I was so excited to see my son and show him Valkyrien. I picked him up at the small airport in Monterey. We watched a rather dull sunset—never a good sign before a sea voyage—and then ate fresh fish beside the pier. I fell asleep so happy to have Maxey near to me.
The National Weather Service radio announced storm warnings that night. Maxey and I have sailed in all kinds of weather, so I didn’t heed the warnings. I was determined to sail the 77-foot schooner down the 90-mile coast of Big Sur, with my fifteen-year-old son and my wacky friend Jasper as the only crew. We would leave at dawn the following morning.
* * *
33. The floor of the cockpit.
10. The Cliffs of
Big Sur
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball . . .
—T. S. Eliot, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
I awoke the next morning, tired, excited, and concerned for the safety of my boat and crew. I knelt down on the floor beside my bunk and said a prayer, asking St. Christopher to protect us and to help me guide the Valkyrien safely past the rocks. I walked through the interior of the boat, checking packages and equipment, and generally making ready for the blow coming in. Then I climbed the companionway to the cockpit and walked the deck, looking for anything out of place, trying to make her as shipshape as possible.
The harbor and wharf appeared dark as I marched along the deck, checking lines and halyards. I looked out at the breakwater—difficult to distinguish against the dark sea in front and behind it. The sun had begun to lighten the night sky, but the brightest stars remained visible above the horizon. Twilight is a magical time in a harbor—filled with so much potential—particularly at the beginning of a trip before a storm, where joy and terror are equal possibilities.
We had not yet raised the sails on Valkyrien in a big wind, and I was concerned about how they would do. Modern racing sails are made of woven Kevlar—the same material used to make body armor and military helmets. Older boats’ sails are usually made of Dacron or some form of Mylar strips or canvas, sewn together using an especially strong thread and a powerful sewing machine. When they are first “bent on,” new sails can be so stiff that it takes a few strong sailors to fold them up properly (called flaking) at the end of a day. Valkyrien’s sails were so old that they could be twisted in hand like an old bedsheet.
Valkyrien carried a heck of a lot of sails, though. She had one huge mainsail, a smaller second main (also called a main staysail) tacked to the forward mast, and all the way forward on the bowsprit, Valkyrien flew as many as four jibs.4 With all sails raised, Valkyrien would show a lot of canvas—at least eight separate sails including a main top gallant staysail and a main royal staysail. Maxey knew the names of every sail. Jasper knew the name of not a single sail. The approaching storm would mark Jasper’s first day of sailing.
We pushed off the dock as the sun began to lift over the horizon, refracting through the mist from the waves, creating an astonishing orange glow. Whitecaps formed in the harbor, and a small-craft warning was issued. I had been taught to always sail during small-craft warnings on Cape Cod; what better way to prepare oneself for an emergency than to sail intentionally into one? But my need to test myself was less of a motivating factor than my need to begin the journey.
Wind blew strong through the harbor, heeling the boat slightly as we made our way past Fisherman’s Wharf toward the harbor mouth. The motor ran well, and the boat moved nicely along, but when I turned the bow into the wind to exit the harbor, I felt the Valkyrien slow as she began to slog through the wind and waves.
The first hundred miles of the coast south of Monterey down to Point Conception were the most dangerous we would have to pass in the United States. Sailing off of Big Sur is a dream for every sailor because of its stark beauty—but it also presents a serious danger, because the wind generally blows toward the shore, and every inch of shoreline is either rock or cliff. Big Sur has not a single safe harbor along its entire hundred-mile length. If the boat were to lose power, we would be pushed hard by the wind and waves toward that cliff-rock coast.
I should have waited out the storm.
As I turned west past the Monterey Bay Aquarium, the waves built higher and higher, approaching six feet at Point Cabrillo, but we were still within Monterey Bay, which was protected from the full strength of the Pacific wind. The swells continued to build as we moved out toward open ocean, although they were farther apart. Before we passed Point Pinos, the largest waves stood at about the height of our mast spreaders—twenty feet above the sea, and growing larger.
Maxey pulled up the main and then the second mainsail, and then the smallest jib. I turned the Valkyrien south, and as the sails began to fill with air; she picked up speed. We cruised amid swells gigantic beyond any I had ever sailed. The waves towered over our spreaders, and we began to lose our wind at the bottom of the troughs. The big Pacific rollers were topped by five- and six-foot wind waves that broke and sprayed white and black as we cut along.
Suddenly, a powerful gust laid the boat hard over on her side. The wave behind us pushed us forward, sliding down its face. For a moment, as we skidded into the trough of this gigantic wave, no wind hit us at all, and Valkyrien’s four tons of lead, bolted to the bottom of her keel, bounced us straight back up like a child’s inflatable punching toy. But just at the moment the boat caught equilibrium, another gust hit us as we rose atop the next giant roller.
Bang!
The mainsail tore in half, and then the halves shredded into more pieces—all of the tatters snapping back and forth like a cowboy’s whip. I shouted to my son, but he could hear nothing over the roar of the torn sail. He moved toward the first mast to try to pull down the remnants. Just as he reached the main, the second main tore as well. It ripped first, separating a seam with a loud zipping sound, then shredded.
We had lost the mainsail, and the second main, and we were being pushed inland by wind and waves. I retained confidence in the smallest jib—extraordinarily heavy, and a perfect storm jib—and it kept its shape. But with only a single sail, and that one way out in front, the boat was pulled hard downwind toward the cliffs onshore. To counterbalance that pressure up front, I turned the boat back and forth, shifting between a straight rudder and hard to starboard.
I thanked God for the new engine. Despite the wind and waves, and lack of sails, that brand new Detroit saved us, giving the boat enough forward momentum, and adding just enough pressure against the rudder, to hold us off the rocks onshore. We could not move much farther out to sea, but we were not being pushed closer to shore, either. We rode a delicate line, and I knew as long as the engine held, we would make it south to the sandy beaches below the rocks of Big Sur.
The waves grew even larger as we were pushed south. Valkyrien raced down the sides of these waves, the increased speed causing her to turn back up into the wind. I had to spin the wheel quite madly in various directions, trying to maintain a semblance of a straight course while avoiding the push of the waves toward the rocks.
In the midst of my steering woes, the engine, tossed so many different ways, conked out. Some connection in that long fuel hose had moved and caught air and the engine was done. I realized, with increasing despair, that we could not possibly chase down an air bubble lost in seventy feet of hose, amid that storm.
Maxey pulled down the shredded main and tied its remnants to the boom. Then he moved forward to the second main, and did the same, his face and body whipped by the shorn bits of Dacron. He stayed at the job and got the sail tied down.
On one big wave, I failed to correct sufficiently and we swung hard toward the wind. Our stern was hit by the following wave, which washed over the boat. My son looked up at me as though I had lost my mind and shouted, using his hands and mouthing the words: “DAD! WHY . . . ARE . . . YOU . . . DRIVIN
G . . . SO . . . BADLY?!”
I held up the Valkyrien’s bronze steering wheel, which had torn completely off of the steering shaft and slipped into my hands. With no mainsails, no engine, and now no steering wheel, we had lost control of the boat.
Although not a sailor, Jasper grasped the gravity of the situation immediately. He looked at the waves and the cliffs of Big Sur and down at the busted-off steering wheel, and without a word, he disappeared below.
Well, that’s unfortunate, I thought. I could use a hand up here.
A minute or two later, Jasper came running back up with the largest vise-grip I had ever seen. Also a can of WD-40. The vise-grip was badly corroded, but Jasper loosened it with the WD and mounted it hard onto the steering shaft. With one hand atop the vise-grip and the other helping to hold it in place, I was able to turn the shaft and make minimal adjustments to our course.
We were still being pushed toward the rocky cliffs onshore, and Maxey and I both understood, without saying anything to each other, that the fix on the steering wheel had bought us time, but that unless we could put sails up enough to jibe the boat, we were going to crash against the rocks.
* * *
4. Throughout the United States, and in England, local sailors have their own names for various types of sails. The jiboom (also spelled jib-boom) is variously called the “club jib,” the “jib club,” or the “staysail.” The cables that hold up the mast are called “shrouds” in many places. On Cape Cod we call them “stays.” On the Cape, cables chained to the sides of the boat are the “side stays,” while the stay at the very bow is called the “forestay,” and the one on the back is called a “backstay” I like the name “backstay,” because even people wholly unfamiliar with sailing can quickly grasp the idea of a backstay).
11. High Seas
I will drink
Life to the lees
— Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
If I did not yet fear for our lives, I had great concern that the boat would not survive the day.
Maxey came to the cockpit to talk to me. Together, we looked at the wind, the waves, and the shoreline. Maxey said, “Do you think she could make it around the point if we could get her turned around?”
“I think she could hold it—but not by much,” I replied. “And if we continue much longer on this angle, she will not be able to claw it back, even if we do get her turned. The only way we can save Valkyrien is to pull up at least two more jibs.”
My son and I both knew what this meant: I had put his life and the life of my wholly innocent friend Jasper in jeopardy. Maxey knew who he was dealing with. He was not surprised that I had sailed with him into the storm. But he was upset that I had brought along Jasper, who had no way of knowing the risks I would take.
Maxey had learned sailing through years of training, but he also had a visceral understanding of sails and lines and wood—all the mechanisms of sail—so he understood immediately what had to be done to save the Valkyrien. Simply put, someone would have to crawl out to the end of the bowsprit, attach the halyards, and release the ties on two more jibs. The widow’s net that stretched beneath the bowsprit would likely catch him, if he fell, but he could easily be swept out of that netting.
At this point, the Valkyrien had become a very wet boat. She rode up these gigantic waves and when she reached their peak, the entire front of the boat thrust into space horizontally—so far out, in fact, that I worried her spine might snap.
I recalled the American cruiser, the USS Pittsburgh. Caught in a Pacific storm, Pittsburgh’s bow jutted out beyond the crest of the waves and literally fell into the sea. The heavy cruiser became forty feet shorter in an instant. The Pittsburgh cruised through the storm, with no lives lost. She had been designed for battle survivability, with waterproof bulkheads. Her well-trained crew and gutsy captain brought her safely home.
I did not have the same faith in Valkyrien’s design tolerances in her current condition. I thought of how long she’d been sitting in that polluted waterway, and the age of her timbers, and I wondered how much rot decayed her keel. I thought of the pressure of the masts, so many thousands of pounds, driving down into her and working her seams further open with every crash of the waves.
Her physical condition notwithstanding, my main concern at that moment was how, exactly, to get to the bowsprit to raise the other jibs. Every time Valkyrien crested a wave and shot down the other side, her entire bow disappeared underwater, driven deep into the next wave. The balustrade, a few feet high around the foremast, disappeared below the sea when she fell down the biggest waves—nearly forty feet of Valkyrien, over and over, with each wave, dissapeared—completely submerged. I turned and checked on our last resort—the trusty old Boston Whaler Montauk. We had purchased a brand new engine for the Whaler, and I remained confident that if we had to abandon ship, she would be able to carry us safely through the enormous waves, even with the high winds atop them.
But I was by no means certain.
Towing a dinghy in a storm can be a terrible mistake. I have many friends who have simply cut away their dinghy midway through a long storm. These boats, dragging behind, can be lifted high up a following wave, then race down the wave face like a mad surfboard to come crashing hard into the stern of the pulling boat, slowly smashing the two vessels to pieces.
Before we left port I had tied a bridle with two bowline knots around the stern of the Whaler. Then I’d passed a heavy ship’s line in another bowline around the bridle and tied some big knots and a life jacket onto the heavy line. The idea was that the heavy line with the knots would create drag (like the tail on a kite), which would slow the Whaler enough as it raced down the waves that it would not strike our stern. The bridle rig would keep the trailing line in the center of the Whaler, which theoretically would keep it riding straight.
Other friends have had dinghies flip and dive; their bow, turned sideways, dips below the water, then the overturned dink dives down like a fishing lure. The dragging line then becomes so taut that it actually “sings,” vibrating like a plucked violin string.
If either occurred, we would lose our emergency boat.
The towline from Valkyrien that held the Whaler was two inches thick, nearly two hundred feet long, and absolutely taut. Most of the time I could not see the Whaler at all—just the rigid towline slicing and disappearing into a gigantic wave behind us. When we arrived at the bottom of a wave, invariably I would see the Whaler cresting the wave behind us. Then, the little fiberglass boat would drop toward us, skipping and skimming along, barely touching the water on the steep wave face.
I figured we could probably escape death on the Boston Whaler—but the only way we could save Valkyrien would be to raise the sails on the bowsprit. I knew that Maxey was the only person on board who could climb out on the bowsprit and untie those sails so they could be raised. In these conditions, I was the only one who could steer the boat by holding the vise-grip.
The waves tossed the boat about, threw us on our sides and often buried nearly the entire boat underwater. Keeping her from being utterly swamped had become a tricky business.
I asked Maxey if he thought Jasper could make it out on the bowsprit.
Maxey replied with strength: “No way, Dad.”
“Maxey, will you do this?”
“I don’t think I can, Dad.”
“I know you can do it. This is the hardest, the toughest thing I have ever asked of you. There are a very few people in this world who could save this boat now, but you can.”
The humongous waves lifted Valkyrien’s stern crazily high out of the water as the bow dove in. Both of us were wondering the same thing: What would it be like out at the end of that bowsprit during the long moments when the entire sprit plunged below the ocean’s roiling surface?
I looked at my son and thought about how much I loved him. Maxey’s green eyes looked stunningly handsome in
the wind and waves. His hair, soaking wet, flashed around his head. I knew he had never been stronger. And he could keep his head in a storm. But I was terrified for him. I also felt though a huge satisfaction that my son would receive this test. I truly believed that he was in no danger—Maxey would not fall into the sea, and even if he did, he could tread water in those waves until I pulled him out. I was glad that tomorrow my son would wake up and know that he was capable of doing things that most men could not do. It scares the hell out of me now that I thought this way then.
We watched several cycles of the waves, and practiced holding our breath from the time the bowsprit disappeared below the water, until it came flashing out again. These were very long periods. Tears came into my son’s eyes. He looked at me with anger.
“Dad, how could you put us in this position?
I looked at him, unable to answer.
“Dad, how can you ask your own son to do this?”
“I don’t know Max. I am sorry. I do not know why I do things like this. But I have done them my whole life, and it will not end here.”
I paused for a long moment, looking my son straight in the eyes, my heart bursting with love for my brave and clear-headed boy.
“Max, you have to go out there,” I said. I pointed at the end of the bowsprit, as it dove again into the sea. “I need you to go out there and ready those sails.”
Maxey looked at me once more, hard this time. Then he turned and faced the waves towering over us.
He took off his life jacket and threw it below. We both knew it would only get in the way. Then he crawled out along the deck. He took a deep breath while holding on to the forward mast, watching the water race across his knees. Then, as the boat began climbing and the bowsprit lifted out of the water, he made his way forward, using the stays and sheets as hand holds.
Sea Change Page 7