Once during the night Linda crept feebly to the hatch steps and started to cry out to her husband and ask if he needed her. But she heard him singing, bellowing against the wind an old song, “The Green Door,” and she knew that if he could sing, then both he and the Triton were healthy. Jim passed the early night hours sitting at the radio shelf, straining to pick up weather reports, receiving instead only static or an occasional maddening fragment of dance music. Most of the time he kept his head buried in his hands, not in sleep, but in prayer. He felt that he had unleashed God’s wrath with his radio lie, that the storm was his punishment. It was the most terrifying night of his life, for he was not prepared to die with a sin staining his soul.
Near dawn, as the skies lightened from black to mauve, with streaks of dark gold on the horizon like ribbons on the package of a new day, Bob felt the waves would ease. Instead, he witnessed the birth of a new terror—massive whirlpools on the port side, whirlpools a hundred feet across. Now it was Bob’s fear that the Triton would be lured into one of these gaping holes as terrible as the mouth of a volcano, that she would be pulled into the depths of the sea and splintered. He dared not take his eye off the compass for an instant, for if it slipped below 165, there was the danger of broaching. That calamity can happen when a boat turns sideways to high winds and the main wave. If the Triton broached, she would surely capsize, as trimarans have a tendency to do, and be sucked into an eternal whirlpool.
Below, after a marathon of praying and repentance, Jim turned on his radio again at 7 A.M., and, waiting for it to warm up, argued silently with himself. For more than ten hours he had endured God’s punishment, and now it was time for him to take the helm. Would he have the strength to bear the winds, as Bob had done so well? He had confidence in the seaworthiness of his boat, but was he interfering with God’s will by challenging the storm? Perhaps God had a plan for the Triton. Perhaps it was futile for him to interfere.
On the other hand, Jim reasoned, he held responsibility toward his passengers, Bob and Linda. Bound by friendship and kinship, he must get them to safe harbor. Help and rescue were but a few miles away, toward the east, at any of a number of California ports. It would be simple to call the Coast Guard for assistance. But if he did, how would he explain his fraudulent use of the radio and his fictitious call letters?
His fingers reached for the knobs to begin vocal transmission, but they failed him. He could not face the disgrace of conviction, of answering to a crime whose penalty could be two years in prison and a fine of $10,000. God’s work in Costa Rica was more important than that risk. The storm would surely die soon. The best thing, he decided, was to alert his friend in Auburn that they had encountered a storm, but that the Triton had bested it.
Quickly Jim tapped out his identification to Wes Parker in Auburn. In code, Jim reported that there had been high seas and winds, but that they were subsiding. Twice he repeated, “We are OK.” Signing off abruptly, he made no requests for Parker to pass on messages of assurance to his wife or to Bob and Linda’s people.
A noise behind Jim made him turn. Linda, still in her nightclothes, very ill, stumbled to the hatch steps to see if Bob needed his thermos jug filled with hot tea. At that moment, another giant wave slapped the Triton, and Linda grabbed a beam to keep from pitching forward onto the wet floor. She stayed there for a moment, as if glued to the board, her slim body shaking in sickness and fear.
Abruptly Jim turned back to the radio and prepared to find help. Setting the indicator on the 40 meter band, he began announcing his fictitious call letters, T12JF, interspersing with the triple break. In amateur radio, a triple break means emergency. The first receiver to pick up his plea was so faint, so far away that Jim could barely hear. Later he would tell Bob he thought he had reached Guam, an unlikely possibility considering the inexpensive antenna, hardly more effective than a car radio whiplash. But within ten minutes, response was heard from a seventy-two-year-old ham operator named N. C. De-Wolfe, who lived in San Carlos, California, twenty-five miles south of San Francisco. While making his morning broadcast and chatting idly with fellow hams, DeWolfe heard a faint voice, fading in and out weakly, crying “Break! Break! Break!” Immediately DeWolfe terminated his other conversations and answered the distress call.
Transmission was so weak that DeWolfe could barely hear, but he was able to determine that the caller was aboard a ship, was requesting a telephone patch to the nearest Coast Guard office. “Stand by,” shouted De-Wolfe, quickly finding his telephone book and looking up the number for Search and Rescue in South San Francisco. Accomplishing the patch, DeWolfe monitored anxiously as the conversation from sea to the Coast Guard took place.
Jim gave his name, the identity of his boat, his destination of Los Angeles (he did not mention Eureka or San Francisco), and said the Triton carried a crew of three. High winds and waves were being encountered, he said, but the storm was easing. He estimated the Triton was seventy-five miles southwest of Cape Mendocino. The duty officer at the Coast Guard said, “Do you need assistance?” Jim replied, “Negative. Do not need assistance at this moment.… We are becalmed.” Then, after a few moments of crackling, suspenseful silence, transmission went dead.
Now N. C. DeWolfe happened to be a most thorough man, and he could not let a mystery like that go un-pursued. Never in fifty years of ham radio had he picked up an emergency call, heard someone in distress somewhere on the sea ask to be linked to the Coast Guard, then listened while the caller contended that, after all, he needed no assistance.
It’s crazy, thought DeWolfe. Immediately he notified WESCARS, an emergency network of California amateur radio operators who are on constant standby to be used in case of disasters. DeWolfe told of the strange call from the Triton and advised his fellow hams to be alert for another distress message. In the meantime, DeWolfe kept his radio on the same channel and tried to raise the Triton through the call letters Jim had used. All morning long DeWolfe broadcast Jim’s name, his letters, his boat. But he was unable to elicit a sound from her.
A few minutes before nine that morning, Jim climbed to the cockpit to relieve Bob, now exhausted to the point of numbness, his hands long since a part of the wheel. But his face showed unconcealed pride at having held the boat throughout the night.
He had been on the radio, Jim said, looking out in wonder at the sea, still mountainous about them, still churning with white anger, still spawning the sucking whirlpools. The wind gauge was below 30, but the waves seemed higher than Jim had imagined them.
Over the winds, Bob cried, “We may need some help! It doesn’t seem to be slacking any. For a while, about six this morning, I thought it was calming, but she kicked up again and now it’s just as bad as last night.” In exclamation, a wave crashed, sending showers from the sea into the cockpit. Both men were drenched to their waists. “Who did you call?” yelled Bob.
“I think I got Guam the first time,” said Jim. “Then I talked to Wes Parker. I told him we were in a storm, but that we didn’t need any help right now. Then I reached a man named DeWolfe in San Carlos and he phone-patched me to the Coast Guard.”
“What’d you tell the Coast Guard?” Bob’s strength was suddenly leaving him, now that he was ready to turn the wheel over to Jim. He wondered if he could unpry his hands, if he had the stamina to fall down the steps and into his bed.
“About the same.”
“Did you ask for help?”
Jim evaded the question. He seemed unready to answer.
“So what happened, Jim?” pressed Bob. “What’d the Coast Guard say?”
After a time came Jim’s reply, a soft and hollow one, as if he had found it with difficulty, as if the words were located in a forbidden, even sinful place. And the winds roared about his words, so that they were delivered in a cacophony. Later, Bob would wonder if he had heard them correctly. “They said they’d probably have a plane out sometime today,” said Jim. “But I told them that no assistance was needed.”
Bob stared at Jim incr
edulously. “You don’t think we need any help? You realize how long this has been going on?”
Jim nodded, chewing on his lip.
Bob felt anger growing.
“Jim, this is serious. I’ve fought this boat all night long. I’m beat. I can’t hold her any longer. I think you’d better call the Coast Guard and get some help out here.”
“I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“The battery’s low. It won’t work the radio.”
Bob slammed his clenched fist against the railing of the cockpit. “Then start the motor and recharge the battery. Dammit, Jim, move!”
Jim shook his head helplessly. “The battery’s too low to start the motor. We’ll have to wait. Maybe later this morning.” Now the color was gone from Jim’s face, and his voice seemed curiously separate from his body. Bob wondered if Jim really understood the severity of the situation.
“I’ve got to get some rest, Jim. Do you think you can take her for a while? I’ll come back as soon as I can.”
Jim nodded. Carefully, twice, Bob explained the dual wave systems still at war with the Triton. He showed Jim how vital it was to keep the compass reading between 165 and 185. “If she falls below 165, we’ll broach. Do you understand that, Jim?” Bob fairly screamed the warning at Jim’s soaked face, inches away, but the winds grabbed his words and swallowed them.
“She’s mine,” said Jim. “I built her. I understand her.”
“Then take her! I’m about to pass out!”
Without stripping off the bulk of his wet clothes, Bob fell down the steps and through the curtains and into the bunk, burying his face in the pillow, throwing an arm about Linda and drawing her to him. For a few moments he was silent, then he turned and saw her face, and as he gripped her as tightly as he could, he broke down and wept, tears falling on his cheeks. Linda understood what he had gone through and why his tears were necessary. She was proud of him, and between the sobs, she tried to gentle him.
“I’m glad we’re getting off in San Francisco,” she said, “I’ve had it with sailboats.”
“It was the worst thing I ever went through,” said Bob, his voice unsteady. “Just the physical torture, not letting up, knowing that at any moment the thing could flip.”
“I know. I’m just glad you were there instead of Jim. He had a hard night, too. He spent the whole time praying.”
At that moment, 9:05 A.M., the Triton broached for the first time.
Only five minutes after taking the wheel of his boat, Jim let the compass reading slip below 165, and the boat turned sideways against a giant wave, a force that slapped it broadside and sent a rending shudder across its timbers. Leaping out of the bunk, Bob ran to the hatch steps and cried, “Jim, watch it! Don’t let her broach again. We lucked out that time!”
By the time Bob got back to bed, the Triton broached a second time. Another sickening scream of uncountable tons of water crashing against one ton of frail sailboat. Bob started to rise in fear and worry. “I’ve got to go back up there,” he said. “I don’t think Jim can handle her.”
“But you’ve got to have some sleep—” began Linda. She was not allowed to finish her sentence.
At 9:18 A.M., this time with no sound, nothing but an eerie silence, the Triton broached for the third and last time.
The wave snatched her, squeezed her in its power, and flipped the Triton completely over. In the cockpit, Jim was hurled out and down and into the violent sea. And below, Bob and Linda were thrown out of their bunk, onto a floor that had seconds before been the ceiling. The seawater rushed in and over their upside-down world, quickly filling the doomed trimaran.
(5)
In the few moments it took to accommodate to the disaster, Bob watched helplessly as the water poured into the Triton’s innards. Linda backed into a corner, holding out her hands as if she could forbid the water to reach or touch her. Then Bob collected his senses and dived for his wife. In an almost fluid action he ripped off her pajama bottoms, found a pair of jeans, stuffed her into them, found a sweat shirt, pulled it over her head, crammed her into a life jacket, found a rope, lashed her to him, and began swimming for an exit.
“Take a big breath,” he ordered. Linda gulped air and held her nose. They plunged down into the shockingly cold water. Finding the central hatch door ajar, Bob shoved with his hands and it broke off easily. They swam through the hole, plunging further into the depths to avoid the broken pieces of mast and railing. They swam for what seemed an eternity, probably thirty seconds, their lungs aching and bursting, until Bob felt they were clear of the Triton and able to surface.
When they came up, the Triton was an arm’s length away, helpless as a dead whale, only the hump visible above the water, with two smaller whales—the outriggers—in escort. Bob grabbed the slippery boards and pulled Linda and himself onto what had been the Triton’s cerulean bottom, now the only part not claimed by the sea. Everything else—mast, sails, cockpit, sleeping quarters, cupboards, supplies, clothing, charts, barometer, chronometer, radar reflectors—all were under water. The exposed bottom was slimy, hard to hold, but sheer will kept Bob sprawled on the surface, Linda digging her hands into his shoulders.
Only when the shock began to wear away, perhaps a few seconds, perhaps five minutes, did Bob remember that Jim had been at the wheel at the moment of capsizing.
Both began to call for Jim. Linda spotted him, swimming frantically toward the upturned hull.
Disappearing from sight as the great waves washed over him, Jim fought his way along the safety line that bound him to the cockpit. Now it was his umbilical cord. Choking, flopping at last onto the overturned boat, he collapsed, slipping back toward the water until Bob pushed out a leg near enough for him to grab.
But none of them could last here long, no more than a man could dangle indefinitely by his fingertips from the roof of a building. Their hands were cold, their fingers numbing, and soon they would lose their grip. Desperately, Bob looked about for a better place. At the stern, the steel railings of the cockpit were visible, not totally submerged. “Over there!” Bob shouted. He began to inch his way, Linda still lashed to him. In the journey of ten feet, the ropes trailing from each of them became entangled, and Bob saw that he would have to duck into the water and under the railing, else his line would snag and deny him refuge. He could not bear the idea of going under again, so he felt for his knife to cut the line. But while he sawed, the knife fell from his slippery hands to his knee. He reached for it, missed, and the knife tumbled to the bottom of the ocean. Cursing, he watched it vanish. A Swiss knife, with numerous tools and gadgets, by day’s end it would have been priceless.
The waves had ebbed to ten-foot swells that came rolling over them with punishing regularity, floggers with merciless whips. There was no discussion about trying to right the overturned boat. The two men knew that would be impossible without a block and tackle, a pulley, and the labor of several men in a still marina. Instead, the three survivors could only huddle together, half submerged in the still angry sea. Jim offered no apologies for his seamanship, but his face reflected his shame and his agony.
Linda was first to spot the debris floating away. She called out, whereupon they all saw the bright red bobbing corks attached to the fishing reels drifting away from them. After that came gasoline cans and clothing and boxes of food, a parade of flotsam.
“We won’t need them anyway,” said Jim. He looked at his watch, which still worked. It was almost 10 A.M.
“You’re sure they’re sending a plane?” asked Bob.
Jim nodded. But the nod lacked conviction, and though Bob wanted to pin him down, to wrestle the precise words of the Coast Guard from him, he feared to press the subject lest it shatter under examination. At that moment, more than steel railings were needed to cling to.
Until almost noon, they hung to the railings, their eyes turned to the skies, watching, waiting, listening for the sound of the plane.
Bob had held Lin
da so long that he did not realize her body was limp in his arms. Only when she began to jerk and twist, thrashing in convulsions totally out of his grasp, only then did Bob realize something terrible was happening to his wife. Within seconds, her face turned white, then the bluish white of dead winter, and her eyes rolled to the top of their sockets. She collapsed, falling against the rail like a marionette shorn of strings.
“Linda’s out!” cried Bob, grabbing her and throwing her down onto the arching surface of the Triton. He flung his body over her, pressing his mouth to her, gulping the salt-flecked wind and blowing it into his wife’s lifeless form. Linda’s dead! he sobbed inwardly, furious at the irony of surviving the capsizing, cheating the cold sea, and now losing her so unexpectedly to classic shock.
But abruptly she gasped—her chest heaved, and tiny bubbles of air appeared on her lips. Linda’s eyes burst open and stared wildly. She pushed Bob away from her as if he were a molesting stranger and tried to rise on the slippery incline. Standing uncertainly, as frail in the winds as a blossom, her eyes darkened. An odd mask of anger dropped across them. She flung out her hands in a don’t-come-near-me attitude, the same she had used in their cabin in futile attempt to stop the sea from menacing her. And she began to scream.
“You’re killing me!” she shrieked at both of the men watching helplessly beside her. Then she lashed out in fury at the master of the Triton. “Why are you trying to murder me, Jim? Why? Why? Why?”
Bob moved toward her, but she shoved him away. Her screams quieted into babble, a jumble of weeping, cursing pleas for her daddy, cries for a lost doll. “She’s hallucinating,” murmured Bob, while Jim edged backward in horror. Then she stopped and looked at the two men as if she had just been introduced—shyly, a moment of coquettishness. Then the screams commenced again—primitive, animal-like shrieks, like nothing Bob had ever heard.
Lost! Page 4