Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Gavin had put on his harness as well, and he turned on the fluorescent light. It helped us to
see in the cockpit and also cast a ghostly white aura of unnatural light into the pitch black
ghastly scene outside. I hauled up the heavy, old Genoa from the cockpit sole and made
sure that the anchor rode was secured to its head and the other end secured to the moor-
ing horn over the other car tire line. I threw it out the back, and it sank slow and pale in
the strange light. It finally disappeared from view. A horrid thought of what it must be like
in that water made me shiver. We watched the rope snake out and finally fetch up sharply
against the mooring horn. I tugged on this quivering line as it disappeared into the fright-
ening black below. There was considerable drag on the line. More so than the car tire. The
combination of these three items dragging behind through the water made a tremendous
difference to her performance. I believe we would not be here to tell the tale if it had not
been for these items.
We stayed outside, taking a little comfort in watching the way our little boat held her stern
to the seas and how she valiantly rode all but the biggest mountains of black sinister waves.
We finally retired below, and I lay on my bunk too tired to care about the mess or the bilge
water slopping about the floorboards. We experienced several more violent knock downs
throughout that terrible night, each one just as terrifying as the previous one. We just never
knew if that was going to be the final straw. We couldn't be sure of just what was rushing
at us from out of the blackness of the night.
At first light, we opened the hatches again and were shocked into silence at what we saw.
Greybeards, every one of these waves bearing down on us now was at least forty feet high.
Their crests all broke and, foamy with the water, cascaded down the steep, dark, blue-green
fronts. It was absolutely horrifying. Never again in my life would I want to see them again.
We watched, fascinated, as these black canyons of evil fell upon our little Déjà vu, tower-
ing over the slender, little toy boat.
With the electrifying speed at which we were swept up into the air, we could feel the wind
rushing past as we were flung up on high. Then we would have a terrifying view of the
whole ugly scene for miles around. It seemed like the whole world was one huge, broken,
noisy storm, and the greybeards marched ruthlessly on like some unstoppable army; wave
upon wave came and swept impassively under us. As the wave broke about us, I was petri-
fied we would sink in the foamy unfloatable broken water all around us. There were times
when she did flounder, and great mounds of salt water smashed over her decks. I looked
back and saw the three brave ropes buried in the trough of these ugly monsters of water,
droplets of water flinging off as the lines quivered with the dragging forces they were sub-
jected to.
Indeed, we could see the pale ghostly outline of the Genoa sail as it floundered along
behind in the dangerous trough at the base of the waves. There was the car tire looking
