Dead Sea (10 page)

As soon as Liberty felt the massive surge of power beneath her feet she began to let
Flint
's head ease off fractionally. The super-buoyant polystyrene hull was swinging swiftly in an arc that threatened to bring her on to a reciprocal with the liner. From sitting across the big ship's path like the cross on a capital T,
Flint
would soon be in danger of meeting her head to head. And ramming the Disney vessel was by no means part of Liberty's plan either.

As
Flint
felt the pressure ease, and her hull came to rely on the twin Mercuries rather than the squall wind, so she began to come upright, her mast heads swinging away from the black-painted, gold-signed flare of the liner's bow. And as she did so, the bow wave hit. A wall of foam came washing up over
Flint
's port forequarter and solid green water went thundering across her foredeck, twisting the vessel over, shrugging her aside, sitting her further upright even as it pushed her away until the masts were penduluming out towards the starboard like the fingers of a metronome and the deck was rolling back the other way.

Under Liberty's iron grip, the hull slid sideways down the great surf along the liner's flank, as the bow wave rolled over into wake at the point where the next great wave was born. And still
Flint
held doggedly upright as the wake simply carried her further and further from the black cliff of her side. Heading for safety, even though the angle of the water meant that foam came rumbling aboard over the uphill port side even as it flooded in over the downhill starboard and met in the middle like the Red Sea closing behind Moses.

But
Flint
simply refused to roll, and her skipper held her steady through it all. Her head went down until the white water exploded against the arrowhead of her raised bridge house. But then she tossed her head up, thrusting the deadly water away like a white whale breaching.

It was only when the huge, square stern swept past, thirty metres from their port side, and
Flint
swung back upright once more, bobbing safely over the crest of that great wake wave and down into the first trough, that Liberty at last swung the wheel over the other way, sending her command skipping nimbly back and away out to starboard, safely under control again.

‘You can kill the motors now, Maya,' said Liberty breathlessly. ‘Check the B Watch and look for damage below. Then see if you can raise Mickey Mouse on the two-way. That rodent and I need to talk.'

‘Yes, Skipper,' said Maya.

And suddenly there was no more doubt about who was in command of
Flint
.

The wind faltered so unexpectedly that Liberty looked up, wondering whether it was another trick of the liner's massive hull. As though it could be followed by a wind shadow as well as by a wake. But no. The clouds thinned suddenly. The sun came out high in the eastern sky as though it was going to shine exclusively on Portland or Vancouver. A rainbow appeared in the west and Liberty turned
Flint
hard over and ran for the foot of it like a leprechaun seeking her pot of gold.

By the time Maya and the B Watch came up out of the cabin to report everything shipshape and secure below, the rain had eased to a drizzle and
Flint
was running steadily under clearing skies across a brisk north-easterly that sent her racing back on to the course Liberty had planned for her.

Then, while Maya checked the electrical equipment and raised the Disney liner's radio officer, who swiftly passed the irate skipper on to an extremely shaken captain, Emma Toda and Bella Chung-Wolf trimmed the sails so that
Flint
could settle down and accelerate smoothly towards the top speed of her design spec in the precise direction she needed to be sailing. Within twelve hours they had picked up a westerly-flowing outrider of the great Alaska Current and that great liquid travelator grasped the yacht's solid keel, working in tandem with the breeze, allowing
Flint
to run steady and true towards the convergence zone, the garbage patch and the telltale red dot of the locator in Dr Tanaka's Cheerio bottle.

And that was a situation which was to last the better part of the next three days.

Robin had faced waterspouts before. But none as big as this one, and never in a vessel as small or fragile as
Katapult
. ‘I need power, Flo,' she ordered. ‘B Watch, get below and break out the life jackets!' As she spoke, the last of the deluge of mackerel fell on to the deck and bounced back into the sea from where they had been sucked by the spout. Except for the ones trapped in the well deck below her. Which would make a nice fresh supper for
Katapult
's crew – if they weren't feeding the fish themselves by suppertime.

Katapult
's design meant that the foresail could be wrapped around a line running up from the forepeak to the top of the single mast. And that the mainsail wound around a matching spindle inside the aerodynamic body of the mast itself. Under most conditions these actions would be hand-cranked by the crew. In an emergency they could be controlled by the computer. This was an emergency.
Katapult
went from full sail to bare sticks in fifteen seconds, even as her motors kicked in.

The multihull's propulsion system was nowhere near as powerful as
Flint
's but it was responsive and potent enough to give the beautiful vessel a solid boot up the backside. On the other hand, Liberty only had her masts and hull to worry about. Robin had the two sleek outriders that sat on the end of computer-controlled gull-wings and steadied the vessel without the need for a centreboard or keel that could slow her down in races by dragging through the water below. But Robin didn't want the outriders torn off. Didn't want the articulated gull-wings damaged. So, though the circumstances were vastly different, Robin's reaction was the same as Liberty's had been. She put the big wheel of the helm hard over to port.

The foot of the spout hit the surface of the ocean about half a mile in front of
Katapult
. It was hard to be more precise than that because the point of impact was shrouded in a cone of spray that spread out in a whirling grey-white mist around it and bounced back up past thirty metres. The main column of the thing writhed sinuously above this into the low cloud that had given birth to it and Robin had an instantaneous impression of a storm front that cut the sky in half with unnerving precision. The leading edge of it seemed to be drawn across the sky with a gigantic ruler. An edge that passed immediately above her head.

On Robin's left it was a bright, sunny morning. On her right it was almost as dark as night. Beneath the absolute blanket of cumulus, a solid-looking wall of rain reached down to the sea like grey concrete. But that was still miles distant. The spout stood on the leading edge of the front, and Robin could swear that there were others, further away behind it, stretching into the distance like columns in a temple. As their furious activity sucked away the last of the mist, they made the air along the huge storm front absolutely crystal clear. The day had gone from blindingly claustrophobic to magisterially vast. The sea went from indigo on the left-hand horizon, through vivid green dead ahead to white-streaked elephant grey beneath the equally distant downpour away to her right.

It was an instant of clarity that Robin had never experienced before and was never likely to experience again. The entire enormity of it burned itself indelibly into her subconscious. Then the reality slammed back into place as the icy air was in motion around her. Suddenly very actively indeed. A squall wind hit her shoulder like a rugby forward tackling high. A heartbeat later it was as though she and
Katapult
were trapped in a wind tunnel.

But Robin was by no means standing idle as she took that one startled glance. The whole of her attention was claimed by the monster lazily sweeping in towards her. The wind on her back like a living force. The race to get
Katapult
out into the light. With the helm hard over, she gunned the motors to maximum, feeling
Katapult
struggling to answer the conflicting dictates of the forces unleashed within and around her. The motors turned a pair of racing propellers seeking to thrust her full ahead. The rudder sought to swing the three points of her bow hard over to the left. The wind howling through what little rigging she possessed was trying to blow her to the right, into the grip of the waterspout which – counter-intuitively – was sailing relentlessly towards her, dead against the wind itself. But of course it was creating the wind by sucking air into the enormous gyre at its heart. The harder it inhaled, the stronger the wind blew, the faster the spout approached, drawing the atmosphere relentlessly into itself. Spewing it up, like the mackerel, into the wildly writhing storm cloud above.

Had
Katapult
possessed a keel like
Flint
, that might have steadied her, made the water cling to her in spite of the wind – but she had outriggers instead. And the starboard outrigger was porpoising increasingly deeply into the water as the triple hull fought to turn away from the spout while the wind pulled the masts towards it. Robin slammed her left hand off the wheel, overrode the computer control system and pushed both outriggers down into the water, feeling the skittish hull steady beneath her widespread feet, though the wheel began to turn back relentlessly against her one-handed grip. Immediately, a wall of spray whipped up the wind and slapped painfully into her face as though the spout was angered by her action. It was the outer edge of the inverted cone at the foot of the thing. Robin was deluged with water in an instant. Water that felt shockingly warm except that the wind chill of the relentless gale turned it icy at once. Robin realized inconsequentially how little she was wearing – and that made her feel more vulnerable still.

For a heart-stopping moment, Robin found herself inside the cone of spray, trapped for an instant between the buffeting curtain of waterdrops made dazzlingly bright by the sunlight of the half day beyond. As though a jewel box full of diamonds and sapphires had been caught in a tornado. And, on her left, less than a hundred metres distant, the foot of the spout itself. The surface of the water in between was fizzing as though the ocean had become champagne. The sound of rushing water, foaming bubbles and screaming wind made an already dizzying experience almost hallucinatory. She saw the great white trunk of the thing lift off the water with a slow majesty she had never expected. It settled back again, then lifted once more, unexpectedly fine, almost diaphanous.

The wind howling past her seemed to hesitate for an instant. She slammed the rudder back hard over.
Katapult
's screaming motors pulled her left at last – smashed her back through the gemstone wall, which immediately lost its diamond and sapphire brightness, turning instantly as dark and threatening as the low, writhing sky.

But that moment, that one flaw in the wind, that instant of hesitation by the monstrous spout, made all the difference.
Katapult
began to gather way, turning obediently on to her new heading, pulling out of the twister's clutches like a knight breaking free from a witch's spell in a fairy tale. And, as though the breaking of its spell could lead to the undoing of its power, the waterspout began to falter. When Robin glanced over her shoulder for the first time a couple of seconds later, the trunk had lifted once again, and the cone wall was thinning, slowing, falling back into the restless water. The fierceness began to fade from that relentless headwind, hitting her now in the face instead of the back. And, perhaps most weirdly of all, the day ahead of her was as bright, blue and sunshiny as any she had enjoyed on Tuvalu. It was only when she looked back, like Lot's wife in the Bible, that she saw the bright day's exact opposite still treading at her heels.

And that was what Flo saw first as she came up out of the cabin wearing a starkly impractical combination tiny bikini and bulky lifebelt. ‘Jesus,' she said forthrightly, ‘that looks nasty.'

‘But at least the spout seems to have gone,' answered Robin breathlessly. ‘I think we can stow the emergency equipment and get rigged – and dressed – for some stormy weather.'

Flo gave a grin. ‘That's just what this baby was built for.' She patted
Katapult
with sisterly pride. ‘You don't win the Fastnet in anything less than a gale.'

‘True enough,' agreed Robin. ‘And you don't win it in a bikini either.'

Rohini and Akelita appeared a moment later, both more sensibly clad in shorts and shirts. Robin handed over the wheel, then she and Flo changed and tidied up below.

Robin found that she was moving like a very old lady indeed, her arms, shoulders and back all stiff and sore. But the pain she felt was as nothing compared to the shock she got when she looked in a mirror and saw what the wind had done to her hair.

The storm front had closed over the sky by mid-afternoon and the lazy, misty calm was replaced by a brisk wet south-westerly which
Katapult
approved of very much indeed. She filled her sails, kicked up her heels, and headed towards the forty-five-knot top speed she was famously capable of delivering. At the same time she seemed to settle to work, her central hull sitting steadily in the water leaning only a few degrees off the vertical even in the strongest gusts, as the outriggers aquaplaned on or below the surface, holding her steadier than even
Flint
's keel could ever have done. Holding her steady enough to allow Robin to light the LPG hob on the cooker in their tiny galley so that she could fry the fish presented to them by the waterspout that morning.

Fish in such abundance, indeed, that they were still eating it three days later when their long fast run came to an abrupt end.

C
ommunications with
Katapult
, thought Richard wryly, were a little like London buses. You waited ages for a message, and then . . .