Robert Fridjhon - Caterpillar seas: a true story

Published by Zebra Press

an imprint of Random House Struik (Pty) Ltd

Reg. No. 1966/003153/07

80 McKenzie Street, Cape Town, 8001

PO Box 1144, Cape Town, 8000 South Africa

www.zebrapress.co.za

First published 2011

Publication Zebra Press 2011

Text Robert Fridjhon 2011

Cover photographs: Cruising into a Storm iStockphoto/Faruk Ulay;

Prisoner iStockphoto/Lou Oates

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

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without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

PUBLISHER: Marlene Fryer

MANAGING EDITOR: Robert Plummer

EDITOR: Lynda Gilfillan

COVER AND TEXT DESIGNER: Monique Oberholzer

TYPESETTER: Monique van den Berg

ISBN 978 1 77022 184 0 (print)

ISBN 978 1 77022 185 7 (ePub)

ISBN 978 1 77022 186 4 (PDF)

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To my father

For many years Ive wanted to write about these events that happened to me in my youth, but Ive held back because of the implications for those involved, including the danger to myself from certain people. But time nearly four decades of it has, I guess, finally mitigated the possible consequences and Ive decided to tell my story. I have changed names to protect peoples identities, and there is one event the crime I witnessed in Los Angeles that I have altered substantially. I have also condensed certain parts and omitted others to keep the pace of the tale. But I have, as much as memory will allow, kept to the truth of what happened. What follows in these pages is an accurate representation of what I did and what happened to me.

Pacific Ocean 1973

The crash slams through the timbers of the yacht, hammering me awake. I hurl myself off the bunk, mind reeling like the boat.

Have we hit something? Or has something hit us? A ship? Oh, no, please dont let it be that. The rasping and crunching on the port side of Coracle sounds like a big steel hull scraping past.

Weve been run over, Im sure. There are no reefs anywhere near, and the crash felt really hard. I smack my hip against the chart table in my panic to get on deck. Is there some way I can fend Coracle off before the mast is ripped out? Is the boat holed? Are we sinking? What if the ships propeller is close to the surface close enough to rip my yacht and me to smithereens?

I lunge onto the deck and peer into the night.

Nothing. There is no vessel, no looming hulk sliding by, only a rolling ebony ocean with brief white flashes of breaking seas. I stare into the dark, lit only by the stars twinkling in the uninterrupted void above.

Uninterrupted? Strange, I can see the sky as though I am standing on a desert floor; nothing blocks my view, apart from the mizzenmast. The universe is completely open above me and I am staring at the broad expanse of stars.

There is no mainmast. This revelation hits as my night vision adjusts: a weird limb-like object is sticking up at an angle over the deck, see-sawing with the movement of the yacht. It is clothed in billowing white material that is slowly inflating and deflating with ghostly opalescence in the wind.

It is the mast of my vessel. The crash was my mainmast going over the side. It is now lying across the gunwale, with the top underwater and a mess of sails and rigging spread all around it. Shit.

But a ship hasnt run us down and were not sinking, and my heartbeat slows with relief. But that relief is skewed by another thought: I still have about three thousand miles to go to cross this ocean without a mainmast. I dont have enough diesel to motor even for a day and Im thousands of miles from my destination, hundreds of miles from any islands.

These concerns are not that relevant at the moment, though. I have other, more pressing, troubles. The mast is bucking and heaving over the deck with the movement of the sea, grinding across the gunwale and destroying what is left of the yacht.

I clamber over the coachroof and grab the spar near where it lies over the edge of the boat. I pull on it, trying to heave it back on board, but it is a pathetic attempt, like that of a child trying to move a ten-ton log a log that is sawing its way through the boat with horrible grating sounds. I need to stop this destruction, and fast, but how? I cant get it back onto Coracle. Its way too heavy.

Ill have to push it over. Get rid of it. If I cant get the mast back on the yacht Ill shove it overboard, so at least it wont be destroying my boat any more.

I get my shoulder under it and heave. The mast swings and grates to the rhythm of the ocean, ignoring my puny efforts and digging a winch painfully into my shoulder, threatening to crush me onto the deck as it see-saws. I heave and push from different angles, trying to get it to slip off the gunwale and into the water. The mast is stuck somehow. My fear and frustration lend strength, but it makes no difference; something is holding it fast.

Breath rasping in time with the cracking and splintering of the timbers, I crawl under the draped sail, trying to see whats keeping the spar from slipping away. The darkness makes this impossible, and for a moment I think of running back to switch on the deck lights. Idiot. The lights are attached to the spreaders on the mast, now underwater.

I dash below and grab my only flashlight, with its flagging battery. By this dim yellow light I can see a wire rigging stay wound around a twisted stanchion. Its the aft lower shroud, and its stopping the mast from going overboard. The wire is attached to a steel plate further aft along the deck, but I figure if I can just get it over the bent upright, the mast should be free to slide. So I grab the wire and tug upwards. Nothing. Its like a steel bar. There is no way I am going to be able to lift it over.

I experience a sudden surge of anger. A hopeless fury at the heavy treacherous mast, at the crappy sails draped everywhere, and at this stupid, bucking, fucking ocean that has trapped me like this, surrounding me with an immensity of water. I want to vent my anger on something, anything strike out at the nearest object, which of course will be either steel or wood, so instead I take a few deep shaky breaths of the oxygen-rich ocean air while I figure out what to do. My anger soon turns into despair. How could the mast have fallen? Why now, when its not even that windy?

I slip back out of the wreckage and down the companionway and grab the pliers from the chart-table drawer. Back on deck, I struggle to remove the pin that secures the shroud. The darkness, plus the tension of the wire, hinders me, but at last the pin comes out, the stay breaking loose with a heavy clunk. I feel the sail slide over my head, moving outboard with the rig. I slip out from under the cloth and, with the help of the swell, I push the spar towards the sea that seems to be trying so hard to claim it and also me.

Finally the end goes, not with the dangerous leap Id feared, but instead with a slow, sliding plop. At last I no longer have to listen to the sawing and crunching sound of the mast cutting my boat in half.

A harsh impact shudders through the deck and into my legs, into my already shattered nerves. Oh fuck. The mast is now acting as a battering ram, propelled by the waves into the side of the yacht. This is worse, much worse. The mast is about to bash a hole in the boat, at around sea level. Another bang spikes me with a mixture of anger and panic. Mostly panic.