With the East and West at war and the normal military presence in those sea lanes absent, piracy off the African coast was on the rise and her skipper, Carlo Duellos, had wisely steered clear of that side of the Atlantic.
No one would be feeding his and the crews’ families if they were being held for ransom in the African bush somewhere.
The British on the Malvinas had itchy trigger fingers as they half expected his country to take advantage of the war, by trying to retake the islands again. So an exclusion zone once more sat in place barring all but the foolish from those waters. No one was going to be feeding their families if the bastard British accused them of spying and locked them up.
Most of the local boats had gone west through the Straits of Magellan to fish off the Pacific coast, but Carlos figured that a lot of boats from Panama on down would be doing the same.
They had returned from the Azores with an empty hold and empty tanks, and Carlos was forced to go cap in hand to the local bank.
The bank manager was a reasonable man and he was a local too, but Carlos was not the only one having an unexpectedly bad season, the whole planet was, and that was likely to last at least as long as the war, he had pointed out.
Carlos went from the bank with only the manager’s best wishes and had arrived at the bar the fishermen used as a kind of base when in port. Getting the crew together he had laid it out for them, they had no line of credit and no gas so he, Carlos, was willing to sell his truck if the rest of them were also going to contribute something towards the expenses.
Their engineer quit, either unable or unwilling to take a gamble on them finding any live fish, and a gamble it was. Worldwide food prices had hit the roof, so a full hold would set them all up for the rest of the year, but another disastrous voyage such as their last one would be ruinous.
The remainder had borrowed from relatives or sold heirlooms for them to fuel the ‘Maria III’.
They had just enough diesel and supplies for about a week’s normal fishing, and so it was that they had set out once more, but with Carlos doing what he could to get the crew’s next most mechanically minded member familiar with the trawler’s elderly seven cylinder diesels.
They went from previously productive fishing grounds nearer home to those more and more distant, seeking the fish that had left without trace.
It took time and patience, going further and further south east with the crew sat about idle, becoming more and more despondent
On the fourth day, with the light fading and dark clouds threatening their sonar fish detector finally picked up a large shoal of whiting and the crew put ‘Maria III’s gear in the water for the first time that voyage.
The change in mood was palpable throughout the small vessel, from borderline desperation to one of desperate hope. It was food on the table for their families, but they had to fill the hold first and they were short-handed, so with rain setting in for the night they set to with a will.
The net came up full and the winch strained as it lifted the catch inboard to whistles and shouts of joy and relief. The gamble was paying off.
Again the nets went back over the side as Carlos stayed with the twisting and turning shoal.
By 3am the seas were picking up and the rain was gusting in horizontally but the hold was still only three quarters full.
Another full net with its flashing silver bounty was tantalisingly just below the surface when the winch jammed, and despite promises and threats it remained uncooperative.
Carlos called down to the make-do engineer to come up and take the wheel so he himself could try and fix the winch.
When the proper engineer had quit he had taken his tools with him, and he had also taken his ear defenders too, so Carlos was relieved on the wheel by a partly deafened novice ship’s engineer.
Carlos removed the housing from about the winch mechanism and cursed the rain and the rusty and frayed cable which had bunched and snagged. At least, he told himself, at least they could invest in a new one once they got back to port and sold this catch.
The radar proximity warnings strident tone registered only as a faint beeping to the only occupant of the wheelhouse and the large return which drew closer with every sweep of the radar repeater meant nothing to him, but similar warnings should have raised the alarm with the watch keepers aboard the bulk carrier ‘Istial Starwalk’ which was running without lights for fear of the submarine threat to shipping.
‘Maria III’ was reported overdue by Carlos’s wife when the fuel they had taken on board was obviously exhausted and neither she nor any of the other wives had received word from their husbands as they would have done had the their boat called into another port for some reason such as a medical emergency or a mechanical failure of some description.
The Argentine Naval Prefecture, as the Argentinian coast guard is known, called the harbour masters on the Atlantic coast as far away as ‘Maria III’s partially full tanks could have taken her and even lodged a request for information or sightings with the Anglos on the Malvinas, but the boat had not put into any port since leaving Rio Gallegos the week before.
Had the ‘Istial Starwalk’ immediately reported a collision which had been felt throughout the vessel, and which was subsequently found to have left her bow damaged and scraped then the search and rescue operation could have begun immediately, and with a precise location. However, her master did not heave-to and did not report any collision until the ship docked at Auckland a month later and even then the insurance claim merely stated ‘Colliding with unknown object’ at a position some twelve hundred miles further north than it actually had, closer to the recent fighting and therefore easier to justify his reluctance to stop and investigate.
Nothing could muffle the sound a piton being hammered into rock, and on the few occasions that it had been absolutely unavoidable Richard Dewar gritted his teeth in the expectation of their discovery.
With the latest piton securely in place Richard attached through its eye, one end of a quickdraw, two carabiners with spring loaded gates and attached together by a webbing strap, before clipping his line into the free end.
The ropes they were using were a far cry from the stiff half inch hemp ropes Richard had first used as a Boy Scout, cliff climbing at Black Rock Sands in Wales, these were 10.5 cm ropes made from semi translucent man-made fibres which though not invisible by any means, did allow them to blend more easily with the background.
Gripping the rope he leant outwards, allowing the piton to take the strain as he peered upwards at the eighteen foot overhang he had reached. About an arms width away a crack in the rock bisected the overhang, and he knew from a recce through binoculars whilst choosing this route that this led upwards, widening all the time to become a chimney. Richard felt around his harness for another quickdraw, but one with a locking gate to attach to his harness. The movements of a climber can inadvertently cause something to press against the outside of a carabiners gate, a jutting rock or another item of equipment can open a spring loaded carabiner causing the rope or harness it was holding to be released, so he always used locking carabiners next to his body.
Clipping the new quickdraw to the one attached to the piton, he spread his feet and braced them against the rock before leaning outwards, reaching up and back for the crack to explore it with his fingers. Ideally he hoped to find a suitable seat for monolithic protection, a solid tapered wedge or a hex to jam inside where a runner could support his weight, but its sides were too smooth and parallel. He wasn’t as fond of SLCDs, the mechanical, spring-loaded camming devices, or a ‘camm’ for short, which were the alternative to monoliths as they had a tendency to ‘walk’ when not under tension and work themselves free. He had no choice in this instance and at least the camm would be hanging vertically, a position from which it was least likely for it to work its way loose. Richard made his selection from the collection of various sizes clipped to his harness, and holding the device by its stem he pushed it up inside the crack as far as he could before releasing the four camm’s at the top end of the single SLCDs stem which sprung outwards, the teeth biting at the rock. Major Dewar clipped another quickdraw to the eye at the stem and tested it by applying increasing weight. It held, allowing him to attach yet another locking quickdraw to his harness and clip it to the free end of the one he held. Richard was now supported in place at two points and still had both hands free, his feet were only keeping him steady whilst he worked so should the piton and camm come loose then only the man belayed-on at the last pitch, seventy feet below could arrest his fall.