Water pours off Rudy’s gray beard. The sixty-two-year-old is being worn down by the effort to hold on to the overturned life raft. But he is also pissed off. It seems he and his mates can’t get a break. First the storm behaved differently than forecast; next the GPIRB didn’t work properly; and then the life raft got pinned by the spreader. And now the storm seems to have singled them out for punishment by not allowing them to flip the raft right side up. His anger is simmering, and soon it produces adrenaline and strength. Rudy lets go of the lifeline, gets his arms around the top of the inflated tubes, and with a sudden kick from his legs along with a push-up motion from his arms, he gets the upper half of his body onto the overturned raft. He heaves his legs up and collapses facedown on top of the raft. It’s a remarkable display of strength, considering he is in waterlogged clothing and foul-weather gear.
Once Rudy catches his breath, he assists Ben in crawling on top. Then the men each grab one of JP’s arms and haul him up.
The overturned raft looks like a trampoline, and the three men have to lie prone on it so they don’t slip off. They do their best to hide their heads from the wind-driven rain that stings exposed skin, as if someone has taken a handful of gravel and thrown it point-blank into their faces. Ben and Rudy position themselves on either side of JP so he doesn’t fall out as the raft rides up and over the giant seas. JP is shaking from the cold, and Ben worries that he won’t last another hour. Waves are crashing around them, though fortunately none make a direct hit on the raft. Ben inches closer to JP so that he is almost on top of him, trying to share his body heat and shield him from the wind. A bit of canopy is swaying in the waterlogged raft and Ben tries to cover JP with it, but there isn’t enough of the fabric to do any good.
JP’s mind is lucid one moment and foggy the next. He is in the fetal position, his arms and legs tucked in tight, his lips blue. The wind knifes right through his slender frame, and he sadly remembers the survival suits stowed on the boat. They were impossible to access because the broken mast had landed directly on the deck locker the suits were stowed in. The mast was too heavy for the men to lift high enough to open the locker top.
JP knows he is close to the end. He can feel himself convulsing, and the pain from his broken ribs is excruciating. Knowing that losing consciousness from hypothermia will be better than the searing torture caused by his ribs, he waits for the inevitable, even wishing he were back in the water. He thinks of his wife, Mayke, in France and wants to tell her he loves her, and that he’s sorry for taking this voyage, that he has done his best.
He tries to talk to Rudy. “Tell Mayke . . .”
Rudy can’t understand the rest, but he’s sure JP knows he is dying and wants Rudy to pass on a message of love to his wife. Rudy doesn’t bother to ask JP to repeat himself. It’s not going to matter, Rudy thinks, none of us will be alive to tell anybody anything.
Rudy looks at JP and tries to hold the captain’s head in his arms. JP’s entire body convulses twice, then it doesn’t move at all. Is he dead? wonders Rudy.
Then, pow! A mammoth wave avalanches onto the raft, sending the men into the sea and the raft arching into the air. The churning water engulfs them as if they have gone over a waterfall and are in the vortex below.
Ben and Rudy come up choking, gasping for air. They cannot see JP anywhere. The raft is nearby, and Ben grabs ahold of it. Rudy does the same. The raft is now right side up, but they don’t even notice because they are craning their necks, trying to spot JP. Rudy kicks to gain an inch or two of height above the foam, and in the process, he spots JP drifting at least twenty feet away. The Canadian swims to JP, clutches the hood of his friend’s foul-weather gear, and drags him back to the raft.
Ben helps Rudy keep a firm grip on JP, and all three men catch their breath. If another wave breaks on the raft, they will lose their hold on it, and the raft will be swept away. Now they notice that the raft is right side up, and this gives them hope. Rudy can see the GPIRB tethered to the middle of the raft, and he thinks, No wonder the raft was impossible to turn over; the GPIRB was hanging down like an anchor when the raft first flipped.
JP seems conscious but is staring off into the distance. Rudy shouts, “Hang on! We’ll get you back in the raft.” JP neither looks at him nor responds. In actuality, JP does hear snatches of Rudy’s voice, but it seems miles away. His mind is in a sort of limbo, and he can’t feel the pain anymore.
Once again Rudy pulls himself into the raft, and with Ben’s help he hoists JP up. Then Ben climbs in, and all three men collapse in a heap, each lost in his own thoughts.
JP feels like he is leaving for somewhere else. His eyes are open, and he looks at the charging combers with wonder. When waves collide, pillars of water shoot high above the seventy-foot mountains, filling the air like geysers. And when they’re down in the canyons, JP thinks the sheer walls around him are the most spectacular thing he has ever seen. He feels at peace, ready to go. He’s too exhausted and disoriented to think in detail about death, but his acceptance of it is part of his spiritual belief that there is an existential flow to life and perhaps even fate. He is not religious in the traditional sense, but he does believe there is something bigger than all of us, and he hopes there is a continuation of a person’s spirit or soul in some way. Yet through this entire emergency, he has never prayed, never asked for help. During the two capsizings, he was in a single-minded problem-solving mode; there was too much to do. Now there is nothing more to be done, and he is letting nature take its course. He is releasing from this earthly life and is surprisingly at peace.
Rudy’s spiritual views are similar to JP’s in that he keeps an open mind but does not consider any one religion his own. And like JP, he thinks that if there is a God or a higher power, it will not alter the course of events on earth, will not single out one group to help over another. Although Rudy is not a practicing Buddhist, that philosophy appeals to him. He figures he will be dead soon, so he tries to relax, sit back, and enjoy the view. In a sense, Rudy is detaching from the situation and looking at it like an observer. He attempts to measure the waves in increments of ten feet. Starting at the bottom of a trough, he slowly looks up. Okay, here is the first ten feet, here is the next ten feet. He continues counting off the sections from the gray liquid wall rising closest to him. When he reaches eighty feet, he is so surprised that he repeats the process, with the same result. Even if I’m off by ten feet, these waves have got to be at least seventy feet. This is unbelievable, absolutely incredible. He is fully engaged in the process of observing, almost as if he’s at the movie theater, looking at astonishing images flickering on the screen. He starts to take in the sounds, not just the roar of the wind near the wave tops or the crashing of waves that break, but the hissing, snarling noise of the foam passing beneath the raft when they enter a trough. The Gulf Stream is putting on the ultimate show for all the senses, and Rudy knows he is witnessing something only a handful of people on earth have ever seen. This is the definitive battleground, with wind-generated waves coursing into the current of the Stream, where they clash like two enraged titans. And Rudy is on the roller coaster they have created; only at the summit, there is pandemonium, while in the valley, there is relative peace. This ride never stops—it just keeps lifting the men to the point of teetering on a wave top, where the wind lashes their bodies, and then sends them sliding down the combers back side into a relative state of tranquility.
Rudy wonders how long the thin fabric of the raft can hold out against the beating. He figures a few more hours, which is probably longer than they can hang on, considering it has already flipped over twice. Losing the ballast bags, reasons Rudy, makes the raft little better than a child’s inflatable pool. Perhaps even worse is that the cover is gone, not just for protection from the wind but for its orange color. Although he doesn’t expect to be rescued, he hoped that in a covered raft, a passing ship might find the little vessel and the bodies inside, and at least the families would know they put up a good fight. I’ve had a good run, he says to himself, I just have to accept this is it. His mind starts to drift to what will happen after he’s gone, what his children will do with his affairs and what their future lives will be like.
Ben is just as calm as the others and tries to think ahead a few hours. Even if we outlast the storm—which could go on for days—we have no drinking water. He is aware that hypothermia will likely kill them long before dehydration, but he doesn’t feel cold at all. When he was younger, doing his dinghy sailing off the English coast, the temperatures were always cold, so this current exposure doesn’t have an impact on him. Still, he knows that their only chance is if the GPIRB transmitted correctly before it went dead.
In a trough, Ben asks Rudy, a trained pilot, “Do you think a helicopter could fly in these conditions?”
Rudy looks out at the crest of the waves, noting how the wind rips spray off their tops, hurling it sideways through the air. “Probably not.”
“Didn’t think so,” says Ben. He wonders if there is anything he can do to help their situation. Bailing would be futile. The flares are useless unless someone is searching for them. But he keeps wondering if he has missed any opportunity to improve their lot, if only to make JP a little more comfortable.
The three men are like soldiers on a battlefield, vastly outnumbered and outgunned, cut off from all help. They know they will be overrun, know they are going to die, but still they defend their little piece of turf, the raft.