We’ve lashed down every loose thing and have been powering through for about six hours, but the wind is still increasing and is clocking around from the southeast. Earlier, it was as if we were riding a roller coaster and sometimes it was almost fun, racing along, trying to stay perpendicular to the waves so they wouldn’t push us over. Shooting up the wave, shooting down it, up and down!
Now the waves are more fierce, cresting and toppling over, like leering drooling monsters spewing heavy streaks of foam through the air. Sometimes as the big waves rear up behind you, you can see huge fish suspended in them.
It’s so hard to see, so hard to think, so hard to stay upright. I was kneeling on deck, fastening a line, and when I turned back, I couldn’t see anyone else on deck, even though just a minute before I’d seen Dock and Cody and Uncle Mo there, and when I shouted out to them the wind blew my voice back into my mouth. Inside my head I heard a little voice whimpering.
“Too much tension on the sails!” Uncle Dock roared, as he emerged from the mist. He was staring up at the sails, where grommets at the top of both sails were popping out, zing, snap, zing! The main was ripping all along the top of the sail.
We got it down and tried to put up the heavy-duty storm trysail, but before it was all the way up, half the grommets had torn out. A blast of wind pushed Uncle Mo up against me, flattening me against the jackstays.
“Flag line on the mizzen broke!” Cody shouted.
“See?” Uncle Mo said, as he tried to stand up. “That boy’s no idjit. He knows a few things.”
The mizzen sail also started ripping, so we brought that one down, too, but as we brought it down, the halyard vibrated free and stuck at the top of the mast.
Uncle Dock clung to the rail and said to the sea, “Oh, Rosalie!”
And here we are, bare-masted in gale winds and high seas, bobbing like a cork, about as far from land as we could possibly be.