Survivor: The Autobiography (39 page)

Between towering crests that wash over me, I lower myself into the hatch. The water below is peaceful compared to the surrounding tempest. I duck into the watery tomb, and the hatch slams shut behind me with a crack. I feel for the emergency bag and cut away the lines that secure it. Waves wander by, engulf us, and move on. I gasp for air. The bag is freed but seems to weigh as much as the collected sins of the world. While struggling in the companionway, pushing and tugging to get the gear on deck, I fight the hatch, which beats against my back. Heaving the bag into the raft requires all the strength I have.

As it tumbles into the raft, I turn to re-enter the hatch. My hand turns aft and finds a piece of floating cushion wedged against the overhead. Jerking at it, I arise for a gulp of air. There is none. In that moment I feel as though the last breath in the galaxy has been breathed by someone else. The edge of the sea suddenly rips past. I see the surface shimmering like a thousand candles. Air splutters in, and I gasp as the clatter of
Solo
becomes muffled by the coming of the next wave.

I tie the cushion to the end of a halyard and let it float about while I submerge to retrieve my bed. Bundling up my wet sleeping bag is like capturing an armful of snakes. I slowly manage to shove, pull, and roll the bag into the raft. With the final piece of cushion, I fall in behind. I have successfully abandoned ship.

My God,
Solo
is still floating! I see her slowly rolling farther on to her side as I gather up items that float out of the cabin one by one: a cabbage, an empty Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee can, and a box containing a few eggs. The eggs will probably not last long, but I take them anyway.

I am too exhausted to do any more. I will not part from
Solo
, but should she want to leave I must be able to let go. Seventy feet of 3/8 inch line, tied to the end of the mainsheet, allows me to drift well downwind.
Solo
disappears when we dip into the waves’ troughs. Great foaming crests of water grind their way towards us. There is a churning up to windward like the surf on the shore. I hear it coming; I hear the clap and bang and snap that are
Solo
’s words to me, ‘I’m here.’ The raft rises to meet the head of the wave that rushes towards me. The froth and curl crash by just to port.

The entrance fly on the tent-type cover snaps with a ripping sound each time the Velcro seal is blown by the wind. I must turn the raft or a breaker may drive through the opening. While on a wave peak, I look aft at
Solo
’s deck mounting on the next swell. The sea rises smoothly from the dark, a giant sitting up after a sleep. There is a tight round opening in the opposite side of the tent. I stick myself through this observation port up to my waist. I must not let go of the rope to
Solo
, but I need to move it. I loop a rope through the mainsheet which trails from
Solo
’s deck and lead it back to the raft. One end of this I secure to the handline around the raft’s perimeter. The other I wind around the handline and bring the tail through the observation port. If
Solo
sinks I can let go of this tail and we will slip apart. Wait – can’t get back in . . . I’m stuck. I try to free myself from the canopy clutching my chest. The sea spits at me. Crests roar in the darkness. I twist and yank and fall back inside. The raft swings and presents the wall of the tent to the waves. Ha! A good joke, the wall of a tent against the sea, the sea that beats granite to sand.

With a slipknot I tie
Solo
’s line to the handhold webbing that encircles the inside of the raft. While frantically tying all of my equipment to the webbing, I hear rumbling well to windward. It must be a big wave to be heard so far off. I listen to its approach. A rush of water, then silence. I can feel it rising over me. There is a wrenching rubbery shriek from the raft as the wave bursts upon us and my space collapses in half. The windward side punches in and sends me flying across the raft. The top collapses and water shoots in everywhere. The impact is strengthened by the jerking painter, tied to my ship full of water, upwind from where the sea sprang. I’m going to die. Tonight. Here some 450 miles away from the nearest land. The sea will crush me, capsize me, and rob my body of heat and breath. I will be lost, and no one will even know until I’m weeks overdue.

I crawl back to windward, keeping one hand on the cord to
Solo
, the other hand clutching the handline. I huddle in my sodden sleeping-bag. Gallons of water slosh about in the bottom of the raft. I sit on the cushion, which insulates me from the icy floor. I’m shivering but begin to warm up. It is a time to wait, to listen, to think, to plan, and to fear.

As my raft and I rise to the crest of a wave. I can see
Solo
wallowing in the following trough. Then she rises against the face of the next wave as I plummet into the trough that had cradled her a moment before. She has rolled well over now, with her nose and starboard side under and her stern quarter fairly high. If only you will stay afloat until morning. I must see you again, must see the damage that I feel I have caused you. Why didn’t I wait in the Canaries? Why didn’t I soften up and relax? Why did I drive you to this so that I could complete my stupid goal of a double crossing? I’m sorry, my poor
Solo
.

I have swallowed a lot of salt and my throat is parched. Perhaps in the morning I can retrieve more gear, jugs of water, and some food. I plan every move and every priority. The loss of body heat is the most immediate danger, but the sleeping-bag may give me enough protection. Water is the first priority, then food. After that, whatever else I can grab. Ten gallons of water rest in the galley locker just under the companionway – forty to eighty days’ worth of survival rations waiting for me just a hundred feet away. The raised stern quarter will make it easier to get aft. There are two large duffels in the aft cabin, hung on the top sides; one is full of food – about a month’s worth – and the other is full of clothes. If I can dive down and swim forward, I may be able to pull my survival suit out of the fore-peak. I dream of how its thick neoprene will warm me up.

Waves continue to pound the raft, beating the side in, pouring in water. The tubes are as tight as teak logs, yet they are bent like spaghetti. Bailing with the coffee can again and again, I wonder how much one of these rafts can take and watch for signs of splitting.

A small overhead lamp lights my tiny new world. The memory of the crash, the rank odour of my surroundings, the pounding of the sea, the moaning wind, and my plan to reboard
Solo
in the morning roll over and over in my brain. Surely it will end soon.

5 February, day 1
I am lost about halfway between western Oshkosh and Nowhere City. I do not think the Atlantic has emptier waters. I am about 450 miles north of the Cape Verde Islands, but they stand across the wind. I can drift only in the direction she blows. Downwind, 450 miles separate me from the nearest shipping lanes. Caribbean islands are the closest possible landfall, eighteen hundred nautical miles away. Do not think of it. Plan for daylight, instead. I have hope if the raft lasts. Will it last? The sea continues to attack. It does not always give warning. Often the curl develops just before it strikes. The roar accompanies the crash, beating the raft, ripping at it.

I hear a growl a long way off, towards the heart of the storm. It builds like a crescendo, growing louder and louder until it consumes all of the air around me. The fist of Neptune strikes, and with its blast the raft is shot to a staggering halt. It squawks and screams, and then there is peace, as though we have passed into the realm of the afterlife where we cannot be further tortured.

Quickly I yank open the observation port and stick my head out.
Solo
’s jib is still snapping and her rudder clapping, but I am drifting away. Her electrics have fused together and the strobe light on the top of her mast blinks goodbye to me. I watch for a long time as the flashes of light become visible less often, knowing it is the last I will see of her, feeling as if I have lost a friend and a part of myself. An occasional flash appears, and then nothing. She is lost in the raging sea.

I pull up the line that had tied me to my friend, my hope for food and water and clothing. The rope is in one piece. Perhaps the loop I had tied in the mainsheet broke during the last shock. Or the knot; perhaps it was the knot. The vibration and surging might have shaken it loose. Or I may have made a mistake in tying it. I have tied thousands of bowlines; it is a process as familiar as turning a key. Still . . . No matter now. No regrets. I simply wonder if this has saved me. Did my tiny rubber home escape just before it was torn to pieces? Will being set adrift kill me in the end?

Somewhat relieved from the constant assault on the raft, I chide myself in a Humphrey Bogart fashion. Well, you’re on your own now, kid. Mingled with the relief is fright, pain, remorse, apprehension, hope and hopelessness. My feelings are bundled up in a massive ball of inseparable confusion, devouring me as a black hole gobbles up light. I still ache with cold, and now my body is shot through with pain from wounds that I’ve not noticed before. I feel so vulnerable. There are no backup systems remaining, no place to bail out to, no more second chances. Mentally and physically, I feel as if all of the protection has been peeled away from my nerves and they lie completely exposed.

By the end of my ‘stag’ the breeze had freshened to a steady wind, and when John next woke me to replace him at the oars a big sea was running and I had to shout to make myself heard above the noise of wind and waves.

John pointed to the sky. Heavy black clouds were racing low, overhead, and I felt the first big spots of rain on my face.

‘I don’t think I’ve made any headway at all in the last hour,’ John bellowed in my ear. ‘If anything, I’ve been losing ground.’

‘Well, let me give it a try,’ I shouted back. ‘The wind’s pretty strong, so perhaps the storm will blow over quickly.’

He shrugged his shoulders and crawled under the canvas. I did not really believe the storm would pass over quickly, but hated to admit right at the start that my two hours’ slogging at the oars was not going to carry us more than a few yards nearer home. It was depressing to work so hard and know that gradually, hour by hour, the sea was pressing us back to the West.

The slamming jar of the waves on the end of the oars at the start of every stroke had an accumulative effect on both mind and body when the wind was in the East. It was a form of punch drunkenness. I found I could sit there for an hour without a single thought in my head and be so little aware of the soreness of my hands that my arms might have been ten yards long.

At those times the brain worked slowly, but the imagination was a vivid thing, and I terrified myself with thoughts of primeval creatures rising from the incredible depths to seize and destroy our boat. When in this condition neither of us wanted our food. The pummelling from the oars combined with fear and tiredness to kill our appetites.

That day marked the beginning of a new phase in our voyage. Far from passing over quickly, the storm lasted for nearly a week. For three days and nights we were unable to row and unable to sleep. We had both known fear many times before in our lives – but never anything like this. The sea was like something out of hell. Lacking keel, sail or motor, we could not keep ‘Rosie’s’ head into the sea, and she thrashed piteously like a mad dog in convulsions. We knew that this could not be over tomorrow, or for many tomorrows. It was like being rubbed down with rough sandpaper.

By then we had lost track of how many storms there had been, knowing only that each one left us progressively weaker and one step nearer defeat. At 2 p.m. on 27 July we shipped oars and hauled the mildewed canvas canopy into place on its metal frame. There was no longer any use trying to disguise the fact that we were running into trouble.

The situation was already serious. That morning while trying to pick up a BBC news bulletin a freak wave had broken right over the boat and swamped our radio. We tried to persuade ourselves that it had only been temporarily put out of action. But neither of us really believed this.

‘Perhaps when it’s had a chance to dry out it will be all right,’ said John. ‘The water has probably got to the points and it is shorting out.’

‘And if it doesn’t work?’

‘Then we’ll just have to rely on the watches to time our sighting,’ he said. ‘I expect they’re pretty accurate. And if they’re not there’s damn all we can do about it now.’

Until then we had been able to check and reset the watches by the radio time signals. They had never been more than a few seconds out. But in three weeks those seconds could mount up and eventually cause a serious error in calculating our position.

Our log notes were running to double the length of previous entries. We scribbled away in the hope that by writing down our problems we would unload some of the worry.

On Thursday, 28 July John wrote: ‘As darkness falls it is apparent that we are unable to row any longer, as each changeover between men entails a swing off course, and the energy required to bring her back is too much.