Chapter 12 - The Storm at the 30th Parallel - continued
We had just crossed the 30th parallel north at 148 degrees longitude west, when we ran into the storm that rolled us over in the sea. Now that we were back under way, we watched the black thunderheads moving off towards the east. The storm we had just weathered was the second worst thunderstorm that had churned up the sea and threatened our safety with it lighting strikes. I hoped not to see another, but was certain we would see many more before this yearlong trip was over.
Becky could wait no longer and I saw her move to the stern, drop her pants, sit down on the wooden toe-kick board and do her business over the edge of the deck. I turned on the portable radio that I had charged earlier and found a rock and roll station out of Oregon that was playing 1980 classics. I heard Becky singing along and realized she was in a very good mood this morning, even if we did have to hunker down in the cabin and deal with bad weather. The Pacifica was staying on course, so I went down into the cabin and got a fishing pole, some tackle, and a bottle that contained bacon rind strips to bait the hook. When I cast the heavy lure with the bacon rind on it along side of the vessel, I heard Becky laughing at my fishing methods. She commented that I could never catch a fish while the Pacifica was moving under full sail. I looked at her and said, “Woman, you concentrate on your pooping, I will tend to the fishing.” I heard her talking, but could not make out her words since she had almost whispered them. I suspected I really did not want to know what words she spoke to me, I could almost guess. Becky had learned many good things from her father; however, her ability to cuss like a sailor was not one of them.
Within just a few minutes, the fishing reel drag was screaming from whatever had grabbed hold of the lure. I took the fishing rod out of the holder, and realized that the fish was rather large and was fighting hard. When I got it up close to the boat, I realized it was a sea bass about thirty inches long. By the time I had it up to the boat, it had completely quit fighting. I decided to keep it, and we would eat it for lunch and supper today. As I ran a rope through its gills and secured it to the mast until I had time to clean it, Becky stepped up to me and said, “I am sorry for chastising you for your fishing abilities. You have done well.” Then she went down into the cabin and returned with her fillet knife and a pan. She looked at me and asked, “Would you allow me to fillet this fish. You can cuss at me and tell me I am stupid while I do it, as I did to your when you were fishing.” I pulled her into my arms and said, “Captain, you have the right to cuss and carry on as you please, but I will not cuss at or insult my wife and best friend.”
I returned my attentions to setting the rudder when I heard her crying behind me. I turned around and said, “I am sorry if my words angered you.” She stepped up to me and said, “Do you know what day today is.” I said, “Yes, it is your birthday and I do not understand why you are angry and crying. You were in such a good mood earlier.” She stepped up to me and said, “True, this is my birthday, but this is also the day, six years ago, that Father died.” I turned to her and pulled her into my arms. I said, “I am sorry if you are feeling sad for the loss of your father, but he would want you to be happy on your birthday, not grieving over his death. I know he would not have wanted to see you sad like this.” She cried a moment longer and then stepped back from me, wiped her eyes, and said, “You are right. Father would be very unhappy if I cried over his death after all these years.” She kissed me and said, “Will you help me fillet this fish, please?”
When all the edible meat was in the pan, I threw the carcass into the water for the fish. Becky put the fish fillets into tightly sealed plastic bags, and then placed them into a mesh bag that she tied to the swim ladder to keep them cool. While I cleaned the deck, I thought about how it would feel to have the Father that you loved so dearly die on your birthday. Becky’s emotions still struggled with the trauma of her father’s death. I finally realized as I thought about my wife’s emotions that most things that happened in her life were traumatic. I guess it was just her way and I was not certain there was anything I could do to help, other that support and love her. The word, bipolar came to mind whenever I considered Becky’s disposition. She was either on a tremendous high or on a traumatic low.
Becky went down into the cabin and returned with a large mesh item in her hands that looked to me like a small fishing net. She walked up towards the bow and carefully tied one end to the foresail mast about four feet up over the deck and then stretched the thing back and tied the other end to the main sail mast. Then it dawned on me what she had found, it was a hammock. It was very large and she commented that it was a two-person hammock. As we tried it out, she crawled on top of me and began kissing me. I told her not to stop, and began rubbing her bare back with my hands. She moved both of her legs over the sides of the hammock and placed her feet on the floor. She giggled and said, “I cannot seduce you with those shorts covering your body.” I quickly corrected the problem and watched her remove her clothing right down to her birthday suit. This time when she straddled my body, I decided I loved Becky’s new play toy a lot.
When I could speak again, I asked her where she had hidden the hammock in the cabin, since I had not seen it before. She laughed and said, “Along with the net bags that I bought for cooling fish, in the cupboard labeled, sex toys.” I laughed at her comment and said, “I never saw that cupboard, I think you are teasing me.” Then I laughed again and asked if she had tried out this sex toy before she married me? She smiled at me and said, “Why Stanley, are you asking about the boys I seduced before I married you?” I looked her in the eyes and said, “Actually, I should retract the question and consider you a virgin when I married you.” She snuggled with me in the hammock and told me that she had two boyfriends before she had married me, and had made love to both of them. She raised her head and said, “I actually was a virgin the first time you seduced me, if you remember back to our freshman year in college. You were my first and best. I only had one boyfriend after that, and we only lasted a few months. That was a year or so before Father died.” Then the question came that I was expecting to hear. Becky raised her head up so she could look into my eyes, and asked, “Now, may I ask about your lovers, or a there too many to count and remember?” I chuckled at her words and said, “There have been three ladies in my life, you were my first true love, until we went our separate ways in this world. Then I married June, two years after I finished my Ph.D. in electrical engineering. After we were divorced, four years ago, I had a short relationship with a lady who decided she did not like my traveling lifestyle.” Becky said, “No quickies along the way, I cannot hardly believe that.” I laughed and said, “Actually, I don’t do quickies, as you must remember from our college days. I have to be pretty committed to a relationship before sex.” Becky hugged me and said, “I guess we are truly quite alike, in many ways.”
As we lay in the hammock talking, Becky commented that she hoped we did not encounter any more storms that rolled the Pacifica into the sea. She snuggled up close and said, “I seldom panic on the ocean, but that did rattle my sense of security a little.” I giggled over her words and said, “I am glad that I was not the only one in a state of panic when the floor became our ceiling. I was trying to determine how to get us out of the Pacifica if we could not roll her over in the water so the hatch doors were towards the sky again.” Becky said, “That is why I wanted the two dive rescue air tanks. If my calculations are correct, I am certain they are. The air in the ballast tanks will support the vessel on the surface even with the cabin full of seawater.” I looked her in the eyes to see if she was just telling me this to give me a sense of security, or if the information was accurate. She told me that with the compressed air tanks inside the cabin, and all the other items that would float, the vessel would positively remain on the surface. Then she commented that with the two 120 pound compressed air tanks we added, she was not certain if the Pacifica would even dive to 100 meters any longer. I asked how we could flood the cabin
before the rescue air tanks ran dry in thirty minutes. She looked at me and said, “By opening the two four inch valves at floor level.” I asked her where the valves were located, since I had never seen them. She laughed and said, “Stanley, I thought you had snooped everywhere on this vessel, let me show you the emergency flood valves. It is important that you know how to equalize the cabin pressure if we ever need to open the hatch doors while underwater.”
When we were down in the cabin, she opened a small cupboard down by the floor under the shelves that we used for beds. Inside was a large ball valve with a metal pipe plug screwed into it. I asked if the other side of the valve was located in the ballast tank or the outside of the hull. She said it went directly out to the sea and would flow a full four-inch stream of water if ever opened. She then opened the cupboard on the starboard side of the Pacifica and I saw another valve located there. She used her fingers to loosen the metal plug and then retighten it, and then did the same on the port side plug. She commented that she wanted the plugs removable by hand, just in case we ever needed to remove them to flood the vessel. I commented that we should have welded tee handles on them to allow a better grip if one should ever get over tightened or corroded. She looked at me and said, “That is a moot point now, my love.” She stood up and began laughing. Then she said, “I have been looking for an opportunity to use that sophisticated word on you in retaliation for you using it on me; I am so proud of myself.” She turned back to me and said, “I had to look the word up when you spoke it to me, but now I know its meaning and will not be surprised by your magna cum laude word ever again.” I reached out, swatted her on the butt, and said, “I was not trying to impress you with a big word, it just came out of my mouth as we talked. You should have asked for the words meaning and I would have told you right then.” She giggled and said, “I just thought you were trying to impress me with your best words so you could get into my pants.” I laughed and said, “I would have used kisses, not words if I had wanted into your pants.” She giggled and said, “Now that you have seen these two valves, you really do know everything there is to know about my water works,” and then headed up the ladder to the deck.
The afternoon had slipped by quickly, and it had turned out to be a beautiful day. I checked the Coast Guard weather channel on the radio and they were forecasting rain for most of the day tomorrow. I asked Becky if she needed a swim and a good bath before we set sail again for the night. We moved the sails parallel to the wind and tied them to the mast, and then adjusted the steering rudders to hold us in a westerly drift while we swam. We got the long lifelines out of the cabin and attached them to the stern tie down ring on the starboard side, and then attached it to the two swim rings. We jumped into the cool water and began scrubbing the salt and sweat from our bodies. We did not stay in very long because the ocean was colder today than normal. The storm had stirred up the deeper cold water and brought it up to the surface.
When we got out and stood on the deck drying with our large beach towels, I smiled to myself over the effect the cold water had on Becky’s nipples. She must have sensed my staring and turned to look at me. She laughed and said, “Don’t be giggling over the size of my nipples until you look down and see the effect the cold water has on your body.” I shook my head and let her know that I was not looking down until my body had warmed a little in the sunshine.
We decided to cook supper and get ready for darkness to set in before we set sail. We both would take a few minutes in the cabin and lay out our dry suits, and the Under Armour first layer to keep us warm as we rotated the watch during the heavy rain that the Coast Guard predicted for later tonight and most of the day tomorrow. The hoods on the dry suits, along with the hats we had purchased went a long way in keeping us warm and comfortable in bad weather. The hats had a flap on the back to cover our necks, a long bill to keep the rain and sun off our faces, and they had a chinstrap to keep them secure in high wind. We also had wool socks and rubber boots that we could tuck up under the cuffs of the dry suits to keep our feet dry. We also prepared the rainwater collection system under the bow hatch.
Once we set sail, we set a starboard tack that we would run until around midnight, and then we would change to the port side tack until daylight.
Chapter 13 - Day Twenty-Two
The sea was calm and we slept together in the cabin. We had set the alarm clock to ring every two hours. We took turns going up on the deck to check on the sails. Around quarter past six in the morning, on the twenty-second day, we again ran into heavy rain. I was standing watch so I went down into the cabin and began collecting rainwater in one of the empty jugs. Becky realized what was going on and got up from bed to help me. She said, “Since you are already dressed for the rain, would you stand the watch for awhile? I will collect rainwater, make coffee, and prepare us a warm breakfast. Then I will put on my wet weather gear and stand watch.”
As I stood on the deck, the rain continued to pour incredibly hard, but the wind remained gentle, and the waves crested only three or four feet high. As I watched the western sky, I could see the thunderstorm moving in our direction and the lightning and thunder was getting much too close. I lowered the foresail mast and then removed the sail and passed it down to Becky. As I watched the storm, I realized it was moving parallel to us and might not get any worse. Becky told me that the water containers were all full and I could remove the rainwater collection system and hand it down to her. As she stowed the frame and trash bag, I closed the bow hatch to keep everything dry. I checked our direction with my compass and we seemed to be heading in the right direction, but I had no idea if we were actually moving forward. I raised the stern hatch and asked Becky to turn on the GPS to insure I was tacking correctly. Within a couple of minutes, she raised the hatch again and said we were on course and that I should come below for breakfast. Before I came down, she handed up the second safety line, and I attached it around the stern mast so she could hook it to her life jacket when she came up onto the deck to relieve me. We would wear our life jackets and use the safety lines while it rained and stormed. Falling into the ocean during a storm would surely be a fatal mistake.
While we ate breakfast, I turned on the marine radio and tuned it to a low frequency channel. We could hear the lighting strikes over the radio and it gave us some idea of the storms intensity. As we finished breakfast, the storm moved past us, but the rain continued. We stood watch in one-hour sessions, as it was difficult to remain in the pouring rain much longer. Our batteries were beginning to indicate they needed charging, so we used the lift table to raise one of the generators up through the stern deck and sat the generator downwind of the hatch door to insure fumes did not enter the cabin.
When I started the generator, Becky said she could feel the entire hull gently shake as the generator charged the batteries. When the meters showed that we had a full charge on all the batteries, we shut down the generator and moved it back down into the cabin. The generator was very hot after two hours running and it raised the cabin temperature by ten degrees. I had Becky pass me the sail that we had used to provide shade on the deck, and I made a cover for the stern hatch door to keep out the rain so we could leave it open. I simply sat one of the deck chairs near the hatch and laid the sail over the chair and the raised hatch door to allow the cool breeze to enter the cabin. Becky laughed at me and said my rigging looked as if we were planning to tent out on the deck tonight, but the cool air in the cabin was very welcome.
By the middle of the afternoon, I saw the sun peek through the clouds towards the west. As I sat in the deck chair day dreaming while keeping an eye on the sails, I spotted something floating towards the port side of the bow. At first, I thought it might be a dead fish or bird, but then I realized it was a coconut. The thing came right along side of the hull and I was able to grab it while I hung onto the swim ladder. When I pulled it up on deck, I figured it would be rotten inside, but it looked as if it had only recently fallen into the water. I laid the coconut on the deck and d
ecided I would get a hammer and open it latter. Becky was napping and I did not want to disturb her just yet. She needed another hour or so of sleep before I woke her.
I changed our tack from port to starboard and carefully adjusted the rudder. As I was checking my pocket compass to be certain I had set a proper course, I realized I could see the bottom of the ocean whenever the sun came out from behind one of the clouds. I could see what looked like small mountains and valleys, and then just as quickly, the deep blue water of the ocean reappeared. The breeze that pushed the Pacifica along had been out of the west, but now it began blowing out of the southeast. I adjusted the sails and the rudder and the Pacifica was now moving along faster that I had ever seen before. I thought about why the wind direction had changed so drastically within a couple hours time, and decided the storms low-pressure region must have moved to our southeast. The temperature began rising, and by half past five in the evening, it was again eighty degrees.
I heard Becky cough and realized she was stirring about down in the cabin. When she came up on deck, she was wearing her white robe. She walked up beside me and said, “I see the wind had changed again. I looked on the GPS and we are a little north of our intended route, shall we change the tack back to port? The storm last night must have pushed us a little to the north.” As we reset the tack and rudder, I smelled coffee brewing down in the cabin. I wanted to catch a fish for supper if possible, and went down into the cabin to get the fishing pole, tackle, and bait. The coffee was ready so I poured a cup and carried it up to Becky who was sitting in the deck chair enjoying the warm sunshine.
SS Pacifica Page 13
