Not Child's Play - Dave Muller

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the sails overpowers the rudder and causes Arwen to pirouette on her keel, gyring her bows into the wind. Another gust hits the sails and Arwen responds by thundering forward, trying to climb her own bow wave, until the wheel suddenly goes limp in my hands as the rudder loses its grip on the water. Arwen pitches sideways again, pivoting into the eye of the wind. No longer filled, both sails stream like flags, flapping with such violence that the rigging thrums and vibrates, threatening to bring down the mast or shred the sails. We have to get the mainsail down.

      I’m about to call for Sandy when the yankee sheet rips from its cleat. A stupid mistake; I should have double-cleated it. The sail flogs wildly, adding whip-like cracks to the scream of the wind and roar of rain. Like a shark shaking and ripping apart its prey, the clew of the sail disintegrates, tearing loose from its sheet and allowing the unrestrained ripped edge of the sail to flay about even more explosively than before. Now not just the rigging, but Arwen’s entire hull begins to vibrate like a giant orbital sander. With no balancing foresail, the main sail completely overwhelms the rudder. We are out of control.

      Down below, Sandy and the kids have been tumbled about the cabin and the only safe place is the cabin floor. Using the settee cushions, Sandy wedges the children between the bunks before clawing her way up the companionway ladder.1 The noise and vibration below are terrifying. Scared that I have been washed overboard and that the cockpit will be empty, Sandy slides back the main hatch.

      Her timing is perfect. ‘Get into your oilskins and safety harness and join me out here!’ I scream, even though I know I cannot be heard. Visibility has been reduced to no more than a few metres. The wind’s trying to churn the sea into waves, but the squalls rip the surface from the sea, sending billows of grey spume smoking into the air where it merges with the rain in a fuzzy turbulent interface between sea and sky. Torrential rain continues to sweep into the mainsail, flowing off the boom where it’s swirled away in the vortex beyond the sail. It’s impossible to look into the wind. The sea – or what little can be seen alongside Arwen – looks like whipped cream as giant raindrops thrash the surface to a froth.

      Sudden, southwesterly gales are a common hazard of sailing in our home waters and Arwen was built to withstand, even relish, these conditions. In fact we’d timed our departure from East London to coincide with the passing of a cold front that delivered the desired strong westerlies that pushed us rapidly east to Durban before petering out as the front sped ahead and dissipated in the Indian Ocean. But what we are now experiencing is far more intense than any westerly gale.

      Sandy throws out the tether of her safety harness and I clip it onto a free cleat. ‘We have to get that sail down,’ I yell superfluously, pointing to the shredded yankee. Sandy nods and crawls along the side deck, sliding her safety line along the wire rope strung from bow to stern for that purpose. At the mast she releases the halyard and continues crawling to the bow to claw down the sail. At times she is completely obscured by the spume blown into the air as the wind tears at the surface of the sea.

      I continue my struggle with the rudder, forcing Arwen onto a shuddering downwind course to spill wind from the mainsail. Between blasts I see Sandy winning her battle with the flailing yankee, securing it to the side netting using the remains of the sheet.

      Halfway down, the loose halyard of the yankee catches on a cleat at the base of the mast. I lean forward to shout a warning to Sandy – an action that probably saves my life. Without warning, the wind switches through 180 degrees, taking the mainsail with it. The aluminium boom scythes over my head and with a thunderous explosion the sail fills on the opposite side of the yacht. Arwen’s hull lurches sideways from the impact but, miraculously, the rigging holds.

      The change in wind direction brings a slight decrease in the strength of the gusts. Sandy takes over the steering while I crawl up to the mast and reef the mainsail to its smallest area. With less sail up, Arwen returns to her docile, obedient self. We roar along on a cushion of white water, heading safely out to sea. Over the next hour, the rain eases and the wind drops, allowing a steep swell to form.

      The crisis over, Sandy and I sit together in the cockpit. The amount of energy unleashed during the storm has left us stunned and silent. Finally I suggest, ‘You’d better duck below and check if the children are okay.’ With a nod, she slides back the hatch and climbs into the main cabin. Soon she’s back in the cockpit, a smile on her face.

      ‘They’re fine. They’ve climbed onto our bunk and wedged themselves in. Both are fast asleep.’

      In the fading light we huddle together, exhilarated by the spectacle of the storm still raging out to sea and glad to at last be making fast progress towards our destination. Above the invisible land to our left, the featureless stratus-clad sky lightens, suffuses and flares with an ever-brightening saffron glow. The sun suddenly appears from behind a hidden cloud; an orange disc dulled by the spume-filled air. The wind pushes Arwen onto an otherworldly stage; one in which all reference to horizon, sea or sky dissolves in a crepuscular glow with Arwen at the nexus and only the disc of the sun as reference. Eerie and portentous, the message is unmistakable: you may chase your dream, but don’t presume you are in control of your fate.

      Chapter Two

      Arwen rumbles along, ploughing through the steep swell that has developed after the storm. The sepia-coloured world fades to grey and Arwen sails back onto a more familiar, less dramatic, stage. Out to sea, mountains of cumulus rim the horizon, sparking with lightning in the deepening dusk. The elements have stood tall and loud and we feel duly humbled. Sandy’s actions during the storm – suppressing the yankee sail and untying the sheets from the sail – remind me of the event that triggered this dream of sailing to a tropical island.

      I was 13 years old, sitting cross-legged with my friends on the floor of the Seaman’s Institute in Port Elizabeth. We watched as leathery fingers formed a loop in a bristly three-strand hessian rope. The year was 1964.

      ‘Look!’ the man holding the rope said. ‘The snake comes up out of the pond, slithers behind the tree, and goes back down into the pond.’ The man – sailing around the world on his yacht, Sandefjord – jerked his hands apart. The strands forming the knot snapped together with a squeak.

      ‘Boys, that knot’s called a bowline and it’s the one knot you must know. Anyone know why?’

      Hands shot up and shrill voices shouted, ‘Cos it won’t come loose!’

      ‘Let’s see.’ He tossed the free end to us while he grasped the loop with both hands and leaned back. We threw our combined weight behind the rope in a tug of war. ‘Whoa, whoa! You’re right. It won’t come loose, but many knots won’t come loose. A granny knot won’t come loose. But there’s another far more important reason. Look.’ He took the knot, the strands now fused and barely visible in what looked like a hairy nut, and bent it between his thumbs. The strands parted, and the knot fell apart. ‘Remember, boys, in an emergency it’s just as important to be able to untie a knot as it is to tie one. Otherwise you’ll have to cut loose and so destroy many useful ropes.’

      Two years later that same man returned, this time with a documentary of Sandefjord’s successful cruise around the world. I watched in wonder as my parochial world widened to reveal unimagined places, and I dreamed the wild unrestrained dreams of a boy.

      I was enthralled by scenes of Caribbean islands with white, palm-fringed beaches; the Panama Canal with its giant locks lifting huge ships tugged into place by odd-looking trains; scenes of snot-sneezing iguanas and blue-footed boobies in the Galapagos. The green, volcanic-ripped Marquesas Islands; Tahiti with its topless dancing women with gyrating grass-skirted bottoms that hinted at pleasures still unknown to me. And last of all, the shimmering, translucent underwater world of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. I was captivated. My world may have been geographically and economically constrained, but my dreams were not … One day I would own a yacht and sail to see those places for myself.

      In the days following, while walking down Sydenham Road to school, I would look out across the width of Algoa Bay. On clear days, especially when the westerly gales blew, the dark arc of the

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