Chapter
3
Waterspout
Endeavour was 50 feet long from
stern to bow. There was not what you’d call
stacks of room below, but more than enough for
the seven of us. Bob had saved enough to have
the inside professionally fitted out. The cabins
were a beige colour and the bunks were made of
tough red canvass. My parents and Bob had bunks
in the two stern cabins. For’ard of them
was the galley and dining area. It took a week
before Vince could be persuaded to stop calling
it the kitchen.
The cooker was fixed using a
self-levelling gimble which ensured that the pans
would not fall over in a rocking sea. All the
plates and mugs were made of an unbreakable plastic
material. There was no fridge. This meant that
after a few days at sea we would be using dried
milk in our cereal and eating packet meals where
you added hot water and stirred.
Beyond the galley was the lower
cockpit area which housed the chart table by the
stairs up to the main cockpit. Across from the
chart-table was the “foulie” locker,
just above the diesel tanks. This is where we
stored our foul weather gear, what used to be
called oilskins. It smelled foul too after a few
days at sea. It’s difficult to describe
the combination of diesel fumes, human sweat and
stale salt water. “Once you know that smell,”
said Bob, “it will stay with you to the
end of your days.”
Further along the gangway was
another set of cabins, each with two bunks. I
shared a cabin with Vince. Pat and Badger shared
the other. Beyond these cabins were the heads.
This is the name they give to the toilets on boats.
There was also a sink and a shower. The toilets
didn’t flush with a handle like they did
at home. You had to pump out the basin and rinse
it with salt water to get rid of everything. Across
from the heads was an empty cabin with another
two bunks. We used this for storing supplies and
spare equipment. Right at the front of the boat,
in the forepeak, we stowed the sails, the anchor
and the ropes which we call “sheets”.
Some of these are used to secure the boat in port
so they can be coiled and stowed when we’re
at sea. The forepeak was the place I liked to
go when I wanted to get away from everyone. There
is no such thing as privacy on a yacht but sometimes
it’s good to snatch some time on your own.
Our first few days at sea passed
easily in perfect weather, giving us time to adjust
to the on-board routine. We had left Whitby on
the first of August. The plan was to sail south
and then westwards out of the English Channel
and into the Atlantic. The aim was to reach Boston
some time in late August. Dad had introduced a
“watch” system for the adults and
Pat but the rest of us were allowed to keep our
own hours. Badger and me were told to get up quickly
if we were called during the night. The cry “all
hands on deck” was only to be used in case
of emergency such as a man overboard.
The watch system worked on a
six-hours-on, six-hours-off rota. The timings
switched every seven days for the sake of variety.
Pat and Bob worked together and dad worked with
mum. Mum said she had never seen so much of dad.
Apart from the fact that we were
always at sea, the sailing was not so very much
different from our practice runs. In the first
week we were always in sight of land. We passed
other yachts, trawlers and cargo boats. Herring
and black headed guls were often floating in the
air just to our stern and sometimes one of them
would perch in the rigging.
On the sixth day we pulled in
to port to stock up with fresh food before heading
out into the Atlantic. It was strange stepping
off the pontoon in Falmouth. I couldn’t
stand straight. “You might feel landsick,”
said Badger. “It’s a weird feeling.”
We all ate out that night. The food seemed tastier
that it usually did. “That’s what
the sea does,” said Bob, “Gives you
a healthy appetite.”
Before we had left Whitby dad
and Uncle Bob had called in all our mobile phones.
I had been miffed because mine had been new for
Christmas. They had given them to old Bert to
put in a drawer. “Won’t be needing
these where we’re going Bert,” said
dad. Now in Falmouth I was missing my phone for
the first time. We found a phone box to call nan.
She said Alfie and Hammie were fine. Then she
reminded Vince, who was holding the receiver,
that he hadn’t asked about grandad. “He’s
fine too,” she said.
“Are you going to phone
your mum?” I asked Badger.
“Why should I?” he
said. “She walked out on me as well my dad.”
“But don’t you miss
her?”
“Of course I do. But I
can’t put things right. I can’t do
anything about that jerk she lives with. I hate
him. She’s made her choice and I’ve
made mine. We all have. We want to live with dad.”
“Does she know what you’ve
done?”
“Well she knows we’re
going to Boston. I don’t know about the
rest.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well I’m not sure
she knows we’re sailing there.”
“Will that mean your father
is in trouble?”
“I can’t see why.
The court said we could live with him. It was
what we all wanted. Anyway how can he be in trouble
when he’s at sea?”
“There’s nowhere
to hide these days.”
“He’s not hiding.
We’ll see mum again. Just not for a while.”
We didn’t wait for morning. The tides were
right that night so we set sail at once. The Endeavour
was roped alongside another yacht, whose owner
helped us cast off while keeping a wary eye on
his own boat. He needn’t have worried. We
had become quite profficient at tying up and casting
off in the weeks before we left. Everything was
becoming familiar as we settled in to the shipboard
routine. It hadn’t been so at first. I was
nervous on the winch. It felt like everybody was
watching me. When I looked up I saw why. They
were all watching me.
Every little mistake, such as
forgetting a safety turn on the rope, or leaving
the winch handle engaged or taking off too many
turns of rope too quickly, each received a correction
or a reprimand, particularly from mum. I understood
why this was happening. It’s easy to loose
a finger in a winch. But that didn’t make
it any better for me. “Leave off please,”
I said eventually. “I know what to do.”
“Let me be the one to keep
an eye on everyone,” I said. Pat and Badger
didn’t like the suggestion that I should
be their teacher but they knew I had been trying
to get mum off their backs and they appreciated
that.
“It’s six o-clock;
breakfast’s ready,” said dad, giving
my shoulder a nudge the next morning. I felt the
movement straight away, not of his hand, but the
boat. It hadn’t been rocking quite so much
before. “It’s blowing 25 knots and
we’re beating into the wind. Make sure you
have your foulies on before going on deck.”
Getting out of my bunk was a
struggle and when I did ease myself out I wished
I hadn’t. I could smell bacon from the galley
but it didn’t smell good this day. “I
think I’m going to be….” The
words were not out of my mouth before my cheeks
filled and I clasped a palm across my face. Leaping
up the steps I got my head out of the door and
threw up into the cockpit.
It was raining and apart from
the reassuring presence of Bob smiling at the
helm I could see another sorrier figure hunched
over the rail. The sea was very choppy and all
the waves were crowned with frothing white tops.
In the distance I could see the waves breaking
against the hull of a giant cargo boat. The wind
was whistling through the rigging and a loose
pan was crashing from side to side in the galley
below. Staggering back to my bunk I was passed
by Pat making the same frantic run as I had done
a few minutes before.
The bunk felt like bliss, easing
the seasickness as soon as I put my head back.
“That was your mother on the rail,”
said a dripping wet Pat as he passed our cabin.
“No Joy today,” he said. I might have
laughed had I not felt so bad. Badger and Vince
were the same.
A little while later –
to be honest I had no sense of time but it was
still light - I was nudged awake by my dad. “You
have to get up Mo and show those boys what you
can do. Mum is sick and Bob and me can’t
sail the boat alone. I’ve tried the bigger
boys but they’re all in a bad way. You can
make it Mo. Just fight it like you fight everything
else.”
I felt so bad but dad was right.
I could stay in my bunk or I could work through
this thing. Kitting myself out seemed to take
an age. I felt the sickness rising in my stomach
as I climbed the stairs to the deck. “That’s
my Mo,” said dad. “Well done girl,”
said Bob. “Could you take the helm. We need
to get a reef in.” All of us except Vince
had helmed before, but I had never done so in
such heavy seas.
Taking in the reef means that
you are reducing the size of the mainsail. It
gave us a little more stability. Dad and Bob struggled
with the sheets but within a few minutes had made
everything secure. The boat, which had been leaning
perilously in the gusts, now set at more of an
even keel and something else had happened. My
sickness had subsided.
A while later, straggle haired,
wearing my soaked and salt-sprayed yellow foulies,
I burst into Pat and Badger’s cabin. My
hand was white and numbed with crinkled finger
tips as I held out a steaming mug of beef drink.
“Here, take this,” I said, passing
Badger the mug. “Hey what about me?”
cried Pat, as I left the cabin, then to his brother
in a lower voice that I still heard, he said:
“I think she’s soft on you.”
Well maybe she was. I didn’t
like to see Badger suffer. I couldn’t care
less about Pat. “How come you didn’t
feel sick?” asked Vince when I took him
a drink. The wind was falling and he was looking
chirpier.
“I was sick a little, but
I felt OK after that. I think it’s best
to keep busy,” I said.
I couldn’t help but feel
that the Grant boys had let the side down. “You’re
still getting your sea legs,” my dad told
them. So was mum who had told dad more than once
in the past few hours that the whole “sailing
thing” had been a bad idea. In fact dad
was the only one of us who had not been sick.
Even Bob had felt bad.
Something else had changed. Wherever
we looked there was the horizon. We still saw
the odd boat but nothing like the steady stream
of cargo boats in the channel.
The days began to drag. I’d
like to say sailing was fun but a lot of the time
it was quite boring. When the boat was sailing
well we could read or chat on deck but when the
wind got up you had to shout. Boats are the noisiest
places; particularly steel boats. There’s
always something to be heard rattling when you’re
below deck. In rough weather the clattering increases
and begins to compete with the howling of the
wind. All this is accompanied by the boat’s
lurching from side to side that makes every step
an effort.
The seasickness returned. Pat
was doing better than Badger. He didn’t
go back to his bunk so much. I resisted the sickness
when it came but it was tempting to retreat to
my own bunk. It was the cosiest place on the ship.
I would visit Badger every now and then and ask
him how he was. He seemed to be wallowing in his
sickness but I enjoyed mothering him. He looked
very cute and helpless. I kissed his forehead
and pressed his skin against my cheek.
A few days out we were sailing
across a much calmer dark blue sea. A couple of
Manx Sheerwaters were skimming across the waves.
It had been a glorious sunset and the water was
just beginning to sparkle with tiny green shimmers
of phosphorescence when the fin of a dolphin broke
the surface near the bow of the boat. We had seen
plenty of dolphins already but this one was different.
It was white. “Look,” I said. “It’s
Scar.” Bob was on the helm but he was too
far back to see anything. The rest were below.
I looked down at the water for a long time but
it did not reappear and began to wonder whether
I had been dreaming.
I laid back on a sail bag, alone
on the foredeck, lost in my thoughts, when Badger
came to join me. I was going to mention Scar,
but decided to leave it. Quietly, without a word,
he placed his fingers on mine and squeezed them.
I felt a tingling in my back like an electric
current. We held hands for minutes in silence
before he spoke.
“It’s a beautiful
evening,” he said. “I’m glad
I came.”
“I’m glad too,”
I said. I meant to say that I too was glad he
had come but it didn’t come out quite right.
I turned my head to look at him. He had short
black quite scruffy hair and dark eyes. He was
good looking, like his father. Our eyes met briefly
and then he looked away shyly.
“Hello, hello what have
we hear?” said Pat who had crept quietly
along the deck. I pulled my hand away as if I
had just touched a slithery eel.
“Are these two love birds
I see before me.” I hoped it was too dark
to see the redness in my cheeks.
“Bog off,” said Badger
and crawled back to the cockpit.
“Was it something I said?”
said Pat
“Just go away,” I
said.
Pat had broken the spell but
he could not take away that moment. Moments like
that stay with you forever. Later I overheard
a conversation between Pat and Badger in their
cabin. “I knew it,” whispered Pat.
She’s soft on you isn’t she? You lucky
skunk.”
“Do you like her too?”
said Badger.
“Wouldn’t matter
if I did. She only has eyes for you bro.”
Then Pat said: “Yes I like her, but not
that way. I’m waiting for one of those grass-skirted
la las in Polynesia.” He began to hum that
Haiwaian tune you always associate with grass
skirts and coconuts. “La la la laa…
la la la laa..”
“Oh shut up,” said
Badger.
Something had happened, I knew.
The next few days I only felt happy when I was
with Badger and worried whenever he was out of
sight. You overhear a lot on the boat and one
night I heard Mum talking to Uncle Bob in the
galley. “Mo and Badger seem taken with each
other,” she said. “I’m glad
our kids get on.”
Two weeks had passed and the
bouts of sickness seemed to be receding for everyone.
Not that I cared. It was one sure way of getting
close to Badger without the others near. I wondered
if we would ever kiss. Would he kiss me or would
it have to come from me? And how would he react
if I kissed him? Questions, questions.
One day the wind disappeared
completely and the weather turned hot and muggy.
When the sea was choppy it was dark navy blue,
almost black. But now it had taken on more of
a turqouise hue and the sun’s rays pierced
its clear fathomless depths. To peer in to those
depths was to look in to a kind of vast endless
dream world concealing wonders beyond our imagination.
The muggy weather lasted for
two days and nights. On the third day dad was
looking worried “Have you seen the barometer?”
he said as he handed over the watch to Bob. He
and Bob always made regular notes of wind speeds
and weather in the log book. “I’ve
never seen it so low,” he said.
That afternoon the sky began
to darken over to the south west. The clouds looked
so heavy and purple and threatening that it seemed
they might sink to meet the sea. The Endeavour’s
bone-white sails had been flapping idly but we
could see a ripple spreading over the greying
sea. Breaking the ripple I saw a white form. “It’s
Scar,” said Vince. The others has seen it
too.
“It was him. It was Scar,”
I said.
We scanned the sea but he seemed
to have vanished. Suddenly not more than a few
hundred yards away, seemingly out of nowhere,
we saw a dark towering watery funnel appear from
the sea, raking skywards.
It was as if the clouds were
joined to the sea by a great twisting umbilical
cord. Two more appeared and we all became aware
of a deep ferocious roaring sound. “Get
the sails down,” shouted dad. But there
was no time. With terrific force one of the funnels
tore down on our boat. I could see up inside it
and feel the water trying to pluck me off the
deck as if nature had created a giant vacuum cleaner
sucking hungrily at everything in its path. There
was a cracking sound as the main sail tore in
three or four places and the boat lurched wildly
in a sea that was frothing foam. Dad had been
bent over the beam trying to pull down the big
sail. As the waterspout hit he was thrown crazily
to one side and over the rail.
Bob was standing at the rail,
his eyes filled with terror. He turned his face
and his features mouthed words I could not hear
above the roaring wind. It was “man overboard,”
I discovered later. But the cacophony of wind
and water drowned out every other noise. The spout
had passed and the boat began to settle more steadily
as Bob, Pat and mum ran to the rail where dad
had fallen.
“Get the boat hook,”
shouted Bob. I went down to the forepeak and disentangled
the wooden-handled boat hook from a mess of different
coloured ropes. By the time I returned, the three
of them were pulling the stiff, wet, bulky yellow
form of my father back over the rail.
“Thank God you were hanked
on,” said Bob. Dad couldn’t speak.
His soaking face was creased in pain. As the others
tried to lay him back on the deck he screamed:
“My leg, my leg. I think It’s broken.”
Vince was screaming too and I
was crying but I had taken over the helm and even
in this chaos I was aware of my duty. In all the
commotion it was easy to forget the storm. I could
see the spouts in the distance and the boat was
still rocking but the worst of it seemed to have
passed.
A petrol-blue bird was flying
low over the water towards the darkness. It looked
so out of place, like a zebra in an English meadow.
It certainly didn’t look like a gull but
it was too far away to tell what it was and a
moment later it had gone. Mum was pressing her
fingers against dad’s leg. He winced in
pain. She looked at dad with a rare tenderness
“I’m sure it’s
broken,” she said. She went back to the
cabin and came back with some splints and bandages.
Before they moved dad she injected a painkiller
and waited for it to take effect. Then they carried
him below to his bunk.
Uncle Bob was standing in the
cockpit. “Is everyone OK?” he said.
He was holding Vince who was sobbing at his side.
Mum and Pat were down below with dad, I was still
at the helm and Badger was there beside me. “Let’s
take down those sails, then check our position,”
said Bob. “Are you OK at the helm Mo? Good
Girl. Pat, Badger, let’s get the foresail
down.”
The foresail, or bits of it,
was hanging over the side. At least the forestay,
backstay and shrouds had held. This was the main
rigging which every yacht needs to ensure that
its mast will stay upright. “We could so
easily have been dismasted,” said Bob. I
have never experienced anything like that in my
life.”
It took about half an hour to
clear away the sails. Bob had switched on the
motor and set a course for Bermuda about 400 miles
to the southwest. With luck, we would get there
in about two or three days. By the evening the
weather had freshened and the sky was clear as
if nothing had happened. It’s like that
at sea. The weather can change so suddenly. You
can never feel entirely at ease.
Suddenly we felt more like a
crew. Badger had taken dad’s place on watch.
Pat seemed to have grown. It’s hard to explain.
He wasn’t any bigger, he just seemed to
be acting more like an adult. I admired him. I’d
never looked at Pat like that before. Usually
he was just a pain in the neck. It didn’t
last, of course, but just then, well, he was something
else.
I went over to Badger and hugged
him when Bob took over the helm. “Are you
OK?” I said, rubbing my fingers in the wet
hair under his hood .
“Fine,” he said,
“You did so well at the wheel.”
“I was terrified. I’m worried about
dad. He was over the side. We nearly lost him.”
“Your mum says his leg
will mend fine but I expect it’s going to
take time and he needs a hospital.”
Bob had radioed the Bermuda coastguard
who said they could airlift dad off the boat.
But we turned down their offer. It wasn’t
clear whether our crew insurance covered the airlift
and both mum and Bob were worried about the cost.
The painkillers were working and dad’s condition
was not considered an emergency case. For now,
at least, he was safely strapped in his bunk.
We hoisted the Genoa, our biggest foresail, to
help the motor, and made good progress over the
next two days and nights. All the same it was
a relief to see the faint outline of an island
in the distance.
“Bermuda,” said Bob,
“The world’s most northerly coral
reef.”
A hot summer sun was burning
the deck as we motored into a tidy almost empty
stone-walled harbour. People were lining the quay
ready to secure our mooring ropes. An ambulance
was waiting to take dad off the boat. It was good
to step on firm land again after three weeks at
sea. Mum burst into tears. “What have we
done?” she said as they stretchered dad
into the ambulance. Bob put his arm around her
shoulders. “We’re OK Joy. We’re
all OK.”
He was right. We were OK, more
than OK. My arms were feeling strong. I had a
deepening tan. I don’t think any of us had
ever looked or felt so healthy. We booked into
a small hotel and I stood in front of the full-length
mirror in my room and felt a little dismayed.
Still a girl, I thought. But I looked a much healthier
specimen than the one that left Whitby and my
light brown hair had bleached in the sun.
“I can see what he sees
in you,” I thought. I only thought it. You
never say something like that, not even to yourself.
Stepping back out on to the quay
I could see Bob talking to a stocky, youngish,
square-shouldered wild-looking man in a tatty
old vest. The man had a mop of scruffy sandy hair.
His skin was sweaty and sallow. They were bending
over the tattered mainsail that had been stretched
over the stone cobbled quayside. The man was scratching
his bristly chin. He turned to me as I approached
and held out his right hand.
“Prospero’s the name.
My you’re a pretty lady. You must be Miss
Molly. That’s a fine name for a girl. Fine
name for anyone.”
He gave me a toothy grin and
spoke with a strange, almost West Country accent.
His handshake felt odd and when he withdrew his
hand I could see why. His third finger was missing.
“Prospero here is a sail
maker,” said Bob. “He’s going
to help us.”
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