I couldn’t say a thing.
I had that first amazing phone call from space, so my emails tell me, on the 29th March. Grandpa’s surprise was a surprise all right, the surprise of my life.
“One Small Step for Man”
0715hrs 29 March 45’ 44”S 50’ 13”W
G’day best Grandpa in the world. No question. You are the coolest Grandpa that ever lived, the greatest, the greekest. Just had the surprise you told me about, the one you made happen. I can’t imagine anything more surprising happening to anyone ever anywhere. Thank you, thank you Grandpa. He’s going to send me a pic of himself and the crew up there, and we’re going to have what he calls “an ongoing conversation”. I think it’s the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me. He sounds like George Clooney, but don’t you dare tell him I said that. I think Americans must all gargle in stuff that makes their voices so husky. And…and…and, what you don’t know is that my albatross is back with me too! So I got an albatross and an astronaut all in one day. Not bad eh? Don’t know how long my albatross can stay. He’s already way too far north. I’m going to try to feed him lots of fish to keep him with me, which is silly I know because he can catch all the fish he wants for himself, albatross are quite good at that stuff, but he seems to like hanging around for mine too. Can’t believe how many of you are looking out for me now out here, all of you at home, my albatross and now Dr Topolski. No one ever had a supporters’ club like that before. Grib forecast is horrible, so I’ve got lots to do and in a hurry. I’ll get back to you later soon as I can. Love y’all, specially you greek Grandpa. Axx
1112 hrs 31 March 42’ 29”S 48’ 30”W
Hi Mum, g’day Grandpa, not had a lot of time to do anything except sail the boat. So have had no time to write emails to you or to Dr Topolski. Just been through a storm like no other. Two knockdowns, but I’m still alive and kicking, still here to tell the tale so no worries. Most of the time there was nothing to do but hunker down below and hope, getting quite good at that. did a lot of bad singing and quite a lot of clutching Dad’s lucky key too. 70 knot gusts rising to 80. vicious wind. Massive flat top waves, wind flattened, the worst kind, the really dangerous kind. Breaking waves of grey water, a spray storm all around me. I just tried to keep the wind and the swell on the quarter as much as I could. Not always possible which is when things went very badly wrong, nearly catastrophic. We came beam on twice into a rolling breaker, and she just went over. Both knockdowns happened in the space of half an hour. Not a half hour I ever want to repeat, I promise you! Nothing I could do, but I knew she’d pop right up again.
Kitty 4 is a real star, a real life saver, all the blokes in the boatyard should be so so proud of her. Wish you could have seen how she was lifting herself up out of the water, giving two fingers to the storm and the wind and the waves, like she was saying teeheehee you can’t sink me. She was magnificent, awesome. And do you know the best thing? When I looked up through the cabin window after each knockdown was over, there was my albatross up there like he was on angel wings hovering over me, protecting me. We make a pretty good team, him and me. Managed to take a piccie of him with Mrs Betts’ brilliant camera just when the storm was dying down. Sending it to you and Dr Topolski. When the worst was over, I managed to cook myself my first hot meal in two days, bacon and sausages and baked beans, a whole plateful – it was so yummy so good – and washed it all down with a mug of hot chocolate – of course. Still frozen in my fingers and feet, but I can feel a warm glow inside me now which wasn’t there before. Love you loads. Allie.
2112hrs 3 April 38’ 54”S 46’ 03”W
Hi everyone. Tootling (Dad loved that word) along 5 knots. gentle swell. Phew. Got some time now to tell you bout Dr Topolski. We’ve emailed each other twice now, and we’ve spoken again too and we’ve seen one another at night at the same time. Here’s how it happened. Dr Topolski phoned from the ISS and said they were passing over my position and could I see them. I went up on deck and there it was. He wanted me to shine a spotlight and put up a flare to see if they could see me. So I did and they saw me. Can you believe that, they really saw me. I could see him, he could see me. I could hear him – he could hear me – we laughed like a couple of kids, not cos it was funny but cos it was just amazing, amazing.
In his emails he has been telling me about the space walk, EVA he calls it, he’s got to do in a couple of days. Never done one before and he was really looking forward to it. He’s got to carry out some kind of scientific experiment. He told me a little of what it was about, but I didn’t understand it really – didn’t tell him that!
He’s up there with a Russian physicist, Dr Uri Malakov and another American, Mike Petersen, he’s the commander. The three of them have been up there nearly four weeks. Very cramped living quarters, that’s what he told me. “I guess that’s what you’d kind of expect in a Space Station. But at least we can fly about a bit whenever we feel like it. Weightlessness is the best, when you’ve gotten used to it.”
He’s told me a lot about himself, he’s got a wife back home in Vermont and a couple of kids, ten and twelve, both girls. He’s a scientist, a physicist, as well as an astronaut, pretty brainy sort of bloke, I’d say. I’ve been telling him a whole lot about us on my emails to him, about Dad and our trip to England to find Kitty. He’s really interested, said he’d do anything he could to help, and I think he means it too. Decided he sounds more like Johnny Depp than George Clooney, but I’ve got his pic. He doesn’t look like either. Looks more like Tom Hanks, got a kind face, a good face. He said he loved my emails and pics, specially the one of my albatross. He reckons we’ve got so much incommon, each of us circumnavigating the earth in our own way, each of us in a tin can not exactly built for comfort. I told him he’s doing his circumnavigation just a little faster than me, and he’s got wide wide space around him and I’ve got wide wide sea.
He says my albatross is the most beautiful bird he’s ever seen. That’s one thing he misses up in space, he says, you look out of the window and you never see any birds. He wants me to send him a lot more pics of birds, so I will. He’s emailed me some brilliant shots of the earth – we do live on such an awesome amazing planet. I’ve got lots of pics too of him floating about in his space station with Uri and Mike. So cool. Have to do that one day. He’s got more room up there than I have down here but he’s got to share it. Nice pics of him and his wife too, she’s called Marianne, and his two kids in the snow outside their home. He looks like his voice, kind, thoughtful, intelligent. Hope his EVA goes well.
Fishing’s been good today. I caught six and kept two for myself. Threw the rest to my albatross, my lip-smacking albatross. Every day he stays with me I know is a bonus. I shall so miss him when he goes, but I keep telling myself that this far north he can’t stay around much longer and I’d better get myself ready for the day he’s not there any more. No more news about Kitty then? She’s got to be somewhere, right? See you. A xxx
1216hrs 5 April (GPS on the blink for some reason, so not sure of precise position)
Hello from the Atlantic. It’s me again. Dr Topolski’s sent me an email all about his EVA. He sounded so excited. Said Uri took lots of pics of him doing his slow-motion space dance. He’ll send them on down when he can. Here’s part of his email:
“I was six hours out there in space. I was busy, but I had plenty of time to look around me. That was when I guess I really understood for the first time the immensity of space, and the timelessness of it, the stillness of it. And our planet seemed to be suddenly so precious, so utterly beautiful. I thought of my family down in green Vermont, and of you out there on that blue, blue sea.”
I emailed him back asking him why he did it, why he’d become an astronaut in the first place. He said it was all Neil Armstrong’s fault, the first man on the moon. When he was little he’d sat there in front of his TV watching him step down on the moon’s surface. Said it was listening to him speak from the moon that did it for him. “One small step for man, one
giant leap for mankind.” He’d wanted to go into space ever since, and he was loving it, except he could do with a little more privacy he said.
We sent emails back and forth comparing notes really. I’m down here at sea level, (well ground level), only the sea keeps moving so it’s not level, and he’s up 350km above ground. They’re going at 5 miles a second up there in space. I’m doing 5 nautical miles an hour down here. I’ve got my laptop, my five GPSs (two of them are still on the blink) and some basic software. He’s got all the most amazing gizmos in the world, most of it operated from NASA. He’s floating around up there, I’m being bashed about down here. Don’t tell him this, but I’ve decided I’m definitely better off down here. Except for his space walk, he’s been shut in up in his space station for weeks. And at least I can breathe good clean sea air, and to be honest, I couldn’t live in such a confined space for so long – I’d go bananas. I mean you couldn’t even talk to yourself without being overheard could you? And he’s got another month cooped up up there. Think I’ll stick to sailing. But we’re both adventurers, he said, both explorers, and just about the luckiest people alive because we’re out there doing what we love best. “Isn’t that great?” he said. He’s right. It is great. I am lucky. He asked after Kitty, after my albatross, about the weather, about how I’m doing down here. He says it’s hard to imagine how life must be for me, but he wants to know all about it says he wants to see diagrams of my yacht, inside and out. So I’ll send them soon as I can. When he passed over I let off a flare again, but he couldn’t see it this time. He’s become a real friend to me, like no other. A friend I’ve never met.
Can now wiggle my little finger again Mum. So I’ve got all ten in use again now. Hands still sore, but otherwise I’m fit as a fiddle another Dad-ism. Why is a fiddle fit? Always wondered that.
There’s some flying fish around, the first I’ve seen. My albatross doesn’t seem at all interested in them. He’s sitting there now waiting for me to put my line over the side again. I’ll do it right now. Got to keep him happy, haven’t I?
1202hrs 11 April 28’ 54”S 44’ 53”W
Hi Mum, Grandpa. Haven’t heard from the ISS for a few days. Hope all’s well with Dr Topolski up there. More flying fish about. Getting closer to the Tropics all the time. Feel like I’m being boiled alive down here. A month or so ago I couldn’t feel my feet and fingers, now I’m sitting here pouring sweat. I want to open the hatch but I can’t because the spray comes in and soaks everything. So I wear very little, only way. Visibility is v. poor. Brazilian coast to port, but I’m keeping well away from it, much as I’d love to see it. Lots of fishing boats out there. Can’t sleep in this heat either – above 30. can’t wait to get further north into the cold again. When I’m hot I want to be cold. When I’m cold I want to be hot. What’s the matter with me? Still all of it will be worth it if we can find out where Kitty is. As I get closer – and I am getting closer now – I think about it more and more. I hope for it more and more. I keep looking at her key, Dad’s key, keep wondering what it’s for. GPS up and running again.
1520 14 April 25’ 85”S 41’ 31”W
The worst thing that could happen has happened, the saddest thing since Dad died. And it was me that did it. I should have known. I should have thought. My albatross is dead and I killed him. I didn’t mean to, but that doesn’t make me any less guilty, does it? I came up into the cockpit at dawn and looked around for my albatross as I always do. And he wasn’t there. My heart sank because I always knew that one morning, I’d find him gone. I saw there were a few flying fish lying in the scuppers. I think that’s what reminded me to check the fishing line. I could see at once the line was taut, so I thought I’d caught a fish. It wasn’t a fish I’d caught, it was my albatross. He was being dragged along astern of the boat, hooked and drowned. I pulled him in and sat with him sodden and limp on my lap, his great wings stilled for ever. Mum, he came with me all this way and I’ve killed him, I’ve killed my albatross. but I’ve done something a lot worse than that. It’s not just the albatross whose wings I’ve stilled. I feel deep in my heart that I’ve stilled Dad’s spirit too. A.
Alone on a Wide Wide Sea
It was only in the days and weeks following the killing of my albatross that I understood what Dad really meant in his story when he said that his “centre would not hold”. I know only from the emails I sent home each day after this that I sailed north for a month. I think I must have sailed on almost as if I was in a trance. It was like I was on automatic pilot. I sailed efficiently. To get as far north as I did, I must have done. I did everything that had to be done, but I did it with no excitement, no joy, felt no fear and no pain, not even any grief. I was numb. I just sailed the boat. I told them I wanted the Kitty Four website down for good. I recorded only my daily longitude and latitude position. I didn’t want to have any communications with anyone any more. I ignored all the pleading emails that came in and I didn’t answer the Satphone either. There was nothing more I wanted to say to anyone. I no longer cared about Kitty or the key. I no longer cared about anything. I even ignored all the messages of sympathy and encouragement that came in from Dr Topolski up in the ISS.
After ten days or so I did send one email that wasn’t just longitude and latitude. Looking back now I’m not sure quite why I did it, unless it was an attempt to explain my silence to everyone at home, and up there in space. Maybe I couldn’t find any words of my own, but I think it was more than that. By now I knew all of The Ancient Mariner so well. The words echoed in my head without my even wanting them to be there. Sometimes I’d just find myself sitting in the cockpit and the words and the lines would speak themselves out loud. And the more I recited it the more I lost myself in it, and came to believe that I was in some way the Ancient Mariner, that my journey, like his, was cursed because of what I’d done. Here’s some of what I emailed on 28th April:
And I had done a hellish thing,
And it would work ‘em woe:
For all averred, I had killed the bird
That made the breeze to blow.
Ah wretch! said they, the bird to slay,
that made the breeze to blow!
…Water, water, every where
And all the boards did shrink;
Water water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.
I know now of course how worried everyone must have been at home when they read this. I know now Grandpa wanted to call the whole thing off, to mobilise a major air—sea rescue at once to pick me up. But Mum had stood firm. And the only reason she had stood firm was that she could see my reports were still coming in each day. She could see on the chart that I was making good progress on my journey north. I know too that Dr Topolski was in close touch with them during my long silence, and encouraged Mum in her decision to give me time to work things out on my own.
I still don’t understand why I came out of the darkness of my despair when I did. We can’t ever really know these things, I suppose. For Dad it was the moment when a nurse was kind to him in hospital in Hobart when he was at his lowest ebb, and helped him through. But even so he wouldn’t have come out of his black hole unless he had really wanted to. If there was such a moment of revelation for me, the moment I found I wanted to start living again, I know exactly when it was, the exact day, the exact place it happened.
I was in the cockpit of Kitty Four when I saw him. A turtle. A leatherback turtle. He surfaced right beside the boat, and just swam along with me. He looked at me quizzically like he was asking me what I was doing there. I told him I was going to England to find Kitty. I told him everything, and he stayed and listened. I wasn’t alone. I heard myself singing aloud in the wind. I hadn’t sung for weeks. I went through my whole repertoire from London Bridge to Here Comes the Sun to What a Wonderful World to I Will Always Love You, and I belted out the last one with tears pouring down my cheeks. When I’d finished, the turtle gave me one last look and left. I didn’t mind. I hadn’t cried ever since my albatross died.
Something was gathering inside me, finding itself again, during these songs. It was my centre.
Maybe keeping myself as busy as I had been with the sailing was the best therapy I could have had to lift me out of the sadness I had been living through. Maybe also it was because I could see that the end of my journey was in sight now. I was only 2500 miles and twenty-three days out from Falmouth. But one thing I’m quite sure of. That day sitting there talking to the turtle, singing and crying in the cockpit of Kitty Four, I felt I was not alone any more. Mum was there with me, Grandpa, Dr Topolski, everyone at home, and Dad too. They were all there with me, willing me on. There was still grief in those tears I cried, but it was a sudden surge of joy that had released them.
I went down into the cabin then to email home at once, and I saw there was an email waiting for me from Dr Topolski. He was back on earth now. They’d brought him down a week before, in Kazakhstan, a bit of a bumpy landing, he said, and he was back home with his family now on leave for a while, and he’d been doing some investigations. He hadn’t forgotten about me. On the contrary, he’d been in touch with Mum and Grandpa a lot ever since he got down. He’d come up with something “pretty interesting” about Kitty, but, tantalisingly, he wouldn’t say what it was. He did tell me that his whole family knew about me, that they were all thinking of me every day, that they had a map of the Atlantic ocean pinned up on the kitchen wall and were charting my progress, moving the bright yellow pin that was me a little further north and little closer to England every morning. He knew that I’d been going through a hard time, he said, but he wanted me to know, “There’s a whole bunch of people here in Vermont and all over the world just rooting for you.” Every day after that I felt as if I was recharging myself somehow.
The Classic Morpurgo Collection (six novels) Page 54