Just Staying Alive
1830hrs Sat 22 Jan
DUNEDIN NZ!
Hi Mum, hi Grandpa. Sorree. Sorree, sorry you haven’t heard much from me for a while. Been a bit busy just staying alive. Can’t say I wasn’t warned. Grib weather forecasts were the worst ever, so I knew it was coming. Trouble was I couldn’t get out of the way of it. Ellen MacArthur would have been able to go round it, dodge it, or race ahead of it. She can do fast, I can’t. Kitty 4 doesn’t do fast. But she does do brave. And it wasn’t just grib that warned me, my albatross did too. Not kidding. For two whole days before the storm he never left us. He was telling us, I’m sure he was. He just hung there above us looking down on us. He’d never stayed so close before nor for so long.
The storm came suddenly, 50-60 in squalls and huge blue waves so high you didn’t want to look but you had to. And blue so deep you could see right into it. Just before it happened I was doing a sail change and clipped on, thank goodness. You know how you can feel thunder is about before you hear it, like the sky is taking a deep breath before it lets rip. It was like that. There was a strange silence and a stillness all around. Like the sea was waiting for it to happen. Then I looked up and saw this wall of water 15 metres high at least and it was breaking right over me, and my albatross was skimming along the crest of it like he was telling me to hang on. So I hung on. Kitty 4 was knocked down, rolled through 140 degrees. The mast was under the water. I thought that was it, that she’d just go on rolling and turn turtle and that would be that. End of story, I thought. But it wasn’t the end of the story. She lay there on her side for a few moments like she was having a bit of a rest and then she just flipped right back up again, a bit like Kitty in my bath back home when I was little. Everything was crashing about. I was chucked about like a wet rag doll. Not a single bit of me that wasn’t bruised. But no broken bones, and what’s a bruise or two when you’re still alive.
And that was just the beginning. Went on for nearly thirty hours. By the time it was over Kitty 4 had taken a real battering – she was in a much worse state than me which is why Mum, Grandpa, I’m here in Dunedin. Had to put in for repairs. The light fitting on the mast head needs draining for a start. Needed a new set of steering lines cos they had chafed badly. Can’t do without my self-steering gizmo. It’s my magic pathfinder through the waves, like my best friend. Got to look after him. And there’s a mainsail that’s torn, so that needed fixing too. In a way I’m glad I got knocked down, glad I had to come into Dunedin. Taught me a lesson. Been a chance to reorganise, tie everything down properly that flew around. thought I’d done that already but the stormfound me out. Won’t be my last knockdown on this trip. Be better set up next time.
And anyway I needed to do some shopping too, more plasters and antiseptic cream. baked beans and hot chocolate supplies were low. Everyone v. kind here in Dunedin, v. helpful. Lots of press people came to see me so lots of posing by Kitty 4. Maybe you saw some of it. Don’t worry Grandpa I made sure I had my Stavros Boats cap on. you’re going to be selling loads of boats in Dunedin after this, all over NZ. And guess what I’ve got free bed and breakfast for all the time I’m here – gift from the town. Isn’t that the best?
2015hrs same day
Just spoken to you on the phone. So good to hear your voices. Made me cry though. And like I said Mum don’t worry, I promise I wouldn’t be going on with this if I thought the boat wasn’t up to it. She’s fine. She won’t get there in a hurry, but she’ll get there,bobbing all the way. Best bobbing boat in the world. I’m fine. Like I told you the bruises don’t hurt like they did. pretty dramatic to look at though. got one all the colours of the rainbow right across my ribs. spectacular. Been having lots of sleep in my nice warm bed and I’ve had lots of long hot baths. I’m taking on all the warmth I can. Like a camel taking on water before a journey across the desert, I’m going to need it, I know that. Told you most of my news on the phone, but must tell you about my albatross.
Saw him last night, but only in my dreams. Dreamt of Dad too. Can’t remember all that much of it, never can remember my dreams properly, but I think I remember Dad and the albatross seemed to be one and the same somehow. One or the other of them, and I don’t know which, was singing London Bridge is Falling Down. Weird or what?
All being well should be on our way again soon. Weather pattern looking better, so that’s good. Bout time. I want some nice easy sailing. Oh yes, and I can do up to verse 20 of the Ancient Mariner by heart now. v pleased with myself! Been learning a couple of verses a day in the bath since I’ve been here. Don’t think I understood till now why Dad loved it so much. I just lie there soaking in my bath saying the lines over and over:
God save thee ancient Mariner!
From the fiends that plague thee thus!
Why look’st thou so? – with my crossbow
I shot the ALBATROSS
That’s verse 20. Sad but so beautiful. I’ll know it all word perfect by the time I get to England. Promise. A
P.S. Still no news of Kitty? Keep thinking and hoping no news will soon be good news.
1002hrs Sat 29 Jan 48’ 12”S 173’ 45”E
6 knots. heading south in brilliant sunshine, reef in the mainsail. The mend is holding well which is good news. It’s all good news because my albatross is back. It’s like he’s been waiting for me out here all the time I was in Dunedin. Seen plenty of them about, but they just fly by on their way to somewhere else. He’s the only one who hangs about. He’s like my guardian angel. So I’ve got Dad’s lucky key and I’ve got a guardian angel too. I’m well looked after Mum. I keep throwing him some scraps because I really want him to stay. The trouble is that as soon as I throw him food his friends come back and bully him off it. I’ve decided to do some more fishing from now on – never did it with Dad, he didn’t like it. It’s too easy just to open a tin. Besides I love fish, full of protein and good for me. Keeps me strong. Don’t like the idea of killing them, but do like eating them. So I’m going to keep a line out and baited whenever I can. I’ll get lucky sooner or later.
1122hrs Sun 30 Jan 49’ 02”S 175’ 38”E
More fog. Can’t see a thing, except a bit of sea around us and my albatross. flies in and out of the fog like a ghost, a welcome ghost though. Doing less than 2 knots, not even enough to charge the battery with the turbine and there’s not enough sun for the solar panel to be much use either. need a minimum of 4 knots to keep going and that’s with everything off except the laptop and the instruments. Can’t afford to use diesel to motor out of it. Can’t afford to use laptop any more either. So I’m turning you off. Byeee Mum. Bye Grandpa. A
0735hrs Wed 2 Feb 49’ 52”S 173’ 54”E
756 miles since Dunedin. Antipodes islands behind us. The Horn ahead of us. Long way to go still. Not worrying about it, Mum, just thinking about it, getting myself ready. Desalinator not working as well as it should. Water tastes a bit salty. But otherwise no worries. Clothes a bit smelly. Glad it’s only me on Kitty 4. Must have a big wash soon, me and my clothes. Been putting it off.
Doing 7 knots sometimes, averaging 4.5. So I’m doing well. I thought my albatross had deserted me yesterday but he hasn’t. He’s up there now, helping us along putting wind in our sails with his great wide wings. He just comes and goes as he pleases. I feel adopted. Out of all the ships and boats in the Southern Ocean I feel he’s chosen us. He likes me to sing to him too, always seems to come closer when I do. So I’ve done him my Whitney Houston, all the Beatles songs I know – Dad taught me most of them – and when I run out I whistle him “London Bridge is Falling Down”. He seems to like that best. Still no fish, but I’ll keep trying. There’s got to be millions of fish down there, all of them deliberately ignoring my line. Why is that? What have they got against me? My smelly clothes? My singing? Thought I saw the back of a whale yesterday. Too big for a dolphin. Got all excited, but if he was one he didn’t show himself again. Hope he doesn’t have a nibble at my bait. Not really the kind of fish I’m after. Bi
t big. This is how sailing should be. We’re dancing our way towards the Horn.
I’m having big doubts about Kitty, like Dad had. Maybe he did make her up after all. I really want to believe he didn’t. I’ve been trying to keep my hopes up, but it’s difficult. To go all the way to England and find out there’s no Kitty after all would be so sad, for Dad and for me. Think positive. Must believe the best. When I do that I get to thinking about what I’m going to say to Kitty when we meet. I can’t wait to see the look on her face when I tell her who I am. And to have a relation on Dad’s side too would be really something. Got so many on your side – no offence Grandpa. But we need some balance here. I’m only half Greek y’know. And I know you don’t want to hear this but I’ve always liked cheddar cheese beta than feta! Now you know and you’ll hate me forever. S’agapo, I love you, Grandpa. xxx A
“Hey Ho Little Fish Don’t Cry, Don’t Cry”
Dad used to love old black and white Spencer Tracey movies, any Spencer Tracey movie. If it was on we watched it. And one film in particular he loved. It was called Captains Courageous. Tracey plays this old fisherman on a whaling ship. He looks after a young boy who’s very spoilt and teaches him what’s what, right from wrong, fair from unfair. He sings him an old fishing song, and I loved this song. It was one of those songs that just stayed in my head. I used to sing it all the time, out on the boat with Dad, in the bath at home, wherever I was happy. And now here I was in the Southern Ocean on my way to the Horn on Kitty Four catching and killing my first fish (I’ve never liked that part of it), tears pouring down my cheeks and singing out Spencer Tracey’s fishing song:
“Hey ho little Fish, don’t cry, don’t cry. Hey ho little Fish don’t cry.”
That first one I couldn’t bring myself to eat, so I tossed it overboard for my albatross who had been watching me, probably hoping I’d do just that. He didn’t have to be asked twice. He was in the sea in a flash and swallowed it down. He didn’t actually lick his lips, but he looked pretty pleased as he sat there in the sea waiting for more. When I caught my next fish, I ate it myself, despite lots of hurt looks from my albatross. But I did chuck him the head, which he gobbled down more than happily.
Whenever I caught a fish after that my albatross seemed to be waiting, so I always threw him the head. I got less squeamish about boning and gutting them too, and I learned how to cook them better each time. The truth is that I began to enjoy the whole process, from the excitement of seeing the line go taut to the eating itself. So now unless it was really stormy I’d have a line out astern of me most of the time.
Routine was all important to living on Kitty Four. It kept my spirits up. Routine checks of everything up on deck—regular adjustments to the halyards and the steering lines. Regular meals and hot meals too, if the weather allowed. The weather rules everything at sea, so sailing the boat came first. But I tried to live as normal a life as possible, tried not to allow the sea to dictate how I spent every moment of my day. So I learned my Ancient Mariner. I wrote my emails. I tidied the cabin. I played my CDs. I mended what had to be mended—there was always something. I fitted the spare membrane to my troublesome desalinator, superglued what had to be superglued. I washed clothes, not as often as I should, and hung them out to dry. I liked to keep myself clean too—to begin with I hadn’t cared about it, but the longer I was at sea the more important it became. So I washed whenever I could—I always felt so much better for having made the effort. And on fine nights, however hard it was blowing, I’d always do the same thing. I’d go up into the cockpit if possible with my cup of hot chocolate and I’d watch the stars. I’d do a lot of my singing up there too—everything from London Bridge to Hey ho Little Fish to Yellow Submarine.
It was on just such a night that I first saw it. I was sitting there gazing up at the zillions of stars, wondering if Grandpa back home was also sitting there with his telescope doing the very same thing at the very same moment, remembering how he loved to tell me what each of them was called, how he’d help me to hold his telescope myself. I was remembering all this when I saw a shooting star pass overhead, much lower and brighter and slower than shooting stars usually were. I watched in amazement as this light arced across the sky, knowing already it couldn’t be a shooting star. It had to be a satellite of some kind. I went down below at once and emailed home to see if Grandpa knew what it could be. Until now I’d never had an email direct from Grandpa—they had always come through Mum. But the next day he emailed me back himself. “I checked. Got to be the ISS. International Space Station.”
I saw it up there again a few nights later even brighter this time, even closer, and I got to thinking: those astronauts up there are closer to me at this moment than any other human being on earth. I’m sailing the seas down here. They’re sailing through space up there. I wondered then if with all their high-tech gizmos they could see me. I felt like waving. So I stood there in the cockpit and waved and shouted till my arms ached, till my throat was sore. I was just so excited, so so happy to see them up there. That was when the idea first came to me to try to make contact with them, proper contact. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought, to meet up by email or even by phone, so we could actually talk to one another as they passed over? I sent an email to Grandpa. It was just a crazy idea to start with, just a lovely dream. Grandpa emailed back. “No worries. I’ll fix it.” I thought he was joking. Meanwhile I had a boat to sail.
I was still about 1000 miles from the Horn. I was down to 57°S. There was ice about in the south, lots of it. It was cold you couldn’t forget, the kind that got into your bones, deep into your kidneys. Feet and hands went numb, so when I cut myself, and I often did, I couldn’t feel it. My ears and my nose ached with it. I used to warm my socks and gloves on the kettle, but the trouble was that my toes and fingers were always colder than my socks and gloves were warm. So the bliss never lasted for long. I’d never known cold like it. I’d do all I could to stay down below in the warm fug I’d created for myself. But sooner or later I’d always have to go back up there again, and the snugger I’d make myself, the colder the blast that hit me when I got up into the cockpit.
It was too rough for fishing now, and far too cold anyway, but my albatross was usually still there. He’d go off for a day or two, but I knew he’d always come back, and he did. I had such faith in him, that he’d stay with me and see me safely round the Horn. And I knew why too, knew it for sure, though I’d stopped writing about it in my emails because I thought it might upset Mum, and because I know it sounded at best a bit crazy. But I knew I wasn’t hallucinating, that I wasn’t mad. I now knew for sure that it was Dad’s spirit soaring up above Kitty Four. He was an albatross, of course he was, but he was Dad too.
It was a different world I was sailing in down there, the wildest place I’d ever been. I could see and feel the swell building all the time. South of 60° between Cape Horn and the Antarctic peninsula there’s no land to break up the ocean swells, so the waves travel uninterrupted for hundreds of miles and they’re just massive—I kept using the word “awesome” in my emails, and that was about right. I knew Kitty Four could handle them, but I also knew I couldn’t leave it all to her. I had to be out there avoiding the breaking waves, especially the hollow ones, the ones that look as if they’re going to swallow you up. Sleep was almost impossible in seas like this, in weather like this. The wind screamed all the time. It was a constant pounding. I was on edge, listening to the boat, trying to work out if she was just complaining, or whether she was telling me something was really wrong. Like me, she was finding this very hard. We were both being tested as never before.
Below in the cabin was my whole world for hours on end. It was cramped, but down there I felt warm and safe. My bunk was a tight fit—it had to be because falling out was very painful and dangerous too. But it wasn’t comfortable. I’d lie there surrounded by all the stuff that was keeping me alive—the medical box, generator, stove, charts, almanacs, sextant, pc, spares for everything, harnesses, life vests an
d sails—and kept telling myself that Kitty Four and all this equipment would get me through. And when I went up on deck there was my albatross telling me exactly the same thing. It was scary, it was heartthumpingly scary at times, but I never for one moment thought we wouldn’t make it. And whenever I felt like human company, I’d sing to myself or listen to a CD, or email home. In my emails I tried to hide just how scary it really was sometimes. There was no point in upsetting Mum and Grandpa unnecessarily. Tell them some of it, I thought, but there’s no need to tell them everything.
I was finding the keyboard slow to use now because my fingers were becoming very swollen. I couldn’t feel them, and they looked like a bunch of white bananas. I was doing all I could to look after them, smothering them with lanolin, but still the cracks came, still my cuticles split around my nails—what nails I had left. My hands were not a pretty sight, but I didn’t mind. I just wanted them to work, to be able to do what I told them to do—cook, tie knots, pull ropes, email.
I’ve never forgotten the morning I saw Cape Horn up there on the laptop screen at last. Sometime before I left home I’d seen the movie Master and Commander, seen the frigate battling its way through ferocious seas off the Horn. It was terrifying enough sitting in a comfy seat next to Dad in the cinema in Hobart. Soon now I’d be going round the Horn myself, doing it for real, but Dad was still beside me. He was there in the boat he’d made for us, in the albatross that guarded us, and in my heart too. I took out The Ancient Mariner which by now had become like a Bible to me. It gave me new determination, a new courage every time I read it out loud.
The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels) Page 52