Sea Wife - Amity Gaige Page 0,29
soaked his WHALE OF A TIME t-shirt. He looked at me, offended, but did not cry. Then, like astronauts training for liftoff, we were rolled backward, until we were pressed against the bulkhead, looking up at the galley, and beyond that, through the portlights, the stormy sky. Above the protestations of the boat—the grunting, the squeaking—was the sound we had grown to live by, amplified: wind.
Roaring wind. Annihilating wind.
Damn you, Michael, I whispered. Get the sail down.
I heard the contents of the entire cabin shift, unseen boxes and bottles sliding and crashing into barriers. It all held, except for one locker that flopped open and ejected plastic dishware onto the sole. Plus a row of cookbooks and Audubon guides previously tethered with a bungee, which came tumbling toward us, each one slamming into the benches below our feet. Don’t cry! I told the children. Don’t worry! But they weren’t crying. Georgie was lying with his back against the bulkhead, looking confused. I wrapped my arms around him and looked up. The starboard portlights were underwater. As if we were videoconferencing with the tortured sea. I remembered the term Michael had used in the past for the boat’s heel. He liked to call it getting tilty.
Watch out, Partlows, it’s going to get a little tilty!
Meanwhile my daughter was climbing up the floor of the boat. She moved like she’d done it before, shimmying from the settee to the doorway of the V-berth. She stopped to look back at us and wiggled her fingers. Come, Mommy!
Movement in that kind of a heel is a trial. You are pushed down not just by the angle of the boat but the boat’s very speed, as if you are in a sports car taking a curve.
Georgie put his arms around my neck. We followed.
Juliet’s V-berth had two bunks, one on either side of the boat aft of the bow. The children loved their bunks. Each bunk had a lee cloth, a kind of apron that protected anyone from rolling out, and when the lee cloth was raised, the children made little worlds there. Sybil’s was filled with discarded clothes and coloring books and stuffed animals that rolled their plastic eyes with the rolling boat. Both children jumped into Sybil’s berth, and just like that, they were cocooned.
I slid down to the floor, my back braced against the bunk.
Breathe, Juliet.
I hung my head down between my legs. The bow of the boat rose—I clung to what I could—hung briefly at that implausible angle, and then plunged, planing down the other side of a wave I could not see.
The one sailor-like quality I had was an immunity to seasickness. I was proud of that. But in the V-berth, bobbing up and down like a corked bottle, my effort not to vomit eclipsed my fear of capsize. I fumbled for a peppermint in the damp pocket of my shorts. Head between legs. A corked bottle. It’s going to get a little tilty! Rain drilled the deck, a sound matched only by the crashing of the sea against the hull. The waves sounded as if they were full of rocks. You think, There is only fiberglass between us and that? Michael had placed a plastic cap over the companionway and thankfully he opened this now, letting a column of wind rush down into the cabin. He shouted, cheerfully, Hold on below, crew! The jib is furled already and now I’m going to reef! She’s doing great!
I glanced at his dripping hair and forehead. Then he was gone again.
The reef lines are color-coded. Red for the first one, green for second, then blue. But with the rain drilling me in the face I forget which is which. Plus where the hell is the boom topping lift. You’ve got to kind of squint up into the rain & shake the sheets (must be a better system). I should have secured the topping lift first—now the boom sags. Live & learn. When that is done, I return to the reefing lines. Then I remember red is first because red is for panic. God bless Harry. He said he would find me a boat that was easy to single-hand. I remember thinking, When will I need