A Mile Down

by David Vann

  When the winds finally died down, we had been delayed a full week, and another storm was supposed to come soon. A weather window of three or four days, long enough for us to get clear of the area, was predicted, so I decided to make a dash for it.

  WE WATCHED THE Pillars of Hercules passing astern and followed the African shoreline. After an hour or two, we hit large standing waves, almost twenty feet high. We weren’t in the mouth of the strait anymore, but even this far out, the tremendous volume of water draining from the Mediterranean to meet Atlantic swells was causing the same kind of standing waves I had seen while rafting Alaskan rivers with my father. They’re called standing waves because they stay in one place, where the collision of forces causes them. In rivers, they’re behind underwater boulders. In the ocean, they’re at the meeting point of opposing currents, usually over shallower water. They’re extremely dangerous not just from overall height but from how steep they are and how close together, and I could not avoid them. Even in a ninety-foot sailing yacht, the force of the waves was frightening.

  Luckily we had strong engines and were through quickly. By late afternoon, we cleared the lighthouse on the final point. The hills were lush and green, not quite how I had imagined Morocco. But the water was bright turquoise, the air warm. The African coast would fall steadily away to port, and we’d be in the Canary Islands in three or four days. We couldn’t raise our sails yet, since the wind was straight on our nose, but after the Canaries we could run downwind all the way to Mexico. And we’d be arcing south, to catch the tradewinds, so we’d soon be able to trade our foul-weather gear for shorts and T-shirts.

  That evening the seas increased a bit and the ride was bouncy, but at the time I went below to sleep we were still making 11 knots, very fast time, plowing into each wave with a concussion that sent spray over the pilothouse. All systems were checking out perfectly and the crew were in high spirits.

  I fell asleep with Nancy in one of the aft staterooms but was awakened suddenly by a loud metallic popping sound right underneath us. I checked my watch to see it was 1:33 A.M. When things go seriously wrong, you have to keep track of the time.

  In the ten seconds it took me to run up on deck, the boat had gone into a spin, the engines still on full, the boat lurching wildly.

  “Put the engines in neutral,” I yelled, but Emi was panicked and Nick looked stunned. So I pushed them aside and cut the engines myself. The seas were thrown up in jagged shapes by our spin, their edges caught in moonlight. The wooden helm turned idly in my hands, offering no resistance.

  Matt came on deck, then Nancy.

  “It’s the steering or the rudder,” I said. “I need to check the hydraulic ram under the bed. Matt, get the emergency tiller.”

  I went below and took the mattress off, but I couldn’t raise the plywood piece under our bed; it was cut too tight. This was why I hadn’t checked on the ram before we left. I could hear the rudder banging against the hull and hear wood being ripped apart. I asked Nancy to get Matt and a flathead screwdriver.

  When she returned, Matt and I pried the board with two screwdrivers, then Nancy turned on the flashlight and we saw the hydraulic ram disconnected from the fitting on the rudder post. Every time the rudder swung underneath and banged the hull, the fitting on the post tore into the wooden wall separating this stateroom from the next.

  “We have to stop the rudder from swinging,” I said. “It could open up our hull.”

  So we went back up on deck. The emergency tiller was heavy iron about eight feet long, with a fitting to attach to the rudder post. Once attached, it swung back and forth with the full force of the huge rudder beneath in large seas. We were not strong enough to stop it. Emi came very close to having her legs crushed between the tiller and the poop deck.

  “Tie it off on the winches,” I yelled. The wind was over thirty knots and howling.

  The others weren’t sure what to do, but Matt grabbed a spare halyard and I grabbed a dock line. We caught the end of the tiller, then wrapped the lines around the winches. The big primary winches were strong enough to pull the tiller to the center and hold it there.

  “Okay,” I yelled over the wind. “We need to go below now and reattach it. Matt, we’ll need the big adjustable wrench and some of the larger C-wrenches, twenty-four and above. Emi and Nick, stay up here and make sure those lines stay on the tiller. Nancy, check on Barbara to make sure she’s all right.”

  I was not happy to have one of my lenders onboard. The boat was new, and this kind of thing should not have been happening.

  When we went below, we could see the rudder post still moving a bit. So we tried tightening the lines with the winches, but there was no way to get it absolutely still in those seas. This was a problem, because the stainless steel shaft from the hydraulic ram had a threaded end that had to be screwed into the fitting on the rudder post. You can’t screw something in unless it’s lined up perfectly. I felt the despair I had felt on many occasions that summer and fall since the final stages of building and launch, when the sheer size and weight of the boat presented something too industrial to manage.

  But for Matt, who had done hundreds of impossible, shitty tasks in worse weather on purse-seiners in southeastern Alaska, this was just another day at the office. He crawled down in with the rudder post and ram, at home with the rumble of the engines and the lurching back and forth in seas, and told me to line up the ram while he held the post in place. So I tried to line up the ram with one hand, ready with a wrench in the other.

  We tried a lot of times, timing it with the waves. Matt was grunting and then yelling in frustration, grease on his hands, the fitting slipping and pulling away from him. We came close enough to turn the wrench several times, but the threads wouldn’t hold. It had to be lined up perfectly.

  Matt’s hands and arms were in close to where the fitting kept jerking past the ram; he could have gotten caught between the two pieces of steel. And I didn’t know what we would do if we couldn’t get the ram reattached. Then Matt yelled, “Now!” and I turned the wrench as fast as I could and we had done it. The rudder post was reattached. I tightened the safety, the piece that had somehow failed, and hurried back on deck.

  The crew untied the lines on the tiller while I put the engines in gear. I did several tests at slow speed, and everything felt fine. We topped off the steering fluid to be safe, but the steering wasn’t slipping. It felt firm. So I bumped the engines back up, though not quite as fast as before, and changed our course for Casablanca. We needed to check the rudder and hull for damage before continuing on to the Canaries. It would be a delay of a day or two but hopefully not more.

  Emi and Nick took their watch again, and the rest of us returned to bed, exhausted. I lay awake for a while wondering why I had chosen this kind of life, feeling afraid of the boat, afraid of the wind and sea, afraid of the licenses and permits I would have to apply for again in Mexico, afraid most of all of my bills and debts, especially after the damage Amber had done. If John’s loan didn’t come through immediately, I wouldn’t have enough money even for diesel, or to pay the crew when we arrived. This life I was leading now was in many ways completely irrational, which made it seem plausible that I was doing all of this for unconscious reasons, trying to relive my father’s life, for instance, or testing whether I’d kill myself as he had if things got bad enough. There had to be something going on that I wasn’t fully aware of, because this was crazy.

  I fell asleep finally, and when I awoke, it was only a few hours later to a hideously loud bang beneath me and the same fullspeed spin.

  On deck, the crew had already cut the engines and Matt was getting the emergency tiller. The wind and seas had come up even more, which was not good.

  I went below and looked under the bed, surprised to find the ram still connected. Everything looked fine with the post and its fitting and the ram. “Tell them to turn the wheel all the way to port, then all the way to starboard,” I told Nancy, and when they did, I could see the rudder post
turn just as it was supposed to, but we were still lurching in circles.

  I went back on deck and tried the wheel myself. “We’ve lost our rudder,” I said. I couldn’t believe it had happened, but it had. If the steering gear works, but there’s no response, and there’s no sound of a loose rudder banging the underside of the hull, then there’s no rudder down there. Shaped like the tail of an airplane, with the one severed stainless steel post sticking out, it was flying down to the bottom of the ocean.

  There was one ship near us on the radar. We could see its lights far off to port. I hailed on the VHF and said we were disabled and needing assistance.

  “This is the Birgit Sabban. I am not able to give you a tow,” the very German voice of the captain came back. “I have limited maneuverability in these seas.”

  “Please stand by on sixteen,” I told him, and I tried hailing the Moroccan Coast Guard and any other vessels in the area but received no response.

  I put the engines in gear and tried steering with them on our previous heading, giving the starboard engine more thrust when I wanted to turn to port, and vice-versa. It worked a bit.

  The crew were watching me. “That’s crazy,” Matt finally said. “You can’t keep going without a rudder.”

  “We can steer with the engines,” I said.

  “Maybe you can,” Nick said. “But not us.”

  They were right, of course. It was crazy. I couldn’t steer all the way to Casablanca myself, without help. At slow speed, it would take more than a day to get there, maybe longer. And then, as I was thinking these things, distracted, the boat went into a spin.

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re right. It doesn’t make sense to try to steer without a rudder in seas.”

  “Right-o, then,” Nick said in his fake British accent. “At least we’ve established that.”

  Everyone grinned. I put the engines back in neutral, then left the helm for the Inmarsat-C station in the main salon. I sent a distress message saying we were disabled, without a rudder, and in need of assistance. Then I returned to the radio.

  The German captain was planning to go into the port of Kinitra at daylight, in just an hour or so, to pick up cargo.

  “I need you to stay here,” I said. “We need assistance. We can’t make way consistently in the same direction without our rudder.”

  “I’ll be in radio contact,” he said. “I am proceeding now to Kinitra. I will continue to try to reach the Moroccan Coast Guard for you on short, medium, and high frequency radio.”

  He was leaving us. “You’re required by international law to stay and provide assistance,” I said. “I have reported the name of your vessel, the Birgit Sabban, by Inmarsat-C, and I expect you to remain here.”

  There was some delay after this. “Okay,” he finally said. “We will remain here with you until daylight and then attempt a tow.” I thanked him and we waited for daylight.

  As we waited, however, the wind and seas kept increasing. The wind was over forty knots and the seas fifteen to eighteen feet. I was using the engines to try to keep our bow into the waves, but I also couldn’t stray too far from the German ship and I couldn’t keep us straight anyway. Every time we went broadside to the waves we rolled hideously. The waves were a bit too small to be able to capsize us by rolling us over, but it felt close.

  The German captain raised the Moroccan Coast Guard on medium wave radio, but the Moroccans couldn’t send out any boats because of the rough weather. All they could offer was a helicopter with a diver, if we wanted to abandon ship. This option would be possible only during daylight.

  “We need a tow,” I told the German captain. “We need a very long bridle with a shackle, and we need a tow line long enough that it will be submerged to absorb shock. We’re over a hundred tons.”

  “Do you have this tow line?” he asked.

  “No,” I said. “Nothing long enough or heavy enough.”

  “Well, I don’t have this equipment either.”

  “You have long dock lines that are thick enough,” I said. “Give us one of those for a bridle, and a shackle if you have it, and then make several lines into a long towline to tie onto it.”

  “We will see what we have,” he said.

  Daylight was a dull metallic color in this weather. The German ship was green and 300 feet long. It made a slow circle and passed in front of us, into the wind and waves.

  “I am limited in maneuverability,” the captain said. “I can only make a track into the wind and you will have to bring your bow up to my stern.”

  “I have no rudder,” I said.

  “This is all I can do, or I will not have control in these seas.”

  So I used the engines to steer the boat. The wind and seas continued to build, the waves very sharp, becoming twenty-footers packed close together, driven by wind over fifty knots. I could get the boat moving several knots forward, catching up to the freighter, but then my bow would take three feet of solid water over the top and the boat would slew to the side from the impact. The wind would catch us as we came up high over the next twenty-foot wave and blow us into a spin. In the spin, another twenty-footer would catch us broadside and roll us more than fifty degrees, which meant looking down across 21.5 feet of deck more or less straight into the water. Fifty knots of wind has tremendous force. The engines were strong, and I was using all the power they had, but if the wind caught the boat right, there was no stopping the spin without a rudder.

  An hour later, when I was finally in position behind the stern of the freighter, I tried to hide in its wind shadow, but it was weaving a bit. The German ship’s crew was on the stern, ready to throw small lines with monkey’s fists, a knot shaped like a ball. To get close enough for my crew to catch one of these, I would need to place our bowsprit within about twenty feet of the German ship, which was a fearsome sight. The stern of the freighter was fifty feet high and flared on the sides, so that when the stern came down after each wave, it flattened the seas with a loud crash and then a sucking sound as it rose up again. I had to use the engines to keep my bow straight behind the freighter’s stern, but I couldn’t drift forward any faster than the freighter was going.

  I hated to take my hands off the throttles, but I had to radio the other captain. “This is just to verify that you’ll be sending a long line to us first, which we will use as a bridle, tying it to both sides of our bow.”

  “I don’t have that line for you. I have only one tow line. This is the tow line they are throwing to you now.”

  “But that won’t work,” I said. “We can’t be towed from just one side of the bow. We have to have a bridle.”

  “You will have to put it in the center.”

  I couldn’t respond because I had to throw the starboard engine hard forward, the port engine hard reverse. The bow straightened but also jumped forward, very close to the freighter’s stern, which came down with a huge crash just as two men threw their lines, both of which fell short.

  “Put it in the center?” I yelled over the radio. “We have a bowsprit. And we have anchors that will sever the line.”

  I had to let go of the radio again.

  “We are doing our best,” the captain said. “We do not have what you are requesting.”

  “Nancy, go tell the crew this line is it. They have to get it attached through the hole in the bow for the anchors and then to a cleat or the windlass, preferably a cleat.” We had enormous steel cleats that were welded to the steel deck underneath the teak.

  Nancy worked her way forward along the rail, struggling to hold on amid the spray and storm-force wind.

  Our bow went up over a wave just as the freighter’s stern drifted to the side, so the wind caught us full blast and spun us, dipping our rail almost to the water. I held on to the throttles and saw the crew holding on to lifelines and keeping so low for balance they were lying on the deck. As we came back around, the boat stalled broadside and I gunned the engines at full power to bring the bow up. I tried not to appear panicked, since Bar
bara was on deck now. She didn’t know how to swim. She was wearing a lifejacket, sitting braced against a table, and not saying anything. I didn’t like it at all that she or anyone else was experiencing this.

  The bow came around under force of the engines, but the trick, with no rudder, was to avoid coming around so fast as to then spin the other way. I had to ease off at the right moment. I succeeded this time, and was able to go straight for a minute and catch up to the freighter, but I was blown in a circle once more before getting the bow up to their stern for another attempt. This time our bowsprit must have come within ten feet of their stern. Completely terrifying. My crew up there and the boat only minimally under my control. Nancy was back beside me, drenched even in her foul weather gear. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and then watched the crew.

  The freighter crew threw lines again, three of them at the same time, which didn’t make any sense, but Matt, in a leap on that rolling, pitching deck, right at the lifelines, caught one. He and Nick and Emi hauled the line in and I tried to keep us in position. Tiny, fast adjustments.

  They led the line through the gap for the starboard anchor and threw the loop around the cleat just as I was losing the boat to starboard. We were blown sideways away from the freighter as the line played out from their end, and then I saw the freighter crew cleating it off.