A Ravel of Waters

She put on the lights. I was surprised at the diameter of the mast inside. There was room for two people abreast, although it narrowed higher up. A steel ladder was clamped to the wall and a trunk of intertwined copper tubes, which combined were thicker than my leg, sprouted skywards out of sight above. These were the hydraulic pipes to control the yards. They were linked in twin, each pair with dials and valves. It looked more like a plumber's paradise regained than a ship's mast. 'Come!'

Kay started up the ladder. Her sneakers made no sound on the rungs. Within seconds she had outpaced me. Up and up we went, Kay drawing ahead at every step. Finally, out of breath, I reached her, perched in a compartment on what looked like a tiny steeple-jack's seat. This compartment was the juncture point of topsail yard and mainmast. Higher, the diameter of the interior narrowed to become the top-gallant mast, and the material changed from high tensile steel to light alloy. The top-sail yard-arm itself was largely hidden from view except via slits through which the sail rolled in and out along stainless steel runners.

Kay followed my inquiring scrutiny of the gleaming mechanisms and valves.

'These hydraulics are basically the same as are used to operate the rudders of large ships — suitably adapted, of course.'

I said, getting back my breath, 'I heard you're called the Old Lady of the Sea. If old ladies go up ladders like that, give me the advanced generation any day.'

She laughed with a mixture of humour and reserve. 'The guys all think I'm crazy. I have an exercise routine. I run up this ladder to the crow's nest every morning before breakfast.' 'What's that in aid of?'

'All day I sit at a sewing-machine stitching sails or at a desk doing maths. Put simply, the bottom doesn't benefit by it.'

I gestured at the servicing compartment. Its most unusual feature was a pair of what looked like gigantic vertical roller-blinds, about nine metres tall, tightly wound with sail.

'I suppose I'll get used to it,' I said, 'but at the moment it all seems like black magic to me. Strangest is having hollow masts.5

'They're correctly termed unstayed rotatable profiled masts,' she answered seriously. 'They've been custom-made by aircraft manufacturers.' She added with a touch of anxiety, 'You're going to try and make time, aren't you? Sail her?'

'My brief is to reach Gough Island within a week. I intend to.'

She considered my statement for a moment, then answered, 'You'll need all the luck.'

'Isn't it a tradition that any sailor who has sighted Cape Horn will have good luck for the rest of his — or her — career?' Her face became expressionless. 'It didn't bring me luck.' 'Meaning?'

She shrugged and was silent. Then she resumed in a different tone altogether. 'It's also a legend that anyone rounding Cape Horn has the right to have a pig tattooed on the calf of the right leg.'

Her amusement had an infectious quality, contrasting with her serious, sombre air of a moment before.

'I did.' She reached down and pulled up the leg of her corduroy pants. 'There. It's mainly gone now. It wasn't a real tattoo, only a kind of self-eradicating transfer.' Her mood changed mercurially. 'Louis thought it was disgusting. How could a lady go out to a party in London with a pig tattoo showing through her stocking?' 'Louis?'

'Husband. Ex. I did it for a laugh. Strangely, it was one of the things he battened on for the divorce.' 'I expect it was only a symptom.'

The colour now in her cheeks had nothing to do with the effort of climbing the ladder. 'Why shouldn't I? Old grandfather Fenton — I remember him still — had his whole forearm tattooed…' 'Is that where your sailoring genes come from?'

'He wasn't a sailor — he was a prospector’ she replied. 'Believe it or not, he went and lived on Gough Island between the wars prospecting for diamonds! Those were the days when a ship might have called once in a year — or never.'

'I never knew Gough was anything but a weather station.' 'Grandfather's expedition was long before it was inhabited. Maybe I'm a throw-back to the old man Perhaps it's his same spirit of adventure which brings me here, or made me sail round the world. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see Gough.'

Her remark brought me back to the hard realities facing Jetwind.

I replied a little offhandedly, 'I don't intend to stop. If you do see Gough, it would only be a glimpse. From there I'll be high-tailing to the Cape like a bat out of hell.' Again she asked eagerly, 'Then we're sailing — soon?'

'I didn't say so. But the race against time, the week, starts tomorrow.'

I sensed that by being non-committal I had lost her. She said distantly, 'John said you wanted to know about the sails?'

I felt I needed her on my side for what lay ahead. 'Listen, Kay,' I said. 'I intend to wring every knot, every half knot, out of this ship every mile of the way — and it's a long way. I'm a rule-of-thumb sailor, you're the specialist. I want you at my elbow to give advice when I hell-drive Jetwind. Automatics aren't the answer as far as I'm concerned. It's the human flair which counts in my scheme of things.'

Her response was to draw up her knees to her chin, squatting on the tiny circle of steel. It made her look more sixteen than twenty-six. I looked down at her, gripping an overhead cat-walk which gave access to the yard and rollers.

'Then you've got to appreciate how different Jetwind is from any ship that has gone before,' she said. 'First, I don't like the term sails. I prefer aerofoils.' 'Sails mean — sails, to me.'

'I'll stick to sails, then. Take a scientific look at the shape of the sails of an old racing China clipper and you'll see the resemblance to an aircraft wing — a slender trapezoid or triangle with a curvature parallel to the longitudinal axis. Therefore those ships were fast…' 'Stick to one-syllable words and I'll follow you.' 'Those early clipper sails were efficient aerodynamically. However, as soon as ships became bigger, the sails had to be split in order to be handled physically by their crews. That destroyed their aerodynamics. Later windjammers looked super but aerodynamically speaking they were a nightmare — hopelessly inefficient. And as for that spider's web of rigging!' She gave a shudder. 'It does awful things to one when you see them under test in a wind-tunnel.'

'They worked, Kay. They also put some of man's most beautiful creations on the face of the ocean.'

'You're wrong!' she retorted vehemently. 'It's Jetwind that's beautiful, more beautiful than the best of them! Don't you appreciate the beauty of this sail plan — an unbroken aerofoil from deck to truck? Not individual sails slopping about on their own but a single entity with all the grace and power of proved mathematics behind it! As for Jetwind's masts — there's never been anything seen before on the high seas like the Prolss mast!

'You have to regard them and the sails as one propulsive unit. We found by tests the optimum speed for a quite definite trim of the sails. We also had to determine the optimum curvature of the yards, by comparison with the sail force curves.' 'It's the end result that concerns me.'

Kay seemed to have more data stored in her mind than a computer memory bank. But however fascinating all this theory was, my first problem was a practical one, the logistics of Jetwind's break-out. I cut in on her rarefied theorizing. 'Kay, what's Jetwind's best point of sailing?'

She answered without hesitation. 'With the wind on the beam or slightly abaft the beam?' 'Best strength?' 'Gale. Force nine.' 'Reefed down?' 'Naturally.' 'Relative course angle?' 'One hundred and thirty-five degrees.' 'Speed?’ 'Twenty-two knots.' I said, 'On paper.'

She burst out passionately. cIf anyone can get that out of her, you're the man to do it! You thrashed Albatros across the face of the ocean as no man has ever thrashed a ship. We heard it on the radio’