A Ravel of Waters

by Geoffrey Jenkins

  Something still eluded me about Tideman. 'As second officer,' I added.

  He answered me a trifle defensively. 'Captain Mortensen was a very fine sailor. He'd graduated in square-riggers and knew deep-watermen. My background did not include them. Also, he was from the Aaland I sips. You know what that implies.' Holding the telephone still, he asked, 'Shall I call Kay?' 'Yes. Tell her to come quickly.'

  He dialled 'S' on the intercom and said to me while the instrument rang, 'Jetwind's phones are automatic — all the main control-points have code-rings, "S" for sail-maker, "O" for bridge — officer of the deck, "E" for engine room — and so on.'

  We waited. 'I'll bet Kay is stretched out full-length on the deck stitching a sail,' he said. 'You must visit the sail-room — it's big enough to house a whole sail spread out. Kay's favourite habit is to lie down and work at them.'

  The phone came alive. I heard a burst of background music and Tideman said, 'Kay! Switch that damn thing down, will you? The skipper wants you…' There was a pause and he eyed me. 'No, the new skipper, Captain Rainier. Yes, he's on the bridge now. At the double, please.'

  'You will have common ground with Kay — she's another Cape Horner,' Tideman said.

  'Was she one of the all-women crew yachts in the last Round the World?'

  'No. She was sail-maker in Peripatetic II. There was one other girl aboard, the navigator. I reckon it must have been the Round the Worlder which threw Kay's marriage. Marriage and the deep sea don't go together.' ' She's divorced, then?'

  'Aye. The guy was a starchy up-and-coming young London stockbroker, I heard. Couldn't stand the absence, and the adulation Kay got over the race. Peripatetic finally finished sixth, which was no mean feat.' 'Is that all that broke it up?' 'Kay's not that sort. Aboard Jetwind we sort of regard her as the Old Lady of the Sea.' 'Meaning?'

  'Well, she's twenty-six, and that's a ripe old age amongst this crew. Their average age is twenty. They even look upon me as the Ancient Mariner — I'm twenty-seven.' 'Same as me.'

  'Jack, our other sail-maker, is really our Old Man of the Sea — he's thirty.' He grinned. 'He's a wonderful practical sail-maker but he hasn't Kay's flair for the theory. I myself don't understand half the maths she talks when she gets on to sail aerodynamics.' 'Are there any more Cape Horners aboard?'

  'Aye. Four of my own lads from the Adventure School. Then there's Pierre Roussouw, who sailed with Tabarly. And the bo'sun, Jim Yell. As you probably realize, a bo'sun in this sort of ship has a very special position. There are only two officers, apart from the captain — Grohman and myself. Yell is a sort of sergeant-major — not that this crew needs chasing. But they're fretting, and the sooner we get to sea, the better.'

  Tideman's remarks about the chain of command made me wonder again where Grohman was. Protocol required that he should have been on the bridge to greet me in the first place. Nevertheless, I had resisted a temptation to summon him. I wanted to find out about things without him around. It seemed to me, however, that he was cocking a snook at me by his continued absence.

  I said, brusque with inner tension, 'I hope they get their wish. There is an Argentinian destroyer on her way here to detain Jetwind’

  Tideman stared at me in disbelief and then exclaimed, 'Detain!’

  'That is my information. She will arrive tonight or tomorrow.'

  I was saved from further explanation by Kay Fenton's arrival. I had been unprepared, in the light of Tideman's 'Old Lady of the Sea' description, for the person who came quickly through the bridge door. She was tallish, with a mod style hair-cut which made her blonde hair lighter than it really was where it had been sun-bleached above her ears. The long legs of her black velvet corduroy pants were dotted with scraps of dacron sail thread. Her slim breasts were free under a green woollen shirt. The Pacific seemed to have left something of its blue in her wide eyes, and Cape Horn something of its greyness. The damped-down turbulence at the back of them was her own.

  She held out her hand to me. As I gripped it we both laughed. She had forgotten to remove her sail-maker's leather palm.

  'I'm not really as horny-handed as all that,' she said. I welcomed the way she repeated the handshake after removing the palm. I also liked the low modulation of her voice. Like her eyes, it seemed to have a background of sadness.

  She by-passed a whole ocean of social conventions by getting down to the subject which, basically, interested both of us.

  'You made the correlation between the theoretical performance of the Venetian Rig and its practical one look a bit battered. Captain Rainier,’ she said. 'We tested your rig at the Schiffbau Institut. If we had had Albatros's actual performance figures then, we could well have plumped for a Venetian Rig for Jetwind’

  Tideman added, 'It takes a sailor to achieve Albatros's results, Kay.'

  Then she asked me with the same eager air as Tideman had shown previously, 'Now that you're here, will we be sailing soon?'

  I dodged the question. 'Mr Tideman has given me a rundown on Jetwind’s controls. Now I want to see the sails themselves — the real power house. I would also like to see the exact place where Captain Mortensen met with his accident.' She flashed a glance at Tideman. 'John?'

  His voice lacked any inflexion. 'I considered you'd be the best person aboard to explain the merits of the sails.'

  'Let's make it as quick as we can,' I said. 'I have to see the chief magistrate shortly after lunch.'

  She gave Tideman another inquiring look and then said, a little uncertainly, it appeared to me, 'Let's go.'

  After operating one of a bank of switches on a nearby console, she led me down a ladder to a central well immediately abaft and under the wheel-house itself. The mast ran through it. Access to its interior was via a steel door which slotted into the curvature of the mast. Kay explained that this servicing door was held shut magnetically until released by the bridge control she had manipulated.

  She put on the lights. I was surprised at the diameter of the mast inside. There was room for two people abreast, although it narrowed higher up. A steel ladder was clamped to the wall and a trunk of intertwined copper tubes, which combined were thicker than my leg, sprouted skywards out of sight above. These were the hydraulic pipes to control the yards. They were linked in twin, each pair with dials and valves. It looked more like a plumber's paradise regained than a ship's mast. 'Come!'

  Kay started up the ladder. Her sneakers made no sound on the rungs. Within seconds she had outpaced me. Up and up we went, Kay drawing ahead at every step. Finally, out of breath, I reached her, perched in a compartment on what looked like a tiny steeple-jack's seat. This compartment was the juncture point of topsail yard and mainmast. Higher, the diameter of the interior narrowed to become the top-gallant mast, and the material changed from high tensile steel to light alloy. The top-sail yard-arm itself was largely hidden from view except via slits through which the sail rolled in and out along stainless steel runners.

  Kay followed my inquiring scrutiny of the gleaming mechanisms and valves.

  'These hydraulics are basically the same as are used to operate the rudders of large ships — suitably adapted, of course.'

  I said, getting back my breath, 'I heard you're called the Old Lady of the Sea. If old ladies go up ladders like that, give me the advanced generation any day.'

  She laughed with a mixture of humour and reserve. 'The guys all think I'm crazy. I have an exercise routine. I run up this ladder to the crow's nest every morning before breakfast.' 'What's that in aid of?'

  'All day I sit at a sewing-machine stitching sails or at a desk doing maths. Put simply, the bottom doesn't benefit by it.'

  I gestured at the servicing compartment. Its most unusual feature was a pair of what looked like gigantic vertical roller-blinds, about nine metres tall, tightly wound with sail.

  'I suppose I'll get used to it,' I said, 'but at the moment it all seems like black magic to me. Strangest is having hollow masts.5

  'They're correctly termed unstayed rotatable
profiled masts,' she answered seriously. 'They've been custom-made by aircraft manufacturers.' She added with a touch of anxiety, 'You're going to try and make time, aren't you? Sail her?'

  'My brief is to reach Gough Island within a week. I intend to.'

  She considered my statement for a moment, then answered, 'You'll need all the luck.'

  'Isn't it a tradition that any sailor who has sighted Cape Horn will have good luck for the rest of his — or her — career?' Her face became expressionless. 'It didn't bring me luck.' 'Meaning?'

  She shrugged and was silent. Then she resumed in a different tone altogether. 'It's also a legend that anyone rounding Cape Horn has the right to have a pig tattooed on the calf of the right leg.'

  Her amusement had an infectious quality, contrasting with her serious, sombre air of a moment before.

  'I did.' She reached down and pulled up the leg of her corduroy pants. 'There. It's mainly gone now. It wasn't a real tattoo, only a kind of self-eradicating transfer.' Her mood changed mercurially. 'Louis thought it was disgusting. How could a lady go out to a party in London with a pig tattoo showing through her stocking?' 'Louis?'

  'Husband. Ex. I did it for a laugh. Strangely, it was one of the things he battened on for the divorce.' 'I expect it was only a symptom.'

  The colour now in her cheeks had nothing to do with the effort of climbing the ladder. 'Why shouldn't I? Old grandfather Fenton — I remember him still — had his whole forearm tattooed…' 'Is that where your sailoring genes come from?'

  'He wasn't a sailor — he was a prospector’ she replied. 'Believe it or not, he went and lived on Gough Island between the wars prospecting for diamonds! Those were the days when a ship might have called once in a year — or never.'

  'I never knew Gough was anything but a weather station.' 'Grandfather's expedition was long before it was inhabited. Maybe I'm a throw-back to the old man Perhaps it's his same spirit of adventure which brings me here, or made me sail round the world. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see Gough.'

  Her remark brought me back to the hard realities facing Jetwind.

  I replied a little offhandedly, 'I don't intend to stop. If you do see Gough, it would only be a glimpse. From there I'll be high-tailing to the Cape like a bat out of hell.' Again she asked eagerly, 'Then we're sailing — soon?'

  'I didn't say so. But the race against time, the week, starts tomorrow.'

  I sensed that by being non-committal I had lost her. She said distantly, 'John said you wanted to know about the sails?'

  I felt I needed her on my side for what lay ahead. 'Listen, Kay,' I said. 'I intend to wring every knot, every half knot, out of this ship every mile of the way — and it's a long way. I'm a rule-of-thumb sailor, you're the specialist. I want you at my elbow to give advice when I hell-drive Jetwind. Automatics aren't the answer as far as I'm concerned. It's the human flair which counts in my scheme of things.'

  Her response was to draw up her knees to her chin, squatting on the tiny circle of steel. It made her look more sixteen than twenty-six. I looked down at her, gripping an overhead cat-walk which gave access to the yard and rollers.

  'Then you've got to appreciate how different Jetwind is from any ship that has gone before,' she said. 'First, I don't like the term sails. I prefer aerofoils.' 'Sails mean — sails, to me.'

  'I'll stick to sails, then. Take a scientific look at the shape of the sails of an old racing China clipper and you'll see the resemblance to an aircraft wing — a slender trapezoid or triangle with a curvature parallel to the longitudinal axis. Therefore those ships were fast…' 'Stick to one-syllable words and I'll follow you.' 'Those early clipper sails were efficient aerodynamically. However, as soon as ships became bigger, the sails had to be split in order to be handled physically by their crews. That destroyed their aerodynamics. Later windjammers looked super but aerodynamically speaking they were a nightmare — hopelessly inefficient. And as for that spider's web of rigging!' She gave a shudder. 'It does awful things to one when you see them under test in a wind-tunnel.'

  'They worked, Kay. They also put some of man's most beautiful creations on the face of the ocean.'

  'You're wrong!' she retorted vehemently. 'It's Jetwind that's beautiful, more beautiful than the best of them! Don't you appreciate the beauty of this sail plan — an unbroken aerofoil from deck to truck? Not individual sails slopping about on their own but a single entity with all the grace and power of proved mathematics behind it! As for Jetwind's masts — there's never been anything seen before on the high seas like the Prolss mast!

  'You have to regard them and the sails as one propulsive unit. We found by tests the optimum speed for a quite definite trim of the sails. We also had to determine the optimum curvature of the yards, by comparison with the sail force curves.' 'It's the end result that concerns me.'

  Kay seemed to have more data stored in her mind than a computer memory bank. But however fascinating all this theory was, my first problem was a practical one, the logistics of Jetwind's break-out. I cut in on her rarefied theorizing. 'Kay, what's Jetwind's best point of sailing?'

  She answered without hesitation. 'With the wind on the beam or slightly abaft the beam?' 'Best strength?' 'Gale. Force nine.' 'Reefed down?' 'Naturally.' 'Relative course angle?' 'One hundred and thirty-five degrees.' 'Speed?’ 'Twenty-two knots.' I said, 'On paper.'

  She burst out passionately. cIf anyone can get that out of her, you're the man to do it! You thrashed Albatros across the face of the ocean as no man has ever thrashed a ship. We heard it on the radio’

  I added., 'I intend to flog Jetwind until she makes Gough in a week or she falls apart at the seams.'

  Provided you first manage to break out, a voice nagged at the back of my mind.

  Kay's voice vibrated still. 'At her maximum, the aerofoil sail-plan delivers forty thousand horse-power. You've only got to have the nerve and the guts to use it!'

  Twenty-two knots, under ideal conditions. The Almirante Storni could bullet along at thirty-five at full bore, depending on the state of the sea. She must never get the chance to use her speed advantage. That was my scheme.

  Linked to my plan was the need to deploy all Jetwind's power rapidly. How fast could she accelerate from anchor to the ten knots I considered the minimum required? Could she work up to that speed in the mere kilometre and a half which separated her from where she lay now to The Narrows? 'Did you ever carry out any flying start tests in your wind-tunnel?' I asked. 'I don't follow you.'

  'Say, for example, I wanted to accelerate Jetwind from a moored position to the maximum she could achieve under the wind conditions then prevailing, how would I set about it?' 'What wind velocity are we talking about?'

  That was the kicker. At its worst, I must assume that the wind would be blowing only a moderate breeze of about sixteen knots by the early hours of the following morning. Anything above that would be a bonus in Jetwind's favour. 'Say, Force Three to Four.' 'And the sea?' 'If she was moored, it would be calm.' Her eyes became abstracted, and she murmured something to herself about side and thrust forces and angles of wind inflow. Then she asked incisively, 'She would naturally be carrying all sail?' 'You bet.' 'I make it eleven knots, at her best point of sailing.'

  Eleven! I had hoped only for ten. If the wind were stronger than Force Three or Four, I'd have thrust in hand for my purpose.

  Yet Kay still had not answered my question — how soon could I draw on that amount of Jetwind's speed? I couldn't be more specific without revealing my plan. I had no intention of doing so — to anyone. 'As for acceleration?' 'It's not the sort of thing we tested for.'

  I changed the subject. 'Kay, what's this curious waxy smell in here — like furniture polish? Is it the hydraulic fluid?' She indicated one of the giant 'rolling-pins'. 'Dacron doesn't smell.'

  'It's not the sails themselves but what's on them,' she explained. 'To protect them against infra-red and ultraviolet ray sun damage, they have a special kind of plastic coating. You can imagine what a suit of
sails like this costs. Mr Thomsen asked the Schiffbau Institut to find some substance to protect the sails so a new flexible plastic was specially developed.'

  I looked about me. 'This is where- Captain Mortensen was killed, isn't it?'

  The animation went from her face. 'Right here in this bay. He's supposed to have been trapped between those two rollers.' 'Supposed?'

  'I can't understand how such a thing could have happened,' she said vehemently. 'First, the sail was supposed to have been jammed on its yard-arm runners. How? At the Schiffbau Institut we carried out thousands of preliminary reefing and sail-setting tests under every simulated condition of wind. Mr Grohman brought Captain Mortensen here to demonstrate a fault to him…'

  My mind leapt ahead to my coming interview with the chief magistrate. 'You don't believe the account of the tragedy?'

  'I didn't say that. All I do say is that, I can't understand how it could have happened. The ship was making time in a rising sea and gale and we were all thrilled with the way she was performing. Then this!' She jumped off her perch and came close to me. She indicated a switch on the mast wall. 'Apart from the bridge consoles, there's a fail-safe control right here. All Mr Grohman had to do was to press this button and the rollers would have stopped. And…' she indicated levers on the rollers themselves '… here are hand cranks as another emergency measure. They operate the travelling runners manually in case of power failure. There was no power fault! What happened?'

  'That's what Mr Thomsen keeps asking. Why did Grohman make for the Falklands when he could have carried on to the Cape?'

  'God, oh God!' she exclaimed savagely. 'It was awful. Jetwind was like a funeral ship. He abandoned the record attempt and headed into the gale. Day after day! Forcing Jetwind to go that way! Into that same godawful gale which would have blown us all the way to the Cape!'

  'I wish Mr Thomsen could hear you now,' I said. And I gave her the gist of Thomsen's plans to try and recoup Jetwind’s prestige.

  She plucked at a loose thread at the bottom of the sail roller. Her big eyes were full of controlled fury.