Adrift: Seventy-six Days Lost at Sea

by Steven Callahan

  It is not all fun and games. It is the autumn equinox, when storms rage, and within a week two severe gales rip up the English Channel. Ships are cracked in half and many of the Transat competitors are delayed. One French boat capsizes and her crew can’t right her. They take to their life raft and manage to land on a lonesome, tiny beach along a stretch of treacherous cliffs on the Brittany coast. Another Frenchman is not so lucky. His body and the transom of his boat are found crumpled on the Lizard. A black mood hangs over the fleet.

  I make my way up to the local chandlery for final preparations. It is nestled in a mossy alleyway, and no sign marks its location. No one needs to post the way to old Willoughby’s domain. I was warned that he talks a tough line, but in my few visits I have warmed up to his cynicism. Willoughby is squat, his legs bowed as if they have been steam-bent around a beer barrel, causing him to walk on the sides of his shoes. He slowly hobbles about the shop, weaving back and forth like an uncanvased ship in a swell. Beneath a gray tousle of hair, his eyes are squinted and sparkly. A pipe is clamped between his teeth.

  Turning to one of his clerks, he motions toward the harbor. “All those little boats and crazy youngsters down there, nothin’ but lots of work and headaches, I can tell you.” Turning back to me he mutters, “Here to steal more bosunry from an old man and make him work like the devil to boot, I bet.”

  “That’s right, no rest for the wicked,” I tell him.

  Willoughby raises a brow and twirks the faintest wrinkle of a grin, which he tries to hide behind his pipe. In no time he is spinning yarns big enough to knit the world a sweater. He ran away to sea at fifteen, served on square-riggers in the wool trade from Australia to England. He’s been round Cape Horn so many times he’s lost count.

  “I heard about that Frenchman. Why you fellas go to sea for pleasure is beyond me. ‘Course we had some fine times in my day, real fine times we had. But that was our stock in trade. A fella who’d go to sea for pleasured sure go to hell for a pastime.”

  I can tell the old man has a big space in his heart for all nautical lunatics, especially the young ones. “At least you’d have somebody to keep you company then, Mr. Willoughby.”

  “It’s a bad business I tell you, a bad business,” he says more seriously. “Sorry thing, that Frenchman. What do you get if you win this here race? Big prize?”

  “No, I don’t know really. Maybe a plastic cup or something.”

  “Ha! A fine state of affairs! You go out, play tag with Neptune, have a good chance to end up in old Davy Jones’ locker—and for a cup. It’s a good joke.” And it is, too. The Frenchman has really affected the old man. He cheerily insists on slipping a few goodies onto my pile, free of charge, but his tone is somber. “Now don’t come back and bother me any more.”

  “Next time I’m in town you can bet on me like the plague, or the tax man. Cheers!”

  A little bell jingles laughingly as I close the door. I can hear Willoughby inside pacing to and fro on the creaking wooden floor. “A bad business, I tell you. It’s a bad business.”

  The morning of the race’s start, I make my way past the milling crowds to the skipper’s meeting. Whether the race will start on time or not has been a matter of speculation for days. The last couple of gales that swept through had edged up to hurricane force. “Expect heavy winds at the start,” a meteorologist tells us. “By nightfall they’ll be up to force eight or so.”

  The crowd murmurs. “Starting in a bloody gale … Quiet, he’s not finished yet.”

  “If you can weather Finisterre you’ll be okay, but try to get plenty of sea room. Within thirty-six hours, all hell is going to break loose, with a good chance of force ten to twelve and forty-foot waves.”

  “Lovely,” I say. “Anybody want to charter a small racing boat—cheap?” The crowd’s talk grows loud. Heated debate breaks out between the racers and their supporters. Isn’t it lunacy to start a transatlantic race in these conditions? The talk subsides as the race organizer breaks in.

  “Please! Look, if we postpone we might not get off at all. It’s late in the year and we could get locked in for weeks. We all knew it would probably be tough going to the Canaries. If you can get past Finisterre, you’ll be home free. So keep in touch, stay awake, and good sailing.”

  The quay around Penzance’s inner harbor is packed with people gawking and snapping pictures, waving, weeping or laughing. They will soon return to the comfort of their warm little houses.

  NAPOLEON SOLO

  I yell “Cheerio!” as Solo is towed out between the massive steel gates, which are opened by the harbormaster and his men pacing round an antique capstan. Solo and I are as prepared as we can be. My apprehension gives way to high spirits and excitement. The seconds tick by. My fellow racers and I maneuver about the starting line, making practice runs at it, adjusting our sails, shaking our arms to get the butterflies out of our stomachs. Those prone to seasickness will have a hard time. Warning colors go up. Get ready. Waves sweep into the bay; the wind is already growing, a rancorous circus sky flies in from the west. I reign Solo in, tack her over. Smoke puffs from the starting gun; its blast is blown away in the wind before it reaches my ears. Solo cuts across the line leading the fleet into the race.

  At night the wind is stiff and the fleet fights hard against rising seas. I can often see the lights of the other boats, but by morning I see none. The bad conditions have abated. Solo slices quickly over the large, smooth swell. I spot a white triangle ahead, rising up and then disappearing behind the waves. I shake the reef out of the jib and one of the reefs out of the mains’l. Solo races on to catch the other boat. In a few hours I can see the white hull. It is an aluminum boat that was rafted next to me in Penzance, sailed by one of the two Italians in the race. Like most of the competitors, he’s a friendly guy. Something seems slightly wrong. The foot of his jib, which has been reefed, is flogging around and bangs on the deck. I yell across, but get no response. I film the boat as I pass, then go below and radio him several times. No answer. Perhaps he’s asleep. As night falls, I hear one of the other racers talking to the organizer on the radio. The Italian has sunk. Luckily he has been picked up. When I rode by him, he was probably in trouble and trying to keep the leak contained.

  On the third day, I see a freighter pass about a mile away. I radio to him and learn that he has seen twenty-two of the twenty-six boats in the fleet behind me. I’m greatly encouraged. The wind grows. Solo beats into stiff seas. I must make a choice, either to risk being pushed into the notorious Bay of Biscay and try to squeak past Finisterre, or to tack and head out to sea. I choose the bay, hoping for the front to pass and to give me a lift so I can clear the cape. But the wind continues to increase, and soon Solo is leaping over ten-foot waves, pausing in midair for a second, and then crashing down on the other side. I have to hold on to keep from being thrown off of my seat. Wind screams through the rigging. For hours Solo weaves and slips sideways, shaking at every punch. Inside, the noise of the sea pounding against the hull is deafening. Pots and cans clatter. An oil bottle shatters. After eight hours of it, I adjust. It is dark. There is nothing to do but push on. I crawl aft into my cabin, which is a little quieter than forward, wedge myself into my bunk, and go to sleep.

  When I awake, my foul-weather gear is floating about in a pool of water. I leap through the pool and find a crack in the hull. With every passing wave, water shoots in and the crack grows longer. The destruction of Solo would follow like falling dominoes. As quick as a mongoose, I rip down the sails, cut lumber, and shore her up. For two days I guide her slowly to the coast of Spain.

  Within twenty-four hours of my arrival in La Coruna, seven Mini-Transat boats arrive. Two have been hit by cargo ships, one has broken a rudder, others are fed up. It appears that Solo ran into some floating debris. Her hull is streaked with dents. Perhaps it was a log. I’ve seen plenty of them—even whole trees adrift. Over the years I’ve spoken with voyagers who have sighted everything from truck containers that fell off of shi
ps to spiky steel balls that resembled World War II mines. One boat off the coast of the United States even found a rocket!

  The race is finished for me. I speak no Spanish, so it is difficult to organize repairs. I can’t find a Frenchman who will agree to drive over the rocky and pitted Spanish roads to retrieve Solo. I have little money. My boat is full of seawater, spilled cooking oil, and broken glass. My electronic self-steering is fried. Then I become ill, with a fever of 103°. I lie among the soggy mess, thoroughly depressed.

  Still, I am more fortunate than others. Out of the twenty-five boats that started, no fewer than five have been totally lost, although luckily no one has drowned. Only half of the fleet will reach the finish in Antigua.

  It is four weeks before I complete my repairs and put Napoleon Solo to sea again. I don’t know if I have enough stores and money to reach the Caribbean, but I don’t have enough to go home. Luckily the Club Nautico de La Coruna is kind. “No charge. We do what we can for the man alone.” For four weeks gales daily ravage Finisterre. The harbor is full of crews waiting to escape to the south. We are all just a little late in the season. In the morning there is frost on the deck. Each day it remains longer before melting off. When Solo finally claws past Finisterre, I feel as though I’ve passed Cape Horn.

  I’ve picked up one person to crew, a Frenchwoman named Catherine. I needed someone to steer. Catherine’s only previous ocean experience was on a boat that was dismasted in the Bay of Biscay. In a panic they had radioed for assistance, were picked up by a tanker, and had watched their boat—the dream they’d worked years for—drift away. They had operated under the delusion that the tanker would save their boat, too. Catherine was not easily put off. She “auto-stopped” her way to La Coruna and there tried yacht-stopping for a ride south.

  Catherine loves my little boat, and she is lovely herself, but I feel no desire for romance. I want only for past pain to melt away in the sun of the south. With Catherine’s help, I expect to reach the Canaries in fourteen days.

  For four weeks we crawl south to Lisbon. Between zephyrs we flop about on a mirrored sea. In my reflection in the glassy water, I get a hint that I am going nowhere, but I begin to fall into the slow pace of the cruising life. My disappointment at not completing the Mini-Transat begins to fade.

  On the coast of Spain, ancient river valleys cut deeply into the country. In these rugged rías, modern machinery consists of donkeys pulling ox carts with wooden wheels and axles. Peasants collect animal bedding from the uncultured grasses of mountainside clearings. Women gather at community basins to beat clothes clean on rocks or concrete. In one port the officials pore over our entry forms, carrying them from office to office, like children trying to decipher hieroglyphics. We are the first yacht to anchor in their waters in over a year.

  We proceed along the coast into Portugal, cutting through dense fog and dodging freighters, which on a clear night appear like strings of Christmas tree lights, sixteen or seventeen visible at any time. To one side of us is a coast of rocky teeth and seething seas, on the other the drum, drum of heavy engines. When the sails hang lifeless, we row. Often we make only ten miles a day.

  It would have been simple to remain at anchor. Latin life and lazy weather are drugging. We begin to soak up tranquility like a sponge. Among the cruising community we make many friends traveling in the same general direction. Many are French. All planned to be into the Pacific by January, but their plans have been tempered. “Maybe we’ll hole up in Gibraltar for the winter.” But there is something inside of me itching to push on. It is more than the need to get to a place where I can refill my purse. Catherine sometimes pouts, wishing I would open up to her more. “You are a hard man,” she tells me, but I do not respond by becoming softer. I only become more resolved to reach the Canaries and then push on alone.

  We sail from Lisbon in decent wind and reach the peaks of Madeira, pause there, and then proceed south to Tenerife. Our two-week voyage has taken six. I say good-by to Catherine. My ship and I are at peace with one another once again.

  Solo is well received wherever she goes. The local people, who would often steer clear of big, expensive yachts, flock to Solo like bears to honey. She is as small as their open coastal fishing boats. It is unbelievable to them that she has come all the way from America. In one small port, all of the fishermen and boatbuilders come down early each morning and perch along the quay, patiently waiting for me to wake up. They are eager for me to tell them more stories in my broken Spanish and convoluted sign language.

  I come very close to mooring Solo for a winter. It has happened to many others, sailing in for a week’s visit and staying for years. They make ends meet by making ships in bottles or collecting pine cones in the mountains. German tourists cover the beaches and buy anything with a For Sale sign. I might draw pictures, and I have some writing to do.

  I need more than just looking on, playing tourist. I need to be productive, to create, and, of course, to earn money again since I have only a few dollars left and debts to repay.

  I am caught in the sailor’s inevitable dilemma. When you are at sea you know you must reach harbor, to restock and, you hope, rest in a warm caress. You need ports and often can’t wait to get to the next. Then when you are in port, you can’t wait to get back to sea again. After a few glasses of cold beer and a few nights in a dry bed, the ocean calls, and you follow her. You need mother earth, but you love the sea.

  In most ports you can find a crew who wants to go in the same direction you do. But now most people who wanted to get to the Caribbean for the winter have left some time ago. I don’t think that the trip will be difficult alone. One of my newfound friends on Tenerife has repaired my self-steering gear, and the pilot chart promises that there is only a 2 percent chance of encountering gales. The trade winds should be steady. It’ll be a milk run.

  I make my way to the sparsely populated island of Hierro. Steep cliffs rise from the Atlantic to the east, topped by lush hills and green valleys. The island slopes away to the west and ends with a moonscape of small volcanoes, rocky rubble, and hot red sand. I finish stocking in a tiny man-made port on the western end. On the final day my throat is dry and gravelly. I slap my last pesetas down on the bar. In fumbling Spanish I tell the familiar bartender that the coins will do me no good at sea. “Cerveza, por favor!” The beer is cold. The bartender sits down beside me.

  “Where to?”

  “Caribbean. Work. No more pesetas.”

  He nods, contemplating the length of the voyage. “Such a small boat. No problema?”

  “Pequeño barco, pequeño problema. No big problem yet, anyway!” We laugh and talk while I finish my beer, burn a last cigarette, sling my provisions over my shoulder, and head for the quay.

  One of the old fishermen stops me. “You come from America?” he asks as he slits open part of his catch, cleans it, and flops it onto a scale. A woman dressed in black pokes the fish, chattering away to herself.

  “Yes, America.” I wonder if her man was a fisherman lost at sea, like so many others.

  “Ooh ho!” he says. “In such a small boat? Tonto!” Fool.

  “It’s not so small, its my whole house.”

  The old man gestures toward his lower abdomen with cupped hands as if holding gigantic organs. We laugh at his joke as I shake my head no, open my eyes wide, and shiver as if frightened. The woman grabs him by the arm, obviously telling him the fish is overpriced, and begins bargaining, an ageless custom as ritualized as the dominoes played by the men seated at a folding card table on the stony beach.

  The night of January 29 is clear, the sky peppered with bright stars. Blocks squeak as I pull up the sails and glide out of the harbor. I thread my way through the offshore fishing fleet and point Solo toward the Caribbean. It feels good to be at sea again.

  NERVES EXPOSED

  I AM EXPERIENCING a rare time for a sailor, a week of peace. With uncharacteristic gentleness, the sea and wind wrap my boat in a motherly caress that sends her skipp
ing toward Antigua. I am comforted by the sea yet am continually awed by her. Like an old friend she is always familiar, yet she is always changing and full of surprises. I recline on the afterdeck and feel the regular files of waves approach, lift my ship three or four feet as they roll under her, then ease her down gently as they rush on, slipping into the horizon ahead. The breeze rustles the pages of my novel while the sun browns my skin and bleaches my hair.

  An age ago oceanic greyhounds—great clipper ships, whalers, and fast cutters full of slaves—plied this route from the Canaries to the Caribbean. Trade winds filled the cloudlike sails that hung from their towering spars: stuns’ls, tops’ls, royals, all set. The rattling of Solo’s spars and the hum of her auto pilot mix with the running wind and blow into my ears a fantasy of tapping feet in a hornpipe danced to the song of a concertina.

  Solo smoothly cuts westward with twin jibs spread from her bow. Her bubbling trail curls across the waves astern. When not reading, I scratch out stories and letters, scribble pictures of sea serpents with bow ties, and waste inordinate amounts of film, shooting the sea, boat maneuvers, sunsets. I stuff myself with fried potatoes, onions, eggs, cheese, and grains—bulgur, rolled oats, millet. I exercise—pushups, pullups, and yoga—thrusting, twisting, and stretching in rhythm with the rolling boat. A spidery, animated maze of mast, boom, struts, and poles dips, rises, and spreads the sails to catch the wind. In short, I and my ship are in fine shape, and I am having a wonderful and leisurely sail. If good fortune continues, I will reach my destination before February 25.

  On February 4 the wind rises and begins to whistle through the rigging. A gale begins to sweep in. A blanket of clouds races overhead. Seas build and begin to crash down all around us. I want to return to peaceful sailing. I speak to the sky. “Come on, hit me if you must, and then go quickly.”