3 minute read
Coming Home
about it, creating a fretful aura that always woke Andy, who turned on the light and tried to make sense with his partner. Becky couldn’t say why. “It was a moment,” is all she could say. Andy pressed her.
“Okay, look: having the lights all turned out and just standing there in that empty, silent darkness was very frightening,” Becky had said. “It was new to all of us, having our senses abused like that.”
“Abused?”
“Abused. Yes. Damn right. We were exposed to a strange netherworld. It was only a minute, but it was…I dunno…life changing somehow. I think if it had been five minutes, or ten, or, heaven help us, an hour, some of us would have lost our minds. We’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget it. And when the lights came on to see this cat - a cat that no one else saw - a cat that was looking right into my eyes and making some kind of noise, no cat noise I’d ever heard by the way, and then have it disappear…”
“It must have run off. Cats are quick.”
“It didn’t run off. It just evaporated, Andy…into thin air. I swear.”
“How do you know where to look? Every inch of that black hole looks the same.”
“I marked it,” Becky said. “There’s a straight track in, following the rails for the cars. The smaller tunnels go off to either side. Where I saw the cat there was a little shelf built into the rock wall, and a painted number in white you could still see. It read 42A67. That’s how the workers knew where they were. Because lord knows it all does look the same in there.”
“Okay,” Andy had said. Battle lost. As he pulled on his pants, Andy was thinking as glad as he’d been to get off the boat, one thing was for sure: it was simpler out there on the ocean.
All American, Andy’s boat, had won The Race. The first American boat in The Race had become the first American boat to win the 30,000-mile trek around the world that had consumed nine months. The final leg from Miami to the finish at the Royal Yacht Squadron in Cowes had been anticlimactic. Other than a few moderate gales, All American’s eleven-day, seven-hour passage had been uneventful. But their main competition, New Zealand’s Ram Bunctious, had suffered all sorts of problems. It had taken them the better part of a day to repair a jib halyard problem at the masthead, a repair that required crewmen aloft for several hours. That had slowed them down. But worse, a day later something had hit
Coming Home
the boat’s rudder. It had happened at night, so they had no idea what it was. It was probably a big fish, like a whale, because there were no scars a hard object like a container would have made. But steering had become impossible. They had to stop the boat, put a man overboard to inspect the damage. They had ended up removing the rudder for repairs, a daunting job at sea. The rudder post had to be disconnected from its control cables, then the rudder had to be lowered until it was free of the boat. Halyards were used to haul the large blade on board. By the time it was dried, patched together with fiberglass strips, the epoxy had set, and they’d reinstalled it, precious time had been lost. The crew would receive the seamanship award for its heroics, but The Race had been lost. Koonce, Ram’s skipper, outdid himself with the case of rum he consequently owed All American’s skipper, Jan Sargent. Diplomatico, Venezuelan, 12 years old. As usual, Sargent had shared it with the crew. It had been a solo finish for All American, with no other race boats in sight. But it had been a sunny afternoon that had drawn hundreds of spectator craft onto the typically cantankerous Solent, all of them trying to keep up with the U.S. boat as it flew toward the finish line under its largest spinnaker. Finally, after nine long months, there was the Royal Yacht Squadron. Cowes Castle, the Squadron’s clubhouse, had been built in 1539 by Henry VIII against the threat of a French invasion. The grandest and most exclusive yacht club of them all was founded in 1815, with its famous row of polished brass cannons now loaded and poised to announce starts and victories and to celebrate important events.
They had ended up removing the rudder for repairs, a daunting job at sea.
The loud thudding of those cannons triggered near-hysteria among All American’s crew. They began bellowing, pounding and hugging one another at the same time. Just completing the course that had included several weeks in the Southern Ocean, the K2 of ocean racing, was a major accomplishment. To win The Race had been but a dream. The reality was hard for the boys to get their heads around. But the cannons didn’t lie. Those smoky thuds were the sweetest sounds a racing sailor could hear. America’s first entry in this ocean marathon had won.
Andy had known something was amiss the moment they had started the engine. It was running rough, sounding the same as it had after the finish in Miami. When the sat phone rang, Andy’s apprehension increased another click. “For