The Other Side of Nowhere Page 3

  ‘I’ll grab mine,’ George suggested.

  I grinned but then thought the better of it. ‘Not unless you want to swim home.’

  ‘Mmm, best not have the skipper holding a grudge, I suppose. Anyway, you better give him a nudge. The wind’s picked up and it’s getting a bit moody out here.’

  She was right. The clouds we had seen on the horizon earlier were now much closer and about to blanket the sun.

  Suddenly George cried out. ‘Hey, isn’t that the island?’

  Following her gaze I swivelled round, back the way we’d come. There indeed was the island, quite a way behind us. We must have sailed straight past it. I checked my watch. It was nearly two-thirty. I’d been asleep for over two hours and by the look of it, so had Nick. I gave his foot a firm shake.

  He awoke with a jolt, instantly alert.

  ‘Too much snoozing, Skipper. We missed the island!’

  Nick spun around to see. He took a quick glance at his watch and then the sky, where clouds were gathering. Then he barked out his plan.

  ‘We’ve got to go about. Get ready to tack. Johnno, pull on the headsail sheet when I let it off. I’ll take care of the main.’

  ‘I’ve got the main,’ George said, picking up a nearby rope.

  I took my position, noticing that George’s offer of help went unchallenged by Nick. Instead he poked Matt awake with his foot, and then settled behind the wheel. As soon as George and I were in place he called out, ‘Going about.’

  As The Dolphin’s nose swung around we were faced with a wildly different sea. Instead of gliding over rolling waves, the yacht started to pitch down into deep troughs and bob up over jagged peaks.

  Nick let off the rope attached to the smaller sail at the front, which flapped madly in the wind until I could pull it on tight around the winch on the opposite side. We tipped over so hard that Matt, still groggy from sleep, fell and slid across the cockpit floor.

  ‘Hey … What was that for?’

  ‘Sorry buddy,’ Nick yelled. ‘Now we’re in for a real sail!’

  I shot a look at Matt. He looked dubious, as if he couldn’t see the value in a real sail if it meant being flung to the floor.

  Then Nick offered us all an apology of sorts. ‘Weather’s come up a bit. No big deal. But it’s coming right out from behind the island, so we’ll have to tack our way in. Means a bit of zigzagging. George, you take the wheel and I’ll look after the mainsail trim. If we get too much wind pressure and start to heel over, I’ll let the sails out, you just keep the course.’

  ‘Got it.’ George nodded confidently.

  ‘You guys take care of the headsail. Just wait for me to call the tack, then one lets go, the other pulls on. Got it?’

  We both nodded, with much less assurance than George had shown.

  ‘Okay then, let’s do it.’

  George took hold of the wheel. Matt took the high side while Nick and I sat down low in the cockpit. I tried to read the look on Nick’s face. I’d sailed with him a couple of times before and he knew what he was doing. My guess was he’d normally be happy as a pig in mud in conditions like this. But I could tell by the thin line of his lips that he was annoyed with himself. To have fallen asleep at the wheel was a major stuff-up – we could have easily smashed into the island and run aground. Now all of a sudden he had to work overtime to fix something that shouldn’t have been a problem in the first place.

  I settled into position with the rope wrapped loosely around my wrist, and even felt a bit of a buzz as we started to pick up speed. I gave a whoop as a wave slapped heavily against the side of the yacht, spraying me with a blast of seawater. This was going to be fun!

  I just wanted to get off this crazy ride. The lurching deck, slippery with water, wouldn’t stay still for a moment, and my guts churned with every jerking movement.

  In the two hours since we’d turned The Dolphin around the weather had turned, too. The morning’s fluffy white clouds were long gone, replaced by a low grey canopy. And moving fast across the sky was a huge thunderhead – black, with sharp jutting towers.

  Things were no better on the water. Whipped white by the wind, the sea bucked The Dolphin like a rodeo bull. Every few seconds we dipped low into a trough only to face an oncoming wave as high as the yacht’s mast. There was just no relief. As soon as The Dolphin rose up she’d drop again, with a jarring thud onto the crest of the wave. It was like she was trying to heave us overboard and hightail it out of there.

  The roaring waves and squealing wind filled my head. Struggling to think or to reason, I just huddled low in the cockpit, near paralysed, gripping the guardrail wire. My hands were bleeding from holding the wire so tight.

  I shot a glance at the others. Matt was clinging to the other side of the cockpit guardrail, looking as pale and over it as I felt. But I couldn’t believe how in control Nick and George looked. With George at the wheel, Nick moved quickly around deck doing what he could to make it easier for her to keep The Dolphin’s nose into the oncoming waves. As I clung helplessly to the guardrail, Nick pulled in the mainsail and furled in much of the smaller headsail. Then he passed out life jackets.

  ‘Just in case,’ he said, passing me a jacket and casually dropping his own jacket at his feet as if to show it wasn’t such a big deal.

  I glanced at George through squinted eyes as the wind whipped up another burst of spray. She was right in the firing line of the darts of stinging water, but she didn’t falter. She just buried her face in her life jacket for a moment without letting go of the wheel. When it was all I could do not to scream, I couldn’t believe her coolness.

  There were a lot of wrong things about our situation, but the worst was that we were mostly going up and down on the spot. The island always there, in the distance, but we never got any closer.

  After what seemed an eternity, Nick finally motioned for us to gather round.

  ‘Change of plan,’ he said bluntly, raising his voice against the wind. ‘We’re running out of time to get to the other side of the island before dark, so we’ll need to drop anchor somewhere on this side.’ He paused, ducking instinctively as another wave of foam broke over the bow and flushed through the cockpit. ‘We don’t have any way of getting to shore, so we’ll have to spend the night on board. Might be a bit rock and roll, that’s all.’

  ‘Can’t be any worse than this,’ mumbled Matt wiping some remnants of a recent vomit from his chin. It was rare to see something get the better of Matt, but neither of us had been in anything like this before.

  Nick didn’t answer. He turned away and took the wheel from George. It was obvious to me that his ‘rock and roll’ comment was a massive understatement. The idea of staying out in the open ocean all night terrified me.

  A flash of lightning announced that the storm was right on top of us. Then came another and another. I watched through a mist of sea spray as the lightning splintered the blackened sky and I couldn’t help feeling doomed. A bolt of lightning flashed, filling the sky with light, followed by two cracks of thunder a split second later. I noticed how perfectly they blended into the terrifying soundtrack of crashing waves and wind. I stared out over the guardrail, hoping, wishing for a miracle.

  As we crested another wave, I saw the island come back into view. There were a couple of bays not too far from us, but they looked way too small. They were more like narrow indents stuck between steep cliffs and rocky points, nothing like the long stretches of sand we’d seen on the other side of the island.

  Suddenly George cried out above the noise of the storm. ‘Look out!’

  The next thing I knew I was shooting through the air like I’d been fired from a cannon. The Dolphin shuddered to a halt and I slammed into the cabin bulkhead and then slid across the deck. Lying there, winded in a crumpled heap, I struggled to make sense of what had just happened. One thing was for sure: we’d rammed into something solid. But even as I lay there moaning, The Dolphin was resisting. I could feel her under me. I reached out wildly, trying t
o grab something that would stop me sliding across the tilting deck. But there was nothing and soon I was airborne again.

  This time I flew backwards into Nick, bounced off him and kept sliding across the deck. The impact caused Nick to let go of the wheel and it started spinning wildly. I watched on helplessly as his arm slipped between its spokes and was pulled down with a violent jerk. He screamed and fell to the deck, clutching his shoulder.

  Then, above the chaos of the storm, we all heard it – a long, tortured squeal as something tore at the hull. The stern lifted high out of the water and shifted to the side and when, abruptly as it began, the noise stopped, we had rotated almost 180 degrees. The giant waves were now coming at us from behind.

  The Dolphin was a sitting duck, and in a split second a wall of water rose up behind us in a humungous, quivering mass. With a cruel roar, its crest heaved over, picking up The Dolphin like a piece of driftwood and pitching her sideways across the face of the wave. An avalanche of white water surged into the cockpit, smashing me backwards into the guardrail at the stern. A searing pain shot through me as the wire pressed deep into my back. But that wire was the only thing between the sea and me. I reached around, tightening my hands around it. We were rolling.

  A shrill, hysterical scream pierced the roar of the storm. As everything turned black, I realised it was mine.

  Like a sock in a washing machine I was spun through the icy water on the drag of The Dolphin’s capsize. Just as it felt like my lungs were crushing, the yacht completed her roll and somehow I found myself still within the cockpit, my hands locked to the guardrail wire. As the yacht righted herself, a torrent of gurgling water rushed away over the sides and threatened to pull me into the angry sea. I roared back and tightened my grip despite the searing pain. As the sea drained off the deck I could see the others – soaked, stunned, gasping for air – but alive.

  George was gripping Matt’s life jacket with one hand and the guardrail with the other. She blinked furiously to clear the water from her eyes and managed a bewildered nod as if to say, ‘We’re okay’.

  The same couldn’t be said for Nick. He was lying on deck, gripping the wheel fiercely with his good arm. The sinews on his forearm were standing out like rope from the strain of holding on so tight. His face was screwed up and his eyes were half shut. It was obvious he was in a world of pain.

  After a quick check to make sure there wasn’t another wave bearing down, I let go and stumbled towards him, grabbing hold of the wheel with one hand and his leg with the other.

  ‘Nick, you okay?’ I called above the wind.

  ‘My shoulder,’ he said through clenched teeth. ‘It’s stuffed.’

  He was slumped over, but even on that angle I could see that his right arm was hanging lower than normal, and looked limp. Too scared and confused to think straight, I turned to get George. She’d know what to do. ‘Can you hold on while I check on the others?’

  He grunted.

  I made sure he had a steady grip on the wheel with his good arm and then slid across the lurching deck to where George and Matt had tucked themselves up against the cabin. That’s when I noticed that the force of the capsizing had snapped the mast clean off and wrapped it around the side of the boat in a tangle of rigging. I had to duck under a snarl of wire and rope to reach George and Matt. George was still clinging to Matt’s jacket, her white knuckle grip so tight it looked as if she might be strangling him.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I think so,’ George said, her whole body trembling.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked, remembering George’s yell just before we were hit.

  ‘Not sure. But there was something … something in the wave,’ she said, shaking her head as if struggling to understand what she had seen. ‘How’s Nick? What’s wrong with his arm?’

  ‘It’s his shoulder … and it’s bad.’

  ‘What are we going do?’

  As if I had a clue. ‘I was hoping you’d know.’

  But George’s face was a blank. ‘God, I don’t know. I guess we have to make sure Nick’s all right. I mean, he’s the only one who really knows what to do.’

  The thought terrified me. Nick wasn’t in any shape to be the only one who knew what to do.

  ‘Okay, yeah,’ I said, trying to sound confident. ‘You just sit tight and whatever you do don’t let go of the rail … or Matt.’

  I scrambled back to Nick, who was back on the wheel in spite of his injury, trying to bring The Dolphin’s nose around to face the oncoming sea.

  ‘Give it to me,’ I yelled, taking the wheel from him. ‘George thinks we hit something in the wave.’

  Nick said nothing and I shot a glance at him. He looked like he might be about to pass out. ‘Sounded like metal to me,’ he said. ‘Could’ve been a shipping container. They can sit just below the surface, then bam.’

  I was only half listening, trying to work out what we should do. With the mast broken we had no sail at all, and even though the motor was still chugging away it didn’t seem to be giving us any momentum. The steering was so heavy it felt like we were trying to move through wet cement. No matter how hard I pulled on it, the wheel wouldn’t budge.

  ‘Nick, I can’t get her to turn.’

  ‘Get rid of the rigging,’ he grunted.

  I wasn’t sure if he was talking to me or himself. For a moment he sat quietly, just staring at the floor. Just when I was about to give him a nudge he sat upright and spoke. ‘Go to the cabin. Under the chart table, there’s a toolkit. Should be a tomahawk and a hacksaw in there.’

  ‘Sure,’ I said, pleased to have some instructions to follow. ‘Don’t go anywhere, all right?’

  Nick smiled weakly and took the wheel again. ‘Just hurry, yeah?’

  The downstairs cabin was a mess. Food, clothes and rubbish were floating in murky waist-deep water. I wondered for the first time if we were sinking. The thought made my stomach churn, but I tried to put it out of my mind and took a couple of deep breaths, knowing I had to concentrate on the task at hand. I waded into the icy water and over to the chart table. In one quick move I ducked under and found the toolkit. I opened it up on the chart table and grabbed the saw and tomahawk.

  ‘Cabin’s flooded,’ I told Nick as I stowed the tools in a compartment on deck.

  ‘Take the wheel,’ he said. Struggling to balance as The Dolphin continued to be tossed around wildly, Nick leant precariously over the side of the yacht to take in the damage. The look on his face said it all.

  ‘We’ve hit something all right. There’s a dirty great hole in the hull. So yep,’ he said matter-of-factly, ‘we’ll be taking on water for sure.’

  My heart started thumping fast and hard. I passed the wheel back to Nick and looked over the side, wanting to see the damage myself. From about halfway along the hull all the way to the stern was an ugly jagged tear on The Dolphin’s perfect skin, just below the water line.

  Up till now everything had been a blur, a surreal craziness with no sense to it, but seeing that damage made the reality of the situation hit home.

  I took back the wheel from Nick and asked the only question on my mind. ‘We’re not going to sink, are we?’

  Nick didn’t reply. With his good arm he reached down and lifted one of the manhole covers on deck. We could both plainly see water sloshing around in the hold under the deck – even more water than before. Way too much water.

  ‘What’s going on?’ George shouted, tugging on my arm. Matt was next to her.

  Nick looked confused, like he wasn’t sure who George was. ‘Did you get the saw?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yeah, and the tomahawk.’

  ‘Okay. You’re gonna have to cut through the wires attached to the mast –’

  Even though he was right next to me I couldn’t hear the rest of it over the roar of the waves. It probably wouldn’t have made a difference if I could. I stared at the jumble of ropes and wires spread across the yacht like an upturned bowl of spaghetti. I had no clue where to star
t and no amount of instruction from Nick was going to change that.

  Then George asked such an obvious question I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought of it. ‘What about the radio? Shouldn’t we send a distress call or something?’

  ‘Can’t,’ Nick replied. ‘It doesn’t work.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ George asked.

  ‘It just doesn’t work,’ he snapped. ‘It’s been busted for a few weeks and I haven’t got round to fixing it, all right?’

  ‘But your dad said there’s a Sat phone. What about that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s down there,’ Nick said through gritted teeth, pointing towards the cabin. ‘It was in my bag on the floor. It’ll be stuffed now.’

  For a moment we stood in stunned silence, trying to make sense of what was going on around us. A deep rumble of thunder boomed as a huge flash of lightning spread through the darkening clouds.

  I looked down at my watch and suddenly realised things could get much, much worse than they already were. It was nearly six o’clock – soon it would be dark. And what would happen then?

  Matt put my worst fears into words. ‘Are we going to die?’ he asked.

  Nick flashed him an angry look. ‘Matt, no-one is going to die, all right? We’ve got power and when we get rid of all this drag we’ll be fine.’ He turned and glared at me. ‘So just get on with it.’

  I pulled Matt close, hoping he wouldn’t see how scared and clueless I really was, and thrust the tomahawk into his hand. ‘I’ll take the roof. You stay down here. Just cut everything … and for god’s sake, hang on, yeah?’

  Matt nodded, blinking hard at me as salt water sprayed into his eyes. I rarely felt like much of a big brother to Matt, but he looked terrified and I knew I had to swallow my own fear for his sake. ‘Matty, we’ll be fine,’ I said firmly. ‘Let’s just get rid of all this rigging so we can get moving again. Okay?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he replied with an uncertain smile.

  ‘All right then … let’s do it.’

  Leaving the others in the cockpit, I climbed onto the cabin roof and started sawing at the mast wires. Up on the roof, out of the shelter of the cockpit, waves didn’t just wash over you, they smashed you, hard and heavy with a massive womp. Wave after wave hit me, allowing only seconds of frantic sawing before I’d have to hug what was left of the mast to avoid being swept away by the force of the water.