A Ravel of Waters

I added., 'I intend to flog Jetwind until she makes Gough in a week or she falls apart at the seams.'

Provided you first manage to break out, a voice nagged at the back of my mind.

Kay's voice vibrated still. 'At her maximum, the aerofoil sail-plan delivers forty thousand horse-power. You've only got to have the nerve and the guts to use it!'

Twenty-two knots, under ideal conditions. The Almirante Storni could bullet along at thirty-five at full bore, depending on the state of the sea. She must never get the chance to use her speed advantage. That was my scheme.

Linked to my plan was the need to deploy all Jetwind's power rapidly. How fast could she accelerate from anchor to the ten knots I considered the minimum required? Could she work up to that speed in the mere kilometre and a half which separated her from where she lay now to The Narrows? 'Did you ever carry out any flying start tests in your wind-tunnel?' I asked. 'I don't follow you.'

'Say, for example, I wanted to accelerate Jetwind from a moored position to the maximum she could achieve under the wind conditions then prevailing, how would I set about it?' 'What wind velocity are we talking about?'

That was the kicker. At its worst, I must assume that the wind would be blowing only a moderate breeze of about sixteen knots by the early hours of the following morning. Anything above that would be a bonus in Jetwind's favour. 'Say, Force Three to Four.' 'And the sea?' 'If she was moored, it would be calm.' Her eyes became abstracted, and she murmured something to herself about side and thrust forces and angles of wind inflow. Then she asked incisively, 'She would naturally be carrying all sail?' 'You bet.' 'I make it eleven knots, at her best point of sailing.'

Eleven! I had hoped only for ten. If the wind were stronger than Force Three or Four, I'd have thrust in hand for my purpose.

Yet Kay still had not answered my question — how soon could I draw on that amount of Jetwind's speed? I couldn't be more specific without revealing my plan. I had no intention of doing so — to anyone. 'As for acceleration?' 'It's not the sort of thing we tested for.'

I changed the subject. 'Kay, what's this curious waxy smell in here — like furniture polish? Is it the hydraulic fluid?' She indicated one of the giant 'rolling-pins'. 'Dacron doesn't smell.'

'It's not the sails themselves but what's on them,' she explained. 'To protect them against infra-red and ultraviolet ray sun damage, they have a special kind of plastic coating. You can imagine what a suit of sails like this costs. Mr Thomsen asked the Schiffbau Institut to find some substance to protect the sails so a new flexible plastic was specially developed.'

I looked about me. 'This is where- Captain Mortensen was killed, isn't it?'

The animation went from her face. 'Right here in this bay. He's supposed to have been trapped between those two rollers.' 'Supposed?'

'I can't understand how such a thing could have happened,' she said vehemently. 'First, the sail was supposed to have been jammed on its yard-arm runners. How? At the Schiffbau Institut we carried out thousands of preliminary reefing and sail-setting tests under every simulated condition of wind. Mr Grohman brought Captain Mortensen here to demonstrate a fault to him…'

My mind leapt ahead to my coming interview with the chief magistrate. 'You don't believe the account of the tragedy?'

'I didn't say that. All I do say is that, I can't understand how it could have happened. The ship was making time in a rising sea and gale and we were all thrilled with the way she was performing. Then this!' She jumped off her perch and came close to me. She indicated a switch on the mast wall. 'Apart from the bridge consoles, there's a fail-safe control right here. All Mr Grohman had to do was to press this button and the rollers would have stopped. And…' she indicated levers on the rollers themselves '… here are hand cranks as another emergency measure. They operate the travelling runners manually in case of power failure. There was no power fault! What happened?'

'That's what Mr Thomsen keeps asking. Why did Grohman make for the Falklands when he could have carried on to the Cape?'

'God, oh God!' she exclaimed savagely. 'It was awful. Jetwind was like a funeral ship. He abandoned the record attempt and headed into the gale. Day after day! Forcing Jetwind to go that way! Into that same godawful gale which would have blown us all the way to the Cape!'

'I wish Mr Thomsen could hear you now,' I said. And I gave her the gist of Thomsen's plans to try and recoup Jetwind’s prestige.

She plucked at a loose thread at the bottom of the sail roller. Her big eyes were full of controlled fury.

'Fine, fine!' she exclaimed. 'But when are we sailing? Every time I ask you when, you dodge the question! What sort of jinx is bugging Jetwind!'

I lit a cigarette after offering her one, which she refused. I had decided to treat her as an ally; as an ally, she had to know what was in my mind.

'There is no jinx, Kay, but there's something equally serious,' I said. Then I outlined Grohman's remarks that Jetwind would be detained, the imminent arrival of the Almirante Storni, the bureaucratic stalling port, and finally my forthcoming interview with the chief magistrate in half an hour or so.

When I had finished, she remained silent. Then she burst out, 'What has Jetwind to do with some obscure squabble between Argentina and Britain over the Falklands? She's a ship, not a pawn in a petty political game, She's my ship!' 'Mine too, Kay.'

'You're not going to let them do it, are you, skipper? Keep her boxed up here to rot! Why don't you up-anchor now — right now — and get the hell out of here before the destroyer can catch us…'

'The Almirante Storni is capable of thirty-five knots,' I answered. 'She'd come after Jetwind if I did. She'd catch us before we'd gone a hundred miles.' 'What do you mean to do about it?' she demanded.

'I'll plan my strategy after I've seen the chief magistrate. Meanwhile, what I've told you is between the two of us.'

'Of course,' she said. 'There's something important I failed to mention, though — there's an important failsafe system built into the masts for the ultimate emergency.' 'The ultimate emergency?' I echoed.

She gestured upwards. 'Yes. In the unlikely event of Jetwind being knocked down on her beam-ends by a squall, self-destructing explosive ring charges are built into the junction of the top and top-gallant masts. The charges are designed to blast away the top-gallant masts, either individually or together, to enable the ship to right herself again.' 'That seems very drastic to me.'

'The masts can't be cut away because there's no rigging,' she went on. 'The charges operate on the same principle as the ejector seat of an aircraft.' 'Who fires the charges and from where?' 'You'll see the "chicken button" as it's called on the main bridge bulkhead. It's painted scarlet, and to get at it one has first to break a glass — like a fire-alarm.'

'Things would have to be pretty far gone before, one resorted to such extreme measures,' I said. 'Now — a final question: how does one get out on the yard itself from here?'

'There's this exit hatchway. It's held shut magnetically, like the ship's watertight bulkheads. Here's the switch. First, though, I have to obtain permission from the officer of the deck.'

She dialled 'O' on a red-painted phone on a mast bracket. I wondered why Grohman hadn't used the instrument at the time of Captain Mortensen's accident. The sail rollers could have been halted via the bridge controls.

Kay said, 'John? I'm opening the main tops'l yard-arm for the skipper to take a look-see — okay?'

The door slid open and we ducked through. The yard itself was wide enough for Kay to stand on. She balanced, without retorting to the safety grab-handles.

The vantage-point gave me a magnificent view of both ship and anchorage. The Narrows entrance seemed perilously close. Between Navy Point and Engineer Point, its twin land flanks, the grey-green water was coming in from the deep ocean beyond the outer anchorage. The sea had lost its brilliant cobalt of the morning. Neither headland was high; none of the hillocks running east and west of them was as high as Jetwind’s maintruck. Therefore a lookout in the crow's nest could see clean across the intervening land to what the Almirante Storni was up to.