Caught by the Sea Read Online Free PDF

nosebleed. I hadn’t felt a thing and couldn’t feel it now.
    A larger wave hit me like a bus. There are some waves that dwarf others when their movement becomes synchronized and they come together to form a much larger one. In large seas such swells are known as rogue waves and can be truly devastating, reaching heights of thirty or even sixty feet. In World War II such a wave hit an aircraft carrier in the Atlantic and peeled the flight deck back like the top of a sardine can.
    This wave was perhaps two times the height of the usual waves hitting me, about eighteen or twenty feet.
    I had time for one word—it may have been a prayer; I hope it was—and I was under water.
    Somehow the wave did not pour down into the companionway and fill the boat. That would have sunk us.
    But I saw the deep green light through the water pouring over me and it jarred me out of my panic-induced stupor.
    Another such wave could easily be the end of us. I had to do something, fix something, save the boat, save myself.
    But what? What did the professionals do when this happened?
    All right, I thought. What is the trouble? What is causing my difficulties?
    The waves.
    The waves were too big.
    Fine, I thought. I know a thing, I know this. The waves are too big.
    Of course there was nothing I could do to make them smaller.
    What else?
    The wind—it was too strong. It was blowing the boat over, so I was being driven even further by the waves that were too big. And as with the waves, I could do nothing to reduce the wind.
    What else?
    I couldn’t change the wind but perhaps I could reduce the effect of the wind on the boat.
    I could—a revelation—reduce the area of the sail. I could pull down the sails. I could reef.
    When I looked at the mainsail, lying almost horizontal to the sea, there seemed no way to make it come down. Then I saw the gearing where the boom joined the mast, truly noticed it for the first time; the boat had what was called worm-gear roller reefing, which meant I had to somehow stand up by the mast and lower the sail rope (halyard) with one hand, while slowly working a crank that rotated the boom with the other hand, while clinging to the boat with my teeth and rolling the mainsail up on the boom the way a window shade is raised. It is a system designed by a maniac advised by a madman who apparently never considered reefing a boat anywhere but tied up at the dock, and I wished fervently he was there at that moment.
    I looked at the front of the boat. It was almost constantly under water, thick spray followed by the tops of waves, green water.
    I must go up there, I thought, and hang on and crank and let the sails down.
    It isn’t going to happen.
    The thoughts came together. I must do it. It can’t be done. I must do it. It can’t be done.
    It was my first real exposure to the fundamental truth of nature, the overriding law that governs all: man proposes; nature, in all her strength and glory, disposes.
    The wind and waves did not care about me, did not care about the boat; we could live, we could die. It didn’t matter to nature, no more than when nature finds other ways—disease, avalanche, fire or just falling rocks—to kill you.
    I was playing in nature’s playground perhaps for the first true time in my life, and there were no rules. I could get lucky, I could get unlucky.
    So, scared as I was, exposed as I was, alone as I was, whether I did it out of bravery or fear, whether I got lucky or didn’t, I had no choice. If I didn’t go up there and lower the sails I would surely get creamed by the next extreme wave, or the one after that.
    I had to go.
    And yet . . .
    And yet . . .
    What with exploding missiles in the army, the Iditarod dog race in Alaska, some rough horses and close calls on motorcycles, I’ve been exposed to plenty of danger. Sometimes I’ve done it voluntarily and sometimes I’ve been forced into it, but to this day I have never been as reluctant to do a thing as I was to go out and lower