Left for Dead by Nick Ward

Author:Nick Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Published: 2009-04-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Blood-tinged Red Roses

I turned onto my stomach and

lay there, face down, staring into the depths of the dark cabin. Behind me the waves thumped violently into Grimalkin's stern: bang, bang, bang. A bitch of a rain-squall pitched the seas into added anger, accelerating the crests. Above me, thick black clouds hurled solid, ice-cold lumps of liquid at my face. This storm defied every meteorological term, defied every law of gravity; it quite simply defied everything I had been taught over the years.

Through squinting, sore eyes, I caught a glimpse of another mountainous wave thundering towards Grimalkin like a prowling beast. I stretched my neck upwards to find the top of this monstrous body of water, but I couldn't, it was too high. I had seen waves of similar formation in north Biscay the previous year. Its shape was similar, but that was all — the noise this one created, the size of it, was something else. This wall of water must have been 60 or 70 feet high and as wide as Waterloo station, with steam-like foam hissing and venting from its tumbling sides.

As the crest of the wave lifted the stern, I felt its power. Its noise, its vicious signature, gathered me up like a watery-gloved claw. Grimalkin's angle steepened, she gathered momentum and I plunged down, pathetically, frantically snatching at sodden rope tails, mooring cleats, debris — everything slipped from my grasp. She was now almost vertical. A stanchion appeared — reaching out, I missed it by inches. I felt like I'd lost my footing on a crumbling cliff edge. Now airborne, both prisoners of this wave, Gerry and I were flung round the cockpit — our heads, limbs and trunks collided violently.

Grimalkin, now fully vertical, was on the brink of pitch-poling, exactly what Mike and I had spent most of the night trying to avoid. Her hull was swept up by an avalanche of high-speed madness. From between Gerry's flailing legs I saw the foredeck. It was submerged. Grimalkin's stern was above me, tumbling clockwise. She was cart­wheeling. It was instant, sneaky, slippery and finger-snapping quick, quick as a flash.

Now her bow was in one wave, her stern in the next trough. Gerry and I hung in mid-air, nothing beneath us. I clung to my harness tether. The boat's stern overtook her bow and I felt myself corkscrew. I was showered by spume, unable to see anything. I had to wait for the boat to catch up with herself and settle, all the time knowing there would be a painful price to pay. With a thud I was slammed straight back into the cockpit on top of Gerry. Despite the pain, the choking and the vomiting, I thanked God that it was Gerry and not the sea that had broken my fall. I watched the floor of the cockpit slowly right itself and wondered just how this ballsy 30-foot yacht had recovered herself yet again from these glacier-sized waves, from these torrents of abuse.

I clung onto

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