But it was dry, as Louella had said, and that was something. He recalled how he’d always hated the pervasive dampness, the clinging, sticky moisture that characterized every ocean race.
Thorn’s trim felt wrong, as if she was lumbering in thick syrup, even though her speed was good. Perhaps, he thought, the boat would have a better feel if she rode a little higher, a little lighter.
He clicked on the heaters in the ballast hold. They had pumped nearly four tons of liquefied gas from the bottom of the keel into the ballast tank to set their present trim. The heaters would expand the liquid and force the ballast out. He turned them off after an hour, when the trim felt better.
On the seventh day of their run they rounded CS-15 on their port side and watched the vivid image displayed on their radar screen until it faded back into the ambient noise. Pascal had dutifully recorded the close passage, to prove that they had indeed rounded the mark, while Louella concentrated on keeping Thorn a safe distance away. To do so she maneuvered the winches to switch the sails from side to side, slipping a little to slew the craft about without losing momentum.
As much as they’d like to do so, there was no time to stop, and no way to find out whether the station knew that they had passed. They’d tried the radio, but the deafening noise of atmospheric static masked any reply.
“I wish we could find out which boats have already gone by,” Pascal remarked as he stowed the log and climbed wearily into his bunk. He loosened the truss and breathed a sigh of relief.
“The hell with them,” Louella answered weakly in a voice that revealed that she too was getting tired. “We just have to do the best we can and hope that the rest do worse. That’s what racing is all about.”
“Yeah, remember the last Whitbread—didn’t see another boat the whole race. It was like we had the whole ocean to ourselves.”
“Not much fun there. What I remember is sitting dead in the water for three days while the Sun baked us to a crisp; no wind, no progress. It was only luck that we caught the edge of that storm and got a boost.”
“Won the race, didn’t we? Luck falls to those with the most skill,” Pascal said encouragingly.
“Let’s just hope it works this time as well,” she said dryly. “Now get some shut-eye so you can relieve me in two hours.”
The rest of her watch passed without incident as she tacked at a twenty degree angle to the head wind. The new sails that they had deployed on day five were still serviceable and were probably good for another two days at least. There was a minor fluctuation in the barometer and Louella let the keel down a few hundred meters. She nearly fell asleep at one point, she was so tired.
Louella was the first to notice how their track was consistently deviating to the south. On the last two tacks they had strayed nearly fifty kilometers west of plan.
“Unless there are some different physics out there we can’t possibly be heading like the inertial shows,” she remarked with a nod at the instrument when Pascal crawled up to relieve her.
Pascal looked at the readout. “This thing’s supposed to be foolproof. Maybe you’re misreading it?”
Louella snorted in reply. “You check it yourself. I’m getting something to eat and then some shut-eye.” She slid from the helmsman’s perch, past Pascal, and into the stateroom. “See if you can figure out what’s wrong.”
Pascal kept an eye on the inertial throughout his shift. Sure enough, the southern legs showed the same deviation. If the machine was to be believed, then the winds were coming almost directly down from the north instead of following the westerly course that they had been told to expect.
He wished that he was thinking a little more clearly. Something kept itching at the edges of thought. Something someone had warned them about. What was it? He looked at the curving southerly trace that the inertial was showing and wondered. It almost looked like a smooth curve…Then he had it! A turbulence eddy must have formed along the edge. If the readout was right then they were already being drawn into its grasp. “Louella!” he shouted, “wake up! We have a bit of a problem.”
Hours later the winds rocked Thorn from side to side as Louella fought to make way. Unlike the smooth air they had encountered thus far, the winds on the edges of the storm were rough, uneven gusts that quartered with little warning. In one stomach-wrenching instance, Thorn had turned completely about, while pitching nearly sixty degrees to leeward, reversing as the wind switched and slammed them in the opposite direction.
She knew that they’d lost the foresail, and suspected that the aft was in tatters. There was no possibility of hoisting new ones in these rough seas. Something in the sail locker had torn loose and was smashing around. Pascal would be taking his life in his hands if he tried to go into the locker. For good or ill, they had to use whatever sail they had and hope that their skill, and no small amount of luck, would see them through.
“Can’t even put out a damned sea anchor to steady her,” she complained at one point. “How the hell do the sailors up here survive these storms, anyhow?”
“I think they are wise enough not to do something stupid like racing in a small boat.” Pascal said dryly from the bunk where he had secured himself. “How are we doing?”
Louella checked the instruments. “As far as I can see we are straightening out our track somewhat. At least we aren’t curving more.”
“I hope that means we aren’t getting sucked in. How big do you think this storm is?”
“No telling. I don’t know how they scale these storms up here. Back home this would be called a one-million year storm, I’m certain. It’s a monster!”
Another gust hit them on the side. Louella threw the switch to lower the keel, and their center of gravity, to give them some more stability. It was all that she could do.
The remnants of the aft sail blew away during Pascal’s watch. The rocking of the boat stopped as it drifted with the wind. Since he now had no control over Thorn, he lashed the wheel in place and crawled into the sail locker. The only way they had of restoring some measure of control to the boat was to get another sail up.
The locker was a mess. The big specialty main that Louella had ordered for the finishing run had broken loose of its restraints and had swept the mountings clean off the deck. Bits of broken metal and plastic tie-downs were everywhere. A large dent on the bulkhead showed where the big sail had struck before it finally wedged itself behind the canisters.
Pascal stumbled over the wreckage and selected one of the smaller sails. He undid the lashings, trying to maintain his balance against the pitching motion of the boat. As he worked he kept a wary eye on the huge mainsail in case it began to roll his way.
Twice the boat moved unexpectedly and threw him against the stowed sails, smashing their blunt edges into his chest and back. He knew that he’d have massive bruises to show for it.
Finally, he secured the winch to the sail head and locked the cables in place. He braced himself between the sail and the bulkhead, using the pressure of his legs to hold himself in position and began the torturous process of ratcheting the sail into place. It took all of his energy to move it the last few centimeters.
Louella was awake and in the helmsman’s seat when he poked his head out of the tube. “Sail ready?” she asked calmly, as if nothing was amiss.