Chickenhawk: Back in the World

When we got clear of the inlet, the wind was howling at thirty-five knots. The Namaste bucked into huge breakers, shuddering like she’d run aground. The wind shrieked through the stays and shrouds. About two miles offshore, John announced it was time to set sail. Bob and I manned the mainsail and staysail winches under the dodger and John winched the jib halyard beside us. John let the boat weather-vane into the wind while we hoisted sail. The empty sails snapped and popped in the gale like big flags, sounding like bullwhips. You could feel the boat quiver with the shocks. It took less than a minute to get the sails up. John shut down the engine and let the Namaste fall off the wind. The sails filled and she heeled over, so fast that I thought she was going to be knocked down. The starboard gunwale went underwater and the Namaste lurched ahead, crashing through the surf. It was like a roller-coaster ride. John said that cruising with the gunwale underwater was called “putting the rail under.” For a neophyte, though, seeing the side of the boat go underwater was alarming.

John showed us how to adjust the sails. When you took up slack, pulled the sails tighter to the boat with the sheets, it was called sheeting in. Let them out, sheeting out. So John watched the sails and the rail and called, “Sheet out.” By sheeting out the sails, we took off some of the sideward pressure and got the rail out of the water, on average. The bigger waves crashed across the deck and poured into the cockpit. The sea was a fury of shoving dark shapes and we were in their way. We couldn’t see anything in the pitch-black night, just the water within a few feet of the boat that our dim red and green position lights illuminated. Waves crashed across the deck and slammed into the dodger. The dodger was just canvas and the only thing keeping water from cascading down the hatch. John tugged Rosalinda’s control lines, clicking the vane ratchet until the Namaste came to a course of about a hundred degrees east-southeast. We gave Rosalinda a little cheer as she held the Namaste on course against such massive forces.

We were soaking wet, crowded under the dodger. John asked me to check our position on the loran. I went below.

Above, in the cockpit, the rolling and wallowing hadn’t bothered me. It was difficult below decks. I began to feel nauseous immediately. The loran was on, its power light showed it was on, but the position readout lights were blank. I reset it and punched the readout button. Nothing. I went up and told John, over the howl of the sea, that the loran wasn’t telling me shit. Maybe he could get something out of it. He cursed the maker, Texas Instruments, and went below.

The cabin lights coming through the hatch made Ireland’s yellow slicker glisten. He cupped a joint against the wind and jutted his chin to the back of the boat. “That Rosalinda. How ‘bout that girl?”

I nodded. “Be hell having to man the tiller in weather like this.”

“Shit, Ali, manning the tiller is a drag in any kind of weather. You just sit there for hours pushing that stick back and forth to keep the fucking compass on track. I’ve tried lashing them down to hold a course, but that only works for a few minutes at a time. I’m real glad John insisted on getting her.” He blew a kiss at the autopilot. “I loooove you, Rosalinda!”

“Bob,” John yelled. We both looked. “I mean, Ali. I can’t get anything, either. See what you can do. You know more about electronic shit than I do.”

“Me? I’ve never even seen a loran before.”

John nodded. “See what you can do.”

As I went below, I saw Ireland lean over the side, barfing. The Namaste was plunging down huge water valleys that put my stomach in my throat and then crashing up the other side with a surge that stretched my scrotum. But I’d been in storms at sea before. My dad and I went through a hurricane in his forty-two-foot fishing boat when I was a kid. I’d spent a month on the USS Croatan on the way to Vietnam. I knew how long I could last before I puked. Below, without the reference of the dim horizon, there were no outside clues as to what was happening. The cabin was a grotesquely tilted room with shifting, unpredictable gravity. One instant I was pressed against the counter, the next I was flung against the stove. The wooden parts of the boat—the cabinets, the bulkheads, and the deck—creaked as the fiberglass hull flexed. I swallowed bile and clung to the chart counter, flipping every switch on the loran. I had it do a self-check, which said everything was okay. Everything was okay except that it wouldn’t give a position readout.

I went back up just as I was about to throw up. The wind and the spray washed the sickness away. I told John, “The fucker’s broken, John. Maybe when it calms down I can go into the engine compartment and check the antenna connections. That might be the problem.”

John nodded. “No problem.”

“No problem?” I said.