1930. Tremendous dollop of water through afterhatch—wet everything—including this book. Gallons and gallons—worst inside wetting I’ve ever had—bunk a shambles.
Barbara’s diary was spared, however, and she describes the same incident with a bit more gusto:
In the early evening, after we had started to sail, a huge wave came aboard and poured, steadily and by bucketsful, down the afterhatch on top of poor Skip who had been trying to snatch a brief rest. He landed standing in the middle of his cabin, looking as though he’d just been in for a swim with his clothes on. Even the folded blankets under the mattress were soaked and his pillow and bolster were hopeless. With the patience of Job, he unloaded everything; wiped and blotted his books and instruments; remade his bed—using dry wool blankets on top of the wet mattress; got into dry clothes, and climbed back to continue his sleep. What a man!
Throughout the night I arose frequently and kept an anxious eye on the barometer, which was now slowly rising. By morning it was up to 1004 and our spirits were obviously climbing right along with it. There is a real lift in knowing that the worst is over and I feel sure it is no accident that we refer to spirits, as well as barometric pressure, as being “high” or “low.”
I felt we had made enough easting during the night so we could afford to give everyone a rest by again heaving to. This time we tried a new maneuver—lying atry: that is, taking down all sail and letting the ship take its natural position. It seemed to make little difference to the Phoenix, other than that she lay a little bit more in the trough. We rode quite comfortably.
The seas and wind were down considerably, but this is a relative statement as they were still very high. With a constant drizzle, visibility was poor and there was no chance to get our position. I estimated that we were about 35 miles southeast of the islands, but that could be only the merest guess.
During the next day the skies began to clear, with the wind still strong and gusty. We could now be sure that the worst was really over and began to check our damage. It was not too bad: four or five clips had pulled loose from the foresail; the main downhaul block was broken at the end of the gaff; the mainsail had chafed through in one spot where ironwork had rubbed against the furled sail. Otherwise we were in good shape.
That afternoon the mizzen flag halyard, which had worked loose and had been flying straight out and beyond our reach for the past two days, at last allowed itself to be captured from the deck. I took this as a sign that we were ready to carry on, so we set sail again to the northwest under mizzen and foresail. In a couple of hours we had the main repaired and ready for action.
Now our problem was to find the islands. The next day we were able to get a hasty sun shot. Barbara took the tiller while Ted and I went below to plot it. Suddenly she let out a whoop.
“Land ho!”