The Sinking
Published in the Tishman Review, February, 2018
The water reflected a calm, pale blue around the boat sitting low at anchor in the first light of dawn. In the distance, a darker stripe of cobalt - almost black - broke the smoothness where a breeze flowed off the mountainside on the far end of the bay. Seagulls floated past the boat with the outgoing tide. On the vessel there was no movement. All aboard were asleep. As the planet rolled from night to face the sun, the men, bay and boat all rode together inside a space not unlike that between two giant breaths - of things that had happened and what was to come.
The boat, a 58-foot seiner rigged for longlining with a reel full of gear and a plywood baithouse aft, sat low in the water with a hold packed full of halibut and ice. The skipper and his four-man crew had been catching fish for the past five days without a break. Tired and with the weather forecasted fair, the bay was an inviting anchorage to catch a few hours in the bunk before making the run home. They pulled in and dropped anchor, silhouetted against a dusky sky streaked with high cirrus clouds.
The activity on board died down quickly; the last movement on deck when the skinny deckhand walked barefoot to the stern brushing his teeth with one hand and holding a coffee mug full of water in the other. He held the toothbrush in his teeth and looked at the faint burn of pink on the horizon while he pulled the front of his sweatpants down with a thumb and took a leak over the side. Finished, he pulled his pants up and watched a fish jump in the distance. He stood a moment longer before washing out his mouth with the water and leaning over the transom to spit into the sea. He turned, shaking his toothbrush as he walked back into the cabin and closed the door.
Hours passed. The crew slept. In the bowels of the engine room a hose, leaking under the clamp that held it to a fitting that pulled sea water in from beneath the waterline, and overlooked since the boat took to sea two weeks earlier, finally ruptured. The ocean poured freely into the bilge under the engine.
A boat floats because it displaces more water than the vessel itself weighs. Once the weight of the vessel exceeds the displacement, it sinks. To prevent seawater from filling the boat in the event of a leak, a pump with an automatic floating switch was installed at the bottom of the bilge, below the engine. The pump worked to empty the water from the boat but was hard-pressed to keep up with the incoming seawater. But keep up it did, and would have done so until the engineer discovered the problem in the morning and turned off the valve that fed the damaged hose. But spray from the hose soaked a small rag hanging over a wire beside the engine. Once the rag absorbed the water, it slid off its perch and landed in the bilge. Wadded in the rag, a long strip of discarded electrical tape floated free.
The pump was mounted to the hull inside a cracked debris guard that protected its impeller from potential obstructions. Loose in the mount, one side of the pump lifted above the guard as the impeller spun, moving 2200 gallons of salt water an hour through the hull and into the sea. The electrical tape, caught in the current created by the pump, slipped past the debris guard and was pulled into the impeller, which promptly jammed. The pump made a gurgling sound as the water still in the hose drained back into the bilge. Unchecked, the water began to rise under the engine.
In the foc’sle at the front of the boat, the top bunks were reserved for greenhorns. To port slept the skinny seventeen-year-old skipper’s nephew on his first fishing trip. His expression in his sleep was the same as it had been for the past week - the open-mouthed look of someone who can’t believe what his eyes are seeing. Even closed, his face looked surprised - like he was watching whales surface next to the boat or reacting to the news that the crew was expected to work until the fish quit coming over the side or the hold got full. ”Sleep is what fishermen do in winter,” the mate had told him earlier in the voyage.
The kid wasn’t the type to ask questions, and he commented even less on his shipmates’ discussions and arguments. At seventeen he only knew how little he knew. He slept the deep sleep of one who was overtired and overwhelmed, on his back, arms framing his head like he had fallen there. Aside from his deep breathing he hadn’t moved since he hit the bunk.
Below decks the pump spun briefly against the tape, but only succeeded in pulling it further into the impeller, straining until the wire powering it began to overheat, causing the circuit breaker in the wheelhouse to trip with an audible click!
Click!In his dream, the skipper dropped his plastic net- mending needle onto the deck. He was asleep on his day bunk in the wheelhouse, his feet a yard away from the breaker panel. The ship’s controls glowed red in the dim light of early morning. Shaking his head at his clumsiness in his sleep, he bent down and picked the needle up.
A stocky 51-year-old, he was normally a light sleeper when at sea, but five days of steady fish, a full fish hold, a calm bay in a good anchorage, a reliable boat underneath him, the anchor alarm set and a forecast for fair weather all gave him permission to dive into the deeper sleep usually reserved for his bed at home. A good rest would charge his batteries for the run back and the hours they would spend delivering the catch. He used the needle and its mending twine to repair a hole that in his dream never got smaller.
In the engine room the deepening pool of seawater was about to engage the boat’s last line of defense. A float switch, located above the bilge pump but below the critical starter motor on the engine and the batteries to either side, waited just above the now rapidly rising water. Once the water lifted the float, an alarm would go off with a piercing shriek in the wheelhouse, warning the crew of the threat beneath them. Swirling, the water continued its climb.
The starboard top bunk held another green crewmember, a friend of the skipper. He signed on looking for a summer adventure from his middle-school teaching job. Exhausted and sore, he laid on his back, snoring. He spent the past five days tired: tired of being seasick, tired of being chilly and wet, tired of diesel fumes and dead, heavy fish. His hands were swollen and sore, and his fingers and wrists stung from dozens of scratches from halibut teeth. His back ached even though he had begun eating Ibuprofen like candy. As he pulled his boots off and climbed into his bunk, he thought he never appreciated his bed at home and his boring life with his wife and children more. His sleep was the deep and dreamless sleep of escape.
The engineer snored beneath him on the lower port bunk. A lifelong fisherman, his beefy hands lay huge on his chest like two fish from the hold - white, motionless slabs. His boots stuck out from under the rumpled sleeping bag piled over his legs. Pieces of halibut covered his tangled red hair and beard and festooned his pillow, sleeping bag and boots like feathers. His hands twitched in his sleep as they turned a wrench that became a live red snapper on a raft in the open sea. He rolled over in his bunk as he felt a wave lift the raft and fought to keep the fish from sliding off. The salt smell was thick in his nostrils.
Over a year ago, a different green deckhand smoked what was left of a joint as he came down the ladder to the engine room. The skipper was in town, and left him the job to install the new high-water alarm float switch. It was one of a dozen menial tasks he’d been left with while the skipper was running errands, and he was bored and more than a little stoned. While he listened to Sheryl Crow sing on his headphones about how she can’t cry any more, he lost his grip on the stainless mounting screws under the engine. Instead of retrieving them, he plucked a single rusty screw off a shelf and used it to fasten the switch to the hull. The power drill battery was low, and he only got the screw halfway in before it gave out. He pulled at the switch and it held. That’ll do, he thought. As he went up the ladder, he sang with Sheryl, “...bad luck’s never endin’” In the salty dampness of the engine room ever since, the rusty screw continued to corrode and weaken.
Across from the engineer, the mate looked the picture of contentment. Even a week’s hard work hadn’t hurt his looks. He was a handsome man in his thirties who emanated confidence. As the deck boss, he had reason to feel self-assured. He had seen the crew through a long haul of constant fish. The best catch of his career was in the hold, and the crew was safe and healthy. His lips had a slight smile to them as his eyes moved beneath the lids. He was in a Mexican cantina, a beautiful dark-haired woman in his arms. They were dancing to a song he knew but couldn’t name. Their feet were bare as they glided along the thick, cool grass of the floor. He caressed her long hair and neck with his hands as they spun. They stared at one another as they moved, her eyes deep brown. He stretched his desire upward on the bunk as they leaned together in his dream. Her lips parted. He may as well have been on a feather bed, he was so far removed from the ocean and the boat where he slept.
As the water level reached the ruptured hose, the constant splashing that could have signaled a lightly sleeping crew was silenced. The force of the incoming flow created a current that swept over and lifted the high-water alarm switch, pulling against the rusty screw until it snapped in two. Without a screw to hold it in place, the switch hung in the current, tethered by the wire powering it and suspended upside-down by its own buoyancy. Unable to activate in that position, it was useless.
When the vessel dropped anchor in the bay with 43,000 pounds of halibut and ice already in the hold, her rounded hull settled nicely as the weight lowered her center of gravity. But hours later, three feet of water in the engine room, weighing 64 pounds per cubic foot, added another 40,000 pounds forward of the fish hold. The auxiliary engine, weighing just over a ton and situated to port of the main engine, added enough off-center weight that the heavier boat began to list in that direction. The bow rode lower in the water as the water caused a shift in the vessel’s attitude. Forty-five minutes later, when the seawater in the hold reached a depth of four feet, the extra load approached thirty tons. Even though the water was not leaking into any other compartment, its presence was manifesting throughout the boat.
The skipper came out of his dream as he turned onto his side. The angle of his day-bed was different. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. In the quiet glow of dawn over the bay everything looked fine at first glance. A seal caught his attention as it broke the surface off the bow, throwing a dark ripple of a wake behind its head as it swam past.
A deep groan reverberated and echoed through the hull. Wide-awake in an instant, the skipper’s first instinct was to get the engine started. He tossed back his sleeping bag and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk to put on his slippers. As he did so, the boat shuddered and groaned again, rolling to port and throwing him off-balance, toward the helm seat. He grunted as he struck the chair with his shoulder. He tried to grab on, but it swiveled on its pedestal and twisted from his grasp. The floor beneath him was at a 45-degree angle and rolling fast as he tumbled across the wheelhouse. His forehead struck the sharp metal corner of the radar unit mounted overhead with such force that when his face collided with the doorframe, he hardly felt it.
In the bunks below, the noise was deafening. A monster had risen from the ocean to join the crew in the foc’sle, and it roared its fury as it heaved the boat over. The teacher, wrapped in his sleeping bag laying on his back, fumbled with the zipper until the angle of the roll became so steep that he slid head-first out of the bunk and fell toward the floor. He struck the back of his head and neck on the rail of the bottom bunk with a loud snapping sound. He saw white, then felt an odd tingling sensation in his arms and legs. That he was conscious at all was an unfortunate miracle. His body loosened as he slid down the side of the bunk and settled there.
The mate pushed his arms against the bottom of the top bunk to hold himself in place. He watched the teacher fall past him and heard the engineer yell “Jesus!” as the teacher’s head hit the teak rail with a sickening crack. In the dim light he looked into the teacher’s eyes as the man slid downward. He wore a matter-of-fact look like he was discussing fish price over coffee. There was no expression of pain on his face at all.
The boat continued to roll, groaning and creaking like it was coming apart. The mate could hear the clatter of dishes and pans crashing around the galley. We’re going over!He swung his legs out into the space between the bunks and stood on the side of the port berth, his feet only inches from the teacher’s face. If the boat kept rolling, they’d be dealing with a flood of cold water very soon. With no way out, the bunks would become coffins.
“Out!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “We have to get topside! Now! Get OUT!”
There was an answering shout from the engineer as he struggled to get out of his nearly vertical bunk. The mate started moving for the entryway into the galley. The boat shook as the house slammed against the water. That’s it! he thought. We’re fucked! His chest constricted as a rising tide of panic surged through him.
An access door in the galley led downward to the now-flooded engine room. As the boat completed her roll to port, the water in the engine room blew the door open. The mate froze, horrified. The water careened off the now-vertical floor and came racing toward him. He turned for the teacher. “You have to get up!” he yelled as he reached for the prostrate man who stared blankly back at him. At the same time, the engineer, finally disentangled from his sleeping bag and nearly standing on his head, swung his legs over the edge of his bunk and caught the mate hard above the eye with his boot. Stunned, the mate fell backwards with a splash just as the water reached the foc’sle.
In seconds the mate and teacher were under water. The engineer rolled himself over and stood on the side of the hull, standing sideways across the compartment. He held out a hand to the sputtering mate, who grabbed it and pulled himself upright. “We have to get out of here!” he yelled at the mate, who nodded and stared at the ice-cold water rising up his legs. Underneath it, the teacher’s hair swirled. His eyes were still open. He blinked.
“Move!” yelled the engineer, and shoved the mate back toward the galley, then climbed over the teacher and fought his way out through the rushing water. Kneeling in the bunk behind him, wide-eyed and silent, the skinny kid watched them go.
Unbelievably, the boat continued to roll. The mate and engineer struggled to pull themselves through the surging water while walking on the cabinets beneath the table. “We have to get out a window before she heads to the bottom!” yelled the engineer. They both looked at the starboard side of the boat above them. All the windows were now below water. The roll of the boat was slowing, but it was taking them deeper, and what little light they had was almost gone.
The engineer picked up a deck broom floating in the galley near them. “Get back!” he snarled. The mate stepped backward and his feet went out from under him as his socks slipped on the wet cabinet. He crumpled beneath the table behind the engineer who raised the brush and threw it with a growl at the starboard window. The handle punctured the glass and stuck there, suspended in the air. The window cracked and bulged in slow motion as the two men stared. Then with a great roar and rush of air, they were engulfed in a torrent of ice-cold water and pieces of broken glass. The engineer twisted away as the force of the water slammed him into the side of the table. He caught a glimpse of the mate pinned to a window under the table on the port side of the cabin. He felt a sharp pain in his side and looked down to see a large triangle of glass sticking out of his torso under his arm. Already waist-deep, the rushing water continued to pummel them. He strained with his other arm to reach the bloody glass.
The mate felt the pressure from the initial torrent of water ease as the cabin filled. With all the water flooding in, there was no getting out the starboard window. The galley was almost full of water. They only had time for a few more lungfuls of air. He pushed himself above the table, and gasped a breath. He went under the table again, feeling his way along in the dark. He fought the chaos of the rushing water until he was next to the port window. Using the table for leverage, he kicked the window with his foot. Under water, he heard a snap, but it didn’t break. He slid deeper to get a better angle. Again he kicked. And again. Eyes burning with salt, he finally broke through, but his calf caught on a broken shard of glass stuck in the pane. He let go of the table and surfaced again, the pain hot in his leg as the glass, still stuck in the window frame, tore through muscle. No, No, No No! he thought. This can’t be happening! Not this way. Not this way!
He rose, his face contorted and barely out of the water as he screamed and took another breath. He went under again and floating, lifted his leg away from the glass with his arms. Freed, he spun around, trying to feel his way back to the opening. Something bumped his shoulder in the dark. He reached out and grabbed the deck brush. The engineer was holding it, and together they swept it around the window frame, breaking away the remaining glass.
On the roof outside the cabin, the increasing water pressure around the sinking boat activated a switch on the hard plastic container that held the life raft. With a low thwump!the case blew open and the raft tumbled out, inflating automatically. The partially expanded raft floated upward directly under the sinking vessel. It rolled off the roof and rose toward the surface, only to become caught between the cabin and the stabilizer poles bolted to the deck. Filling with air, it wedged its way higher and tighter, the pressure stretching the fabric around the poles until, overwhelmed, it burst. A violent flow of bubbles surged toward the surface.
Trapped inside the deflated and snagged fabric of the raft, an Emergency Position-indicating Radio Beacon automatically transmitted a repeating distress signal and location information to a GOES weather satellite in orbit 24,000 miles above the earth. Had the EPIRB not been submerged, the signal for help would have been received and immediately relayed to the United States Coast Guard station nearest the boat’s location. From twenty feet below the surface and sinking, the signal had no chance of escaping the dense, cold water.
Lungs burning, the mate and engineer backed away from the window and pulled themselves to the top of the cabin for another breath of air before attempting to swim out. They rose in the deepening darkness until their heads bumped the floor above. The boat was upside-down and full of water. They turned to each other and stared. They could feel the changing pressure as the boat slid toward the bottom, taking them with it. The engineer shook his head but the mate swam off, frantically looking for a pocket of air. With a look of resignation on his face, the engineer exhaled.
§
Completely capsized, the boat didn’t linger. Once the windows were breached and water engulfed the cabin, what remaining air that might have kept the hull on the surface was quickly purged. Bubbles roiled on either side of the capsized hull as it settled into the water. The air in the aft storage locker held the stern up a long moment, but the rest of the vessel was too heavy. With a hissing exhale, it too slipped under. Bubbles raged then slowed for several minutes as the sun broke the horizon and a new day began.
The surrounding mountaintops reflected golden yellow from snow-capped peaks. The water echoed a cloudless ice-blue sky. A pair of seagulls, attracted to a few final ripples stirring in the center of the bay, circled and landed. Finding nothing, they took flight once more, wingtips striking the surface again and again and again.
Published in the Tishman Review, February, 2018
The water reflected a calm, pale blue around the boat sitting low at anchor in the first light of dawn. In the distance, a darker stripe of cobalt - almost black - broke the smoothness where a breeze flowed off the mountainside on the far end of the bay. Seagulls floated past the boat with the outgoing tide. On the vessel there was no movement. All aboard were asleep. As the planet rolled from night to face the sun, the men, bay and boat all rode together inside a space not unlike that between two giant breaths - of things that had happened and what was to come.
The boat, a 58-foot seiner rigged for longlining with a reel full of gear and a plywood baithouse aft, sat low in the water with a hold packed full of halibut and ice. The skipper and his four-man crew had been catching fish for the past five days without a break. Tired and with the weather forecasted fair, the bay was an inviting anchorage to catch a few hours in the bunk before making the run home. They pulled in and dropped anchor, silhouetted against a dusky sky streaked with high cirrus clouds.
The activity on board died down quickly; the last movement on deck when the skinny deckhand walked barefoot to the stern brushing his teeth with one hand and holding a coffee mug full of water in the other. He held the toothbrush in his teeth and looked at the faint burn of pink on the horizon while he pulled the front of his sweatpants down with a thumb and took a leak over the side. Finished, he pulled his pants up and watched a fish jump in the distance. He stood a moment longer before washing out his mouth with the water and leaning over the transom to spit into the sea. He turned, shaking his toothbrush as he walked back into the cabin and closed the door.
Hours passed. The crew slept. In the bowels of the engine room a hose, leaking under the clamp that held it to a fitting that pulled sea water in from beneath the waterline, and overlooked since the boat took to sea two weeks earlier, finally ruptured. The ocean poured freely into the bilge under the engine.
A boat floats because it displaces more water than the vessel itself weighs. Once the weight of the vessel exceeds the displacement, it sinks. To prevent seawater from filling the boat in the event of a leak, a pump with an automatic floating switch was installed at the bottom of the bilge, below the engine. The pump worked to empty the water from the boat but was hard-pressed to keep up with the incoming seawater. But keep up it did, and would have done so until the engineer discovered the problem in the morning and turned off the valve that fed the damaged hose. But spray from the hose soaked a small rag hanging over a wire beside the engine. Once the rag absorbed the water, it slid off its perch and landed in the bilge. Wadded in the rag, a long strip of discarded electrical tape floated free.
The pump was mounted to the hull inside a cracked debris guard that protected its impeller from potential obstructions. Loose in the mount, one side of the pump lifted above the guard as the impeller spun, moving 2200 gallons of salt water an hour through the hull and into the sea. The electrical tape, caught in the current created by the pump, slipped past the debris guard and was pulled into the impeller, which promptly jammed. The pump made a gurgling sound as the water still in the hose drained back into the bilge. Unchecked, the water began to rise under the engine.
In the foc’sle at the front of the boat, the top bunks were reserved for greenhorns. To port slept the skinny seventeen-year-old skipper’s nephew on his first fishing trip. His expression in his sleep was the same as it had been for the past week - the open-mouthed look of someone who can’t believe what his eyes are seeing. Even closed, his face looked surprised - like he was watching whales surface next to the boat or reacting to the news that the crew was expected to work until the fish quit coming over the side or the hold got full. ”Sleep is what fishermen do in winter,” the mate had told him earlier in the voyage.
The kid wasn’t the type to ask questions, and he commented even less on his shipmates’ discussions and arguments. At seventeen he only knew how little he knew. He slept the deep sleep of one who was overtired and overwhelmed, on his back, arms framing his head like he had fallen there. Aside from his deep breathing he hadn’t moved since he hit the bunk.
Below decks the pump spun briefly against the tape, but only succeeded in pulling it further into the impeller, straining until the wire powering it began to overheat, causing the circuit breaker in the wheelhouse to trip with an audible click!
Click!In his dream, the skipper dropped his plastic net- mending needle onto the deck. He was asleep on his day bunk in the wheelhouse, his feet a yard away from the breaker panel. The ship’s controls glowed red in the dim light of early morning. Shaking his head at his clumsiness in his sleep, he bent down and picked the needle up.
A stocky 51-year-old, he was normally a light sleeper when at sea, but five days of steady fish, a full fish hold, a calm bay in a good anchorage, a reliable boat underneath him, the anchor alarm set and a forecast for fair weather all gave him permission to dive into the deeper sleep usually reserved for his bed at home. A good rest would charge his batteries for the run back and the hours they would spend delivering the catch. He used the needle and its mending twine to repair a hole that in his dream never got smaller.
In the engine room the deepening pool of seawater was about to engage the boat’s last line of defense. A float switch, located above the bilge pump but below the critical starter motor on the engine and the batteries to either side, waited just above the now rapidly rising water. Once the water lifted the float, an alarm would go off with a piercing shriek in the wheelhouse, warning the crew of the threat beneath them. Swirling, the water continued its climb.
The starboard top bunk held another green crewmember, a friend of the skipper. He signed on looking for a summer adventure from his middle-school teaching job. Exhausted and sore, he laid on his back, snoring. He spent the past five days tired: tired of being seasick, tired of being chilly and wet, tired of diesel fumes and dead, heavy fish. His hands were swollen and sore, and his fingers and wrists stung from dozens of scratches from halibut teeth. His back ached even though he had begun eating Ibuprofen like candy. As he pulled his boots off and climbed into his bunk, he thought he never appreciated his bed at home and his boring life with his wife and children more. His sleep was the deep and dreamless sleep of escape.
The engineer snored beneath him on the lower port bunk. A lifelong fisherman, his beefy hands lay huge on his chest like two fish from the hold - white, motionless slabs. His boots stuck out from under the rumpled sleeping bag piled over his legs. Pieces of halibut covered his tangled red hair and beard and festooned his pillow, sleeping bag and boots like feathers. His hands twitched in his sleep as they turned a wrench that became a live red snapper on a raft in the open sea. He rolled over in his bunk as he felt a wave lift the raft and fought to keep the fish from sliding off. The salt smell was thick in his nostrils.
Over a year ago, a different green deckhand smoked what was left of a joint as he came down the ladder to the engine room. The skipper was in town, and left him the job to install the new high-water alarm float switch. It was one of a dozen menial tasks he’d been left with while the skipper was running errands, and he was bored and more than a little stoned. While he listened to Sheryl Crow sing on his headphones about how she can’t cry any more, he lost his grip on the stainless mounting screws under the engine. Instead of retrieving them, he plucked a single rusty screw off a shelf and used it to fasten the switch to the hull. The power drill battery was low, and he only got the screw halfway in before it gave out. He pulled at the switch and it held. That’ll do, he thought. As he went up the ladder, he sang with Sheryl, “...bad luck’s never endin’” In the salty dampness of the engine room ever since, the rusty screw continued to corrode and weaken.
Across from the engineer, the mate looked the picture of contentment. Even a week’s hard work hadn’t hurt his looks. He was a handsome man in his thirties who emanated confidence. As the deck boss, he had reason to feel self-assured. He had seen the crew through a long haul of constant fish. The best catch of his career was in the hold, and the crew was safe and healthy. His lips had a slight smile to them as his eyes moved beneath the lids. He was in a Mexican cantina, a beautiful dark-haired woman in his arms. They were dancing to a song he knew but couldn’t name. Their feet were bare as they glided along the thick, cool grass of the floor. He caressed her long hair and neck with his hands as they spun. They stared at one another as they moved, her eyes deep brown. He stretched his desire upward on the bunk as they leaned together in his dream. Her lips parted. He may as well have been on a feather bed, he was so far removed from the ocean and the boat where he slept.
As the water level reached the ruptured hose, the constant splashing that could have signaled a lightly sleeping crew was silenced. The force of the incoming flow created a current that swept over and lifted the high-water alarm switch, pulling against the rusty screw until it snapped in two. Without a screw to hold it in place, the switch hung in the current, tethered by the wire powering it and suspended upside-down by its own buoyancy. Unable to activate in that position, it was useless.
When the vessel dropped anchor in the bay with 43,000 pounds of halibut and ice already in the hold, her rounded hull settled nicely as the weight lowered her center of gravity. But hours later, three feet of water in the engine room, weighing 64 pounds per cubic foot, added another 40,000 pounds forward of the fish hold. The auxiliary engine, weighing just over a ton and situated to port of the main engine, added enough off-center weight that the heavier boat began to list in that direction. The bow rode lower in the water as the water caused a shift in the vessel’s attitude. Forty-five minutes later, when the seawater in the hold reached a depth of four feet, the extra load approached thirty tons. Even though the water was not leaking into any other compartment, its presence was manifesting throughout the boat.
The skipper came out of his dream as he turned onto his side. The angle of his day-bed was different. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. In the quiet glow of dawn over the bay everything looked fine at first glance. A seal caught his attention as it broke the surface off the bow, throwing a dark ripple of a wake behind its head as it swam past.
A deep groan reverberated and echoed through the hull. Wide-awake in an instant, the skipper’s first instinct was to get the engine started. He tossed back his sleeping bag and swung his legs over the edge of the bunk to put on his slippers. As he did so, the boat shuddered and groaned again, rolling to port and throwing him off-balance, toward the helm seat. He grunted as he struck the chair with his shoulder. He tried to grab on, but it swiveled on its pedestal and twisted from his grasp. The floor beneath him was at a 45-degree angle and rolling fast as he tumbled across the wheelhouse. His forehead struck the sharp metal corner of the radar unit mounted overhead with such force that when his face collided with the doorframe, he hardly felt it.
In the bunks below, the noise was deafening. A monster had risen from the ocean to join the crew in the foc’sle, and it roared its fury as it heaved the boat over. The teacher, wrapped in his sleeping bag laying on his back, fumbled with the zipper until the angle of the roll became so steep that he slid head-first out of the bunk and fell toward the floor. He struck the back of his head and neck on the rail of the bottom bunk with a loud snapping sound. He saw white, then felt an odd tingling sensation in his arms and legs. That he was conscious at all was an unfortunate miracle. His body loosened as he slid down the side of the bunk and settled there.
The mate pushed his arms against the bottom of the top bunk to hold himself in place. He watched the teacher fall past him and heard the engineer yell “Jesus!” as the teacher’s head hit the teak rail with a sickening crack. In the dim light he looked into the teacher’s eyes as the man slid downward. He wore a matter-of-fact look like he was discussing fish price over coffee. There was no expression of pain on his face at all.
The boat continued to roll, groaning and creaking like it was coming apart. The mate could hear the clatter of dishes and pans crashing around the galley. We’re going over!He swung his legs out into the space between the bunks and stood on the side of the port berth, his feet only inches from the teacher’s face. If the boat kept rolling, they’d be dealing with a flood of cold water very soon. With no way out, the bunks would become coffins.
“Out!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “We have to get topside! Now! Get OUT!”
There was an answering shout from the engineer as he struggled to get out of his nearly vertical bunk. The mate started moving for the entryway into the galley. The boat shook as the house slammed against the water. That’s it! he thought. We’re fucked! His chest constricted as a rising tide of panic surged through him.
An access door in the galley led downward to the now-flooded engine room. As the boat completed her roll to port, the water in the engine room blew the door open. The mate froze, horrified. The water careened off the now-vertical floor and came racing toward him. He turned for the teacher. “You have to get up!” he yelled as he reached for the prostrate man who stared blankly back at him. At the same time, the engineer, finally disentangled from his sleeping bag and nearly standing on his head, swung his legs over the edge of his bunk and caught the mate hard above the eye with his boot. Stunned, the mate fell backwards with a splash just as the water reached the foc’sle.
In seconds the mate and teacher were under water. The engineer rolled himself over and stood on the side of the hull, standing sideways across the compartment. He held out a hand to the sputtering mate, who grabbed it and pulled himself upright. “We have to get out of here!” he yelled at the mate, who nodded and stared at the ice-cold water rising up his legs. Underneath it, the teacher’s hair swirled. His eyes were still open. He blinked.
“Move!” yelled the engineer, and shoved the mate back toward the galley, then climbed over the teacher and fought his way out through the rushing water. Kneeling in the bunk behind him, wide-eyed and silent, the skinny kid watched them go.
Unbelievably, the boat continued to roll. The mate and engineer struggled to pull themselves through the surging water while walking on the cabinets beneath the table. “We have to get out a window before she heads to the bottom!” yelled the engineer. They both looked at the starboard side of the boat above them. All the windows were now below water. The roll of the boat was slowing, but it was taking them deeper, and what little light they had was almost gone.
The engineer picked up a deck broom floating in the galley near them. “Get back!” he snarled. The mate stepped backward and his feet went out from under him as his socks slipped on the wet cabinet. He crumpled beneath the table behind the engineer who raised the brush and threw it with a growl at the starboard window. The handle punctured the glass and stuck there, suspended in the air. The window cracked and bulged in slow motion as the two men stared. Then with a great roar and rush of air, they were engulfed in a torrent of ice-cold water and pieces of broken glass. The engineer twisted away as the force of the water slammed him into the side of the table. He caught a glimpse of the mate pinned to a window under the table on the port side of the cabin. He felt a sharp pain in his side and looked down to see a large triangle of glass sticking out of his torso under his arm. Already waist-deep, the rushing water continued to pummel them. He strained with his other arm to reach the bloody glass.
The mate felt the pressure from the initial torrent of water ease as the cabin filled. With all the water flooding in, there was no getting out the starboard window. The galley was almost full of water. They only had time for a few more lungfuls of air. He pushed himself above the table, and gasped a breath. He went under the table again, feeling his way along in the dark. He fought the chaos of the rushing water until he was next to the port window. Using the table for leverage, he kicked the window with his foot. Under water, he heard a snap, but it didn’t break. He slid deeper to get a better angle. Again he kicked. And again. Eyes burning with salt, he finally broke through, but his calf caught on a broken shard of glass stuck in the pane. He let go of the table and surfaced again, the pain hot in his leg as the glass, still stuck in the window frame, tore through muscle. No, No, No No! he thought. This can’t be happening! Not this way. Not this way!
He rose, his face contorted and barely out of the water as he screamed and took another breath. He went under again and floating, lifted his leg away from the glass with his arms. Freed, he spun around, trying to feel his way back to the opening. Something bumped his shoulder in the dark. He reached out and grabbed the deck brush. The engineer was holding it, and together they swept it around the window frame, breaking away the remaining glass.
On the roof outside the cabin, the increasing water pressure around the sinking boat activated a switch on the hard plastic container that held the life raft. With a low thwump!the case blew open and the raft tumbled out, inflating automatically. The partially expanded raft floated upward directly under the sinking vessel. It rolled off the roof and rose toward the surface, only to become caught between the cabin and the stabilizer poles bolted to the deck. Filling with air, it wedged its way higher and tighter, the pressure stretching the fabric around the poles until, overwhelmed, it burst. A violent flow of bubbles surged toward the surface.
Trapped inside the deflated and snagged fabric of the raft, an Emergency Position-indicating Radio Beacon automatically transmitted a repeating distress signal and location information to a GOES weather satellite in orbit 24,000 miles above the earth. Had the EPIRB not been submerged, the signal for help would have been received and immediately relayed to the United States Coast Guard station nearest the boat’s location. From twenty feet below the surface and sinking, the signal had no chance of escaping the dense, cold water.
Lungs burning, the mate and engineer backed away from the window and pulled themselves to the top of the cabin for another breath of air before attempting to swim out. They rose in the deepening darkness until their heads bumped the floor above. The boat was upside-down and full of water. They turned to each other and stared. They could feel the changing pressure as the boat slid toward the bottom, taking them with it. The engineer shook his head but the mate swam off, frantically looking for a pocket of air. With a look of resignation on his face, the engineer exhaled.
§
Completely capsized, the boat didn’t linger. Once the windows were breached and water engulfed the cabin, what remaining air that might have kept the hull on the surface was quickly purged. Bubbles roiled on either side of the capsized hull as it settled into the water. The air in the aft storage locker held the stern up a long moment, but the rest of the vessel was too heavy. With a hissing exhale, it too slipped under. Bubbles raged then slowed for several minutes as the sun broke the horizon and a new day began.
The surrounding mountaintops reflected golden yellow from snow-capped peaks. The water echoed a cloudless ice-blue sky. A pair of seagulls, attracted to a few final ripples stirring in the center of the bay, circled and landed. Finding nothing, they took flight once more, wingtips striking the surface again and again and again.