Isvik Read online

  ‘She was not moored at the dockyard. Nobody seemed to know where she was being hidden away. She was at the Navy Yard until just after the Falklands war ended, then she left, nobody could tell me where.’

  ‘Right after the end of the war?’

  ‘Yes, right after the war.’

  ‘Are ye sayin’ that was when she went down into the ice – right after the war?’

  But she couldn’t be sure of that. ‘Some of them thought she was hidden away in one of the coves. There are hundreds of places she could have been beached or anchored. You have only to glance at the chart. All west of here is a maze of islands, channels and secret places.’

  He picked her up on that. ‘Secret places? Why do ye use an expression like that – any particular reason?’

  She gave a little shrug. ‘There was some talk. Rumours, you know. There are always rumours after a war. There was talk of an English commando unit. Marines. And of a camp.’

  ‘What sort of camp?’

  But she didn’t know. It was just talk. ‘And I was there because of my husband. I wasn’t there to talk about the Santa Maria.’

  ‘Did anybody happen to mention anythin’ about the Desaparecidos?’

  ‘I don’t remember. Maybe. But it would have meant very little to me. It was Charles I was thinking of.’

  The warmth of the bistro was making me drowsy. I must have dozed off, for the next thing I heard was Nils saying, ‘Ja, to make a good testing I need a full day.’ And Iain’s reply: ‘Thursday then.’

  ‘Okay. Ve start very airly so ve haf calm water. Then if the vind get oop is good again, so I test that skrue shaft with waves to throw her around.’ He nodded. ‘Thursday, but you take a telephone to the weather man first. I am not wanting flat calm all day. And no gale neither. A good weather mix I want. That is good for Pete and his sails, too.’

  I came fully awake then. ‘Sails? I haven’t got any sails yet.’

  ‘They are finished,’ Iris said. ‘I showed you the telex on Saturday. They are loaded on the cargo vessel Anton Varga and she left Valparaíso last Wednesday.’

  ‘Sea trials on Thursday then,’ Iain said, looking across at me. He got to his feet. ‘And if the new sails haven’t arrived by then ye’ll hoist the old ones. Okay?’

  I nodded. The old ones had been double-stitched and patched where necessary. They would be perfectly adequate to test the rigging.

  He stopped at the cash desk to pay the bill, the three of us getting to our feet and shrugging our way into our oilskins. All through the meal the rain had been beating against the windows. Iris took my arm, a gesture of excitement, I think. ‘Thursday and our first sea trials. Thursday is my lucky day. If everything goes right …’

  But I was already thinking about all the things that still had to be done. There were the old sails to bend on, and because they had been with a retired dockyard worker, who had been employed making and repairing awnings and hatch covers, I had not yet been able to check the sheet leads. And then there was the problem of handling the sheets when under sail alone, and if it suddenly started to blow and we had to reef … We were desperately short-handed, with Nils in the wheelhouse watching over his engine and only Iain available for deck work if Iris was at the wheel.

  I tried to argue with them, but though they agreed it would be much simpler if we postponed trials until the Galvins arrived at the end of the month, Iain still insisted on Thursday. ‘And if the weather’s bad?’ I asked. ‘It’s not just the sails. You both had a look at the chart. Somebody has to pilot the boat.’ I had already discovered that I was the only one of us with experience in navigation. ‘And if the wind comes at us from off the mountains, the gusts could be katabatic.’ They both knew what that meant, vicious down-blasts hammering the water almost vertically so that a vessel with full sail up could suffer a knock-down. ‘Just think what it could be like if we had to shorten sail in those conditions.’ I talked to them about reefing then. There was no roller-reefing, it was rope down to the boom through the reefing cringles and tie-in reef pennants, and in the confines of the Strait I would have to be constantly taking bearings and marking up the chart.

  ‘We’ll take it as it comes,’ Iain said finally. ‘Ah want to see Isvik under way so we know what further problems we face. Okay?’ He turned towards the door. ‘No more argument, Pete. Trials are set fur Thursday, 09.00, and if the weather’s bad, then we’ll confine it to engine trials.’ And he ducked out, shoulders hunched against driving hailstones.

  I caught up with him, almost shouting to make myself heard above the drumming of the hail on tin roofs, the sound of waves breaking against the quay, as I reminded him how fickle the wind could be, how quickly it could get up. ‘We could have full sail hoisted in relative calm and the next minute be roaring along with far too much canvas up and visibility about nil in a heavy rain squall. What do I do then?’

  ‘Shit yer pants, Ah should think.’ He had rounded on me, his voice cold with anger. ‘Jesus Christ, man! Stop worryin’. Take things as they come.’

  ‘But –’

  ‘Shut up, blast ye! Ah don’t want another word from ye on the subject. Thursday, 09.00. Sea trials. Got it?’

  ‘It will be all right, Pete.’ Iris had caught up with us, pouring oil on troubled waters. There was something to be said for having a woman along. ‘He’s right. Stop worrying.’ I felt her hand on my arm. ‘I’ll get Captain Freddie to pilot us,’ she added. ‘I’m sure he would come. He would love it. There! Does that ease your mind?’

  I said, ‘Yes.’ But it didn’t really, and though I was tired, I couldn’t sleep that night. Maybe it was the coffee, but for hours, it seemed, I lay awake, my mind going over and over all the deadly, disastrous possibilities. A young woman with only a rudimentary knowledge of sailing and a man who was not only one-armed, but mentally attuned to mechanics and electronics so that he hardly knew one end of a boat from another. And though Isvik was essentially a motor-sailer, she still carried a considerable area of canvas. She was schooner-rigged, the main mast aft carrying a huge stays’l for reaching as well as the main, and the foremast an upper and a lower squares’l in addition to a boomed stays’l and a full range of jibs.

  I had three days, that was all, and the sails were sodden. We had been using the Yard facilities and they had been laid out in the loft while the old man worked on them. He had finished on the Friday, and because there had been a sudden demand for the use of the loft, they had been dumped outside in the open. Nobody had told me, and as a result, they had remained there all weekend. It had rained throughout the Sunday night. They said it was unusual for rain to last any length of time, but it did that night and the sails were so full of water they seemed to weigh a ton as we shifted them on a borrowed trolley from the Yard to the boat.

  Fortunately, the weather was fine from noon onwards with a nice drying breeze. With Iris to help me, I hoisted the jibs, main and trysail upside down, an old trick that ensured the biggest area of sail was at the highest point on the mast. Even so, I lost a whole day, the sails slatting furiously as the wind increased out of the west, funnelling north up the Strait and causing the heavy terylene to bang thunderously. The noise brought half the population of the port to the quayside. I don’t think they had ever seen sails hoisted the wrong way up before, and anyway, they were as full of ‘curtiosity’ as a baby elephant, asking all sorts of questions, but particularly where we were going, when and how many of us. Isvik had been moored to the quay so long they had obviously come to regard her as a fixture.

  The day was not entirely wasted, for I spent most of it staring at charts 1281 and 1337 and trying to memorise the more hazardous details, also the transit marks, bearings and all the courses we would need to steer going either south or north from Punta Arenas.

  We had come off the slip first thing that morning, a Yard launch towing us round to the quay, and Nils had gone to work straight away, putting first of all the heads together, then connecting up the galley taps which were all pump ac
tion. As a result I had the deckhouse with its chart table virtually to myself. It was very different on Tuesday when Nils had the engine hatch boards off and the big Merc diesel thumping away as he ran a detailed check on the prop-shaft and the auxiliary dynamo, slipping the shaft clutch in and out.

  Tuesday was my day for hoisting the sails the right way up, checking the sheet leads to the winches, the quick clamps we had had flown in from BA, reeving the mainsheet through the big titanium and carbon-fibre block, which was also new, and working out the reefing drill. Iain would be at the mast paying the halyard out on the winch, I would be hauling down on the rope rove through the lead cringle, running it through the quick clamp and clearing it down, while Iris did the same for the luff cringle and then worked aft along the boom, flaking the sail down and tying it into position with the reefing pennants. I took them through the drill time and time again until Iain finally lost patience and said he had other things to do.

  ‘Well, just remember what you have to do when I yell Reef.’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ I don’t think he had an inkling of what it could be like at night in a gale with a big sea running.

  I stood there for a moment, looking at him. ‘Something I think you should understand.’

  He was on his way below then and he checked. He had caught the tone of my voice. ‘Well?’

  ‘You told me I was to be the ship’s sailing master, right?’

  ‘Aye.’ He had his jaw thrust out and I had the feeling he was preparing himself for trouble.

  ‘If I’m to be sailing master,’ I said slowly, ‘then the deck is mine. I’m in charge up here and you’re under my orders, you and Iris, Nils, the Galvins, everybody. You do what I say without question or argument. If not – if it isn’t to be like that, then I won’t sail with you. It would be too bloody dangerous. You understand? It’s got to be like that or we don’t survive when the gremlins strike.’

  There was silence, Iris standing on the wheelhouse roof with one hand still on the spoke of the upper steering wheel and Iain on the step of the wheelhouse entrance, just his head and shoulders showing and his eyes half-closed as though thinking it over. Finally he raised his head, looked at me and said, ‘Fine. On deck ye’re the boss. Ah accept that.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Ye dae it right an’ we’ll work our arses off fur ye, but ye get too full o’ yersel’ an’ by God Ah’ll gi’ ye hell down below an’ on the ice. An’ so will Iris – won’t ye, luv?’ He jabbed his finger at me. ‘Ye’re in command up here because ye know yer stuff, but just remember, this is me expedition. Ah pay the piper. And Iris – she’s the cause o’ the five o’ us bein’ here. So watch it, ’bor. Ah don’t take very easy to people who like throwin’ their weight about.’ He nodded and swung himself below, saying, ‘Just pray fur some good weather on Thursday.’

  It was late afternoon by then and my patience had been exhausted. But what did they expect? On the last run-through there had been a sudden blattering gust of wind that had threatened to tear the ship from the quay, possibly break the mast or rip the main. Anyway, I was tired, we were all tired, and Iain letting go the topping lift when I had called for the main to be lowered … The thought of the damage that could result from inexperience sent cold shivers through me and I found myself hoping to God Galvin would prove a good hand.

  I didn’t have any coffee that evening and fell asleep at the table. It was Nils who woke me. The other two had left. He was still the only one of us sleeping aboard. ‘The rain is taken away. You go to bed now.’ I looked round the saloon with its big, gimballed table. It was like a carpenter’s workshop, took and wood shavings everywhere. But it was taking shape. The cabins and the heads now had doors and we had handholds conveniently placed all along the roofing timbers. ‘Is good, ja,’ he said, seeing me reach up to steady myself. ‘We are all like apes swinging from one handhold to another.’ He drank the dregs of his akavit and got to his feet. ‘But is better with handholds, much, much better. We don’t break many bones, eh?’ And he showed his stained teeth in a cackle of laughter.

  I was asleep again almost before I had climbed over Iain into my bunk and I did not wake until a shaft of sunlight streamed through the window onto my face. Immediately after breakfast I took them through the reefing drill again, Nils included, and then explained the gybe procedure for bringing the boat round into the wind in the event of one of us being knocked overboard. It is not easy to carry out man overboard drill with the vessel moored alongside a quay. I had them do a couple of dummy runs and left it at that, for there were changes I needed to make to the genoa leads, also the positioning of the main boom kicking strap needed adjustment, and the others also had things to do before we finally went to trials. And that evening I tried to tell them how to read a chart and lay off a course. Iain was very quick at picking it up, but even so, I was appalled to discover what an awful lot there is to learn on a boat of this sort, and we were going out into one of the worst sea areas in the world.

  Next day, Thursday, I was again woken by a gleam of sun, but it did not last. By the time we had finished breakfast the sky was overcast, the tops of the heights to the west of us capped with dark masses of cloud and the wind beginning to funnel up the Strait. I tried to persuade Iain to switch the order in which we tried out engine and sails. He saw my point about the need for light winds, or said he did, but he still refused to take the sail trials first. ‘If there’s anythin’ wrong with the engine or that prop-shaft the sooner Ah know about it the better. Engine trials first, then we’ll get sail up and test out the shaft clutch and that new auxiliary dynamo. Okay?’

  The Merc was already thumping out its hymn tune and ten minutes later we cast off from the quay and were away with Iris at the wheel and Iain laying off the course on the chart under my direction. I could have done with Captain Freddie at the wheel. His presence would have given me confidence, too, but unfortunately he had been called on board a Panamanian tanker so we left without him. The noise in the deckhousing made speech almost impossible. Nils had the sound-proof cover boards off and was sitting on the floor, his legs dangling over the noisy monster as we slid away from the quay. Out in the Strait we turned onto the southerly course we had run on Sunday in our semi-rigid inflatable, heading for the Brunswick Peninsula with wind over tide and the bows slapping noisily into a short lop.

  Iris leaned away from the wheel, calling down to Nils, ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Ja.’ He nodded.

  She looked at me, smiling. ‘Everything’s fine. No problems.’

  I agreed. ‘No problems.’ So far. My mouth felt dry. The wind was increasing.

  Nils was over an hour tinkering with his engine before finally asking me to get the sails up and turn downwind so that we could have the prop turning with the engine disconnected and test the dynamo and its drive. By then the wind had risen to something over force 5 and there were intermittent outbursts of storm rain. The sails went up with only one hitch, when I did what Iain had done two days ago, grabbed the topping lift instead of the jib halyard. I decided on Number 2 jib, and while we were still headed into the wind under engine, I had the mainsail lowered and a reef tied in. The result was that, when we turned downwind, we were under-canvassed, and with the engine disconnected there was insufficient power from the prop. It had to be that, for shortly after the dynamo had been installed Nils had gone up the ratlines and rigged the two-bladed wind prop to the upper crosstrees of the foremast and it had worked off that perfectly.

  ‘Ye’re being over-cautious,’ Iain told me. ‘We’ll have to unreef the main and get a bigger foresail on her. And if that doesn’t work, then we’ll hoist the squares’l.’

  In the end I agreed. It was a mistake, of course, but it was his boat and we had land on either side of us. By then we were cumbered with oilskins and safety harness and it took much longer than expected to change jibs and shake the reef out, so that by the time we turned downwind again we were well past Puerto Hambre and the end of the Brunswick Peninsula and were being set down on t
o Dawson Island, close to a mass of rock guarded by kelp.

  I went about then, for it was blowing force 7 in the gusts with visibility cut to less than a quarter of a mile and snatches of heavy rain. Nils was aft, testing the quick-release system for the prop. Both prop, and the arm to which it was attached, could then be swung up through the slot in the transom to save the blades from damage by ice floes. I switched the radar on, thankful that our sailing speed now provided enough power from the dynamo to give a clear picture of the shore. The speed indicator, now that the wind was aft, was showing 10½.

  Nils was gone a long time, so that we were well past Punta Arenas before he rejoined me in the wheelhouse. ‘Is okay. It verk fine.’ He peered down into the engine compartment, then he was at my elbow, flipping on just about every switch the instrument console possessed – echo-sounder, Decca navigator, Satnav, masthead, stern and navigation lights, the lot. There was enough power now to drive them all, the only exception being the searchlight mounted on the deckhouse roof. When he switched that on all he got was a feeble glimmer.

  ‘Okay?’ I asked him.

  ‘Ja. Okay.’ He switched everything off and tried the little cooker Iain had insisted on installing to save fuel. It worked even with hot plate and microwave oven switched on.

  ‘Okay, that’s enough,’ I shouted to him. I wanted the engine on again, for by then we were already abreast of Puerto Zenteno, which marked the turn eastward through the second, then the first narrows and out into the Atlantic The Strait was narrowing fast and already the Tierra del Fuegan shoreline was showing dangerously close on the radar. A moment later we could see it with the naked eye. There was kelp and rock there and I went about in a hurry, yelling orders, a course to steer to Iris at the helm, to Nils, particularly to Iain as he began hardening in on the jib sheet. I passed him the winch handle. At least he could work the winch one-handed. The main was flogging wildly, the noise deafening.