A Voyage For Madmen by Peter Nichols

Author:Peter Nichols
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Profile Books Ltd
Published: 2011-07-14T21:00:00+00:00

Sailing Route Across the Indain Ocean

Two thousand miles to the east – 1,100 miles the other side of Cape Town, well into the Indian Ocean – Bernard Moitessier was sailing through the choppy aftermath of a brief gale that had struck the day before. The wind, which had begun in the southeast, had backed through the northeast to the north during the night, before dropping away to a breeze on the morning of 31 October.

But the surface of the sea around Joshua was still disturbed by the winds that had swept fast through 180 degrees of conflicting directions. Heaps of foaming water tossed around the boat making a strange noise. It made Moitessier think of the sound of a multitude of termites clicking their mandibles or the scattering of dead leaves. The confusion of heaping waves breaking against other waves in nearly calm conditions astonished him, demonstrating that the sea, no matter how well one knew it, was always capable of showing something new.

The gale had not been severe enough to trouble him, but a few days earlier, in similarly rough, disturbed seas, Joshua had been knocked flat. An enormous breaking sea had smashed into the side of the boat, so hard that for a moment Moitessier could not believe his portholes had not shattered. Joshua came up quickly and sailed on. The only damage on deck had been the wind vane, smashed when the mizzen boom was pushed across the deck. But the vane was simply constructed and Moitessier quickly shipped a spare.

An hour later, sitting on his perch beneath the turret hatch, he saw a freak wave, twice as high as those around it, rise up astern. He jumped down, wrapped his arms around the chart table, braced his legs, and felt Joshua take off in a surge of acceleration. Then she went over again, slammed down on her side.

Once more, the buoyant, boilerplate Joshua rose upright. Her telephone pole wire and rigging suffered no damage. The wind vane held the boat on course, and she ran on downwind without a touch from her captain.

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