June 7th, 1997

  Day one

  Endings and Beginnings

  I know now it wasn't my fault, but I still feel regret all the same.

  I was sailing on my beloved 35-foot sailboat, the Express Delivery. The wind was blowing to the south, and I was sailing a beam reach to the west. The ship was gliding through the water. My feet were up, and the waves were slow and long and 5 feet high. I was relaxing, enjoying a quiet day reading a Richard Bachman book called Desperation. I was somewhere around 700 miles from Kiribati, 2600 from the coast of Mexico, and because if I were you, I would ask around 1000 miles from Hawaii.

  The first sign I was in trouble was the thunderhead on the horizon behind me. I looked at the towering cloud with fear and awe. While the express delivery had been through its fair share of storms, this one was unlike any we had ever seen. I trimmed my sails, hoping to outrun the storm. I went below to turn on the weather forecast; at first it was just static. I checked my watch; it was 15 minutes till the report. I turned the volume up and returned to the cockpit.

  I relaxed as I watched the storm slowly fade away. The report came in: no storms in this sector. Wasn't supposed to be any weather for at least 2 days. It didn't matter; the express was outrunning it anyway. I put my feet back up and continued reading.

  That is until the sails went slack, then the wind direction shifted, the boom swung over, and made the boat heel over sharply. I leapt from my comfortable seat and let out the main to right her. I adjusted the jib and continued sailing.

  I picked up my novel, trying to ignore my growing fears, and was thrown to the floor of the cockpit when the wind shifted yet again, blowing on the bow of the express and throwing my ship into irons.Now instead of blowing me away from the storm, the wind was drawing me in. I struggled to get her to turn out of the wind. The waves were threatening to swamp her. I used the rudder as a paddle and was able to get her to swing 10 degrees around, and the sails filled with wind, and I cheered as she jumped back to life.this time heading south. Instead of trying to outrun the storm directly, I decided my best bet was to avoid the storm path altogether.

  But whenever I would make progress, the wind would shift, and I would lose ground to the storm, the sound of lightning audible in the distance. I turned to look at the storm, and for a moment it had giant teeth in an even larger maw, large bolts of lightning lighting up the depths of the storm as it moved quickly towards me, ready to swallow my ship.

  My dread grew as the storm crept closer, and as the storm crept, the wind grew stronger. I put in the first reef on my mainsail. Now with reduced sail area, the ship was more stable but still going the same speed. I started my diesel engine to recharge the batteries and see if the diesel could make better speed than the sails. The tired engine had always been temperamental. The sailboat was old when I bought it. I had spent a year upgrading and repairing every system onboard other than the grumpy engine.

  I pushed the engine hard. The boat moved a noticeable amount faster through the waves. However After an hour, I felt the engine chug and start to falter. I attempted to pull back the throttle, hoping the reduced RPMs would let the engine run smoother, but instead it died with a violent shake.

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  I crawled into the bilge; the ship was rolling in a predictable pattern. I pulled the dipstick and saw the milky color of mixed oil and water, a dead giveaway to a blown head gasket. This is the moment I should have called for help. Pride, ego, thoughtlessness, and youthful ignorance. They all played a part in my downfall.

  I fumble with my piles of spares and begin changing the gasket, a tricky task and one that wasn't guaranteed to work. if the cylinder head was warped; there was no hope that I would get a tight enough seal.

  I spent an hour getting the head off to see that the metal gasket was missing the metal between cylinder 2 and 3. I put a new one in place, setting the head back on. As I was attempting to put the bolts back in the head, a rogue wave crashed into the front of the ship and tossed me against the hull. I felt a horrible crunching noise as I hit.

  I lay there dazed for a moment. Were the noises from me or from the hull? I guessed both. The crawl out of the engine compartment was arduous, but I rushed out to the deck to see the damage to the ship, and I was greeted by the waves as tall as a two-story house. I adjusted my course to be perpendicular to the waves and went below to see if I could finish getting the head back on.

  Each bolt had to be put back in and tightened to a specific tightness in order for the repair to hold. I trembled as I put each bolt in place. I kept looking down at the now oily, nasty bilge water and thought about how I would never find the bolt if I dropped it. However, I was able to tighten the bolts down. I scurried to the deck; the waves were growing in steepness; they were now so bad I wondered if my safety tether would be enough to save me if a wave broke over the ship again.

  The wind gusted hard enough I felt the ship heel over, and the toe rail got wet. I quickly let out the main and climbed forward and set the main to a triple reef. I then lowered the jib and went forward to lash it down. The sail was inflating with the wind and thrashing around violently. I was able to stuff it in a sail bag and tie it to the front stay. I ran back and winched the mainsail tight, feeling the ship lurch back into motion.

  One emergency averted, it was time to turn on the engine. I gave the key a twist, and the engine cranked and cranked and whined. In desperation I adjusted the throttle, and the results were the same. All I could think of is that I must have missed something when I reassembled the engine. I climbed back down into the engine bay and checked over my work. A mechanical cable lay unhooked. I checked the injector. I had forgotten to connect the throttle cable.

  I went back to the cockpit and tried again; with a rumble, the engine started. It idled smoothly. I slowly worked it up to a normal speed. But by now it was pointless; the storm was on me. I watched in horror as the black clouds consumed the ship and the hail started.

  I hunkered down in the cockpit, the canvas top keeping me protected; the temperature dropped so low I shivered with the cold. I went below to find something warmer to wear; as I changed, I could hear the golf ball sized hail attempting to beat my ship to death by a thousand cuts. The hours went by, and the waves grew larger; now each wave felt like a roller coaster. It felt comical that my relatively small ship could stay upright in such massive waves.

  The sun set, and the drone of the diesel was drowned out by the hail that kept coming. That night was the first time on the entire trip I was motion sick. The Dramamine helped, but I spent the night and the day waking every 2 hours to check the rigging and the heading before sealing myself back below deck nauseous.

  I woke to the sound of destruction from the deck. I rushed to look outside only to be pelted by ice; my canvas that covered the deckhouse had been ripped off by the waves. I shoveled the ice out of the cockpit, my breath visible in what should be warm tropical air.