THERE IS ONE GREAT HAZARD above all in singlehanded sailing, as I had learned, and that is, if you should topple over, there is no one to turn the boat about and pick you up. This was always before my mind, and I was forever cautious to guard against it.
The day after the shark battle I rigged a life line of about sixty feet, which I dragged astern—something to grab onto if I should fall over. Sometimes I bent a hook to its end baited with a stripping of white rag, and caught a fresh meal for the crew and me. Or I tied on a dirty pair of pants or a shirt to launder themselves in the wake. I used it also for a log line to indicate my speed. Primarily, though, its purpose was that of lifesaver in case I should fall over.
But one morning even my lifesaver nearly left me afloat on the sea.
The sun was barely up before a tumult of wind was down on me from the southwest. The sea picked up into a churlish, slapping hand, and I was banging into the teeth of it. The mainsail and staysail were reefed. I hesitated about pulling the jib, thinking conditions would abate.
Getting dunked and even dragged off the bowsprit now and then wasn’t discouraging any longer. Pagan’s bowsprit was too long—about seven feet—and very small around.
Taking in the jib in a gale was an activity for which I was never able to formulate an exact process. Never once did I doff it satisfactorily—so to the end I was practicing with it. But to get it in I usually proceeded something like this: First I crawled out and loosened the lanyard. I crawled back and slacked the halyard a foot or two, dropping the sail. Out again to snap loose a couple of hanks, pull the clew in, and pack it behind the rail at the forepeak. Slack away at the halyard again; unsnap several clips and pull in more of the sail from the grasping water, and stow it on deck.
Invariably I always left the jib to the last minute before tugging it in. Because it was clumsy to handle, it made little difference whether I grappled with it in a mild gale or a full one.
On this morning of high wind I was preparing myself for a bout with the jib by the usual cursing and swearing beforehand. When I got out on the bowsprit, I found that the turnbuckle of the stay was almost unscrewed. I twisted it by hand to tighten it, but must have turned it backward—suddenly it parted. I grabbed a handful of the sail, and hung to it as the wind filled it.
The next moment I was in mid-air dangling from the billowed sail. I was fifteen feet up and the same distance off the beam. I had a death’s grip on the sail luff and I was wondering if I would be thrown too far out to swim back if I should let go. I decided to hang on.
Suddenly the sail spilled its wind and I swung inboard, crashing into the mast. Before I could think to let go I was blown back into the air again. The wind was whipping at the sail. I was being shaken back and forth as a terrier shakes a rat. Then the sail slipped loose from the stay, lost its wind, and folded as it splashed onto a sea.
The knotted halyard end caught in the block and I was towed astern. I was clinging to the stiff sail and wrestling with it as I clung; trying to gather it into a bundle, hoping I could somehow save it by gaining the deck with it. The canvas resisted stubbornly. Then the halyard slipped through, leaving me adrift: I had only the sail to hold to. Pagan moved away. I had the sail in a close grip, and swam to the life line astern. But sea slime and small rubbery sea animals had grown to it; and hanging to it, while clinging to the sail, was like holding on in a slippery pig contest.
I was determined to save the jib. My spare jib had been blown out in the storm off San José. The one I was fighting to save was my last. I needed it badly. A jib is a vital sail when working to windward.
In a minute I knew that fighting my way up the slimy rope with the sail still in hand was impossible. I managed to edge a few feet ahead, only to be thrown back by the wash of a swell.
I was deeply mindful of the cruel steel shark hook at the line’s end. When I stopped to rest, I found that the line was slipping steadily through my hands. Not all the pressure of my grasp would counter the drag. The hook was near my feet, and threatening to snag them. I was slipping helplessly. The sea, pulling on the sail, was sliding me back and back.
The sail was bundled loosely on my stomach. I freed my hold on it and let the water devour it. I hated to do it, but what could I do?
Pagan, double reefed and heeling deeply as she pushed into the teeth of the rising wind, had a plucky look about her partly denuded spars and exposed hull as her trim lines battered the rough edges of the swelling seas, thirty feet ahead of me. She was wreathed in spray. I could hear the bow cleave the oncoming rollers.
I started the long haul up the slimed-over line from handhold to handhold, fighting each sea and the bubbling wake.
I crawled onto deck and lay watching the churning seas, crested with foam, racing away to the horizon, rumbling like trains as they went.
Lying there thinking morbidly over what might have happened, I noticed, as my eyes wandered astern with each sea, a ripple on the water’s surface. I could see that it was my sail, and that somehow it was fouled with the end of my life line, and towing behind.
I gathered in the line, hoping the sail wouldn’t disentangle. It didn’t. When it neared the transom I saw that the shark hook had barbed the sail at the boltrope. One chance in hundreds.
I later entered the occurrence in the log as “taking in the jib the hard way.”