Sea Change

by Maxwell Taylor Kennedy

  The bowsprit snapped about six inches in front of the deck, and both jibs pulled out to the side, then backwards, collapsing halfway into the sea. The jibs acted like parachutes, stopping the boat by filling with water. Each jib remained connected to the foremast by the forestay and halyards, so when they filled with seawater, most of the stress the heavy sails exerted pulled at Valkyrien’s weakest point: the top of the mast, multiplying the pressure at the mast-foot like Archimedes’ lever.

  Before the bowsprit snapped, the forestays were helping to hold the mast in place. That help was the key to keeping the entire rig held up. Now, instead of helping, these stays were actually pulling the masts down, and sideways, with enormous force. The huge bowsprit fell into the sea and snapped in two pieces. A mess of cables, ropes, and netting tangled the broken spar, smashing it repeatedly against Valkyrien’s side. It made a loud cracking sound as though we had hit another boat. Sometimes the pieces struck the hull below the waterline, sounding more like a muffled boom, as though we had struck a rock.

  The foremast, freed of being held forward by the forestay, immediately snapped backwards. The main mast then fell backwards too, and the main boom fell to the cabin top, nearly smashing my head, and the helm. This loosened the back stay, and left both masts free. The untethered masts began swaying back and forth, beginning the slow process of gnawing through Valkyrien’s hull, gradually splitting her open. The terrible wind continued to blow, turning the stays and shrouds into a sort of mad harp, a ghastly pitch that grew higher and louder as the winds increased. The noise echoed, haunting the boat.

  I let go of the wheel, ran forward, and dropped the two mainsails, to take some pressure off the masts. Valkyrien slowed to a crawl. The waves, which had been so kindly when we were cruising at 12 knots, began battering us as the boat slowed. I rushed back to the cockpit, then peered into the cabin where Jasper and Kit stared, amazed.

  Valkyrien stood in a brutal storm, her forestays all untethered, and her masts swaying dangerously back and forth. Two jibs and huge portions of the bowsprit dragged along the starboard side, carrying rope and cable and netting along with them. The two mainsails, down but not tied, whipped back and forth out of control. The boat rocked forward and aft, and side to side. Huge waves smashed against her port side, and swept the decks. Heavy rain slashed at my eyes and pelted my skin, striking in sheets and often in hardened beads. Frequent lightning strikes accompanied by shattering thunder struck and rolled down upon us.

  Jasper and Kit crouched together, in shock as the boat buffeted about, with no sails and no motor, entirely at the mercy of wind and waves. Jasper started the engine, but the boat slammed side to side violently, lifting the propeller out of the water, over and over, revving the prop.

  I became quickly concerned that all of the sloshing would disrupt the flow of oil from the pan, and cause insufficient lubricant in the cylinders, so I asked Jasper to shut the engine down. Then I told Kit to take the wheel, and Jasper to put on a life jacket and come to the bow with me to set a forestay and pull the jibs on board.

  I leapt back up the companionway into the cockpit, then crawled forward on my belly along the deck, watching the destruction unfold as the changing winds and seas cast the Valkyrien in wild disorder. The jibs dragged through the water, seized by the waves and caught up in the various cables from the bowsprit. The weight was pulling the boat to the starboard side, bending the masts, and often nearly stopping us short.

  At other times, the jibs might, singly or in unison, release all of their water, and for a few moments fill with air and lift out of the brine, cracking and snapping with relentless ferocity. The broken pieces of the bowsprit had tangled with the jibs, and when the jibs rose out of the sea, like kites, they sometimes carried the bowsprit pieces up with them. The Valkyrien, freed of that massive drag, would pick up speed. Then, bent by the wind in her newly flying jibs, she leaned over, and the heavy blocks of broken sprit would catch and dive back into the ocean. The sails would pull back under, jerking Valkyrien over to starboard again, stopping her hard. The huge waves smashed against her stalled hull, as they would strike a rocky shore—shaking her, covering her, beginning to swallow her up.

  Scientists have not determined why certain songs can become stuck in our heads, nor why this phenomenon occurs at any particular time. But sometime that night I began singing to myself the lyrics of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” I found the song a welcome distraction and an impetus to act correctly as a sailor and captain. I also found it amusing. Often when I worked at the bow, far out of earshot of the crew, I shouted the song as I struggled with the lines:

  The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound,

  as the waves broke over the railing . . .

  I waited for Jasper and Kit to follow me up on deck, watching the jibs and stays and pieces of sail tearing apart, momentarily transfixed by the madness unfolding all about Valkyrien.

  I stared at the rows of drenched belaying pins and for a moment thought of Douglas Fairbanks, the legendary hero-captain, swinging from the halyards, using the belaying pins as knives to tear his enemy’s sails, while preserving the safety of innocents.

  This is not how things went aboard the Valkyrien that night.

  I had to be extremely careful with every move that I made on deck to keep from falling overboard. Jasper and Kit did not appear. I spun around to face the stern, still lying on my belly, with my legs pinning me against the railing and the house top. Then I reached over the coaming, into the cockpit, and held tight to the companionway. I shouted out to Jasper, but he couldn’t hear me. I leaned my head into the galley and told Jasper again, loudly, to jump up and grab the wheel, and ordered Kit to come with me to get the sails down.

  Neither man moved.

  “Jasper, you have got to be fucking kidding me. We need to get this done. Now!”

  Jasper did not say a word.

  I jumped into the galley, face-to-face with my crewmen. I saw a look in Jasper’s eye that I had not seen before, and realized immediately that reasoning was useless. He would not climb on deck in that storm.

  Thinking that it would be better for it to look like this was my idea, I ordered Jasper to go below and check the engine, and instead told Kit to come up and hold the wheel while I moved forward. I climbed up the companionway to the cockpit and turned around. Neither man had moved.

  “Kit, quit fucking around and get your ass up here.” I spoke harshly, punctuating each word.

  Kit did not move.

  “Kit, I need you. I need you to come up here now, and grab this wheel.”

  Still, Kit did not move.

  I climbed below and stood only a few inches from him. I spoke each word with staccato emphasis, not shouting, but loud and clear and filled with command.

  “Kit,” I said, “this is a tough time. A very tough time. This is a difficult storm, no doubt about it. The bilges are filling with water, but we can’t turn on the pumps unless the engine is running. And we can’t turn on the engine until the boat settles, or the engine will be destroyed. The masts are untethered, and each time we move, they jerk back and forth. They are driving through the bottom of this boat, and with each wave that strikes us, the masts pry the planks a little further apart. They are causing us to break apart. If we let this continue, we will sink.

  “Look below. Water is beginning to pour through the deck in places it never has before. Valkyrien is starting to open up. I can prevent this—but I can’t do it unless you get up there and hold the wheel while I move forward to reset the masts.”

  I continued: “Kit—thirty years from now you will be telling this story to your children. Come with me, Kit. Together we’ll save this boat. And in thirty years, when your children ask you what you did at this time of great difficulty, you won’t tell them that you stayed below, that your fear took you, that you refused to help. You’ll tell them instead that you took the wheel and sa
iled through the storm, through the lightning and the thunder and wind and waves. You’ll tell them you did this great thing!”

  Kit looked me straight in the eye and said he was sorry, but there was no way he was going back on deck.

  21. Making Lists

  I caught myself listening on tiptoe for the next beat of the boat, for in

  sober truth I expected the wretched thing to give up every moment.

  It was like watching the last flickers of a life. But still we crawled . . .

  —Joseph Conrad, Marlowe, Heart of Darkness

  My great captain’s speech having failed miserably, I jumped back up to the cockpit and made adjustments to the wheel, then jumped below again. I told Jasper that he didn’t even have to come into the cockpit to help me. He could sit on the ladder and reach one hand back. From that position he would be able to see Valkyrien’s direction to the wind. He could hold her steady enough until I finished with the sails.

  I helped Jasper put on a life jacket. He pleaded with me, telling me not to go.

  “I’m going, man. It’s the only way. Give me your knife.”

  Jasper, with a solemnity that I found both irritating and charming, rather dramatically placed his most prized possession in my palm.

  Normally, in a storm, a crewman working on the bow hooks his harness to a safety rope so that if he’s swept over the side, he won’t be lost at sea. Other crew can grab hold of the safety line and pull him back aboard. I thought that if the debris tangled in the safety line I could be pinned under, unable to move, and so decided not to tie myself in.

  Waves washed over the entire boat. As I grabbed Jasper’s knife, I heard the clump of falling wood and turned my head forward, looking at the mast hole.

  Masts are seated on a platform of hard wood called the “mast step.” The masts exert enormous pressure on the bottom of a ship, and, when untethered or moving back and forth, they can quickly work a hole in the boat and push themselves all the way through. The mast step is supposed to disperse the pressure of the mast to a wider area on the bottom of the boat. The mast then passes up through a hole cut in the deck. This hole is framed with especially strong wood. Wooden wedges are hammered in along the sides of the mast, holding it stiffly into the frame, jamming the mast tight into position, immovable. These wedges make the mast and deck essentially a single piece of wood. If the wedges are ever removed, however, the mast will move independently of the deck, and the destructive power of the mast colliding constantly with the deck will tear the boat apart.

  All of this was now happening on Valkyrien. Our mast had begun twisting and deforming the deck, and thus, widening the mast hole. The wedges had fallen through. Now the mast was free to move in whatever direction the wind pushed it. This would vastly accelerate the deterioration and ultimate destruction of Valkyrien. The hole was widening further every minute. I had to get the sails and bowsprit out of the water and stabilize the mast before the boat became critically damaged.

  As I peered into this hole, I felt the dark energy of fear run from my neck and down my arms, electrifying my hands. The boat was coming apart. I was scared as hell. The first thing I had to do was to stop the damage from spreading. I had to quiet my fear.

  I have learned to walk through scary predicaments mostly through a life of long practice. I begin by thinking about how I would like things to be, ideally, and then consider in detail the way things are. Then I make a mental list of everything I can do to bring the situation closer to the ideal. This mental work usually takes me out of the fear, at least long enough to think through the issues and decide what needs to be done. Once I have a list, it is a simple matter to work on each item, one by one.

  1.Tie down the mainsail to stop it from flapping around.

  2.Tie down the forward mainsail.

  3.Replace the forestays using halyards. Climb to the bow, take the halyards from the forward mast, and tie them to the deck. Then tighten them down hard. The halyards run from the top of the mast, just as the forestays used to do. If I could tighten the halyards down hard enough, they would hold the masts in place—at least through the storm.

  4. Pull the pieces of the bowsprit and the two jibs back onto the deck, or cut the mess loose.

  5. Raise the storm jib. (I kept the storm jib ready, and had only to release a single tie and haul up on the halyard.)

  6. Find a mallet and knock all of the mast frame wedges back into place.

  That was it: a list of six things, all of them relatively simple. All doable. Making this list, going through it in my mind, imagining myself at each stage and walking through the steps, helped enormously. The process calmed me.

  Jasper sat in the companionway, stretching awkwardly backward so as to keep a part of himself in the cabin, and one hand on the wheel. The main boom clattered back and forth just above Jasper’s head while the sail snapped and whined and spilled into the sea, then back up on the boat, bursting with wind.

  I had no time for further delay. I pulled in the boom as tight as I could, then I looked up at the mainsail snapping crazily and thought, How the hell am I going to tie that down?

  I remembered my uncle telling me when I was a child and we were racing his Victura: “Move like a cat . . . move like a cat.” I do not like cats, but I moved on all fours up to the main mast with that idea in my head, carrying a line I found coiled on the balustrade.

  The closest edge of the sail sounded like a dozen whips snapping all around me, crack-crack-cracking, over and over. I spread my arms wide and leapt atop the main boom, linking my hands around it and pressing with my knees, like wrestling a fighting dog to the ground. I passed the rope between my hands, tying it tight as a cowboy would a steer, and as I cinched down the knot, the sail calmed. I was able to wrap the line around and around, lashing tightly to the boom, finally immobilizing the sail.

  In just a few minutes I had the mainsail tied hard so it no longer moved. Check One. Time to move forward to get the second main. Dark clouds completely blacked the sky. All deck lights had been extinguished. No moon shown through. Not even a hint of a star. I could barely see at all—even a few feet ahead of me. Harsh rain fell in horizontal sheets that stung my cheeks and forehead. The boat made the terrible sounds of wood coming apart.

  I sang out Gordon Lightfoot as loud as I could, though no one could hear me.

  And every man knew, as the captain did too,

  T'was the witch of November come stealin’.

  I made my way to the forward mast, by feel as much as by sight, crawling along the deck and holding my breath when the waves rolled over me. Every few seconds a bolt of lightning exploded near Valkyrien, creating a brief, surreal moment of daylight and clarity that was immediately followed by a darkness that seemed even more Stygian than what had come before.

  When I reached the mast, I looked at the base where it passed through the deck. Several more wedges had fallen through. I could see a pale light emanating from a tiny LED flashlight that had fallen off a shelf near the fuel tanks. I had never before seen any light escaping through the tight mast hole from the cabin. I became afraid again. I thought: I am too late. And I thought then about how stupid I was to have tried to sail across this bay. I wished the storm would end, but I knew it wouldn’t.

  I thought of abandoning the ship, and wondered whether Kit and Jasper could handle spending the night and perhaps several days, or more, aboard the Whaler. If we lost power on the Whaler, the storm and wind would probably push us two hundred miles out to sea. We might never be found. How could I have done this to them?

  For a few moments I froze, hands shaking. I did not know what to do.

  Pinning my thigh against the mast, I looked at my hands. I stared at them and said to myself, “These are my hands. I know these hands well. I am on a boat, and the boat is sinking. It may be too late to save her, but it is too early to abandon ship. I can move with
these hands and do the right things. Take the sails down, stow things away. Stabilize the masts. Make her shipshape, and stay with the boat until morning. Reassess if things change. But for now, I do everything I can to keep Valkyrien afloat. I know these hands. I can move through this, one step at a time. Move through the list.”

  I pulled the sail in tight and cleated off the boom, then leaned forward, gathering as much sail as I could hold, and wrapped my body around the boom, and tied the violent sail down. Then I shuffled aft along the boom, leaning over and hugging it again—I tied the second knot. The sail shook much less now, and I continued wrapping rope around it until finally this main, too, lay steadfast.

  Check Two.

  I moved to the tip of the bow where the bowsprit had shattered. I wrapped the halyard around the wreckage of the sprit still attached to the bow, holding my breath each time Valkyrien dove beneath a wave. I thought of Maxey in that earlier storm. I tied a bowline, then slid behind the front hatch and back behind the mast, and I pulled as hard as I could on the halyard.

  The new rig worked like a miracle. The moment I tightened down, both masts stopped about 80 percent of their movement. Much of the sound of wood moving hard against wood dissipated, and the boat smoothed out markedly.

  I quickly moved forward and tied on a second halyard. Each time we struck a wave, the masts bent forward, causing the halyards to slacken. But I took in the slack behind each wave until the masts did not move any longer. The boat continued to pitch and yaw, and waves broke over the bow, submerging the deck and roiling over me. But I felt great relief at stabilizing the masts.

  Check Three.

  A pile of wreckage hung off Valkyrien’s bow. These ropes and chains and cables and netting, powered by the wind and the waves, slammed the heavy broken bowsprit against the side of the boat, jarring Valkyrien with every smash, halting her in the sea, and tipping her sideways. I had to get hold of some piece of this shambles and begin pulling it in. I figured if I could grasp one line and brace myself sufficiently, I could, bit by bit, bring the whole mass aboard.