Cracking, banging, crunching sounds slip into my dreams and I’m instantly awake. I’ve become used to waking at the slightest unusual sound but this is different, worse, like nothing I have heard before.
Ted and I catapult out of bed and up on the deck into the wind and darkness.
There’s more loud, regular crunching. Fleeting thought: Is that the dinghy hitting the side? No, we’ve hit something . . . stab of pain in the stomach . . . The reef! We’re on the reef.
I realise it’s my voice coming from somewhere.
The noise is now deafening. There’s a large swell and our yacht is hitting the bottom of each trough with a crashing noise that vibrates through the whole boat. Ted rushes for the engine and it roars into life; we’re up and away. The crunching has stopped; we’re free. I start to breathe. Now, quickly get the anchor up . . .
But then the engine stops again. Ted starts it. It catches, runs, then fails. The boat is bucking and swaying in the swell, and I realise we’re drifting backwards again. No! Stop it somehow. Stop it!
Ted keeps starting the engine but fails each time.
Then we’re at it again; ugly, fracturing grinding.
‘My God, we’re going to lose the boat!’ Ted shouts as the milliseconds stretch into slow motion and his words echo round and round in my head. We’re barely eight months into our voyage around the world. This can’t be happening . . . we’ve only reached the Maldives!