Senior Service: A Story Of Riches, Revolution And Violent Death by Carlo Feltrinelli

Author:Carlo Feltrinelli [Feltrinelli, Carlo]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781847088949
Publisher: Granta Publications
Published: 2013-05-01T16:00:00+00:00

Outside Trondheims Fjord we hit a heavy squall. We were heading into a south wind, which obliged us to reef the gaff-sail and to press on aided only by the foresail and the mizzen-sail. We kept on hoping things would calm down as we forged ahead, but the situation got markedly worse. Mr Feltrinelli realized that it would be dangerous for us to carry on, and so he decided that we would anchor in the next sheltered place we came across. About ten miles ahead of us there was a fjord, in the lee of a promontory. We decided to take shelter there. But the unfavourable winds and currents we encountered as we came up to the point behind which lay the fjord literally stopped the boat, and despite all our efforts we couldn’t move forward so much as one metre. And as if these problems were not more than enough to worry about, a gust of wind ripped the foresail from the boom. I ran to get it before the wind dragged it into the sea. Mr Feltrinelli tried to start the engine, but this was not possible as the batteries were flat. All we could do was to hoist the storm jib, a small and very resistant sail, and try to carry on with that. But hoisting it proved a hard job. I had to open a key-bolt but it was stuck, I needed a screwdriver. It was necessary to go fetch the tools from inside the yacht, but I couldn’t leave the bows or the wind would have dragged the jib into the sea. Mr Feltrinelli could not leave the helm, from where he was steering the endangered boat, and there was no question of his moving from there. There was a guest on board, a gentleman from Milan, but he was so seasick that only when it was impossible to do otherwise did we decide to ask his help. Crawling along the deck, suffering God knows what torments, and stopping frequently to vomit, he finally managed to hand me the screwdriver. I managed to hoist the storm jib. But the unfavourable winds and currents continued, despite the hoisted sail, to prevent us from entering the fjord; the situation was still precarious. Mr Feltrinelli handed me the helm and went to check the sea charts. All we could do was to seek shelter astern. He found a place a few miles astern, Hovofjord, a tiny bay with a particularly tricky entrance, no more than five metres across, while the Eskimosa was about 3.80 metres wide. We were encouraged to attempt the passage by the fact that we sailing before the wind. But it was risky and Mr Feltrinelli and I feared for the boat. With every minute that passed, he would ask me: ‘Say, Biagio, are we going to make it?’ I replied by joking that if by any chance we didn’t make it, the land was so close that all we had to do was jump to reach it.

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