Blue Water

by Lindsay Wright

  I whisked them ashore in the big inflatable and motored slowly back to the boat, tied the dinghy astern and walked on deck. I could just see the four French people, delving into the hamper and settling back onto a picnic blanket on shore. But something felt different about the boat — sort of sluggish and uggy. I swung below, and my bare feet splashed into about 2 centimetres of water over the cabin sole.

  ‘Sacré bleu!’ I thought. My brain was stuck in French. I stood for a second or two and thought, then splashed through to the forward toilet. The water inexorably rose as I splashed about checking all the sea-cocks and through-hull openings … they all appeared to be intact. The water was getting close to the under-seat lockers where all the neatly folded linen, freshly laundered for the charter, was stowed. Finally, I threw open the doors to the engine compartment and there, staring back at me with one round seawater-green eye, was the culprit. The propeller shaft normally passes through a stern gland which prevents water from entering the boat as the shaft spins. There was no shaft in sight — just a 50-millimetre hole welling water into the engine room. ‘Bloody beaut,’ I reverted to Kiwi English. ‘I could be the first Caribbean charter skipper to have a boat sink under him on the first day of the charter.’

  I grabbed a wooden bung, kept for just this purpose, from the bin of spare parts on the bulkhead and rammed it into the hole. What next? I scrambled up on deck, wrenched open a cockpit locker and snatched a dive mask and snorkel from inside. Hurriedly slamming them on my face, I stepped overboard and began to paddle around.

  The reduced gravity felt good and the water cooled my sweaty brow while I paddled around looking for the errant propeller and shaft. Surely a bloody great bronze propeller and 3 metres of 50-millimetre stainless-steel shaft couldn’t have gone far, could they?

  I didn’t have far to look. Both propeller and shaft were nuzzled into the sandy sea floor a few metres behind the boat, like they’d been there forever. I sucked in a deep breath and swam down, grabbed the shaft in mid-span, and lunged across the sea floor towards the boat, hefting the shaft like an Olympic javelin thrower. The propeller shaft slid back into the gaping hole, and I shot to the surface where I lay for a minute or two gasping air back into my lungs. Ducking under again, I slid the shaft all the way into the boat, then popped to the surface and clambered on board.

  So, now I’d stopped the water coming in — how to get rid of what was already there? I grabbed a bucket, swung below, lifted a sole board out of the way and began bucketing furiously. It’s said that there’s no faster and more efficient method of removing water from a sinking boat than a scared human being with a bucket. Danger to life and limb had long passed, but I still had a charter to complete and a reputation to maintain (for better or for worse), so I kept on hoisting dollops of Caribbean Sea out of the boat in about 15-litre portions.

  The water dropped below the sole boards and I stopped to rethink. Walking forward, I closed the sea-cock which allowed water in to flush the forward toilet. Using a screwdriver from the engine room, I removed the hose from the sea-cock and jammed it deep in the bilge, then jammed the handle of a deck broom against the ‘Flush’ button. The toilet was now busy pumping more water out of the boat.

  Buoyed by that success, I did the same in the galley; took the fresh-water hose off the valve manifold to the water tanks, dumped it in the bilge and set the tap running in the galley to pump sea water overboard through the sink drain.

  I braced myself for the engine room. If there was water in the engine oil, it would mean an ignominious tow home. It soon became obvious why propeller shaft and boat had parted company in such an effortless and potentially disastrous manner. Instead of a key and keyway to hold the shaft in the gearbox coupling, there were two measly grub screws which wouldn’t have been up to retaining the topping on a shepherd’s pie.

  Roundly cursing, in French and Kiwi, the engineers who had committed this abomination and then sent someone to sea in it, I backed the grub screws off, slid the shaft into the coupling and tightened them as much as I could. A hose clamp, screwed firmly around the shaft, should stop it from abandoning ship so readily next time — because there surely would be a next time; whenever the gearbox was put astern, in fact.

  I’d been lucky with the engine — the water level had stopped just below the oil dipstick level. A few litres more would have leaked into the sump, diluted the oil, and made the engine inoperable. A check of the dipstick showed that seawater had found its way into the gearbox’s oily innards, though, and that would have to be dealt with later.

  Working frantically in the confined space, with sweat drooling down my face and dripping off my chin, I closed the engine cooling-water sea-cock, took the hose off and plunged it deep into the bilge under the engine. The engine rattled to life and began sucking water from the bilge, which gratifyingly lowered the level almost immediately. Next was the big double-action manual bilge pump beside the companionway stairs. I took a deep breath, grasped the black plastic ball on top of the handle and began to pump, changing arms as they began to ache with the exertion.

  First I heard the forward bilge slurp dry, and jumped to turn the toilet pump off. The galley fresh-water pump was next, and I sucked the last few litres out of the main bilge with the hand pump. Next was the engine, and I squatted beside it until I could begin to see the suction pipe; then turned it off. I grabbed the store of fresh towels from my cabin and mopped round the boat to remove the last drops of moisture; then put the kettle on.

  Coffee in hand, I climbed to the cockpit and stretched my back. All was well with the world: the boat wasn’t sinking, the coffee tasted great, we’d saved the day. The sun blazed down and the yacht lay towards the warm and gentle trade winds which funnelled through her interior to dispel any last vestiges of involuntary submersion.

  I wondered what would have happened had I accepted my guests’ offer to join them on the beach. There we would have lain, soaking up the rays, while the boat slowly sank and one of us realized that it had disappeared. Thinking about the resultant Anglo/French linguistic babble made me smile. I glanced in the direction of Honeymoon Cay. There, jumping comically up and down on the blinding white shore, were the French people, waving their arms in the air. I thought I could hear outraged cries; things like ‘Merde’ and ‘Sacré bleu’.

  I sighed and climbed down to the inflatable, started the outboard motor and headed into the beach. From the coolness of my reception, I gathered that the charter guests had been trying to attract my attention for some time. ‘Aahhh — juste un petit problème avec le bateau,’ I shrugged, but the bond we had been developing was broken and I could see I would have to work hard to regain their trust.

  ‘Capitaine — we go Prickly Pear Cay?’ the guests asked, once we were aboard.

  Prickly Pear is an aptly named coral atoll which barely breaks the sea surface a few miles further from Anguilla. Entry to the small anchorage is via a narrow dog-legged passage lined with coral crags. The engine seemed reliable enough, but the gearbox had recently swallowed a sizeable amount of sea water and the last thing I felt like doing was powering into Prickly Pear with an unreliable drive train.

  ‘C’est impossible,’ I lied through my teeth, ‘the tide is too low and we will be going into the sun and will have no vision.’ I suggested Road Bay, Anguilla as an alternative destination and, reluctantly, they concurred. Road Bay was a few kilometres to windward, wide open and reef free. We could sail in and anchor without using the engine and, while they went shopping ashore, I could buy some hydraulic oil and replace the sea-water-diluted lubricant in the gearbox.

  For once, it all went according to plan. We tacked into the bay, rounded gently into the wind and dropped the anchor without any mechanical assistance at all. The guests changed from beachwear into shore gear, and I dropped them on the beach with a hand-held radio so they could contact me when they wanted to come back aboard.

  As metropolises go, Anguilla is about as far removed from Paris as a mountain village in A
fghanistan. From a red British Telecom phone box that was straight out of Dr Who, I phoned the manager of the charter company and explained the problems I was having with the boat. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he replied, ‘but we haven’t got any other boats to spare at the moment — do you think you can keep it going for another few days?’

  After visiting every garage, workshop and even a ship on the island wharf, I managed to source the right type and amount of oil, and nipped back aboard to put it in the gearbox. That job finished and cleaned up, I lay down for a quick nap. The boat tugged gently at the anchor rope and little wavelets chortled along the hull. A cooling breeze swept through the forward hatch. I read for a few minutes, until the book slumped from my fingers and my eyelids drooped.

  ‘Bateau … bateau … c’est bateau mobile…’ the staccato radio call crackled. Bloody hell — I prised my eyelids open again and climbed wearily on deck. There they were, standing in the sand, shoes in hand, and waving frantically. I leapt into the inflatable and roared in to pick them up — reminding myself to show them how to operate the dinghy some time soon.

  Next day, we carefully negotiated the passage into the Prickly Pear anchorage and stopped her with the anchor without needing to put the engine into reverse and back the shaft out of the boat. I surreptitiously checked the coupling and nipped up the grub screws that night — drag on the propeller while sailing the boat had caused the shaft to slip back a few millimetres.

  The following day, we had a slow start and leisurely sail to Island Harbour; and, if my guests wondered why I checked the engine room so frequently, they didn’t ask or comment on it. Conditions were benign and they began relaxing into the holiday that they’d come for. That evening they took the boat ashore to dine and I checked the shaft and the engine and gearbox oil levels.

  The turbulent tidal waters of Scrub Island Passage gave us all a thorough testing; I clung to the wheel with half my mind in the engine room wondering whether or not the shaft would stay with us. Sure enough, when we anchored off Marigot that night, the shaft had backed almost the way out of the coupling. The week continued that way — my guests relaxed and became more personable, my French language improved, and we had great meals and plenty of laughs; but always the propeller shaft bored into the back of my subconscious.

  Sailing from anchorage to anchorage it was no problem and my guests began to enjoy the sailing and picking their way about under sail, but I dreaded returning the boat to the charter base at Philipsburg. Space was tight at the marina there and it would require some pretty tricky manoeuvring with the engine to back the boat into her berth — there was no way the shaft would survive that, and I could end up with more egg on my face than a weasel in a poultry farm.

  Finally the dreaded day arrived, and we sailed down the island and into Groote Baai. We dropped sail well out in the bay and the Frenchwomen disappeared below to begin packing their belongings for the flight home to Paris. I started the engine and, while it idled, rigged mooring lines and fenders, plenty of them. The Frenchmen sat back in the cockpit pointing out buildings and features ashore and enjoying their last few minutes of sunshine before returning to workaday Europe.

  I gently approached the marina, spotted a vacant berth and motored in. I would need boat speed to turn the boat and engine revs to stop her hitting the rock breakwater so I could back her into the berth. I clasped and unclasped sweaty palms on the boat’s stainless-steel steering wheel, headed in, spun the wheel to starboard and pushed the control lever forward to spin the boat to where I could back her into the berth.

  As the bow swung towards the breakwater, I moved the lever to reverse and gently increased the revolutions. The way began to come off the boat and the bows backed away from the rocks just a few metres ahead of us. I breathed a deep sigh of relief; then there was a clatter and the motor began to rev freely. ‘Bugger.’ I walked briskly forward, smugly congratulating myself on my cool professionalism, and dropped the anchor.

  ‘HEY … YA CAN’T ANCHOR THERE!’ an American yelled from a nearby cruising boat, but one of the charter-company dock hands was already forging towards us in a dinghy.

  ‘What’s the matter, mate?’ he asked.

  ‘C’est le moteur,’ I replied, ‘c’est buggered.’

  NO STASH, NO SPLASH

  For weeks, Sarah and I slept in the back of a friend’s pick-up truck in a marina car park and lived off the free finger-food that was handed out at happy hour in the local bars. We worked illegally, painting, varnishing and rigging yachts at local boat yards, until we bought Elkouba as a wreck from a Frenchman at River Bend Marina in Florida, in 1985. The deal was completed offshore — outside the 12-mile territorial zone — to avoid paying sales tax or import duties, and we started work immediately on her total refit.

  As the refit time-frame got longer and available funds shorter, we took positions as skipper and cook on a corporate super yacht in Connecticut and arranged for a boat yard at Fernandina Beach, in northern Florida, to complete a list of structural modifications to Elkouba. With our job start deadline looming, we began the week-long trip up the Intracoastal Waterway from Fort Lauderdale to Fernandina Beach with Elkouba’s 36-horsepower Volvo rattling away to propel her heavy steel hull at a tiresome 4 knots.

  The scenery made the trip worthwhile, though. One sunny morning, we rounded a right-angled bend somewhere in central Florida and exchanged waves with two old women taking the sun on a bench beside the canal. Seconds later, Elkouba ground to a halt on a mid-channel sand bar. Looking back, I saw one of the women, smiling widely, doff her broad-brimmed sunhat. We easily manoeuvred off and the women settled back to wait for the sand bar’s next victim to happen by.

  At another small Florida town, the local lift-bridge had had an electrical fire and jammed shut — and was likely to stay that way for a week or so. We motored across to a nearby marina, negotiated the use of their crane, and dropped Elkouba’s 12-metre mast on the deck before motoring gingerly under the bridge with just a few inches to spare between our heads and the rusty steel girders.

  Jacksonville was near the end of the journey. Early in the morning we steered our way through a cluster of local fishermen in aluminium punts; good ol’ boys resting rods on their bulbous bellies, swilling coffee from insulated mugs and staring glumly at the brown waters of the estuary. Our waves and smiles were rebuffed by indifference.

  With a few days up our sleeves and the end of the long haul in sight, we fancied a full American breakfast, so we tied Elkouba to the fuel dock at a riverside marina. She looked a shambles: the mast ran the length of the deck and overhung her hull at both ends, hurriedly bundled rigging was strewn all round, chancres of rust streaked the deck, and the toe rail, soon to be replaced, had rusted through in places.

  The pleasant lady in the marina office confirmed that the boat would be okay while we ate, and directed us to the nearest restaurant, a mile or so up the road. The food was classic American: bacon, eggs, pancakes, with multiple infusions of filter coffee.

  As we walked hand in hand in the early morning sun back to the boat, I noticed someone standing on the stern desultorily dangling a line in the water. He wasn’t dressed like the fishermen we’d seen on the river and was somehow lean and hard.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘this is our boat and we’re about to leave.’

  ‘Get on board,’ he snarled in reply and whipped out an identity card. I made out his mug shot and the words Drug Enforcement Agency, then noticed the bulge of a handgun, shoulder-holstered under his jacket. Looking below, I saw two more men in Elkouba’s saloon, tearing clothes and personal effects from our bags and shining torches into lockers and the bilge.

  Sarah and I exchanged looks of dismay. Elkouba, spartan though she was, was our first real home and sole possession in the world. We’d been home-invaded by a gang of gun-toting strangers.

  ‘OKAY, ASSHOLE,’ the lead man spat as I slid behind the saloon table, ‘WE KNOW YOU GOT DRUGS ON THIS BOAT — BY THIS TIME TOMORROW WE’RE GONNA HAVE IT CUT
INTO A THOUSAND PIECES. WE’RE GONNA FIND DEM DRUGS AND WHEN WE DO,’ he paused, ‘YOU’RE IN DEEP SHIT, BUDDY — YOU AND YOUR LITTLE LADY THERE. YOU GOIN’ TO JAIL FOR A LONG TIME, ASSHOLE — DOWN IN MIAMI WIT’ DEM CUBANS — THEY LIKE A BIT OF WHITE BOY — DEY’LL SPLIT YOU RIGHT IN HALF,’ he bellowed. A downward slash of his hand accentuated the threat and I writhed uncomfortably on the bench as I could almost feel the pack of Cuban inmates carrying out his threat. His flushed, thickset face was so close to mine I could feel his spit on my chin. The fingers of his right hand flexed around the grip of the handgun which lay on the table between us.

  ‘Aahh … but … we haven’t got any drugs — you’ve made a mistake,’ I spluttered. But I began to wonder — we’d just bought the boat, illegally without paying tax or import duty, from a shady Frenchman … what if there were drugs on board? What if we’d been set up?

  Plus, we’d been working illegally in the US for almost two years. What if they figured that out, confiscated the boat — which represented our life savings and some borrowed money besides — and turfed us out of the country? These boys were seriously scary — I thought back to The Deer Hunter movie and wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d decided to pistol-whip me and rape Sarah.

  During the ensuing interrogation, it turned out that the men were Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents from Jacksonville who had received a tip-off that a big marijuana shipment, inbound on a yacht from overseas, was imminent. Their resolve to make Elkouba into the drug bust of all time weakened as I pointed out that we couldn’t possibly have come from overseas with our mast on deck, no sails, no compass, no charts, limited cooking facilities and hardly any food aboard.