“She must have come up with some kind of story to explain your disappearance. Something face saving to tell people at work, friends, relatives and fellow countrymen.”
“Absolutely. That’s exactly what I’ve written in the letter. One thing for sure is that you, my kidnapper would be a man in my mother’s retelling of events. She would not allow people as much as a guess that her daughter got together with a woman. Her daughter may never be this way. Never be that wrong and perverted. And our colleagues, relatives and friends will always believe that she is a poor mother and I am a stupid and ungrateful daughter who ran away with some crook or got kidnapped by a white slaver.”
“I am sorry, Anna.”
“Why?”
“It’s all awful. I mean you loosing your country, you home, friends.”
“We’ll see who laughs last. I am the winner in reality, Jess. I run with you to sea because it is better than being in Russia among people like my mother and my so-called friends. I’m serious. I am terrified of course, in fact I more than likely will cry when you go down-below, but I am with you and I am free! They didn’t get me!”
“Oh Anna…” My eyes were stinging. The engine droned reassuringly below us. I ignored the lump in my throat and concentrated on every nuance of sound it made.
Anna looked up at the sky. “Don’t worry about me, Jess. We’ll survive. Look around us, it is the most gorgeous moment I’ve ever had. A yacht, the person I love, the Moon, we are underway, going home. Life is great!”
The wind was picking up. Hoping it would stabilize the boat and move us through the miles faster, we raised the sails. When I turned off the motor, it was somewhat quieter, but we still had to raise our voices to be heard over the rushing water, slapping lines, breaking waves, whining wind generator, and the sounds of things crashing and shifting below.
Standing and walking were close to impossible. Sitting required hanging onto something. Anna tried to sleep and was launched from a cockpit bench. It proved that lying down was downright dangerous. Dragging herself up, she looked at me, tried to say something, and doubled over vomiting. I was feeling sick myself, but hadn’t acknowledged it until Anna expressed her grief so viscerally. I mean, how can someone embarking on a sea voyage without an end in sight be seasick? And in the first twenty miles at that!
By two thirty in the morning the wind was strong and gusty. Infuriatingly, it was blowing from where we needed to go — southwest, into the international waters east of the Greek islands of Rhodes, Karpathos and Crete. In the sheltered waters of Marmaris Bay, sailing into the wind was exciting and fast; in the middle of the night, in open water with the boat bucking over choppy belligerent waves, it was exhausting. The bow reared up on each foaming crest then plunged into the following trough with a shuddering crash. Water and spray flooded over the deck into the cockpit. As much as I insisted, Anna refused to go below to check the hatches, moaning from the cockpit floor that she was too seasick to move.
The wind direction was forcing us toward Alexandria instead of Crete. It would take several days to reach Egypt, but the thought of working with the wind instead of against it was compelling. So was landing in Africa and just walking away from it all. My mind and inner ear yearned for land. My body begged for sleep. I was at war with my basic needs and worried about Anna. I asked her to at least take the wheel so I could go below and close the hatches.
She muttered something like, “Pleeeeez, just let me die.”
I let it go. It was just too damn bad if water was coming in through the hatches. I couldn’t leave the helm. We’d end up wallowing broadside to the waves or worse. I didn’t actually know what would happen but I wasn’t going to find out. Instead I gave the manual bilge pump handle a few good strokes every now and then.
I tried the newly commissioned autopilot, but couldn’t get it to engage. I should have read the manual or at least tried the thing out before leaving. I was trapped at the wheel, preventatively pumping the bilge every now and then, willing the sky to lighten to the east.
An anemic sunrise revealed an endless vista of white-capped waves coming at us from the southwest. I gave one of Anna’s legs a nudge. “Hey, I need to take a crap.” She rolled her head painfully to look up at me. “I’m going down to the bathroom. Take over here.” No response. “Please!” I added urgently.
She got to her hands and knees and dry retched without result.
“Whoa, you’re still seasick.”
She groaned, crawling for the companionway. She reached it, grasped the threshold, and stared below deck into the darkness.
“Tvoyu za-nagu mat, water is everywhere!”
“Yeah, it’s been coming through the hatches. Take the wheel for a second and I’ll mop it up when I get off the hopper.”
“Jess, it is bad. The floor is floating.” She dragged herself toward the wheel. “Go, look, I think we’re sinking.”
She was right. The floorboards — heavy panels of teak — were sloshing around, afloat in a soup of wet paper and debris. “Shit, we are sinking!” At the electrical panel I saw that the electric bilge pump breaker had tripped. I jammed it into the ON position. It tripped again. I hollered to Anna, “The handle beside you, pump it: the manual bilge pump.”
Further down in the boat, I heard gurgling and saw a rhythmic up-welling of water stirring the debris. “STOP PUMPING!” I shouted. The water stopped gushing from the manual bilge pump intake. The electric bilge pump was submerged and wrapped in paper strips and glop from the toilet paper supply like a drowned piñata — useless. “Okay, pump the handle once and only once.” I called out. Bubbles and a jet of clean water gushed from the intake hose. “Stop! It’s pumping water into the boat.” The manual bilge pump was hooked up backwards! During the night my luckily random pumping had been forcing water into the boat instead of out.
I waded into the sloshing mess and ripped away at the pulpy crud clogging the electric bilge pump. The boat lurched and I skidded into the bilge, landing on my ass and filling my rubber boots with icy water and debris. I swore at the top of my lungs. Then I heard a thump from the cockpit and the yacht was definitely taking the waves differently. The back and forth movement was suddenly violent and the floor boards became battering rams against my knees.
My first thought was the thump from above and the loss of control was Anna going overboard. I thrashed my way to the cockpit. She was crumpled on the floor under the wheel! She really didn’t look good. Her face was white and bloodless, eyes rolled up under the upper lids. “Anna! Come on, I need you. Don’t do this.”
Her foul weather offshore gear, supposedly waterproof, was drenched. Holding the wheel with one hand I shoved the other into her coat and felt only drenched fabric and it was cold. She was breathing, but showed no signs of shivering. “Oh no you don’t! Nobody’s coming down with hypothermia in the sunny Med on my watch! Do you hear me?” I shook her lightly by the collar.
Anna’s eyes scrolled down. She spent a second or two focusing, then rolled over and threw up something yellowish and gelatinous.
“You’re dehydrated. We need to get some water and glucose into you.” I needed her conscious, focused on my voice. “Very few humans can vomit like that and live. You might be setting some kind of record here!”
“Jess, it looks like we’re sinking.”
“Aw, come on. We’re not sinking.”
“Come on yourself. Look around. It’s flooded below and the weather doesn’t subside, it wants to kill us.”