Alone

by Gerard d'Aboville

  I seemed to remember virtually every drink of note I’d ever had, and quite a few of little note. Not only the drinks themselves but the shape of the glasses, the color of the liquid, the reflections of glass and bottle on the table, the atmosphere of each and every setting, and, of course, the taste, the exquisite taste. My memory went so far as to transport me back to my earliest discoveries in this area, back to the family house in Kérantré, where as a wayward child I used to sneak sips of Cointreau and Benedictine, alone and in hiding from prying eyes but surrounded by the disapproving stares of the family ancestors who gazed down at me severely from their appointed places on the library walls. Foremost among them, the General seemed to disapprove most heartily.

  One day, having indulged a bit more than usual, having used as my source of supply my grandmother’s homemade black currant brandy, which she prized above all others, I was dozing in one of the easychairs when, in my stupor, I heard her voice behind me, growling, “Bad boy! Sure as I’m your grandmother, you’ll end up an alcoholic!”

  November 4

  Gusting winds. Heavy swells.

  In the morning, as I was talking to Christopher on the phone, I realized that at this point we were not only geographically worlds apart but worlds apart in our thinking. The subject under discussion was plane reservations, and for him it was a matter of utmost importance. He wanted to make sure he booked tickets for all those who wanted to be in the States when I arrived. Arrived? The thought still seemed so far off to me. Christopher was living in “Parisian time” while my time was slowness and perseverance. To pin things down, he wanted to know exactly when and where I planned to land. I blew my stack, not realizing that to secure thirty or forty plane tickets for a single flight was not a given, or at least could not be accomplished overnight. But what could I tell him? I now knew that the chances of making landfall in San Francisco were slight, as I also knew that the final stage of my journey would be difficult and painful.

  Now I was doing everything in my power to keep Sector headed for San Francisco, because that was the place I had picked to land, whereas the real goal of the voyage had been simply to make landfall somewhere in North America. At this point I was 500 miles from Vancouver Island and a good 800 from San Francisco. It would be ridiculous on my part to keep focusing on a secondary objective — San Francisco — that was increasingly inaccessible, especially since I had lost the larger of my two anchors. The problem was, I was approaching a rugged coast, one of the most dangerous in the world, where ports are few and far between. To make matters worse, these ports are generally protected by barrier reefs that are impossible to cross in bad weather. The central issue was to bring Sector ashore safely — and me with it — rather than organizing some wonderful ceremony.

  Night was now fourteen hours long, and yet I slept less and less, completely obsessed by the desire to reach shore.

  November 7

  Everything I thought or did was merely a pretense for figuring out where I was in relation to my arrival. I had seventeen cigarettes left; I would smoke one a day, hoping that I would have enough to last me till I landed, I took out a tank of bottled gas, telling myself that it was certain to be the last, or next to last. Well, maybe two more. The one thing I refused to do was count the strokes of my oars; that would have been sheer torture.

  Memories, memories ... In September 1980, on the train that was bringing a friend to the Brittany port of Brest as part of the welcoming committee to celebrate the triumphant conclusion of my Atlantic crossing, the friend turned to a journalist sitting next to him and said, “From what I just heard on the radio, apparently Gerard’s hands have doubled in size.”

  The next day newspaper headlines blared: his hands are twice their size! As soon as I landed, everyone rushed to see what my hands looked like. Their comments were varied, but this one made me chuckle for a long time afterward: “God, his hands must have really been tiny when he started!”

  It took them a long time to realize that my hands were just like anyone else’s. But the initial impression is always what counts. A decade later, scarcely a week went by without somebody stopping me to say:

  “I still remember those hands of yours, poor fellow, when you pulled in at Brest. They were twice their normal size!”

  * * *

  At Choshi, before I departed, a Japanese journalist insisted on taking a photograph of my hands. What he should have photographed were my buttocks. That’s the part of my anatomy that suffered most during the crossing.

  As for my hands, they did fine. Hardly any blisters and very few calluses. In other words, experience proves that as a person grows older his hands harden and his buttocks soften.

  November 9

  Last night, an abrupt return to reality. Sector capsized twice. It hadn’t happened to me for three weeks.

  The first time it was as if I were being given a gentle reminder. It was the least threatening capsize since I’d set out. A three-hundred-and-sixty degree revolution in the space of a few seconds. I was fast asleep when it happened. When I woke up I wasn’t even sure the boat had actually capsized until I checked and found a number of objects not in their usual place. In other words, it was a real sweetheart as capsizes go. And yet, two hours later I was out in the cockpit battening down the oars, not wearing my safety harness, although the winds were high, and if the same thing had happened then — that is, if the boat had turned over and righted itself immediately — it would have sailed away leaving me in its wake. Fault me for not buckling up, but after going through a full somersault, you tend to think that lightning won’t strike again right away.

  Not true. Just before dawn Sector turned over again. I had done my best to distribute the weight throughout the trip, so that one side or the other was not too heavy, yet at this point my starboard stern was considerably heavier than the port and I had all I could do, battling waves and wind, to turn over. Twenty minutes passed with no apparent progress, till finally it rolled back over. By then, I was so tired I couldn’t even remember what I was supposed to do next.

  November 11

  Four months! A terrible night

  The boat capsized at about 2000 hours. Took me about 10-15 minutes to get it righted. I had just taken a leak and was about to empty my “chamber pot” overboard, through the open porthole. One can only imagine what might have happened if I had taken my leak a minute later!

  Cold. Very cold.

  I rowed under a bright moon tonight, and it was comforting to think that I might be able to enjoy the moon’s company till the end of my trip. Very heavy westerly swells, waves up to twenty-five feet, though not unpleasant, since they were not breaking. But my nerves were still raw, and for all intents and purposes I could no longer sleep.,

  Radio conversation with a journalist, who asked me, “How far are you now from the coast?”

  “More than 400 miles.”

  “Ah, so you can see the coastline?”

  No comment.

  November 12

  I informed Christopher that I was aiming for the Columbia River and landfall somewhere between November 21 and 23.

  Somehow frightening to have reached a fixed time and place of arrival, with no hard knowledge of the weather conditions. Final straight line. Frightening, too, to think that even this close to land anything might still happen, especially if there are squalls close to shore.

  Trying to be careful, but just too exhausted, I hadn’t realized that I had become crotchety, emptied out, worn down like an old man. It was high time this ordeal come to an end.

  11

  The “Heavenly Bum”

  November 14

  Eddy had provided me with some accurate weather information: two very low pressure systems were predicted for the following several days. Near the coast, where the ocean floor rose abruptly, the sea would probably prove impossible. Landing at the wrong moment could well turn into a catastrophe. I had to calculate my progress in careful doses to make sure I reached land at a propitious moment.


  November 16

  In the early evening, the bottom fell out of the barometer. A sort of tornado, with winds of up to sixty miles an hour, waves breaking and crisscrossing in every direction at once. The storm passed through as quickly as it had arrived.

  November 17

  Christopher phoned me from the Astoria Hotel, on the Columbia River, in the state of Oregon. I asked him if he could lease a ship and a hardy crew to come out and meet me when I got close to shore. There was no way I wanted the U.S. Coast Guard to come out and pick me up if the weather got so bad I couldn’t make land on my own. I wanted to remain in charge of my own destiny, and for that I needed an impeccable organization.

  At the end of my conversation with Christopher, I had this rather strange reaction: “Christopher, after I arrive, can I count on you to protect me?” Despite my impatience to land, I was also afraid of having to deal with people’s questions, terrified of having to talk to them. Perhaps after all this time Fd gotten used to my damn solitude?

  November 18

  How hard, how incredibly hard, the final phase was turning out to be. It was raining. Icy rains. Melting snow.

  John Oakes, the owner of the Miss Mary, could not believe what he was hearing. These French are really out of their minds. Put out to sea in this weather, with winds of seventy knots and waves of thirty to thirty-five feet being predicted . , . and they come asking him to lift anchor and set out to sea to meet one of their compatriots who’s arriving from Japan in a rowboat! Not surprising they can’t find anyone to take them.

  John is anything but timorous: he’s a seasoned veteran of fishing expeditions off the Alaskan coasts, which are not exactly made for Sunday sailors. He knows how treacherous the approaches to the Columbia River can be. Miles and miles of virtually impassable reefs, a sea that is indescribable during bad weather, with more than two thousand registered shipwrecks to prove it.

  And to top it off, here’s this guy everyone has been talking about for the last several days, a twenty-six-foot rowboat, with less than a foot of freeboard, a boat that has been out at sea for more than four months.

  Taking all this into consideration, John made his decision:

  “Let’s get this tub moving!”

  November 19

  Never had the sea been worse, more difficult to navigate. In close to the shore, the currents, coupled with the gale force winds, created a monstrous riptide that ran perpendicular to the long swells of the Pacific. I had experienced rougher seas, but this was a new kind, one made to crush and pulverize, a killing sea. These waves were watery avalanches, solid masses going head to head with one another.

  Christopher had told me that the fishing trawler Miss Mary was putting out to meet me. I found that hard to believe. In any event, even if it did manage to set sail in this weather, its chances of finding me in these seas would be the nautical equivalent of finding the needle in a haystack. But then I learned that my old pal Olivier de Ker-sauson* was on board the Miss Mary. If anyone could produce the miracle, I knew he could.

  If Olivier were looking for me I knew he had to be in contact with Christopher on shore. That meant that their means of communication had to be via station KMI. For hours on end I combed the wavelengths trying to make contact, but my batteries were almost dead and I constantly came up empty. The skies had been overcast for several days, so the solar panels had not been charging at all. One or two more tries, I knew, would use up the last of my electricity.

  • On January 25, 1993, de Rersauson and a crew of five left the French port of Brest aboard a twenty-seven meter trimaran, Chard Their goal: to be the first to circumnavigate the globe in eighty days.

  John Oakes was at the helm of the Miss Mary, peering into the watery gloom, his trawler listing dangerously to port and starboard, sometimes as much as thirty to thirty-five degrees. It was also pitching like some oceangoing bronco; at times its stern rose completely out of the water and its propeller raced, churning air, the ship vibrated from stem to stern, then slammed back into the water as its bow in turn bucked upward. The next wave would submerge the deck, the spray washing over the decks and smashing up against the bridge.

  The television technicians on board were cursing the fate that had forced them into this terrible position. If there was a slim chance they might get some decent pictures, maybe it would he worth it. But now, at only nine o’clock in the morning, it was still almost totally dark. In the radio room of the Miss Mary, Olivier refused to admit defeat. Once again he put in a call to Christopher, checking to see if by chance he had made contact with me.

  “KMI, KMI, this is Miss Mary calling KMI. Please come in.”

  “Olivier, this is not KMI. This is Gerard calling. I hear you, Olivier. Do you read me?”

  Apparently, the sound of my voice coming through had the effect of an electroshock on board the Miss Mary. I gave them my present position. John made a quick calculation of my projected movement and adjusted his heading accordingly. In ten minutes, they should be in sight.

  * * *

  I could barely hear the sound of Miss Mary’s engines over the roar of the waves and winds, but just as I did hear them a giant wave hit broadside and, once again, Sector was on its back. As they say, it’s not over till it’s over!

  My antenna was underwater, therefore the radio was out of commission. I was about to start pumping, to fill the starboard ballast tank and, presumably, right the boat, when I thought to see if I could rouse Olivier on my little portable ultra-high-frequency radio, which was meant for conversations boat-to-boat at close proximity.

  “Olivier, Olivier. Gerard calling. Do you read me?”

  Silence. I would have to wait till I got Sector righted and the antenna could again start functioning.

  On the bottom of the hull, which since the boat was overturned was out of the water, was a bronze plate meant to serve as a bonding jumper; it was attached to the main radio by a copper wire. On the off chance that it might work, I attached the antenna of my high-frequency radio to the copper wire, and tried calling.

  “Olivier. Miss Mary?”

  “I hear you, Gerard.” The answer came in loud and clear. “Keep talking. We’re homing in on your radio signal. We’re almost there!”

  Without question, this whole thing was turning surreal. I decided that I would refrain from righting the boat till the Miss Mary arrived. Hull up, Sector would drift more slowly.

  “Gerard! Gerard! I can see you. You’re no more than fifty yards away!”

  And there I was — closeted in an overturned boat that was being tossed about by waves up to thirty feet high, still defying this ocean that was not going to get the better of me.

  “Olivier, do you hear me? Tell them to get out their cameras. I’m going to show off now. A live demonstration, right before your very eyes, of how I turn this damn thing right side up!”

  Without further ado I set about shifting Sector’s ballast, as I had done so many times before, and like a docile little lamb Sector gently did a 180-degree turn and landed right-side up. What a spectacle. I was as excited as a kid with a new toy!

  I called over to Miss Mary on my high-frequency radio and listened with swelling pride to their chorus of congratulations, which I, idiot that I am, had the gall to believe I deserved.

  But the Pacific does not like braggarts or blowhards. If my private combat might have pleased this ocean, my public display of victory clearly did not. The punishment was swift and sure. Sector was suddenly picked up by an enormous groundswell and hurled forward at a speed of at least twenty knots; it made a forward somersault, was then knocked over on its back and turned back over again, and, before I knew what was happening, the whole process was repeated, as Sector did a second complete gyration.

  I was flattened against the bulkhead of the cockpit, my face a bloody mess, my back a mass of shooting pains, one finger broken. The only thing that kept me from fainting was the pain.

  Sector, which I had finally concluded was indestructible, was not in
much better shape than I was. There was a crack in the cabin deck at least twenty inches long. And to make sure the lesson was driven home, in the unlikely event it had not gotten through to me, or that I had perhaps not taken it to heart, no one on the decks of the Miss Mary had seen a thing; no one had even the slightest indication that something was wrong. All they had seen was the enormous white mass that had picked me up and vomited me out a few hundred yards away.