Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
time we had slid open the hatch. Now, as afternoon drew on to evening, what little daylight
there was began rapidly to fade.
An ice cold wind blew savagely from the torn crests of the slowly rushing horror waves.
Everything was in slow motion. We couldn't believe the size of the seas that were now
bearing down on us, growling angrily as they raced carelessly, dangerously, past our mini-
ature vessel, ridiculously out of her element. It was a wonder we weren't crushed by these
ponderous mountains of blue black water on the move. Now as they rushed below her keel
we could feel the extra speed we were forced to do. The steering vane was losing control
again, and Déjà vu was trying to round up into the gale, almost as though she were trying to
confront her antagonist, her teeth bared in fear. I had left the walker log in operation. The
impeller spun around noisily as the attached string turned the gauge mechanism in fantastic
readings. I leaned over from where I was sitting and took one final reading of the miles
made good before I hauled in the line.
Feeling sick and dizzy, I made my way down to the chart table and lashed myself in with
the restrainer seat belt and pelican hook. I was thrown mercilessly from side to side, and
my knees fetched up painfully against the plywood lockers. I reached towards the dividers
in their plastic holder and, using the latitude scale on the side of the chart opposite where
we supposedly were, calculated the new mileage made good. I stuck one steel point onto
yesterday's deduced reckoning and walked down the new mileage with the other extended
point, towards the general direction of the storm's prevailing direction. I scribed a generous
arc to accommodate all errors and penciled in a rough position.
It was then that I saw the little dotted circle on the chart. My heart leapt into my mouth.
I turned white and muttered a Jesus Christ Almighty! I was looking at a shoal warning! If
this was correct, and we were in this area or anywhere near this area, then we were sailing
in dangerously shallow water. My heart thumped as I looked again at the chart. There it
was, in calm businesslike black and white, an innocent little symbol on the chart where my
light pencil arc had been drawn. Quickly I redid the math, offering up the dividers to the
latitude scale and carefully measuring off the miles in that direction, and it remained the
same. “Fucking hell! We have a problem!” I said out aloud.
Gavin was beyond earshot, and there was no point in telling him something we had no
control over. There were a couple of these warning shallows, ranging from a mere eight
fathoms to thirty fathoms I now saw, as I scrutinized the chart with a sinking heart and as
the violence of the boat's motion battered my poor knees. Here was Kelso Bank and right
next to it another one called Capel Bank. These two banks comprised of several sound-
ings of water as shallow as between fifty feet and one hundred and eighty some feet. The
whole area was full of shoals! In an ocean that was predominantly around six thousand
feet, we were sailing in dangerously shallow water! As luck would have it, we had a strong
