Offshore Islands
Page 79
Barton set the sails to take advantage of the wind that was now blowing strong, at the same moment Erikkson hit the Absolute. As the Marie Galante swiftly plunged through the waves the other less experienced sailors also took to their cabins while Castlemain and Barton thrilled with the sport of handling the fast yacht that was running fast ahead of the wind.
It must have been an hour or so later which Doudoune was awoken by a crash. The bottle of Absolute that had rolled of the table and fallen to the floor slithering across the cabin as the boat rolled heavily.
Looking at Erikkson she saw that he was slumped deep in the chair with his head lying on the ships table facing the porthole. She pulled herself out of the bed, groggy from the sedative she had taken, and stepped unsteadily towards him. His eyes were half open as was his mouth; his face was a motley ruddy white. His reddish blond hair hung limply over his forehead.
In a panic she opened the cabin door and screamed out, Courtauld came hurrying out of the adjacent cabin.
“What’s wrong?”
“Stiggy! Stiggy!” She pointed into the cabin.
Courtauld instinctively felt Erikkson’s pulse, he knew he was a heavy drinker with a predilection for Nordic style binges, but the open eyes were a bad sign.
He barely felt the failing pulse and called for help. With difficulty they got his ninety-five kilos onto the cabin bed. Courtauld stepped out of the cabin and talked quickly to Barton.
“He seems to be in a bad way.”
“Is it the Vodka?”
“I don’t think so, I think he’s had an attack on some kind!”
“Shit! Shit!
“Tell Castlemain!”
After a heated discussion they agreed they had no choice but to head for San Domingo, there was no point to go back to Ponce, where Erikkson could have probably got better treatment in an American hospital. Castlemain insisted on going west. They could leave Erikkson with Doudoune together one of the crew who would stay to assist her through the difficulties.
They radioed ahead to alert the port for an ambulance. By the time they approach the port of San Domingo Erikkson was already dead. There was nothing they could have done, but they decided against telling the bad news to Doudoune who was totally dazed, in a kind of trance. Arrowsmith promised Doudoune that he would return from George Town to help her, knowing that she was stranded now that Erikkson was dead.
One of the Guadeloupean crewmen stayed with her and was instructed to help her with the financial problems and her return to Guadeloupe or Cuba. Castlemain had instructed their agent by radiotelephone to settle the money problems and inform Erikkson’s Swedish family and the Bottens, who would have to look after the formalities and repatriation of the body to Sweden.
It was early evening as the ambulance headed out of the port, its sirens wailing in the direction of the hospital. The Marie Galante had already set sail in spite of the warning from the Harbour Master. Barton figured they had over twenty four hours good sailing ahead of them before the storm hit.
Before leaving Guadeloupe the weather forecast had reported a tropical storm, which had formed in the Atlantic east of Trinidad and had swept up into the southern Caribbean over Venezuela, causing torrential rains and mudslides in Caracas, with the loss of many lives in the favalas perched on the mountain side above the capital.
The satellite image showed the spiral form of a cyclone that was moving slowly northwards, the forecasters had announced that it would lose its intensity over the following forty eight hours becoming a mild depression with heavy rains by the time it arrived over the south-west Caribbean and the Central American region.
That would be well south of them and should not be of any worry, Barton had decided. Nevertheless as a good seaman he had taken careful note to follow the movement of the storm hour by hour.
They had lost over twelve hours with the detour and stop in San Domingo. Castlemain calculated that by setting full sail they could race ahead of the storm, which was heading in a north-westerly direction according to the weather report, the yacht would veer directly west to the Caymans. He figured at the worst that only the edge of the storm would affect them.
Castlemain wanted to get to George Town as soon as possible to settle his business affairs before travelling on to Cuba. He was a busy man and could not spend more than the time he had allotted to pleasure. What was more important it was essential that he initiate the transfer of the monies promised to Montero’s political friends in Havana to avoid a major crisis at the Ciudad Cayo Saetia site. It was his habit to personally look after such delicate affairs, the less that others knew of such transactions the better.
The next evening the Marie Galante headed through the Jamaica Channel, south of Guantanamo, in the direction of Cabo Cruz, at the westerly tip of the Sierra Maestra. To Arrowsmith’s surprise Barton was still fretting over the precious hours lost by their stop in San Domingo, though there was a good wind blowing the weather remained fine and clear and there was no sign of the storm that had been the subject of so much discussion.
The radio reports that Barton still managed to tune into seemed to indicate that the storm was gathering speed and veering further to the west than the weathermen had forecast. His experience warned him never to underestimate the unpredictability of the weather and especially tropical storms.
Over the following hours they maintained full speed in the clear weather and in spite the heavy sea enjoyed the sunshine and sat back, there was little effort needed to keep the ketch underway. At the rate things were going the would be safely in George Town the next morning as the storm turned in a north west towards a large Cuban island called Isla del Jovenes.
It was night and they were about six or seven hours out from George Town when the storm suddenly caught them with it’s lashing gusts of wind, pushing them ahead and violently whipping the sails. Barton hauled in the sails and the Marie Galante ran under the full power of her two 250-horse power engines. As boat was violently heaved by the waves fear and misgiving slowly began to replace the earlier bravado of the inexperienced passengers.
It was two thirty in the morning as Castlemain fought the wheel with Barton as the wind shrieked and rain lashed the boat at over 150 kilometres an hour. Their heading was directly west and with luck he figured they could make it into port without too much difficulty if the storm veered north as expected from the last radio forecast they had heard.
The motors were turning at full speed whining furiously as the props thrashed the foam almost gasping as the boat rocked and heaved. The waves were now five or six metres high. Below de Montfort had collapsed on his bed vomiting bile, sick from endless heaving of the boat as it rode through the storm, he was beyond caring.
Arrowsmith was holed up in the navigation cabin hanging on to the table, desperately trying to get some sense out of the radio. After more than two hours of being buffeted by the storm there was an unexpected calm, the pitching and rolling eased and the sea seemed to be less agitated, the boat hummed smoothly through a miraculously changed sea.
The passengers and crew barely had time to give a sigh of relief when the one of the motors fell silent, followed a few instants later by the other. A moment later Barton came crashing down the stairs.
“What the fucks up!” he shouted as he tore the motor room door open. A blue cloud of diesel fumes and smokes poured through the door.
“What’s going on for Christ sake man?” Castlemain shouted.
The lights flickered and went out, then came on again as the batteries took over.
“The motors have stopped!”
“I know that for God’s sake! Get them going again!”
Barton pressed on the starter. There was a whine and a clanking.
“It’s the gear box! A shaft or something’s bust!”
“My God, what a fuckin time for that to happen!”
De Monfort appeared at the door of his cabin.
“Are we there?”
“Get out of the way man!” shouted Castlemain push
ing him to one side.
The boat gave a roll and the wind started to howl like a jet engine. The boat was drifting wildly, turning broadside on to the waves, which had started to pick up force again.
“Get her around with the fuckin wind! Get some fucking sail up!”
A good seaman like Barton could in theory sail out the storm. It depended on how bad it became.
The ketch swung around with the wind behind it. For the next hour they fought through the storm, pushed by the hurricane force winds up 180 kilometres an hour, they no longer controlled their heading and struggled in a north westerly direction.
Barton figured that they must be somewhere north of the Caymans, between the Pickle Bank and the Archipelago de los Jardins de la Reined.
Their lighting and power for the electrical equipment, with the engines down, now depended on the batteries and how long they would last was anybody’s guess.
He pulled on the wheel as he tried to keep the Marie Gallant in line with the wind, which was veering. Suddenly it went slack, the ketch no longer replied to the wheel. It veered around with the wind to its starboard flank and started heeling over as the wind the tore at the two sails that had been driving them through the waves.
“Get your fucking lift vests on!” shouted Barton, “We’re going to founder!”
“Send out a distress signal!”
“The god dammed radio is out!” shouted Arrowsmith appearing on deck tightening the cords of his life vest.
The boat heaved as a mighty wave rolled her broadside into a deep trough. Then came another wave that seemed to flow like a huge black torrent over the boat. Arrowsmith felt himself lifted bodily into the water, with a crashing and cracking that told him that masts and riggings were coming down. Detachedly he noted the water he gulped was warm and tasted the salt in his mouth. The sea swirled in a violent flood around him.
Then the boat seemed loom over him as he was pulled by the wash. He lost consciousness, hit by something hard, literally thrown at him by the force of the waves.
The Marie Galante powerless and rudderless, swung around and heeled over in slow motion. The white keel half submerged floated during a short moment, tossed on the huge waves like a piece of insignificant flotsam in the dark of the night before going down stern first, the prow seemed to linger briefly like a floater then it was gone with its crew, passengers and illicit cargo of cocaine.
Their only hope would have been the American Navy that had been running exercises to the south of the Pickle Bank, but the big war ships had their own problems and were running for clear weather to the south.
Chapter 80
Fraud