True pirates, part 4

Fall 2023

By David Roper

I kept replaying it in my head: “And we’re not stopping at Bermuda,” Mark had commanded. But he wasn’t the captain. I was. And I told him so.

He’d smirked, then winked at Artie. “Yeah, sure you are.”

At this point, alone on deck, it was a toss-up as to which was the leading cause of my anxiety: the sense that a mutiny of sorts was brewing 100 miles at sea; or the fear that another thing was brewing, a low-pressure system that could turn into a …. No, I didn’t want to think about either one. And I didn’t have to, immediately anyway, as the main halyard had just uncoiled from its cleat on the mast and was now trailing astern. I worried about it getting tangled in the rudder or propeller and knew I’d need to go forward to recoil and tether it.

We were rolling dramatically now in the building quartering seas. I locked the wheel and hoped the boat would track long enough for me to run forward, pull in and secure the errant halyard, and return to the cockpit. I did a modified Army crawl forward, clinging to anything solid, then grabbed the trailing line, and returned. (I should note here that for years after this trip I was haunted by the thought that if I had fallen overboard, no one aboard would have known, and that once I was discovered missing, these pirates probably wouldn’t have bothered to look for me. In my life vest, I would float in the relatively warm Gulf Stream water for two, or even three, days before dying of thirst. What thoughts would go through my head while waiting for the end, as I futilely blew on the cheap plastic whistle Mark and Artie had bought me? And would I hallucinate? Would I relive poignant moments in my suddenly shortened 25-year life?) [Editor’s note: “In the Gulfstream,” a fictionalized short story based on these thoughts and inspired by this delivery experience, appears in the author’s book “Watching for Mermaids”]

Finally, at the end of my watch, and after a number of my nudging shouts to Mark and Artie to come on deck, the two pirates took over. Once below, I was pleased to find that Hobie, my friend and seasick watchmate, was feeling better. I turned in. But a few hours later I was awakened by a change in motion, and I shot up on deck. The mainsail was half down, and the end of the main halyard was swinging wildly halfway up the mast. I looked over at Mark, who was behind the wheel. “Artie was putting in a second reef,” he yelled, “lost his hold on the halyard when we took a big roll. We’re gonna need that mainsail on this tub. We need to send somebody up the mast to grab the end.”

I looked over my shoulder at the rolling seas. They were getting big enough to crest now. I shook my head. “That’s impossible until things flatten out.”

Mark struggled at the wheel, correcting a bad roll to port as we slid off a cresting sea. “We need some mainsail, some pressure amidships, or we won’t be able to control her down these following seas. She’ll spin out and broach. Only option if it gets worse instead of better is to lie ahull, under bare poles, ’cause I don’t think this pig will heave-to very well.”

It got worse. And that’s what happened. We tried unsuccessfully to heave-to and finally rolled up the jib, slid in the companionway hatch boards, locked the helm, and all went below. We laid on the cabin sole as we couldn’t keep from being thrown from our bunks. I have an indelible memory of a plastic bowl of peanuts sitting on the cabin table as we fell off a wave; the peanuts shot up and out of the bowl. The bowl stayed still. It was that rough. Though lying ahull in the troughs was risky, I think what saved us was that we were on a very light, high-sided and buoyant vessel able to lift above rather than get pummeled and toppled by giant, folding seas. But finally, she met her match with a rogue wave. Suddenly all wind and wave noise vanished, the natural light in the cabin turned the dark green color of the sea, and all was still. We were underwater. I’m sure it lasted only a few seconds, but it seemed an eternity until she popped back up. I remember thinking: Well, that’s got to be the worst of it.

I was wrong.

David Roper’s upcoming novel, “The Ghosts of Gadus Island,” is scheduled for publication this year. Dave is the author of the three-time bestseller “Watching for Mermaids,” as well as the sequel “Beyond Mermaids” and the novel “Rounding the Bend.” All are available through Amazon.com or roperbooks.com.