Maybe I’ll sit here and let Sydney drift for a while Tom thought as he rose, put on his shorts, shoes, hat and T shirt and went out on deck. The sun was rising over the water; the first sliver of bright yellow was peaking over the blue.
There was nothing like sunrise at sea. Tom thought about all the sunrises on the ocean that he had enjoyed before. All of them before this trip were close to shore, so the sun was rising over the land. Not here. There was no land, only water. The incredible beauty of the morning stirred his soul again, just as it had done every morning for the past two weeks.
Before he went to bed last night Tom calculated his position. He was almost exactly halfway between San Francisco and Hawaii. The first half of his trip had taken him fifteen days, just about on schedule. While a part of him was interested in seeing dry land soon, most of Tom was perfectly content to remain on his boat indefinitely.
Smiling, Tom opened the valves on the propane tank from the cockpit. He heard a splash starboard. A pod of dolphins was circling Sydney, checking her out. After five minutes or so, they’d seen enough and they headed west, probably for the Hawaiian Islands Tom guessed.
As he headed below to make breakfast, Tom decided to fry up the last of his eggs and toast some bread in the oven. His supply of perishable food was nearly gone, so the eggs would be his last fresh treat for a couple of weeks. The coffee pot was electric. Tom switched it on. The stove and the oven were propane. Tom hadn’t used the propane stove or oven much so far on the trip, maybe four or five times, the last being five days ago. When he needed to heat something up or cook, his small microwave was much faster and more convenient. It hadn’t been nearly cold enough to fire up the propane galley heater.
The propane tanks on deck fed a gas line that led to the stove and oven. The line to the oven had a small leak. Since the beginning of the voyage, each time Tom opened the valve on the propane tank a small amount of propane leaked out. Since propane is heavier than air and there was no ventilation in this space, the gas had nowhere to go but to settle and pool in the bottom of the bilge. During the few minutes Tom was on deck watching the dolphins, enough propane had pooled to become a bomb.
Tom lit a match to light the oven. He wasn’t paying too close attention to what he was doing; rather he was thinking about how he would spend his day. Maybe I’ll finish Moby Dick. It might be time to polish my presentation for the Institute, Tom thought. Like it or not, sooner rather than later the real world is going to intrude on my solitude…
In the space below the oven, a tongue of gas from the propane pool in the bilge was drawn up towards the burner. When Tom moved the match towards the hole in the bottom of the oven, the tongue of gas ignited and sent flame racing towards the propane pool.
The explosion blew a hole through the hull at the keel. Tom was blown against the cabin ceiling and knocked unconscious. Because of the shape of the space between the stove and the hull, most of the blast was directed into the hull. Sydney was totally destroyed.
When Tom woke up his ribs felt like he had been kicked by a mule. His side hurt so much he could barely breathe. The cabin was more than halfway full of water. He was dazed and unsure just what had happened, but from the ringing in his ears and the destruction all around him he knew that had just lived through a huge explosion.
After he moved some light debris off of him, Tom looked out the porthole. He saw water. Then he became fully aware that he was sinking. Survival instincts kicked in. I have to get out of here now! Tom took a deep breath and then coughed and bent over in pain. His injury made taking in a huge gulp of air excruciating. But he breathed deeply a couple more times and the pain decreased. He took one last deep breath and went underwater.
The only way out of the sinking cabin appeared to be through a gaping hole where the stove once was. Tom saw deep blue through the hole and sunlight streaking through the water. Rather than go back up into the cabin and take another breath, Tom swam out of the hole. He assumed that he was only a few feet underwater.
He was wrong.
When Tom reached open water he saw the surface above him – thirty feet away. What was left of the cabin was sinking fast. Not yet within fifteen feet of the surface, Tom was out of breath. He closed his eyes and kicked and paddled for all he was worth. By the time he hit the surface, the only thing keeping Tom conscious was the searing pain in his chest.
He took in a huge gulp of air which was both incredibly relieving and mind numbingly painful. I’m not going to stay conscious long, Tom thought in panic. He looked around him and saw a six by six foot piece of the fiberglass hull lying in the water. Tom managed to pull himself up onto the fiberglass. Then he passed out.
When Tom woke up it was nearing sunset. The sun was on the other side of the horizon from where he last saw it. For a few seconds Tom was not sure where he was. Did I fall asleep lying on the deck? Maybe I better go inside; I’m probably burnt to a crisp… Then he remembered the explosion and the desperate swim to the surface. When he tried to move, his ribs reminded him that he was hurt. He still had his shorts on, but his shirt, hat and shoes were gone.
He looked at his chest and expected to see a terrible wound. There was some bruising, but no pooling of blood. He stretched a bit, which hurt but was not as painful as he thought it might be. With any luck at all I only have a deep bruise, Tom said. He was mildly relieved.
He sat up on his makeshift fiberglass raft and looked around. He was in the middle of a debris field. What was left of his beloved Sydney was floating all around him. Think, Tom, think. It will be dark soon. What am I looking for? The red emergency packs! They float too! Tom scanned the water in all directions. After a couple of minutes, he saw what he thought might be an emergency pack, but he wasn’t sure. It was floating amidst other debris.
It took almost fifteen minutes to reach the red object. When Tom got to where he was going, he was not disappointed. He pulled the red emergency pack onto his raft and out of a clump of burnt rope and what was probably singed sail.
Inside the pack was five days’ worth of food and water rations for one person, a first aid kit, an emergency blanket, a flare gun and a few other small items. The kit was designed to be used with a survival raft. Tom was fairly certain that his survival raft, which was stored un-inflated under the main mast, was sitting on the bottom of the Pacific.
Tom opened the emergency pack and grabbed one of the bottles of water. He gulped most of it down in seconds and reached for another. Wait, Tom told himself. Don’t drink your water all at once. Who knows how long I’ll be out here until help arrives. There were a few sips of water left in his first bottle and Tom finished them off. He took out an energy bar and ate it.
He found a few more barbequed sail pieces in the water and pulled them on to his raft. Then he balled them up and made a crude pillow. He pulled the emergency blanket over himself. He felt surprisingly chilly although Tom knew that it had to be over seventy degrees outside.
The sun was fully set. The night sky lit up before Tom’s eyes. Tom loved looking at the stars at night on the open ocean. Lying on his back, he thought about the night before when he lay on the bow of Sydney doing the same thing, gazing up at the heavens.
His boat was gone. He had very few supplies. He was probably two hundred miles or more away from any major shipping lanes. No one was expecting him for fourteen days, at a minimum, in Honolulu. While Syd might start to worry if he did not reach out to her by radio in ten days or so when he was scheduled to be in radio range of Hawaii, she would likely not immediately hit the panic button when she didn’t hear from him.
His marvelous adventure had become a nightmare. As he drifted off to sleep, the only thought that brought Tom comfort was that Jonas was not out here with him.
Chapter Sixteen
“Happy birthday,” Syd said. All she had on was a skimpy white nightie.
“I wish everyday was my birthday,” Tom said as he leaned back on the bed, propped himself up on a pillow and put his hands behind his head
.
Moving to the dresser, Syd switched on the stereo. Harry Connick, Jr. now filled their bedroom with his smooth, crooner voice. Into the moment, Sydney smiled at her husband as she edged closer to the bed.
“The kids?” Tom asked.
“Janice has them. They’re spending the night with her,” Sydney said. “I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”
“Come here,” Tom said as he popped up and took Sydney in his arms.
Off in the distance Tom could hear squeaking or chirping. He thought it might be a phone or an alarm clock or maybe a stove timer. He couldn’t do what he wanted to do, which was to give Sydney the attention she so richly deserved, until he shut off that damn noise. Syd couldn’t hear it, or she didn’t seem to care, but it was driving him crazy.
When he went to sit up, he felt the bed and it seemed rock hard; the mattress had a slick, plastic surface. His arms and legs were warm - not warm, hot. Then Syd was gone. Where did she go? Where am I?
Tom was still floating on the fiberglass hull piece in the middle of the Pacific. From the position of the sun in the sky, Tom guessed it had to be mid-morning. He had been dreaming, but it had seemed so real. Usually Tom’s dreams were not so vivid, but this time… he truly regretted waking up before he finished what he started.
The chirping sound was coming from a pod of dolphins that were moving past him in the water. Tom looked at them with envy. They were gliding through the dark blue water effortlessly, completely unconcerned that they were hundreds of miles from land. They did not need the land to sustain them; the ocean provided everything they required. The ocean was their home.
Until yesterday, Tom was as comfortable as the dolphins were on the water. His beautiful boat, his water home, his prized Sydney, was now nothing but flotsam. He took a second to scan the horizon. The debris field was diffuse. It stretched mostly to the southeast, no doubt following the current.
There was no wind to move the scattered remnants of his boat. The sea was dead calm. It looked like he was floating on a giant backyard swimming pool. Only this pool was ten thousand feet deep and there was no patio to sit on and no sliding doors let him back inside the house.
Think Tom, think. As he gathered himself he remembered that he had fresh water, it was in the floating emergency pack. He looked around his makeshift raft. No pack. Where had it gone? If I’ve lost the pack…
Tom looked in all directions. The intense glare created from sunlight striking flat water was nearly blinding. He had to squint and hold his hand over his eyes to be able to scan the water effectively. Finally, he saw it. The red pack was perhaps twenty yards away, floating with other debris. He was certain that he had put the pack on the raft last night before he fell asleep. He also remembered sleeping under an emergency blanket and using a wadded up pile of old sail as a headrest. Those items were also nowhere to be seen.
The only conclusion he could reach while he was paddling towards the red emergency pack was that he must have thrashed around in the night and kicked or shoved it off the raft in his sleep. He vowed to be more careful. If the wind had been up the emergency pack might have drifted too far away to retrieve. If he lost his only source of fresh water and food he knew that he was doomed.
It took him nearly an hour to reach the emergency pack. Along the way he collected a couple of useful things – two pieces of sail, both five feet by ten feet or so and a three foot by eight inch piece of wood he assumed was from his former galley table, which he now used as an oar.
For the next six hours Tom paddled around the debris field looking in general for anything useful, but specifically for any of the other emergency packs. He found a blue baseball hat and a couple of pieces of shirts that had managed to free themselves from the captivity of a dresser drawer before the main cabin sank. One of the partial shirts, a red and white tee with Coca Cola written across the front, immediately became a head bandana and the hat went over it. Now at least his head and neck were shielded from the sun.
As the sun was about to set Tom stopped paddling around. He might resume his search tomorrow or then again maybe not. He assumed that everything had drifted in the same direction and he had reached what he thought was the end of the debris field. For all he knew, the other emergency packs had disintegrated in the explosion.
The explosion, Tom thought as he sipped from his precious fresh water bottle. How could I have been so stupid? He had not checked the propane tanks and lines. He assumed they were sound. The leak was slow so the gas sank and pooled undetected in the bilge. He never smelled the gas, but it was certainly there.
Because of his carelessness he was floating in the middle of the sea with nothing but a few days’ supply of fresh water and food standing between him and certain death.
He wondered what Jonas and Jessica were doing right now. They were probably at home lounging around with one screen or another in their hands. Tom worried that his kids were addicted to screens – smart phones, tablets, televisions; they were always looking at some device. Jessica more than Jonas for sure; she and her i Phone were never apart.
When Tom was a kid growing up in Pasadena the world was a different place. There were five channels on the TV back then – cable television didn’t become widely available until he left for college. After school and homework were done, Tom usually grabbed a mitt or basketball and headed out to play with the neighborhood boys. Pick-up games were everything. He imagined himself being Steve Garvey or Ron Cey or Dusty Baker making great plays in the field at Dodger Stadium or hitting a fastball for a home run over the left field wall and into the pavilion. If it was a basketball game he was playing, then he was Jerry West or Wilt Chamberlain scoring forty points against the Celtics in the NBA Finals.
Tom worried that his kids didn’t do enough with other kids. Jonas was an avid long boarder, but that was a solo activity done with perhaps two or three other boys who were riding alongside him. Jessica hated sports of all kinds. The most exercise she got was walking home from the bus stop. She had a couple of close friends, but she almost never did things with groups of girls.
Have I done enough for them? Tom asked himself. Their college funds were huge and they also had large personal trust funds. But money wasn’t everything, and Tom knew it. Have I taken every opportunity to try and help them? Have I loved on them as best as I could?
When I get back I have to do more, be a better dad, especially now after the divorce. I’ll take Jessica with me to the gym, Jonas and I will go to Yellowstone like we had always planned to do….
Then he opened his eyes. The sun was nearly set. He looked around without difficulty now, the glare was gone.
“I’ll never see them again,” Tom said aloud. “I’m going to die out here.”
For the next hour, he cried as the sky went from light to darkness. There was no moon so the world was black, illuminated only by the stars which were on magnificent display.
The inevitability of his fate now weighed heavily on his soul. He was a dead man; it was only a matter of time. He knew that the only human beings in the area were 36,000 feet above him in commercial airliners traveling at 500 miles per hour.
He had no idea what he could possibly do to improve his situation. He was totally alone and utterly helpless.
Chapter Seventeen
Tom slept in fits and starts that night, his second night on the water. His ribs were hurting like hell, but that was not his biggest concern. He’d bruised ribs before as a kid playing football and he knew that as long as he had not broken a rib, and he couldn’t be certain that he hadn’t but it didn’t feel like he did, then it was just pain.
“I won’t live long enough for my ribs to heal,” Tom said aloud.
All night long Tom battled with the idea that there was absolutely no hope for his situation. By nature he was an optimist, but the years had sapped some of his innate positive spirit. For the past decade plus Tom had felt trapped. Granted his cage was a beautiful house on the hill, a 400 square foot office overlooking downtown
San Francisco and a Mercedes Benz S500 sedan, but it was a cage nonetheless.
Now he had unwillingly traded his luxurious prison on land for a small piece of fiberglass floating in the middle of the ocean. If he slid off this small chunk of his former boat’s hull and into the water he would last only an hour or so before his energy would run out and he would sink into the deep and drown and become part of the food chain.
As the morning came and went Tom thought about doing just that – consuming the last of his food and water in a final feast, saying a Hail Mary and an Our Father and sliding into the water. He thought he might float for a while and then dive below the surface and take in a lung full of water and that would be it, the end.
Around mid-afternoon Tom’s attitude began to change. No matter what there’s always a chance, a part of his brain kept telling him. Don’t give up. Fight until your last breath. You aren’t a quitter, don’t go out that way.
Tom thought about praying. His days of being a believing Catholic were long over. As a child, he went to Catholic school and his father took him to Mass once a month or so, but by the age of 12 or 13 Tom simply drifted away from anything to do with religion. Science, particularly marine science, became his passion and his faith. God didn’t seem to fit this equation – for Tom the very idea of God seemed an antiquated and almost primitive notion, at least the God he was taught about in Catholic school.
But given his dire circumstances a prayer seemed to be in order.
“God, the Universe, whatever you are, I need a little help. I really don’t want to die out here. If I’ve blown it with you, I’m sorry. Thanks.”
What a stupid prayer, Tom thought as he crossed himself. If God is out there he probably wants nothing to do with me.
He just lay there on the raft. He heard nothing all afternoon. There were no dolphins swimming by or fish jumping. He did see a couple of contrails in the sky; planes headed both east and west. As evening fell, Tom sat up on his fiberglass raft.
Henry and Tom: Ocean Adventure Series Book 1: Rescue (Ocean Adventures Series) Page 7
