With butterflies in my stomach, I study the blackening sky.
“It may get a little rough for a few minutes,” Dorin says as he and Cory come back to the cockpit. “How fast are we moving?”
“Six knots,” replies Cory, glancing at the knot log.
The Fandango’s maximum speed is six-and-a-half knots.
“Six?” Dorin frowns. “How much heel?”
“Fifteen degrees,” I reply.
“Hmm. We may have to reduce sail a little more.”
“Seven knots now,” says Cory.
“Twenty degrees heel,” I add as we lurch again.
White caps spit from the tops of three-foot waves. Rain begins to tattoo the boat.
“Okay,” Dorin says. “Let’s put another reef in. Shirl, you’ll have to turn the boat into the wind.” Hanging onto the lifelines, they go forward.
Historically, in winds over ten knots, this is not my best scene. True to form I turn the boat too far. “Look out!” I yell as the boom sweeps across with a bang. Now the stays’l is back-winded, and the flapping main sounds like gunfire.
“Let her come around,” Dorin yells.
In years past, I almost knocked him off the boat on three similar occasions, one time, twice in two minutes. Each time, in my horrified confusion, I forgot which way to turn to “bring her around.”
Panicking, now, I pull the tiller toward me.
When nothing happens, I rapidly push it away.
“Wrong way!” Cory and Dorin yell. But… which way is the wrong way?
Cory sprints toward me along the slick deck. He grabs the tiller, and the boat comes around. Dorin finishes reefing the flogging sail as the rain comes down in sheets.
Cory darts into the cabin and comes out a few seconds later with foul-weather jackets and safety harnesses. Struggling against a lurching boat, we pull on and fasten the gear.
White-tipped waves, now six feet high, smash into the lurching Fandango, throwing spray across the cabin top. I look at the inclinometer, and my stomach sinks. Twenty degrees.
A gust slams us. Thirty.
Something crashes to the floor of the cabin.
“Damn! The wind is still building,” Dorin shouts. “We have to reef again. We have to reef the stays’l, too. I need your help, Cor.”
No! The thought of both of them on the slippery deck with the wind screaming, while the boat drops out from under their feet every few seconds, terrifies me.
I look at the straining sails and the inclinometer. Thirty degrees. If we don’t reduce sail now, we risk a knockdown.
Dorin catches sight of my face. “We have to. You have to bring it into the wind again.”
“No. I can’t. I’ll knock you off. I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can. We’ll be okay. Let’s go, Cor.”
Cory and Dorin snap their safety harness tethers to the lifeline and grab the handrails as, crouching, they step out on deck, planting their feet in the angle between the toe rail and the deck. A wave crashes over the bow, and they’re up to their ankles in foam.
As they near the mast, the boat slips sideways and down off a wave. Over the roar of the wind, Dorin yells something to Cory. I hold my breath while Cory unhitches his harness from the lifeline and, climbing up onto the cabin, refastens it to the mast.
A huge wave slams us, and the deck drops out from under their feet.
I grit my teeth and force down a scream.