the balmy evening. Donald, happy with his command, waved from the wheelhouse and the passengers strutted about the deck. Good thing it’s warm, I thought, looking at the white ‘pants’ and silk blouses. I had rung John, disturbing his pre-dinner drinks, but it seemed the fishing party only wanted to chat about the river, so no one had really noticed I was not there. I couldn’t just leave Kate on her own or Donald with an unknown boat. And of course there was the engine. With no Cubby everything felt different; already I missed him with his wayward charm and quick teasing humour.

  After dinner I went to relieve Donald but as I took over in the wheelhouse it seemed strangely empty without Cubby. He and Kate had been the reason for all this, and now here I was, responsible for lives as well as money. Monaco gently rolled her way across the Minch in the long golden dusk while the Americans were happily enjoying a dram in the saloon after dinner. Kate had excelled herself, carefully creating a dinner with no red meat, low salt and ‘darling, don’t even think of carbs at night’. At least the weather is on my side, I mused wearily.

  A piercing wail split the calm. A red light flashed on the little black box under the controls for pitch and revs. Flipping up the bottom switch stopped the noise but the red light flashed urgently.

  ‘Kate!’ Sticking my head out of the window, I called down to the open galley door. ‘Could you come up here a moment, please?’ She’d heard the alarm and was already half out of the door.

  ‘What do you think it is?’ We studied the box. There was no sign of Donald, just a distant snore drifting up from the cabin below the mess.

  ‘Well, it looks like oil,’ she said calmly.

  ‘Oil! Must be important, do you think I can ring Bill at this time? I’ve got a bit of signal on the mobile.’

  ‘Yep, go on. He thinks you’re a star — especially after that bird with the whip! Go on, he won’t mind. Give it a go.’

  ‘Hi, Bill, it’s me again. I’m so sorry. You don’t mind, well, that really is good of you.’ My voice wavered, I was close to tears and if he was nice to me I’d lose it. ‘What do you mean how much oil have I put in? I haven’t put any oil in! We’re in the middle of the Minch so I can’t tie up. Oh. Right, I see, OK, I’ll have a go.’

  Kate took the wheel and I went back into the engine room. Standing in the heat next to the pounding dragon, I peered about looking for the big knurled nut. He’d said I would find easily and at least I knew where Cubby kept the funnel. He’d said the nut was on the starboard side, low down, underneath the lubricator. Remembering times in Peterhead, I knew which the lubricator was — the collection of glass tubes, each one showing how much oil was available for its associated cylinder. Well-greased by Cubby, the nut undid easily and with my legs braced against the engine and a fuel tank, I lifted the oil drum. The yellow plastic drum was slippery and it was not easy to keep twenty-five litres of oil steady even when the motion was a gentle sway and roll. Viscous shiny oil glugged into the funnel. It disappeared surprisingly quickly into the thirsty throat of the thumping dragon. Monaco had a two-stroke engine: oil was the dragon’s life blood. When the drum was empty (Bill had said use the lot if it would go in), I clambered shakily back up the ladder. No urgently flashing light greeted me in the wheelhouse. Kate reached out and flipped the little switch up; another step learnt.

  We spent the night peacefully tied up in Loch Maddy, but of course Hughie the pier master appeared in the early morning, enquiring for Cubby. Cubby was the Monaco: she had never moved without him before and with Donald making the necessary announcement to the coastguards as to where we were going and numbers on board, everyone would know he wasn’t on board. I sneaked below to start the engine, not wanting Donald to see the air-release contraption; it would be impossible to explain three Coca-Cola bottles strapped at the end of the engine. But I was confident now in my dragon friend.

  ‘The Boat Girl’, as our immaculate Americans had described Kate, was doing a great job. When their requests for no red meat – fish and chicken only – no sugar and, of course, a low-fat, low-salt diet had come through, Kate had blanched. ‘What shall I give them? Will they not want any black pudding or haggis?’ she’d asked incredulously. But the hunger-inducing sea air had caught them and in the calm waters as Monaco weaved between the buoys and low-lying sheep-dotted islands of the Sound of Harris, they happily polished off bacon, fried eggs, black pudding and squares of Lorne sausage, toast and butter, as well as porridge with brown sugar and cream. Kate, headphones firmly stuck in her ears, sang tunefully in the galley as she stowed away the plates and mugs in their neat compartments, ready for the motion, relieved her menus had become considerably easier.

  Monaco, with the bright sharp morning sunshine on her stern, began to pitch as she entered the waters of the North Atlantic, big swells lifting her stem: the Atlantic always had movement and power. Her high bow went fifteen foot up in the air on top of a big westerly swell before plunging down into a trough pushing aside curling masses of frothy white bubbles at each plunge. Water streamed from the deck, gushing out through her freeing ports. It was like being at the fair; she was in her element. Up in the wheelhouse, Donald could just make out St Kilda as a tiny smudge on the horizon, now only five hours away. He was enjoying himself. Even though the motion was so totally different from his regular yachty commands, he’d had a good breakfast and maybe, just maybe, he might become permanent skipper. I left him in charge of the wheelhouse. ‘Love Is All Around’ by Wet Wet Wet blasted out of the CD player. But it felt lonely out here in the open waters without Cubby.

  Remembering his practices, I ducked into the engine room, adjusted the temperature control now that our big red dragon was warming up and glanced
at the sight glasses. All were solid pink, full of fuel, all was OK. The new Motorola, carefully wedged amongst the cushions in the crew mess, trilled into the morning.

  ‘Bill! How nice of you to ring. Yes, thank you, just fine!’ Relief in my voice. ‘By the fish market. Yes, of course I’ll call you back.’

  I visualised him in the fish-whiffy call box strategically placed in the centre of Europe’s biggest whitefish port.

  ‘It’s so nice to hear you.’

  A cacophony of familiar noises crossed the Highlands from Peterhead on the North Sea to Monaco in the grey lifting Atlantic. I could hear the cranes clanking as they delved into fish holds pulling out bright blue plastic boxes, crammed with silvery fish and swinging them up onto the quays. Forklift truck engines buzzed as they scurried about like ants, picking up the boxes from the quays and taking them into the market, lining them up by type, ready for the morning auction. The sing-song voice of the auctioneer was just audible as he moved from box to box. Selling. Selling. Selling so fast you had to be a local to understand. Over it all I could hear the throbbing engines of refrigerated trucks, waiting in rows at the back of the market, ready to hurry the cod, hake, turbot and every other bulging-eyed, slithering species away to Billingsgate or Barcelona. Bill knew them all, the skippers of the Peterhead home fleet. From small wooden twenty-footers to vast steel vessels, over a hundred feet long, bristling with aerials and sophisticated gear designed to cope with distant waters, to fish far away to the north amongst the cold and icy chunks of the Arctic: they were all his clients. Low in the water, in the early morning, a steady stream of trawlers would come into the harbour and tie up alongside the quays: Bill would be there, waiting to hear which engines needed attention; which had a problem the Stickers team should fix so they could go out again, go back to scooping up slithering, slippery profits.

  ‘Yes, I know you don’t like that contraption of Coke bottles, and nor do I. You want me to clean the gearbox filters when we get to Village Bay?’ I protested, ‘Bill, I’ve no idea where they are, or what they look like. Must I really?’

  There was no escape. It had to be done, especially as neither of us knew when Cubby had last cleaned them. Bill painstakingly explained how vital they were. Monaco’s gears wouldn’t work if they were clogged; she’d stop.

  ‘OK,’ I said doubtfully. ‘Let me repeat that. At the aft end of the engine, on the starboard side, if I kneel on the gearbox facing forward and stretch down with my right hand under the main shaft I should feel two small handles sticking out. Loosen the four nuts on the top and pull out the two units. With a small brush and a basin of diesel, I have to tease out any bits of grit and stuff from between the combs, rinse them and put each one back in the same hole.’ I took a deep breath. ‘OK, I’ll do it tonight in the bay, but please could you give me a ring tomorrow morning? Yes, same time would be great, thank you so much.’

  In spite of the motion, I returned to the engine room to take a look while his description was fresh in my head.

  We were halfway to St Kilda, three hours out into the lonely, steel grey of the North Atlantic. Fulmars dipped past, wings almost touching the waves, Monaco pitched and rolled closer to our goal. The engine room was hot and noisy, but not uncomfortably so; hanging on against the motion, I went slowly down the ladder towards where the filters should be, glancing at the sight glass near the fuel pump as I made my way along the side of the dragon.

  Clear.

  CLEAR!

  No pink diesel. I looked again. A spurt of pink diesel and a mass of bubbles sped through the sight glass. Quickly I looked at the other two. Neither was solid pink.

  All had moments when there was no fuel. Clear, nothing. When there was fuel it was alive, dancing with bubbles. I stuck my ear next to the Coke bottles; a puff of air blew my hair across my eyes. They were doing their job.

  When the Danish engineer had been on board during two of our winter dive charters, he’d proudly told me how Monaco’s engine, when built in the seventies, had been the cutting edge of marine design. Fuel was pumped up into a small tank six feet above the engine, it then fell by gravity down to the engine and no matter how fast she went, twenty-five per cent more fuel than was needed went up into this tank with the excess returning to the main fuel tanks. This constant flow of fuel through the tanks prevented ‘down’ time, no sludge could accumulate in her tanks; she need never stop fishing.

  Forgetting the filters, I sat hunched on the little walkway above the engine by the small excess tank, my legs fizzing with pins and needles; mesmerised, I watched each of the sight glasses in turn. The one in the overflow pipe was the worst. When Monaco rolled one way it was a solid pink, when she rolled the other way it was clear, just air; it was empty. Shuffling closer, I stretched up and pulled off the heavy cover, heaving it onto the metal walkway using Monaco’s motion to help. I lodged it so it wouldn’t crash down on top of the dragon below. I should have waited, but it never crossed my mind. Kneeling up, I pushed my head sideways into the gap between the tank and the engine room roof and peered in. Diesel sloshed from side to side inches from my face, moving in time with the motion. At the far end opposite my face was a dark hole: the mouth of the pipe taking away the excess fuel. With one roll it was covered by fuel, but when Monaco rolled the other way the diesel sloshed away, exposing the pipe opening; with the next roll it returned, sloshing back to cover over the hole, thus pushing a ‘gobbit’ of air down into the pipe.

  OK, but that shouldn’t matter, I reasoned. The excess fuel was returned into the top of one of Monaco’s huge main fuel tanks; all four had air vents, so the ‘gobbit’ of air in time would just settle out. I studied the spaghetti-like tangle of pipes, following by eye the route of the overflow pipe, but after the sight glass it disappeared into the darkness of the bilges. Monaco rolled on, so all was fine, but above the regular heavy throb of the dragon, I could just hear the Coke bottles sighing. I went down the ladder again and flashed my torch into the shadows of the bilges, lighting up the red side of the dragon. Carefully, my eyes followed the overflow pipe as it snaked past water cooling pipes, bilge water pipes and slim hydraulic fluid pipes.

  I traced it again. It couldn’t do that.

  I must have got it wrong. Slowly I traced it for a third time, my eyes following the pipe.

  It didn’t go back into the top of a tank. It snaked its way down and joined back into the main fuel pipe to mix with the rest of the fuel going straight into the engine.

  The longer Monaco rolled, the more air bubbles would be pumped directly into the engine. Of course it was only when she rolled that diesel sloshed from side to side in the tank, pushing the air into the pipe. It seemed ironic that it only happened in the summer, when she worked the long passages across the Minch or out to St Kilda when the motion made her roll so the air accumulated, and not in the winter when we did shorter steams in more sheltered waters. We’d spent thousands of pounds employing engineers, Cubby had become increasingly worried about Monaco’s safety and I’d been terrified lest the Department found out. It seems all that was needed was to reroute a pipe. I desperately hoped I was right. It seemed far-fetched that I, a girl rather than an engineer, might have cracked the problem after all the ‘experts’ had failed, but at least it would be easy for Colin to reroute the overflow so we could see.

  Coming back into Oban would be another challenge. I wondered if Cubby would be standing on the pier, ready to catch the ropes. I hoped he would. I was longing to see him, to have his reassuring, if demanding, self, back in charge on board.

  We’d managed. We’d been lucky with the weather and Donald had been OK, but it all seemed pointless without the craic, the wheelhouse blethers and his curiosity. Donald hadn’t even looked out of the wheelhouse windows when we cruised around, showing the open-mouthed Americans the jagged stacs of St Kilda: he’d simply driven. Cubby, by contrast, would have been hanging out of the open window, gazing up at the cliffs, asking if I’d ever seen anything so impressive or pointing out a flo
ck of gannets diving away on the horizon and suggesting we should go and have a look. He’d been there over ninety times, but he never lost a moment to marvel and enjoy the grandeur.

  If he were not there, what sort of reception would we get? Would we get a decent place alongside? He was the Monaco.

  There were smiles all round as our happy punters said goodbye in Oban. Holding out three one-hundred pound notes, Gerry, the suave leader, stepped into the galley. ‘It’s been a great ten days,’ he drawled. ‘We’d never expected anything like it. Those cliffs are awesome. And the food . . . you really did a great job,’ he continued, turning to Kate, whose eyes widened at the sight of the hundred pound notes. We had pulled it off without our cool Americans having any idea: not once had they realised what thin ice they’d skated on. John should be pleased, but there was still no sign of Cubby and Kate had no idea where he was.

  As soon as the mountain of bags had gone, I called John and caught him at last.

  ‘Hello! We’re back and they never knew. They’ve given us each a hundred pounds! I’ll go down to Loch Melfort and collect Cubby, then I’m coming home. I need a bath, I feel soaked in diesel.’

  I rattled on, full of my delight at having managed to get back to Oban without a hiccup. ‘Aren’t you pleased?’ I asked eventually, exasperated at the lack of response. ‘What do you mean – you’re not going to be at home?’

  I could hardly believe what he was saying.

  ‘You’re going to see clients? But you’ve never seen clients at weekends before. You want me to stay up here — why? I’ve no need to stay up here! And I want to come home.’